Political Theory Commons^™

Mill's Harm Principle: A Study In The Application Of 'On Liberty', Sandra J. Peart

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

English philosopher and political economist John Stuart Mill argued that people learn by choosing: this is how they become creative and productive individuals. For this reason, and because he felt that individuals are typically the most capable people to make their own choices, Mill was highly skeptical of restrictions on choice placed by a third party, such as the state.

Mill famously separated actions into two categories: (1) self-regarding actions that do not affect others; and (2) other-regarding actions that do affect, and may harm, others. In the former category he placed thought and discussion, tastes and pursuits, and association, …

Introduction: Essays On Peace Bishops, Ron Pagnucco

The Journal of Social Encounters

No abstract provided.

The Age-Less Citizen: Cultivating A Civically Engaged K-12 Community Through The Use Of Service Learning, Chelsia I. Douglas Mpa

National Youth Advocacy and Resilience Conference

The Age-less Citizen will analyze evidence-based civic education studies and explore proactive student engagement strategies to build an individualized nonpartisan action plan for each school represented. From sending election reminders home by a kindergartener, to including local school board meetings on school newsletter and calendars, attendees will take away practical tips and tools to restore faith in the younger generation's ability to improve our democracy.

Is Faith The Ultimate Divider?: The Intersections Between Religion And Political Behavior In The United States, Ryan Supple

Honors Projects

This thesis examines the complex relationship between religiosity and voting behavior in the United States. In a country where religion has diminished in importance over time, it seems rather fascinating that it still plays such a large role in the inner-workings of American politics. Chapter One analyzes the varying ways in which scholars have approached emergent political trends between religious groups, particularly with regards to political parties, voting behavior, and government representation. Chapter Two extends this analysis to the American National Election Studies (ANES), a national survey distributed to random samples of Americans during election seasons. The information from the …

Can Discourse Ethics Be Applied To Emergencies?, Brenna Giblin

Regis University Student Publications (comprehensive collection)

Emergencies arise unexpectedly and when they occur, it is the job of our governments to respond to them. They often do so by using emergency powers, designed to return the nation back to its original state. Ensuring that our responses to emergencies are ethical is essential if we wish to return to a state of normalcy. To ensure that everyone is treated fairly, not only during the emergency, but also during the rebuilding and healing periods of the post-emergency world, we must critically analyze our emergency response. In this paper, I propose that Discourse Ethics, a normative theory suggesting that …

Women's Political Representation And Sustainable Development In Nigeria, 1999-2019., Efetobar Stephanie Effevottu

Young African Leaders Journal of Development

All over the world, the invincibility of women in politics act as a limitation to the promotion of gender equality and the accomplishment of the sustainable development goals. This paper interrogates the political representation of women in Nigeria's fourth republic. It is driven by the desire to unravel the challenges faced by Nigerian women in their quest for equitable political space and its inference for sustainable development in Nigeria. The findings of the study reveal that there has been significant improvement in the lives of women in Nigeria since the return of democratic governance in 1999. It also indicates that …

Subject Formation, Fundamentalism And Instrumentalist Nationalism In Zimbabwean Politics, Joram Tarusarira Dr.

Peace and Conflict Studies

This article argues that despite presiding over a failed economy, the Zimbabwe African Union Patriotic Front (ZANU PF) led by Robert Mugabe, has willing and enthusiastic supporters. There are claims that the large crowds witnessed singing and dancing at ZANU PF rallies are mobilized by force because the attendees do not benefit anything from supporting the regime. In a divergence from the consensus of the literature, this article surfaces other explanations than coercion for the huge turnout at rallies, rented crowds, handouts, and well-articulated election manifestos. The psychological dimension, especially the fundamentalist mindset created by instrumentalist nationalism, is one such …

How Civility Works, Keith Bybee

Institute for the Study of the Judiciary, Politics, and the Media at Syracuse University

Is civility dead? Americans ask this question every election season, but their concern is hardly limited to political campaigns. Doubts about civility regularly arise in just about every aspect of American public life. Rudeness runs rampant. Our news media is saturated with aggressive bluster and vitriol. Our digital platforms teem with expressions of disrespect and trolls. Reflecting these conditions, surveys show that a significant majority of Americans believe we are living in an age of unusual anger and discord. Everywhere we look, there seems to be conflict and hostility, with shared respect and consideration nowhere to be found. In a …

Soft Power Played On The Hardwood: United States Diplomacy Through Basketball, Joseph Bertka Eyen

Pitzer Senior Theses

This thesis demonstrates the importance of basketball as a form of soft power and a diplomatic asset to better achieve American foreign policy, which is defined and referred to as basketball diplomacy. Basketball diplomacy is also a lens to observe the evolution of American power from 1893 through present day. Basketball connects and permeates foreign cultures and effectively disseminates American influence unlike any other form of soft power, which is most powerfully illustrated by the United States’ basketball relationship with China. American basketball diplomacy will become stronger and connect with more countries with greater influence, and exist without relevant competition, …

Republican Realignment: Building A Majority Coalition For Future Electoral Success, Anthony J. Del Signore

Honors College Theses

Since the election of President George H. W. Bush, Republican presidential candidates have had difficulty winning popular elections. Republican candidates lost five of the next six popular elections to their Democratic opponents. This paper investigates why. It outlines the growing demographic shift in electoral politics which is detrimental for future Republican success. The growing dissonance between non-white, non-male voters and the Republican Party hinders the Party’s success when its message does not resonate with a majority of voters.

Utilizing realignment theory as first espoused by political scientist V. O. Key, this paper analyzes nine essential battleground states and the growing …

Interpreting, Stephanie Jo Kent

Doctoral Dissertations

What do community interpreting for the Deaf in western societies, conference interpreting for the European Parliament, and language brokering in international management have in common? Academic research and professional training have historically emphasized the linguistic and cognitive challenges of interpreting, neglecting or ignoring the social aspects that structure communication. All forms of interpreting are inherently social; they involve relationships among at least three people and two languages. The contexts explored here, American Sign Language/English interpreting and spoken language interpreting within the European Parliament, show that simultaneous interpreting involves attitudes, norms and values about intercultural communication that overemphasize information and discount …

Reclaiming Egalitarianism In The Political Theory Of Campaign Finance Reform, Frank Pasquale

Frank A. Pasquale

Recent advocacy for campaign finance reform has been based on an ideal of the democratic process which is unrealistic and unhelpful. Scholars should instead return to its egalitarian roots. This article examines how deliberative democratic theory became the main justification for campaign finance reform. It exposes the shortcomings of this deliberativist detour and instead models campaign spending as an effort to commodify issue-salience. Given this dominant function of money in politics, a more effective paradigm for reform is equalizing influence. Advocates of campaign regulation should return to the original principles of reformers; not an idealized vision of the democratic process, …

Voice Without Say: Why Capital-Managed Firms Aren’T (Genuinely) Participatory, Justin Schwartz

Justin Schwartz

Why are most capitalist enterprises of any size organized as authoritarian bureaucracies rather than incorporating genuine employee participation that would give the workers real authority? Even firms with employee participation programs leave virtually all decision-making power in the hands of management. The standard answer is that hierarchy is more economically efficient than any sort of genuine participation, so that participatory firms would be less productive and lose out to more traditional competitors. This answer is indefensible. After surveying the history, legal status, and varieties of employee participation, I examine and reject as question-begging the argument that the rarity of genuine …

Liberalism And Postliberalism In Bolivarian Venezuela, Tony Petros Spanakos

Department of Political Science and Law Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

In the last half-decade, the “rise of the left” in Latin America has been studied extensively by many scholars. Whether framed as one, two, or many lefts, its various party leaders have been vocal in opposition to neoliberalism, although the orientation of their policies and governments toward neoliberalism has been mixed (Panizza 2009). The most influential and visible case of an anti-neoliberal government is that of Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez Frías.

The five books reviewed here, drawing on research on Venezuela, share a common scholarly interest in liberalism, pluralism, and account- ability, although some defend liberalism (Brewer-Carías, Corrales and Penfold), …

Electoral And Political Reforms, Vijaya Krushna Varma Mr

VIJAYA KRUSHNA VARMA Mr

Varma proposes electoral and political reforms to reserve politics only to perfectionists who intend to dedicate their whole time and energy to serve the people of the country round the clock. It is imperative to consider these new political and electoral reforms for better, healthy and improved democracy to remove corruption, inequalities, unemployment and mis-governance.

Did Secularism Fail? The Rise Of Religion In Turkish Politics, Zeynep Taydas, Yasemin Akbaba, Minion K.C. Morrison

Political Science Faculty Publications

Religious movements have long been challenging the modernist and secularist ideas around the world. Within the last decade or so, pro-religious parties made significant electoral advances in various countries, including India, Sudan, Algeria, and the Palestinian territories. In this article, we focus on the rise of the pro-religious Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi- AKP) to power in the 2002 elections in Turkey. Using the Turkish experience with political Islam, we evaluate the explanatory value of Mark Juergensmeyer's rise of religious nationalism theory, with a special emphasis on the "failed secularism" argument. Our analysis indicates that the …

Course Syllabus: Harry Potter And International Politics - Identity, Violence And Social Control, Emma Norman

Emma R. Norman

The themes we draw from J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series are used to illuminate parallels in contemporary world politics and to apprehend in detail some of the key problems that revolve around the three core themes of the course (identity, violence, and social control). How, for instance, does life in Hogwarts help to illuminate the multiple, crosscutting identities produced by globalization? How does the divide between wizards and muggles, or Hermione’s obsession with elvish welfare, serve to illuminate continued discrimination in current liberal democracies and do these narratives help to widen our options when it comes to minimizing it? What …

The Moral International Sphere As A New "Civic Virtue", Claudia Heiss

Human Rights & Human Welfare

Liberal political theory, the predominant paradigm at least since the 1970s, rules out as oppressive the imposition of any substantive notion of a "good way of life" and proposes instead a neutral conception where each individual should have the right to pursue his or her own preferred project of life. This opposition of an ancient "virtue" and a modern "freedom" seems challenged by current debates about morality and the responsibility to protect innocent civilians from massive crimes. The moral outrage of the international community may be interpreted as a signal of a perhaps minimal notion of civic virtue, which translates …

Collective Choice, Justin Schwartz

Justin Schwartz

This short nontechnical article reviews the Arrow Impossibility Theorem and its implications for rational democratic decisionmaking. In the 1950s, economist Kenneth J. Arrow proved that no method for producing a unique social choice involving at least three choices and three actors could satisfy four seemingly obvious constraints that are practically constitutive of democratic decisionmaking. Any such method must violate such a constraint and risks leading to disturbingly irrational results such and Condorcet cycling. I explain the theorem in plain, nonmathematical language, and discuss the history, range, and prospects of avoiding what seems like a fundamental theoretical challenge to the possibility …

Recent Legislation To Promote Wind Energy In Nebraska, Ryan Lemke

Department of Environmental Studies: Undergraduate Student Theses

Nebraska is currently ranked 4th in the nation for wind energy potential, but ranks low in actual wind power production. The lack of wind energy production could be the result of Nebraska’s unique public power districts that have eminent domain of distribution and retail sales of electricity in the State. Public Power districts are prohibited from receiving benefits of state and federal tax incentives for the development of wind farms, however some Nebraska power districts still pursue wind energy as a renewable source of energy.

Recent legislation changes, including the passing of laws LB629 and LB1048, have provided the State …

Citizenship, In The Immigration Context, Matthew J. Lister

All Faculty Scholarship

Many international law scholars have begun to argue that the modern world is experiencing a “decline of citizenship,” and that citizenship is no longer an important normative category. On the contrary, this paper argues that citizenship remains an important category and, consequently, one that implicates considerations of justice. I articulate and defend a “civic” notion of citizenship, one based explicitly on political values rather than shared demographic features like nationality, race, or culture. I use this premise to argue that a just citizenship policy requires some form of both the jus soli (citizenship based on location of birth) and the …

Reclaiming Egalitarianism In The Political Theory Of Campaign Finance Reform, Frank Pasquale

Faculty Scholarship

Recent advocacy for campaign finance reform has been based on an ideal of the democratic process which is unrealistic and unhelpful. Scholars should instead return to its egalitarian roots. This article examines how deliberative democratic theory became the main justification for campaign finance reform. It exposes the shortcomings of this deliberativist detour and instead models campaign spending as an effort to commodify issue-salience. Given this dominant function of money in politics, a more effective paradigm for reform is equalizing influence. Advocates of campaign regulation should return to the original principles of reformers; not an idealized vision of the democratic process, …

The Opacity Of Transparency, Mark Fenster

Mark Fenster

The Effects Of Ballot Position On Election Outcomes, Jonathan G.S. Koppell, Jennifer A. Steen

Publications from President Jonathan G.S. Koppell

This article presents evidence of name-order effects in balloting from a study of the 1998 Democratic primary in New York City, in which the order of candidates' names was rotated by precinct. In 71 of 79 individual nominating contests, candidates received a greater proportion of the vote when listed first than when listed in any other position. In seven of those 71 contests, the advantage to first position exceeded the winner's margin of victory, suggesting that ballot position would have determined the election outcomes if one candidate had held the top spot in all precincts.

Relativism, Reflective Equilibrium, And Justice, Justin Schwartz

Justin Schwartz

THIS PAPER IS THE CO-WINNER OF THE FRED BERGER PRIZE IN PHILOSOPHY OF LAW FOR THE 1999 AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL ASSOCIATION FOR THE BEST PUBLISHED PAPER IN THE PREVIOUS TWO YEARS.

The conflict between liberal legal theory and critical legal studies (CLS) is often framed as a matter of whether there is a theory of justice that the law should embody which all rational people could or must accept. In a divided society, the CLS critique of this view is overwhelming: there is no such justice that can command universal assent. But the liberal critique of CLS, that it degenerates into …

Functional Explanation And Metaphysical Individualism, Justin Schwartz

Justin Schwartz

A number of (present or former) analytical Marxists, such as Jon Elster, have argued that functional explanation has almost no place in the social sciences. (Although the discussion is framed in terms of a debate among analytical Marxists, the point is quite general, and Marxism is used for illustrative purposes.) Functional explanation accounts for what is to be explained by reference to its function; thus, sighted organism have eyes because eyes enable them to see. Elster and other critics of functional explanation argue that this pattern of explanation is inconsistent with "methodological individualism," the idea, as they understand it, that …