Political Science Commons^™

Deifying The Dead And Downtrodden: Sympathetic Figures As Inspirational Leaders, Scott T. Allison, George R. Goethals

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

This chapter proposes that leaders often derive their most inspirational qualities from events or actions that transpire before and after, rather than during, their tenure as leaders. These events or actions engender sympathy, emotional support, and adoration for the leader. We identify three types of individuals whose effectiveness as leaders stem from actions that elicit sympathetic responses from others: underdog leaders who attract sympathy from their ability to overcome significant obstacles before they assume their leadership; deceased leaders who attract sympathy and whose deaths elicit reverence and inspiration long after they are gone; and martyrs who make the ultimate sacrifice …

(Dis)Solving The Chronological Paradox In Customary International Law: A Hartian Approach, David Lefkowitz

Philosophy Faculty Publications

As traditionally conceived, the creation of a new rule of customary international law requires that states believe the law to already require the conduct specified in the rule. Distinguishing the process whereby a customary rule comes to exist from the process whereby that customary rule becomes law dissolves this chronological paradox. Creation of a customary rule requires only that states come to believe that there exists a normative standard to which they ought to adhere, not that this standard is law. What makes the customary rule law is adherence by officials in the international legal system to a rule of …

On The Foundation Of Rights To Political Self-Determination: Secession, Non-Intervention, And Democratic Governance, David Lefkowitz

Philosophy Faculty Publications

From a justificatory standpoint, perhaps the most basic question with respect to secession is what, if anything, provides the moral foundation for a group’s right to secede. My aim here is to make a start to answering this question. I do so, however, by considering a different, albeit closely related, question, namely what is the nature of the wrong done to members of a qualified group denied secession by the state that currently rules them? A compelling answer to this latter question, I suggest, will contribute significantly to a satisfactory answer of the former one.

[Introduction To] Medicare Prospective Payment And The Shaping Of U.S. Health Care, Robert A. Berenson, Rick Mayes

Bookshelf

This is the definitive work on Medicare’s prospective payment system (PPS), which had its origins in the 1972 Social Security Amendments, was first applied to hospitals in 1983, and came to fruition with the Balanced Budget Act of 1997. Here, Rick Mayes and Robert A. Berenson, M.D., explain how Medicare’s innovative payment system triggered shifts in power away from the providers (hospitals and doctors) to the payers (government insurers and employers) and how providers have responded to encroachments on their professional and financial autonomy. They conclude with a discussion of the problems with the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003 and …

Indigenous Self-Determination: A Global Perspective, David E. Wilkins

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

The concepts of self-determination and sovereignty, from an Indigenous perspective, embrace values, attitudes, perspectives, and actions. Of course, as a result of the historical phenomenon known as colonialism, in which expansive European states sought to dominate the rights, resources, and lands of aboriginal people worldwide, one cannot discuss Indigenous self-determination and sovereignty without some corresponding discussion of how states and their policy makers understand these politically charged terms as well.

I have been thinking, acting, researching, and writing on these two vital concepts, intergovernmental relations, critical legal theory, and comparative Indigenous politics for nearly two decades. Along with this, I …

Simmons’ Critique Of Natural Duty Approaches To The Duty To Obey The Law, David Lefkowitz

Philosophy Faculty Publications

In his most recent book on the moral duty to obey the law, A. John Simmons considers and rejects a number of natural duty approaches to justifying political authority. Among the targets of Simmons’ criticism is the account defended by the book’s co-author, Christopher Heath Wellman. In this essay, I evaluate the force of Simmons’ objections to Wellman’s account of political obligation. As will become clear below, I think Wellman’s defense of the duty to obey the law defective in certain ways—but not in all of the ways that Simmons argues it is. By rebutting some of Simmons’ criticisms and …

The Reagan Standard, Gary L. Mcdowell

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

After much hemming and hawing, former U.S. Sen. Fred Dalton Thompson has made it official: He will seek the Republican nomination for the presidency. His official announcement, it has long been rumored, will cause a collective sigh of relief from a great many conservatives in the party. He is, after all, in their view, one of them. The question is, what does that mean?

A Theory Of Political Obligation: Membership, Commitment, And The Bonds Of Society By Margaret Gilbert (Book Review), David Lefkowitz

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Does membership in a political society, in and of itself, involve obligations to uphold that society’s political institutions? Margaret Gilbert offers a novel argument in defense of an affirmative answer to this question, which she labels the membership problem. Given a plausible construal of the concepts obligation, political society, and membership in a political society, Gilbert argues that it follows analytically that to be a member of a political society just is to have an obligation to uphold and support that society’s political institutions. The key to Gilbert’s argument is the idea of a joint commitment; those …

A Critical Comparison Of The Church-State Jurisprudence Of Chief Justice William Rehnquist And Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, Christy Harrison

Honors Theses

The relationship between government and religion is a difficult one. The question of how religious beliefs and practices should be treated by the government remains at the forefront of constitutional debate. There are concerns about religious freedom and the extent to which it conflicts with public duty. The First Amendment of the United States Constitution states, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." The Supreme Court's interpretation of the religion clauses has been unclear, inconsistent, and, therefore, extremely controversial. In fact, it has not become less controversial over time, but quite …

Scientific Advice To The House : Who Has The Congressional Ear?, Kristen Greenholt

Honors Theses

In 2001, President George W. Bush remarked, "Science and technology have never been more essential to the defense of the nation and the health of the economy." The responsibility for formulating science and technology policy primarily falls into the hands of Congress. However, since few members of Congress possess a broad base of knowledge in either science or technology, they must rely on external sources of information. I examine the sources of information on which they rely, or the question "Who has the Congressional Ear?"with regard to science and technology issues. Using the downfall of the Office of Technology Assessment …

Mccarthy Hearings, Paul Achter

Rhetoric and Communication Studies Faculty Publications

What have become known as the “McCarthy hearings” refer to 36 days of televised investigative hearings led by Senator Joseph McCarthy in 1954. After first calling hearings to investigate possible espionage at the Army Signal Corps Engineering Laboratories in Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, the junior senator turned his communist-chasing committee’s attention to an altogether different matter, the question of whether the Army had promoted a dentist who had refused to answer questions for the Loyalty and Security Board. The hearings reached their climax when McCarthy suggested that the Army’s lawyer, Joseph Welch, had employed a man who at one time …

[Introduction To] The Values Of Presidential Leadership, Terry L. Price, J. Thomas Wren

Bookshelf

In this volume, presidential scholars from communication, history, law, philosophy, political science, and psychology explore the broader phenomenon of leadership. Like leadership more generally, presidential leadership is a value-laden activity, an exercise in communication, and a collective enterprise. It is also subject to psychological and historical barriers to interpretation. Finally, presidential leadership is instrumental: presidents must achieve their valued ends. Contributors address each of these aspects of leadership in essays on how presidential values are determined or constructed, how they are condoned and criticized, how they are packaged and conveyed, and how they are interpreted and acted upon.

[Introduction To] Inventing Leadership: The Challenge Of Democracy, J. Thomas Wren

Bookshelf

The tension between ruler and ruled in democratic societies has never been satisfactorily resolved, and the competing interpretations of this relationship lie at the bottom of much modern political discourse. In this fascinating book, Thomas Wren clarifies and elevates the debates over leadership by identifying the fundamental premises and assumptions that underlie past and present understandings.

[Introduction To] Civil Society In Yemen: The Political Economy Of Activism In Modern Arabia, Sheila Carapico

Bookshelf

Sheila Carapico's book on civic participation in modern Yemen makes a pathbreaking contribution to the study of political culture in Arabia. The author traces the complexities of Yemen's history over the past fifty years, considering its response to the colonial encounter and to years of civil unrest. Challenging the stereotypical view of conservative Arab Muslim society, she demonstrates how the country is actively seeking to develop the political, economic and social structures of the modern democratic state. This is an important book that promises to become the definitive statement on twentieth-century Yemen.

Enforcing New Property Rights In Sub-Saharan Africa: The Ugandan Constitution And The 1998 Land Act, Sandra F. Joireman

Political Science Faculty Publications

A convincing case has been made in both academic studies and policy circles for clearly defined private property rights as a means to economic development. Perhaps best characterized by the recent work of Hernando De Soto, well-defined private property rights are thought to be critical not just for economic growth, but also as tool to alleviate poverty. The argument that the poor have capital that need only be put to efficient use through the creation of institutional structures that will allow them to access it is compelling. De Soto's work follows decades of policy advice provided by the international financial …

The Duty To Obey The Law, David Lefkowitz

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Under what conditions, if any, do those the law addresses have a moral duty or obligation to obey it simply because it is the law? In this essay, I identify five general approaches to carrying out this task, and offer a somewhat detailed discussion of one or two examples of each approach. The approaches studied are: relational-role approaches that appeal to the fact that an agent occupies the role of member in the political community; attempts to ground the duty to obey the law in individual consent or fair play; natural duty approaches; instrumental approaches; and philosophical anarchism, an approach …

Women And Welfare: The Politics Of Coping With New Social Risks In Chile And Uruguay, Jennifer Pribble

Political Science Faculty Publications

Women make up a disproportionate share of the world’s poor, and Latin America is no exception to this trend. Nevertheless, very few studies of social policy in the region have investigated why the gendered character of welfare provision varies across countries. This article addresses that question through a comparative historical analysis of Chile and Uruguay and concludes that variation in the gendered nature of each state’s social policy regime resulted from a two-step process. In the first stage, female labor force participation, the mobilizing capacity of women, and policy legacies differentiated the two countries, placing Chile on a less equitable …

On Moral Arguments Against A Legal Right To Unilateral Humanitarian Intervention, David Lefkowitz

Philosophy Faculty Publications

As the international response to recent events in Darfur demonstrates, the restriction of authority to intervene to the United Nations poses the greater legal barrier to intervention. From a practical perspective, then, the more pressing question may be whether international law ought to be modified to permit states, or multi-state organizations, to carry out unilateral humanitarian interventions; that is, interventions that are not authorized by the United Nations. The issue here is essentially a moral one: would the incorporation of a right to unilateral humanitarian intervention entail a moral improvement to international law – for example, a decrease in the …

Unraveling North Korea’S Preferences And Managing Its Nuclear Threat, Monti Narayan Datta

Political Science Faculty Publications

Chief among US national security concerns is the North Korean nuclear threat. Led by its reclusive, enigmatic leader, Kim Jong Il, the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea (DPRK) is one of the last bastions of communism, representing a strategic and ideological challenge for the United States in the post-9/11 era. So great is the perceived threat of the DPRK, that in his 2002 State of the Union address, President Bush proclaimed, “States like these, and their terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world. By seeking weapons of mass destruction, these regimes pose …

Killing Zone: What Can Be Done In Darfur?, Sandra F. Joireman

Political Science Faculty Publications

Christians from all traditions and from across the political spectrum have been pressing President Bush to try to get more United Nations peacekeeping troops on the ground in Darfur to stop the unrelenting violence there. The National Council of Churches endorsed the UN resolution in August that called for sending UN troops. In October, Evangelicals for Darfur, a coalition of Christian leaders—including Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention and Jim Wallis of Sojourners—took out full-page ads in newspapers calling for President Bush to do more to address the crisis.

Overcoming Apartheid: Can Truth Reconcile A Divided Nation? (Book Review), Sandra F. Joireman

Political Science Faculty Publications

Anyone engaged in conflict resolution, whether interpersonal or international, would agree that the process must begin with truth telling. But can truth telling be more than a beginning? Can it create a political environment hospitable to both perpetrator and victim?

Hiv/Aids In Africa, Sandra F. Joireman

Political Science Faculty Publications

The response of the United States to the HIV/AIDS pandemic in Africa is an example of the redefined nature of security threats that characterizes the post-September 11 period. Even the most ardent realists now accept that serious threats exist to US security apart from those brewing in organized states. Scholars and governments have been forced to adopt a greater sensitivity to the issues that underlie international violence and terrorism, such as a lack of political freedom, state failure, poverty, and HIV/AIDS, the topic addressed in this chapter as an indirect threat to US security interests in Africa.¹

Utilitarianism And Beyond: Contemporary Analytical Political Theory, David Miller, Richard Dagger

Political Science Faculty Publications

In this chapter we sketch a body of political thought that became predominant in the second half of the twentieth century among academic political philosophers, primarily in the English-speaking world, but increasingly elsewhere, too. To call this type of political thought ‘analytical’ may not be particularly revealing, but no other term better describes the movement in question. Sometimes ‘liberal political theory’ is used, and there is indeed a close connection between analytical theory and liberalism. But that label is in one way too broad and in another too narrow for this kind of political thinking: too broad because liberalism has …

Freedom And Rights, Richard Dagger

Political Science Faculty Publications

Liberalism, of course, is quite a capacious theory, with room for liberals to debate quite vigorously among themselves, as well as with others, the meaning and significance of freedom, rights and other concepts. It is also capacious enough to allow for a rethinking of these concepts at a time of pressing environmental problems. Such a rethmking, I shall argue, should lead us to conceive of freedom and rights less as barriers or shields that protect individuals against interference - as forms of independence - and more as matters of organic growth and connection, or interdependence. Indeed, we must conceive …

Complying With The Help America Vote Act (Hava): Variations Among The States, Daniel Palazzolo, Sarah F. Liebschutz

Political Science Faculty Publications

Our focus is on both the causes for the variations in state compliance with HAVA and the consequences of HAVA requirements for election administration, with particular emphasis on the experiences of New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania in implementing HAVA. We identify administrative, political, and policy-related reasons for variations in HAVA compliance in each state. We also consider the effects of HAVA on state and local government interactions, funding decisions, and policy innovation. We begin by reviewing HAVA compliance requirements, describing how states responded to those requirements, and comparing New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania with the national norms for …

Ukraine, Jeffrey K. Hass

Sociology and Anthropology Faculty Publications

The independent nation of Ukraine was born on December 1, 1991, when Russia's Boris Yeltsin, Belarus's Stanislav Shushkevich, and Ukraine's Leonid Kravchuk agreed to disband the Soviet Union and create the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). Since then, Ukraine's political history (much like its economic history) has been marked by the confusions, contradictions, and conflicts that go hand in hand with state building. Overshadowed on the world stage by its "bigger brother,'' Russia, Ukraine nevertheless has tried to forge its own path in terms of policies, political structure, political culture, and political identity.

The Ukrainian economy has been in a …

Russian Federation, Jeffrey K. Hass

Sociology and Anthropology Faculty Publications

The Russian political system remains subject to sudden radical change--this has been the basic logic of its political history since 1985. Only by understanding the processes and logics of that recent history of change can one understand the present and the (possibly radically different) future.

In December 1991 Boris Yeltsin, president of the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic (the USSR's largest republic, known as RSFSR), joined Stanislav Shushkevich of Belarus and Leonid Kravchuk of Ukraine in dissolving the Soviet Union and replacing it with the ill-defined Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). The RSFSR was transformed into the Russian Federation, and …

Romania, Jeffrey K. Hass

Sociology and Anthropology Faculty Publications

Before 1989 Romania was among the most authoritarian regimes of those in the Socialist East Bloc. Nicolae Ceauçescu's secret police was among the most active, and the dictator ruled with impunity until the wave of popular revolutions that swept Eastern Europe in the autumn of 1989 reached Romania. An internal coup deposed Ceaçescu (whose body was shown on television after he was shot), but Romania did not move immediately to liberal politics as in Poland or Hungary. Democracy took time to develop, although success appears on the horizon after joining the North Atlantic Treat Organisation (NATO) in 2004 and possible …

Republic Of Poland, Jeffrey K. Hass

Sociology and Anthropology Faculty Publications

Located in east-central Europe, Poland comprises an area of nearly 313,000 square kilometers (about the size of New Mexico). Borders with Germany on the west and Belarus and Russia on the east give Poland notable geopolitical significance. In addition, its flat topography, with no defensible geographical features, has made Poland a prime area for conflict, as the country not only lies between historically powerful nations but also has served as an unwilling conduit for forces between Russia and Germany.

Republik Of Lithuania, Jeffrey K. Hass

Sociology and Anthropology Faculty Publications

Formally Lithuania is a republic. The national government is composed of three branches-executive, legislative, and judiciary. Lithuania has a stronger presidency than the other Baltic countries and is referred to as a "presidential democracy" that has come to resemble the French system, where the president presides over policymaking and the parliament (Seimas) is weakened by divisions between several parties and factions; however, this strength may be illusory for institutional reasons.