Political Science Commons^™

International Elections Experts, Monitors, And Representations In The Arab World, Sheila Carapico

Political Science Faculty Publications

Elections are sites of festivity, celebrity, and sometimes dramatic suspense, unique occasions for the simultaneous nationwide engagement of candidates, campaign volunteers, poll-workers, voters, and even abstainers and school-children in the quintessential patriotic experience. Yet in an era of globalization, national elections are not necessarily purely domestic affairs; a large cadre of expatriate consultants, trainer-trainers, and monitors often participate directly. This paper considers two alternative understandings of the role of North American, European, and international democracy brokers in Arab elections since the early nineteen nineties. The usual story is that Western democracies set aside democratic altruism to protect vital interests, allies, …

Bilateralism, Jeffrey W. Legro

Political Science Faculty Publications

Bilateralism concerns relations or policies of joint action between two parties. It can be contrasted with unilateralism (where one party acts on its own) and multilateralism (where three or more parties are involved). Typically, the term has applications concerning political, economic, and security matters between two states. Bilateralism has both costs and benefits, and there is a debate on its merits relative to unilateral or multilateral approaches.

Evaluating Majority Party Leaders In Congress, Daniel Palazzolo

Political Science Faculty Publications

Evaluations of majority party leaders come from three main sources: political scientists, media analysts, and members of Congress. Political scientists are the theoreticians. They have defined concepts and developed theories for evaluating leadership style, strategy, and strength. Journalists are the watchdogs. They regularly evaluate leader performance in response to contemporary events. Members of Congress then serve as the judges and juries. They occasionally advise leaders on tactics and strategies, and they ultimately have the ability to sanction or reward leaders.

The Mystery Of Capital Formation In Sub-Saharan Africa: Women, Property Rights And Customary Law, Sandra F. Joireman

Political Science Faculty Publications

Economists such as Hernando De Soto have argued that clearly defined property rights are essential to capital formation and ultimately to economic growth and poverty alleviation. This article traces two impediments to the clear definition of property rights in the African context: customary law and the status of women. Both of these issues interfere with the attempt of African countries to rearticulate property law with the goal of capital formation. Constructive attempts to define property rights must address the problem of enforcement in under-resourced environments where changes may not be welcomed.

The Impacts Of Climatic Changes For Water Resources Of The Colorado And Sacramento-San Joaquin River Basins, Peter H. Gleick, Elizabeth L. Chalecki

Political Science Faculty Publications

A wide variety of regional assessments of the water-related impacts of climatic change have been done over the past two decades, using different methods, approaches, climate models, and assumptions. As part of the Water Sector research for the National Assessment of the Implications of Climatic Variability and Change for the United States, several major summaries have been prepared, looking at the differences and similarities in results among regional research projects. Two such summaries are presented here, for the Colorado River Basin and the Sacramento River Basin. Both of these watersheds are vitally important to the social, economic, and ecological character …

A Framework Of Ordered Climate Effects On Water Resources: A Comprehensive Bibliography, Elizabeth L. Chalecki, Peter H. Gleick

Political Science Faculty Publications

An examination of the metadata for almost 900 bibliographic references on the effects of climate change and variability on U.S. water resources reveals strengths and weaknesses in our current knowledge. Considerable progress has been made in the modeling of climate change effects on first-order systems such as regional hydrology, but significant work remains to be done in understanding subsequent effects on the second-, third-, and fourth-order economic and social systems (e.g., agriculture, trade balance, and national economic development) that water affects. In order to remedy a recently-revealed lack of understanding about climate change on the part of the public, climate …

Explaining Bureaucratic Optimism: Theory And Evidence From U.S. Executive Agency Macroeconomic Forecasts, George A. Krause, Kevin Corder

Political Science Faculty Publications

We offer a theory of intertemporal bureaucratic decision making which proposes that an agency’s forecast optimism is related to the extent to which it discounts future reputation costs associated with bureaucratic incompetence. Agency forecasts of the distant future are more likely to be optimistic than short-term forecasts. We claim that unstable organizations will discount reputation costs at a steeper rate than stable organizations, and therefore will produce more optimistic forecasts. We test our theory using macroeconomic forecasts produced by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the Social Security Administration (SSA) across six forecast horizons from 1979 to 2003. …

Dual Enrollment Between High Schools And A Metropolitan University, Steve Bullock, Gregory A. Petrow, Daniel Patrick O'Dell

Political Science Faculty Publications

Concurrent/dual enrollment programs at postsecondary educational institutions have rapidly proliferated across the country during the last several years with wide variations in the structure and composition of such programs. Having recently completed a pilot phase of its first dual enrollment program, the University of Nebraska at Omaha (UNO) has enjoyed great success due to a relatively unique partnership formed between the university and Omaha area school districts.

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 …

A Story Of Saxophone Craftsmanship: Implications For Public Administration Theory, Terence Garrett

Political Science Faculty Publications

While having breakfast and visiting with my friends, Ralph Hummel and Camilla Stivers, last week at the 2005 American Political Science Association annual meeting in Washington, D.C., we were sharing stories about the loss of American (and, indeed, outside of the U.S.) craftsmanship and the propensity for manufacturers and service providers to obey the laws of mass production. When it was my turn, I recounted the story of my own experience when it came time for me to buy a “new” baritone saxophone. After having talked about the story, my friends told me that the story had important aspects pertinent …

Katrina, Rita, Challenger And Columbia: Operationalizing A Knowledge Analytic In Nasa And Dhs Crises, Terence Garrett

Political Science Faculty Publications

The knowledge analytic is based on the reality of organizations that are clearly defined by the people who inhabit them: executives, managers, and workers. Each level of the organization possesses people who have a way of knowing how to do their work. Problems in organizations arise when there is conflict, or incompatibility, of knowledges (plural). Hummel (2006) submits that those at the higher echelons of the organization, the executives, use numbers as power over subordinates. Problems are accentuated with the problem of “forced commensurability” where numbers become more real to the organization than the actual work experienced by the employees …

From Opposition To Accommodation: How Rockefeller Foundation Grants Redefined Relations Between Political Theory And Social Science In The 1950s, Emily Hauptmann

Political Science Faculty Publications

I n this essay, I rely primarily on unpublished documents from the Rockefeller Foundation Archives as well as the annual reports of the Ford Foundation and the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) to show that rather than being in a torpor, political theory in the 1950s was a large and eclectic field, marked by contest and rapid change. I focus on the Rockefeller Foundation’s policy making for its program in Legal and Political Philosophy (LAPP), the largest grant program for political theory in the 1950s, both to see how the Foundation justified the creation of the program and how it …

India: Grassroots Hiv/Aids Activism Growing, Manju Parikh

Political Science Faculty Publications

In the last ten years, we have seen frequent news reports on the spread of the HIV/AIDS virus in the Indian subcontinent, each one stressing the dire economic and social consequences if urgent attention is not paid to the problem. Although the Indian government has responded by adopting many policies and by establishing an organization — the National Aids Control Organization (NACO) — to deal specifically with HIV awareness, treatment for HIV infected individuals, and prevention of further spread of HIV/AIDS, many critics do not find these measures adequate.

The campaign to create awareness and check the spread of AIDS …

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 …

Review Of One House: The Unicameral's Progressive Vision For Nebraska By Charlyne Berens, James B. Johnson

Political Science Faculty Publications

This is a book that needed to be written-a valuable, though flawed, addition to the literature on Nebraska's unique legislative body. It is the first addition to research on the Nebraska Legislature in some time and presents a new approach to the subject: has the Unicameral lived up to the promises of its founders? The answer is, by and large, yes.

Political Context And The Turnout Of New Women Voters After Suffrage, Kevin Corder, Christina Wolbrecht

Political Science Faculty Publications

Many observers expected new women voters to respond to their political context in distinctive ways. Some scholars anticipated that newly-enfranchised women—lacking political interest and experience—would be volatile and highly responsive to context. Others expected political isolation and norms proscribing political activity would insulate women from political stimuli.We test these competing predictions with a Bayesian approach to ecological inference and a unique set of aggregate data.We find that the responsiveness of women’s turnout is strikingly similar to that of men. However, the lesser impact of electoral competition, and the greater effect of electoral laws and prior suffrage activism, suggest that the …

Globalization, Migration Health, And Educational Preparation For Transnational Medical Encounters, Peter Koehn

Political Science Faculty Publications

Unprecedented migration, a core dimension of contemporary globalization, challenges population health. In a world of increasing human mobility, many health outcomes are shaped by transnational interactions among care providers and care recipients who meet in settings where nationality/ ethnic match is not an option. This review article explores the value of transnational competence (TC) education as preparation for ethnically and socially discordant clinical encounters. The relevance of TC's five core skill domains (analytic, emotional, creative, communicative, and functional) for migration health and the medical-school curriculum is elaborated. A pedagogical approach that prepares for the transnational health-care consultation is presented, with …

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 …

The Evolution Of The Common Law: Legal Development In Kenya And India, Sandra F. Joireman

Political Science Faculty Publications

Recent cross-national studies of the institutional prerequisites of economic growth have identified common law systems as superior to those of civil law. The assumption is that all common law systems share a similarity of structure and law which creates an environment facilitating investment and contract enforcement. Yet, due to its evolutionary nature, common law is not everywhere the same, nor is the historical development of the common law similar in all countries. This paper makes this point by examining the political development of common law in India and Kenya, in order to compare their legal institutions and histories. Both of …

An Unholy Trinity: Aids, Poverty And Insecure Property Rights For Women In Africa, Sandra F. Joireman

Political Science Faculty Publications

Women in Africa have long had insecure rights to both moveable and immoveable property due to the coexistence of customary and statutory law, lack of clarity and poor enforcement of the formal rights to property that exist. Insecure property rights for women are most evident in the case of divorce or the death of a spouse when a woman loses access to land and household assets. This paper examines the issues of poverty, HIV/AIDS and property rights in the area where they intersect most vividly, women’s lives and livelihoods. The gendered nature of the HIV/AIDS pandemic in Africa is analyzed …

No Quick Fix: Foreign Aid And State Performance In Yemen, Sheila Carapico

Political Science Faculty Publications

few of the world's poorest countries better exemplify American interests in government performance than Yemen. Long overshadowed by its oilrich Persian Gulf neighbors, Yemen gained attention as both an occasional target and a natural haven for militant regional paramilitary groups (including but not limited to al Qaeda). Headlines were made at a time when development analysts were already worried about ecological and economic stresses exacerbated by the strains of structural adjustment and critical water scarcity. In view of these circumstances, analysts began wondering if Yemen is an example of the combustible mix of poor governance and economic stagnation that could …

Forecasting Mass Destruction, From Gulf To Gulf, Sheila Carapico

Political Science Faculty Publications

While internally displaced Americans were piled into an unequipped New Orleans sports stadium, the question on everyone’s lips was: where were the Louisiana National Guard and its high-water trucks when Hurricane Katrina struck? One answer, obviously, was that at least a third of the Guard’s human and mechanical resources were deployed to Iraq. Anti-war protesters demonstrating in Washington on September 24, 2005 as a new storm battered the Gulf coast turned the question into a new slogan: “Make Levees, Not War.”

Is Regime Change Enough For Burma? The Problem Of State Capacity, Neil A. Englehart

Political Science Faculty Publications

The U.S. and the EU employ sanctions to encourage regime change in Burma. This policy ignores serious problems of state capacity that impede a transition to democracy and would plague any transitional regime. Engagement with the current regime on issues of state capacity would improve the chances for a transition.

Louisiana: Hot And Spicy, Christine L. Day, Jonathan O. Knuckey, Charles D. Hadley

Political Science Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.