Political Science Commons^™

The Soul Of A New Political Machine: The Online, The Color Line And Electronic Democracy, Eben Moglen, Pamela S. Karlan

Faculty Scholarship

In this Essay, we want to suggest two ways in which people's experience with the Internet may affect how they think politics ought to be organized, and to consider the consequences for the political aspirations of minority communities. First, the notion of "virtual communities” – that is, communities that affiliate along nongeographic lines – may provide new support for alternatives to traditional geographic districting practices. As Americans become more comfortable with the idea that people can belong to voluntarily created, overlapping, fluid, nongeographically defined communities, which may be as important as the physical communities in which they live, they may …

Evaluating Hungary's Mixed-Member Electoral System, Kenneth Benoit

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

The electoral system adopted by Hungary in 1989 represents a monument to the potential for institutional design through bargaining to produce complex yet stable institutions. The key compromise reached during this bargaining process was the decision to use a mixed-member system, electing a roughly even number of representatives from both majoritarian single-seat districts (SSDs) and from multi-seat, list proportional representation (PR) districts. This decision established Eastern Europe's first mixed-member electoral system, a format that was to become common in post-communist electoral systems. In its ten-year existence, Hungary's mixed-member system has operated in three elections and seen three different governments come …

Carter, Reagan, And Khomeini: Presidential Transitions And International Law, Nancy Amoury Combs

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

W(H)Ither Zschernig?, Carlos Manuel Vázquez

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The author argues here that a declaration of victory by the critics of the dormant foreign affairs doctrine would be premature. Notwithstanding the Court's citation of Ashwander v. TVA, the actual grounds of the decision in Crosby were in no meaningful sense less "constitutional" in nature than a decision based on the dormant foreign affairs power would have been. Moreover, even though the Court said that its decision was based on a straightforward application of "settled ... implied preemption doctrine," the Court's preemption analysis was anything but ordinary. Indeed, Crosby's version of preemption analysis is subject to the …

International Studies In The 21st Century: Civilization, Ethics And Transnational Relations, William A. Callahan

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Since the end of the Cold War, the world has been reorganizing itself, moving away from the global issues to other forms of international politics. There has been a shift in the study of world politics as well. Some have tried to refashion Realism to again concentrate on nation-states in perpetual conflict.

Simulation Methodologies For Political Scientists, Kenneth Benoit

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

In this brief article I identify and characterize the variety of simulation methodologies relevant to political science research. Having identified them, I then recount a light-hearted tale of one successful application of a computer simulation to a real world problem of enormous significance. Extending the discussion to other examples, I discuss some of the main issues and benefits in simulation models for political science. Finally, I identify some software tools and additional resources for those who would like to learn more about using simulation methods for their own work.

Can A Liberal Society Tolerate Illiberal Elements?, Chandran Kukathas

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Libertarians believe that all individuals are entitledto live as they choose, free from interference byother persons or by the state. They also believethat in the absence of such interference, whether bygovernment or other agents of the state intent ondesigning or planning for society as a whole, order willnonetheless prevail. Given the freedom to contract andexchange, markets will coordinate the production anddistribution of goods — and indeed do so better thanany other institution can.

Human Rights From Paper To Practice: How Far Have We Come?, Gerald Robert Pace

Human Rights & Human Welfare

A review of The Power of Human Rights: International Norms and Domestic Change, edited by Thomas Risse, Steve C. Ropp, and Kathryn Sikkink. New York: Cambridge University Press (Cambridge Studies in International Relations, 66) 1999. 308pp.

The adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is now some fifty years behind us. Perhaps now is the time to focus less on which aspects of the political and private realms should fall under the domain of human rights, and more on the effect of the human rights discourse on the harmonization of state behavior. We presently live in a world …

Democratization And Human Rights: Affinity Or Tension?, Sharon Healey

Human Rights & Human Welfare

A review of Democratization and the Protection of Human Rights: Challenges and Contradictions, edited by Patricia J. Campbell and Kathleen Mahoney- Norris. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 1998. 140pp.

Historically, studies on democracy and human rights have considered the two as unrelated issues, and where treated as related, many scholars have assumed a positive relationship between democracy, human rights and development. The contributors to Democratization and the Protection of Human Rights, Challenges and Contradictions examine and critique some of the popular conceptions about the relationship between democracy and human rights.

China’S Cautious Participation In The Un Human Rights Regime, Greg Moore

Human Rights & Human Welfare

A review of China, the United Nations, and Human Rights: The Limits of Compliance, by Ann Kent. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999. 328pp.

When most Western students of human rights and/or international relations think of China, unfortunately they are most likely to think not of the greatness and longevity of Chinese civilization, the goodness of Chinese cuisine, or the grandesse of the Chinese landscape. Rather, they are most likely to think of the Tian’anmen Square incident of 1989 and China’s human rights problems. Considering both the interest and the emotion generated in the West over the issue of human …

Shaping Asylum: The Power Of Language, Teresa Tellechea

Human Rights & Human Welfare

A review of Arguing about Asylum: The Complexity of Refugee Debates in Europe by Niklaus Steiner. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000. 186pp.

It is June 1992. War has broken out in the Balkans. When we leave Madrid by car for the frontlines in Mostar, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bosnians and Croats are defending themselves against Serbians. Our license plates begin with SA, the abbreviation for Salamanca, Spain, which is taken to mean Sarajevo, which is currently under siege. On the road to Mostar we are greeted as heroes having been able to escape from SArajevo, though we are two free-lance photographers from …

Universal Human Rights And Cultural Diversity, Hilde Hey

Human Rights & Human Welfare

A review of Human Rights: New Perspectives, New Realities, edited by Adamantia Pollis and Peter Schwab. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2000. 259pp.

The debate as to whether human rights should be considered universal or culturally relative has come a long way. In 1947, when the Commission on Human Rights considered proposals for formulating a declaration on basic human rights, the American Anthropological Association submitted a statement expressing concern about the universality of the proposed declaration. The association’s main argument was that ideas about rights and wrongs and good and evil that exist in one society are incompatible with the ideas …

Norm Theory And The Future Of The Federal Appointments Process, Michael J. Gerhardt

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Role Of Law In The Functioning Of Federal Systems, George A. Bermann

Faculty Scholarship

Federal systems are about the distribution of legal and political power, but law is not only one of the currencies of federalism, it is also one of federalism's most important supports; this chapter considers the role that law plays in establishing and enforcing the system by which both legal and political power are distributed within the USA and the EU. Bermann explores the various ways in which the courts can, and choose to, enforce the principles of federalism beyond the classical ‘political’ and ‘procedural’ safeguards provided by the institutional structures themselves and the constraints on the deliberative process. He describes …

A Political Geography Of Chinese And Other State Claims To Territorial Sovereignty Of The Spratly Islands, William Jeffery Brown

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

Since 1970, the claims in the South China Sea have become a matter of considerable political attention, both regionally and internationally. This increased attention has came about largely because of the UN Convention of the Law of the Sea and the fact that China has started pressing for what it calls its historical claims. The PRC and the ROC, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, Brunei, and the Philippines have claims to islands and waters in the SCS. The claims are promoted today because of the major oil potential of the Sea. The UN CLOS allows control of resources by the State that …