Political Science Commons^™

Response To Prof. Ernest B. Hook’S Comments On “So-Called Euroasianism”, Dimitry Shlapentokh

Comparative Civilizations Review

I was quite pleased by the fact that a professor, a full professor from the prestigious University of California Berkeley, not only read my article, but commented on it. (Comparative Civilizations Review: No. 82. 129, 2020) Indeed, millions of articles are published every year, and the vast majority are absolutely ignored.

Philipp Ammon. Georgia Zwischen Eigenstaatlichkeit Und Russische Okkupation (Georgia Between Nationhood And Russian Occupation), Andrew Andersen

Comparative Civilizations Review

The book provides detailed analysis of political, historical, religious and cultural roots of the ongoing conflict between Russia and Georgia, which started more than 200 years ago in what is now a strategically important area of the world – the South Caucasus. That region, which includes Georgia alongside Armenia and Azerbaijan, serves as a natural corridor through which Western countries can get access to the vital hydrocarbon resources of Central Asia, bypassing Russia. At the same time, after the disintegration of the USSR, the South Caucasus turned into one of the “hot zones” where polar ideologies and economic interests of …

John Vincent Bellezza. The Dawn Of Tibet: The Ancient Civilization On The Roof Of The World, Constance Wilkinson

Comparative Civilizations Review

The Dawn of Tibet: the Ancient Civilization on the Roof of the World by John Vincent Bellezza is a unique work by an intrepid explorer-scholar who, purely from his own inspiration, spent decades doggedly tracking down traces of the prehistoric Zhang Zhung civilization, a Metal Age culture (famed for making iron weapons of war) and a polity that dominated the remote northwestern plateau of Upper Tibet until the 7th century CE.

End Matter

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

Organizing Twenty-First-Century Activism: From Structure To Strategy In Latin American Social Movements, Jessica Rich

Political Science Faculty Research and Publications

This article examines how the organizational structure of a social movement affects the tactics it is likely to adopt. Hybrid movements gained prominence at the start of the twenty-first century. Like movements of the past, they protested on the streets; but unlike the movements of the past, they also acted like interest groups by lobbying government over policy. Considered through the lens of traditional scholarship, this phenomenon presents a puzzle. Loose networks of activists are thought to be good at contentious politics but incapable of negotiating with government. By contrast, federations of interest groups are seen to be good at …

William Of Rubruck: Cosmopolitan Curiosity And Restraint In An Age Of Conquest And Mission, Duncan Weaver

Comparative Civilizations Review

William of Rubruck’s account of journeying to Mongolia (1253-55) remained relatively elusive in scholarly and popular discourses. A Franciscan friar, his mission helped tentatively acquaint two (literally/figuratively) distant civilizations, Latin Christendom and the Mongol Empire. We may assess the extent to which a critical reading of Rubruck can propel knowledge of a Christian Eastward mission. Rubruck’s account was found to evince a degree of restraint and cosmopolitan curiosity that not only went against the grain of Christendom’s exceptionalism and expansionism, but also enabled the pursuit of a rudimentary inter-civilizational dialogue.

Justice, Ideology, And Struggle, Megan Murray

Compass: An Undergraduate Journal of American Political Ideas

Marx’s approach to questions of justice and morality are captured by this metaphilosophical position, whereby Marx rejects an understanding of philosophical inquiry as the pursuit of foundations and universality. Philosophical justifications are, in the last instance, products of a particular form of society and production. Rather than abandoning the basic idea of human moral equality, the radical historicist approach allows the philosopher to make the Marxist progression from merely understanding the world toward changing it and moving it closer toward a moral horizon.

Author information: Megan graduated from Bryn Mawr College in 2018 started a PhD in political theory at …

Alexander Hamilton’S Vision Of An American Monarchy, Madeline Clarke

Compass: An Undergraduate Journal of American Political Ideas

Alexander Hamilton’s underlying arguments in The Federalist Papers and the Pacificus-Helvidius Debates of 1793-1794 expand the power of the presidency and display Hamilton’s desire for a king-like president of the United States, much like Great Britain’s monarch.

Author information: Madeline Clarke is an honors student from Ashland, Missouri, at the University of Missouri-Columbia studying political science and geography with a minor in American Constitutional Democracy. She is currently a Kinder Institute on Constitutional Democracy Undergraduate Fellow in addition to serving as president of Gamma Theta Upsilon Geography Honor Society, an executive board member of Pi Sigma Alpha Political Science Honor …

Hiding Behind Lincoln, Jonathan Fenster

Compass: An Undergraduate Journal of American Political Ideas

Abraham Lincoln’s ascent to power was surprising, but after a deep analysis it is clear that it was not at all unique. Just like Queen Esther, Lincoln was able to overcome extreme odds through patience and faith.

Author information: Jonathan Fenster is a Straus Center Scholar at Yeshiva University located in Washington Heights, New York. Jonathan plans on attending law school after he completes his biology major, and hopes to cultivate and develop a deeper understanding of the synthesis between modern law and ancient philosophy.

Grand Old (Tailgate) Party?: Partisan Discrimination In Apolitical Settings, Andrew M. Engelhardt, Stephen M. Utych

Political Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

Recent work in political science demonstrates that the American public is strongly divided on partisan lines. Levels of affective polarization are so great, it seems, that partisanship even shapes behavior in apolitical settings. However, this literature does not account for other salient identity dimensions on which people make decisions in apolitical settings, potentially stacking the deck in favor of partisanship. We address this limitation with a pair of experiments studying price discrimination among college football fans. We find that partisan discrimination exists, even when the decision context explicitly calls attention to another social identity. But, importantly, this appears to function …

Procesi I Negocimit Në Kosovë Dhe Sfidat E Tij, Diellza Hoti

Theses and Dissertations

Rrugëtimi i Kosovës deri në përfundim të procesit të shtetëzimit të plotë, me demokraci kushtetuese dhe vlera evropiane, me përcaktim të qartë drejt agjendës së integrimeve euro - atlantike, nuk është rrugëtim politik i kohës së re dhe i përjetuar lehtë. Ky punim synon të hulumtoj për sfidat e Kosovës në aspektin politiko - territorial ndër vite, që nga periudha kur Kosova ishte objekt i padrejtësive historike e deri në ditët e sotme ku është palë në tavolinën negociuese në procesin e dialogut Kosovë - Serbi. Kosova, një territor i vogël prej 10,887 km², me një popullsi prej rreth 2 …

Law Library Blog (September 2020): Legal Beagle's Blog Archive, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Law Library Newsletters/Blog

No abstract provided.

Comment By David Rosner, David Rosner

Comparative Civilizations Review

Human beings need to “make sense” out of the world, but our world is sometimes unintelligible.

Comment By Tseegai Isaac, Tseegai Isaac

Comparative Civilizations Review

Ethiopia is celebrated for its ancient biblical civilization. Its political traditions for centuries blended Old and New Testament tenets, creating templates for daily social and religious life.

Comment By David Wilkinson, David Wilkinson

Comparative Civilizations Review

In his life, Sorokin was variously a starving peasant orphan, an itinerant icon gilder, a self-taught bookworm, a political activist, a six-time political prisoner, an empirical penologist, a quantitative sociologist, a Socialist Revolutionary, a starving intellectual worker, an involuntary passenger on the Ship of Expelled Russian Thinkers, a founding comparative civilizationist, a conservative Christian anarchist, a Tolstoyan believer that “the Kingdom of God is within you,” and an elected write-in candidate for President of the American Sociological Association.

Editor's Note, Joseph Drew

Comparative Civilizations Review

The ferocity of Covid-19 has struck worldwide this year. In the process, all of humanity has been affected. Civilizations and societies, and nations large and small, have responded to the challenge, some with more success than others.

Chogyal Namkhai Norbu. The Light Of Kailash, A History Of Zhang Zhung And Tibet, Constance Wilkinson

Comparative Civilizations Review

The Light of Kailash : A History of Zhang Zhung and Tibet is a three-volume series by the late Chogyal Namkhai Norbu, former professor of Tibetan and Mongolian Language and Literature at the University of Naples L'Orientale. Born in Derge, Tibet, he spent much of his career researching the origins of pre-Buddhist Tibetan culture, finding sources in an ancient civilization, Zhang Zhung1, and an indigenous ritual tradition, Bon2.

Civilizational Dynamics Of "Hybrid Warfare", Stephen T. Satkiewicz

Comparative Civilizations Review

Since the end of the Cold War, analysts have struggled to make sense of the proliferation of smaller scale conflicts. Several labels have been used to describe this phenomenon, the most recent being “Hybrid Warfare.” This paper attempts to analyze them through the perspective of civilizational theory.

Very rarely, however, have the civilizational dimensions to these "Hybrid Wars" been extensively addressed. Considering that civilizations represent collective identities on perhaps the most macro-scale, they play an important potential dimension in this ongoing debate. Avoiding any gross simplified variation of a "clash of civilizations" type thesis, a civilizational perspective into this debate …

Pestilence And Other Calamities In Civilizational Theory: Sorokin, Mcneill, Diamond, And Beyond, Vlad Alalykin-Izvekov

Comparative Civilizations Review

This paper analyses the phenomenon of pestilence through paradigmatic and methodological lenses of several outstanding social scholars, including Pitirim A. Sorokin, William H. McNeill, and Jared M. Diamond. All three thinkers have advanced original, fundamental, and revolutionary paradigms regarding the profound role which infectious diseases played, are playing, and will continue to play in world history and culture. The phenomenon of pestilence is studied in the context of other major calamities. The relevant historic, as well as contemporary macro-level and long-term sociocultural research, is reviewed. The author advances a number of original concepts, as well as makes relevant projections into …

St. Thomas Aquinas And The Third Hellenization Period, Demetri Kantarelis

Comparative Civilizations Review

In this paper, I assert that currently the world has been experiencing the Third Hellenization Period that started with the Italian Renaissance, instigated by the teachings of the theologian and philosopher St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274 CE). Unlike philosophers in previous periods (First and Second Hellenization as well as Medieval), St. Thomas preached that Truth is a function of both Natural Revelation and Supernatural Revelation. This resulted in, simultaneously, Christianizing Aristotle (St. Thomas’ most referenced philosopher) and Aristotleizing Christianity, thus opening up the doors to human reason that had been muted during the Medieval centuries.

I also assert that the basic …

Despite Eld’S Lengthy Statement On Ge2020, Some Key Questions Remain Unanswered, Tan K. B. Eugene

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Singaporeans went to the polls on July 10 amid an unprecedented set of public health and safety precautionary measures put in place to prevent the spread of Covid-19 infections. Among other things, GE2020 would also be remembered for long queues at some polling stations and the less than positive voter experience. There was also the first-ever extension of polling hours nationwide by two hours to 10pm.

Politically Connected Governments, Christine Cuny, Jungbae Kim, Mihir N. Mehta

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

This paper examines the consequences of powerful political connections for local governments. We find that governments located within the constituencies of, and thus connected to, powerful congressional members reduce their stewardship over public resources. Using plausibly exogenous declines in the power of congressional representation, we show that the effect is causal. To better understand why connected local governments can reduce stewardship, we study electoral characteristics. Our findings suggest that the increased resources that come with powerful congressional representation allow local‐government officials to reduce stewardship without material adverse effects on their reelection prospects. In sum, we provide evidence of a cost …

Legitimizing Violence At The European Border: Gendered Misrepresentations At Sea And The Vulnerable Other, Michela Demelas

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis highlights a temporal and spatial gap in the feminist literature about migrants' journeys throughout the Mediterranean, and investigates the gendered dynamics acting upon the encounter between the European border and racialized bodies at sea. The Mediterranean sea’s material features allow Europe to approach migration as a humanitarian crisis coming from outside, which discharges its responsibility for the deaths. Yet, essentialistic views represent the feminized Other as vulnerable and needing to be saved from the male Other and the sea. Such views shape the Western narratives around concrete rescue procedures and border authorities behaviors. The encounter between the border …

The Political Aesthetic Of Hannah Arendt: Modernity, Judgment, And Culture, Quixote R. Vassilakis

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The plan of this thesis is, first, to interpret Arendt’s critique of the modern age. Next, this paper outlines Arendt’s reconceptualization of Kant’s theory of judgment as the basis for a novel model of the public sphere in light of the conditions of modernity. Finally, this paper explores Arendt’s poetics as a means of activating the faculty of judgment in order to reconcile with the modern world. In order to address the political crises of modernity, Arendt develops a political aesthetic alive to the role of narrative and culture in reconstituting political communities. I argue that Hannah Arendt develops a …

Searching For Pōhakuloa: A Citizen Scientist’S Journey In Aloha ‘Āina, Drake Logan

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation tells a story about the United States (US) military’s land occupation of two Indigenous Hawaiian wahi pana (sacred places), on O’ahu and Hawai’i Island, which have produced widespread health concerns regarding exposure to military toxins. I conducted six months of fieldwork in Hawai’i, in which I partnered with local communities in a Critical Participatory Action research process. Together, we formed and co-led a community-based science pilot study of contamination from Pōhakuloa Training Area, generating new citizen science methods capable of uncovering evidence on confirmed military toxics uses. These methods were developed in critical solidarity with international communities who …

Thoughts Of Becoming: Negotiating Modernity And Identity In Bangladesh, Humayun Kabir

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation constructs a history and conducts an analysis of Bangladeshi political thought with the aim to better understand the thought-world and political subjectivities in Bangladesh. The dissertation argues that political thought in Bangladesh has been profoundly structured by colonial and other encounters with modernity and by concerns about constructing a national identity. Negotiations between the incomplete and continuous projects of modernization and identity formation have produced certain anxieties about becoming that permeates political consciousness and ideas in the country. Though such anxieties of becoming are also shared by other postcolonial countries, the specific, though not necessarily exclusive, character of …

False Cures Of U.S. Nationalism: The Border Wall – A Raucous Call From The Silent Center, Tatiana N. Browne-Kai

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In trying to grasp the authoritarian surge in the U.S. since 2016, political theorists have increasingly turned their focus back to the Studies of the Authoritarian Personality. In response to the risk of these contemporary studies’ use of psychoanalysis in a de-historicized and individualized way, this paper opts for a double historicization of modern mass-formations. In analyzing the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, the Minuteman Border Fence and We Build the Wall, civil initiatives that aim at fortifying the U.S.-Mexican border wall (D. Trumps central campaign theme), the current surge to the right is shown to be based on and made …

Many Forms Of Black Death: Coal Extraction, Transnational Activism And The Value Of Life In Colombia, Oscar H. Pedraza Vargas

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

After the murder of the president and vice president of the coal union by paramilitaries in the department of Cesár, Colombia, the union is left adrift. Its fragility is only heightened when the person who decides to take over, is killed six months later. The union has been vocal on their critique of environmental destruction produced by coal and argues that their criticism is part of the reasons why they were targeted. Not far from there, in the department of Guajira, the conglomerate in charge of Cerrejón, the largest open-pit coal mine of South America, wants to divert a creek …

A Defense And Expansion Of The Theory Of Capitalist Ground Rent: Speculation, Securitization, And Struggles Over Land And Housing, Francesca Manning

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Why are the rents so high? Who is responsible for homelessness, for urban and rural displacement? How can these problems be combatted?

Recent literature addressing these questions has pointed to gentrification and the financialization of land and housing, faulted financialized landlords, hedge funds, and the irredeemable logic of finance, and pointed to the importance of land and housing regulation to prevent displacement.

However, theories of displacement—in both land and housing, on both urban and rural terrain—suffer from a lack of an underlying theory of the logic, tendencies, and limits of ground rent extraction in capitalism.

This dissertation develops a theory …

Black Parental Involvement In A Suburban School District, Walter L. Fields

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Since the historic decision of the United States Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, Black parents in the United States have been in a continual search for public school districts in which their children would receive an education that would allow them to be productive citizens and economically self-sufficient. From the period of the Great Migration to present day, the movement of Blacks in America has been driven by a quest for opportunity. Black parents have made tremendous sacrifices in the hope of securing a good education for their children, including movement away from families, longtime …