Political Science Commons^™

Better City, Better Life, Gina Anne Russo

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

This month began with the countdown clocks ticking away the time until the start of the 2010 Shanghai Expo hitting the one-year-to-go point, and the weeks that have followed have seen the international press pay a good deal of attention to this upcoming event, which had gotten relatively little media coverage in the Western media. There have been a flurry of op-eds (including this one by China Beat‘s Jeff Wasserstrom), reports on the question of whether the U.S. will have a national pavilion (such as this one by Shanghai Scrap‘s Adam Minter), and feature stories on the city of Shanghai …

Measuring The Effectiveness Of The Statewide Initiative: “The Maturing Of Illinois”, Joseph Alustiza

Capstone Projects – Politics and Government

The federal government continues to mandate and fund non-profit organizations to provide social services in local communities around the United States. Social services such as healthcare, education and poverty relief have been “privatized” to non-profit organizations. In the case of aging services, the East Central Illinois Area Agency on Aging (ECIAAA) has been mandated and funded by the federal government and the state government of Illinois based on appropriations in Title III from the Older Americans Act (OAA). This area agency and others around the country provide program and planning services and support to service providers for older adults, caregivers …

A Few Readings Around The Web

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

1. China Digital Times is on our RSS feed, and, hopefully, on yours too—it is one of the essential places where English-language readers can find easily accessible updates of what is happening in China and in the Chinese media and blogosphere.CNReviews has posted an interview with CDT’s Sophie Beach that gives further details about the site’s management and goals.

2. In the interview, Beach also mentions her own website (好妈妈) on raising bilingual children, chockfull of information and references for those who are interested. At Hao Mama, Beach references Anna Greenspan’s website, Waking Giants, on Greenspan’s experiences sending her son …

Aboriginal Affairs: Monologue Or Dialogue?, Vanessa Castejon

Aboriginal Policy Research Consortium International (APRCi)

On January 26 2002, the thirtieth anniversary of the creation of the first Aboriginal tent embassy was celebrated. In 1972 the tent embassy emerged from the Black Power movement as a manifestation of the call for recognition of Aboriginal sovereignty and the right to self-determination. These claims have been raised continually by some prominent Aboriginal activists, but the main answer given by the government has been the creation of Aboriginal policies and sections for Aboriginal people within the Australian political system. The government, by different means, has brought Aboriginal activists within the system and has diverted attention from their aspirations. …

5/18/89: Working Class Heroes, Philip J. Cunningham

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

New, creative links were being made, reflected in the flags and slogans draped on industrial strength trucks with factory logos packed to the brim with red-sashed workers.

WORKERS SUPPORT BRIGADE!

WORKERS UNITED WITH STUDENTS IN SUPPORT!

But the really eye-catching, breath-stopping slogans took aim at the most powerful man in China.

XIAOPING GAODE RENREN FENFEN BU PING

“Wow! You see that Lotus?

It says Xiaoping is ruining it for all of us!” Quite a few posters and political cartoons were openly critical of Deng, representing a logical but politically dangerous turn of heart. But the most novel element today was …

The Ties That Bind The United States: A Recount (Book Review), Jeffrey W. Legro

Political Science Faculty Publications

Review of the book, World Out of Balance: International Relations and the Challenge of American Primacy by Stephen G. Brooks and William C. Wohlworth. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008.

Marx And The Taipings, Daniel Little

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

With all the May anniversary dates to mark, we missed the May 5th birthday of Karl Marx (a man to whose thought the Chinese Communist Party still pays homage, even if you wouldn’t know it from their economic policies). Had we been on our toes, we might have found a China-specific way to mark that date, like looking back to how Marx, in his journalist mode, wrote about the Taiping Uprising, an event that the CCP would later treat as a precedent for their own revolutionary struggle. Well, in the spirit of better late than never, here’s what one of …

Rss Feeds

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Several regular readers have mentioned in conversations recently that they don’t know what an “RSS feed” is. Many of our readers are already using the service—at this writing, more than 1200 of them access the site’s content this way.

What is an RSS feed? “RSS” stands for “really simple syndication” or maybe “rich site summary” (depending on who you ask). An RSS reader is a service that will automatically download content from websites of your choosing. Rather than spending time each day checking in at each of the websites you regularly read, your reader will download all the new content …

5/16/89: To Serve The People, Philip J. Cunningham

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

The term “democracy” was gaining a certain purchase on the popular imagination, though it was not without its slippery side. Given the predictable confusion about what the students were really up to, given the abstraction and ambiguity inherent in political term minzhu, particularly within the confines of a communist society which fancied itself to be democratic in a roundabout sort of way, “democracy” meant very different things to different people. It had such a bafflingly wide range of meaning, it was so easily co-opted and distorted, that one could better appreciate the efficacy of a banal but concrete cry.

Thus …

Zhao’S Memoirs: 5 Places To Turn

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

The biggest publishing news just now related to Tiananmen’s 20th anniversary is the release of Zhao Ziyang’s memoirs, a book that was apparently already being offered for sale in Hong Kong even before its official publication date and has been reviewed, excerpted, and discussed in various newspapers and magazines. We may at some point do an “In Case You Missed It” review of Prisoner of the State(or deal with it extensively in another fashion), but we weren’t able to do a “Coming Distractions” piece about it for a simple reason: we weren’t sent an advance copy.*

What we can do …

In Case You Missed It: Death By A Thousand Cuts, David Porter

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

In the months leading up to the Beijing games, as Tibet protests flared and t-shirts derided the “Genocide Olympics,” Jill Savitt, the Executive Director of the human rights group Dream for Darfur deployed a striking phrase in a New York Times interview about her group’s plans to pressure Beijing to take action on Sudan. Promising a broad-based campaign that would be far more sophisticated than a mere “ham-fisted boycott,” she explained, “From start to finish, what we want China to fear is death by a thousand cuts.”

In a coincidence tinged with historical irony, an important book published in the …

Modern Sophistry: On The "Economization" Of Higher Education, Michael Mcshane

Honors Theses

The best way for one to begin approaching political philosophy is to do just that, not as a theorist or philosopher, but as a student who examines the various works of theorists in general and sees what is gainful in each of them. It is a thing said to be pleasant – to gain from those who possess knowledge that exceeds one's own. The theorists themselves are taxed with a kind of work that would not appear to the student pleasurable in the slightest, and he might be better off conceding the great labors and accolades that come with this …

5/15/89: Looking For Gorbachev, Philip J. Cunningham

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Setting up a shot in a methodical manner–tripods incrementally adjusted, white balance achieved, illumination enhanced–allowed for the recording of clean, well-lit images worthy of prime time TV, but much of it came at the price of spontaneity. That which we sought to observe was constantly reacting to us and regrouping due to our presence. Cameramen know all about this of course, and a long lens can, with some foreshortening, capture unadulterated spontaneity, but more than once we simply scrapped the shot when members of the crowd seized up or returned our curiosity in an obvious way.

Which brought us back …

The Apology Of Sidney: Explaining Martyrdom, Michael Marinaccio

Honors Theses

The treatment of important figures throughout history has always played favor to the victor by nature and consequently only been offered thorough significance given the eventual passage of time and publicity. If queried of philosophy and its basic influence on the modern world, laymen would probably have the ability to conjure up the name of Socrates, one of the more prominent, noteworthy philosophers in history.

The Chinese Typewriter, Thomas S. Mullaney

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Tom Mullaney, who will be familiar to regular followers of this site thanks to the podcasts he’s done for us (such as this one on the 1989 protests and this one onLast Days of Old Beijing), recently mentioned that he is currently writing a history of the Chinese typewriter, as actual and imagined object.

He sent this piece introducing the subject, which moves between popular culture and the history of technology (how often are rapper MC Hammer, IBM engineers, diplomats from China, and Homer Simpson alluded to in a single story?), while illuminating some of the directions that thinking about …

Journal Of Asian Studies 68.2

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

In the brand new May 2009 issue, just up on the Cambridge University Press website, readers will find, free for now at least, two relatively short (four to six-thousand words) pieces in the Journal of Asian Studies‘ new “Asia Beyond the Headlines” series–one by Berkeley economist Pranab Bardhan is on China-India comparisons, while the other is a take by USC political scientist Stanley Rosen(who took part in the Brookings Institution panel that was the subject of a recent post by Teresa Wright) on youth and politics in China.

The third piece is a full-length one (with illustrations) on Confucian temples …

Understanding China’S “Angry Youth”, Teresa Wright

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Two things that China Beat has been tracking since we began are Chinese nationalism and youth attitudes in the PRC today (those interested in these issues might check out Alec Ash’s recent posting that addresses youth nationalism in regard to the 5/8 anniversary). It’s no surprise, then, that we were interested in learning more about an event at the Brookings Institution that brought these topics together (Evan Osnosmentioned his participation at his blog).

So we turned to Teresa Wright, one of the people who shared the stage with Osnos at the panel, to fill us in on the discussion that …

The Hunger Strike Begins, Philip J. Cunningham

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

The idea that the campus was under student control struck me as a dangerous illusion. Bright and others said campus life had changed for the better, and in the aftermath of May 4, I could see evidence of the soaring change in spirit. But what if the whiff of freedom turned into a mockery of the same, a transient window of openness that served to make people implicate themselves? It had happened before in the 1950s, when Mao urged “a hundred schools of thought to contend,” only to punish those who expressed themselves too freely.

To date, the campus strike …

Cohort And Cultural Effects On Unconventional Political Behavior, Cameron C. Wimpy

Student Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines unconventional political behavior in the Muslim world by comparing it to Europe to test the influence of culture. Using data from the most recent wave of the World Values Survey, several hypotheses regarding the primary sources of protest behavior in the Muslim world are tested to determine whether Muslims behave in a politically unique way. Using ordinary least squares regression, I find that Europeans are more likely to engage in protest activity than Muslims. Further, it is determined that cohort differences are responsible for predicting unconventional political behavior in the Muslim world. Last, I demonstrate that religiosity …

One Year Ago

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

A year ago, we were glued to our televisions and computers, like so many others in China and around the world, watching a tragedy unfold in Sichuan. The news we saw from the earthquake zone was bleak and heartbreaking.

Several news sites have run memorials, one-year on, and we’ve selected a few of those in the reader below. We also point you to some of the coverage we ran atChina Beat in the days that followed.

1.One of the things Kathryn Edgerton-Tarpley stressed in a piece for China Beat last May was that Chinese volunteerism was not a brand-new phenomenon, …

May 10, 1989: Demonstration Of Ten Thousand Bicycles, Philip J. Cunningham

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

For a few days there it seemed that the successful student march of May 4 would be the last of the big demos and soon everyone would be back on campus attending classes again. Railing against this rather pleasant and natural inclination, strident wall posters at Shida and Beida called for continuing the student strike. One of the more florid campus wall posters that I managed to snap a photo of was a florid eulogy to the Great Hall of the People as a symbol of representative rule. The dark message, written on May 5, 1989 was at odds with …

Creating Memory: J.G. Ballard And Shanghai, Robert Bickers

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

When news of Shanghai-born J.G. Ballard’s death reached China Beat, we asked friend-of-the-blog Robert Bickers, author of Britain in China and Empire Made Me: An Englishman Adrift in Shanghai, to share his thoughts about the writer with us. He was kind enough to oblige, passing on these thoughts on Ballard’s most famous novel, Empire of the Sun (subject, of course, of a Spielberg film), and also another work of fiction that uses Shanghai as a backdrop.

They own him and disown him. “My brother was in his class at school,” one might tell you. “Why did he tell those lies …

Academic Journal Report: Inter-Asia Cultural Studies By Nicole Barnes

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

I have in my hot little hand the December 2008 issue (Volume 9, Number 4) of a hot little journal from Routledge Press, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies. Supported by the Chiang Ching-Kuo Foundation and Taiwan’s National Chiao Tung and Tsing Hua Universities, this journal has a truly international editorial collective hailing from Singapore, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Taiwan, the PRC (including Hong Kong), Japan, Australia, Malaysia, Thailand, Korea, India, and the U.S. To further demonstrate its comprehensive Pacific Rim approach, the journal accepts publications in Asian languages as well as in English.

Although this is an academic journal, it …

1989: A Lively Dinner In A Quiet Week

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

May 7, 1989

The Yang’s spare living room was transformed into a vibrant cultural salon, with Gladys and Xianyi taking their habitual places in twin armchairs, bringing to mind a kindly old king and queen holding court. The rest of us, lined up on a long couch against the opposite wall behaved like loyal subjects, beaming with respect and admiration.

The Yangs had been through unimaginably hard times, including solitary confinement during the Cultural Revolution, but remained true to one another through thick and thin, emerging with a rare degree of contentment, humility and self-knowledge. They did their best to …

Splitsville: A Study Of Income Inequality And Political Polarization In The United States House Of Representatives, Robert O'Brien

Honors Scholar Theses

The study compares a measure of income inequality with polarization scores of U.S. Representatives from the 104th to the 109th Congresses. It attempts to explain the link, on the abstract level, between high inequality and high polarization. The end findings indicate that inequality increases a Representative's likelihood to act liberally.

"Super" Representation: The Relationship Between Elected Officials And Their Constituents, Joshua Shulman

Honors Scholar Theses

The following paper is about the relationship between elected officials and their constituents. Seniority and margin of victory are studied to determine their effects on said relationship. The institution of superdelegates in the Democratic nominating process is studied from 1984-2008 to make this thesis empirical.

The Treatment Action Campaign's First Decade: Success Achieved?, Jung Cho

Honors Scholar Theses

South Africa is known to have the largest HIV epidemic in the world with 5.7 million people currently living with HIV, according to UNAIDS. In light of the crisis, South Africa's Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) has led the social movement for increased treatment access for people living with HIV through lobbying the government, multinational pharmaceutical companies, and grassroots campaigning. Since it's founding a decade ago, TAC has been highly acclaimed both regionally and internationally for its success. In order to determine the success of this social movement organization, social movement theories, such as mobilization potential, external political opportunity structure, and …

Rules Of Misrule, Meghan Forgione

Honors Scholar Theses

The project seeks to offer an alternative interpretation of sport culture in Renaissance England with respect to theater and football. I seek to show how sport culture, although seemingly threatening to the state, actually reinforces the monarchy due to its ability to provide the people with a controlled social release. The prose explores the function of carnival in sport culture and the way in which the two are manifested in football and theater in the Renaissance.

Gay Parenthood And The Revolution Of The Modern Family: An Examination Of The Unique Barriers Confronting Gay Adoptive Parents, Nicholas Arntsen

Honors Scholar Theses

Abstract: In recent decades, the structure of the American family has been revolutionized to incorporate families of diverse and unconventional compositions. Gay and lesbian couples have undoubtedly played a crucial role in this revolution by establishing families through the tool of adoption. Eleven adoptive parents from the state of Connecticut were interviewed to better conceptualize the unique barriers gay couples encounter in the process adoption. Both the scholarly research and the interview data illustrate that although gay couples face enormous legal barriers, the majority of their hardship comes through social interactions. As a result, the cultural myths and legal restrictions …

Weak States And Political Constraints: Experiments With Truth In Liberia And Sierra Leone, Robert Collins Painter

Political Science Honors Projects

Focusing on truth and reconciliation commissions in Liberia and Sierra Leone, this thesis examines which political conditions typical of weak states had the greatest impact in deciding the different levels of success between the two cases. Two conditions played a central role in determining each commission’s success: the de-legitimization of the state and political fragmentation. Their presence in Sierra Leone derailed that truth commission’s efforts to carry out its mandate. Conversely, their absence in Liberia allowed its commission to operate relatively free of political impediments, leading to greater success.