Other Political Science Commons^™

Accounting For Accountability, Celina Su

Publications and Research

Review of the book Open Budgets: The Political Economy of Transparency, Participation, and Accountability, edited by Sanjeev Khagram, Archon Fung, and Paolo de Renzio.

Greece In Crisis: An Interview With Despina Lalaki, Despina Lalaki

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Homonationalism, State Rationalities, And Sex Contradictions, Paisley Currah

Publications and Research

Celebrating the re-election of Barack Obama as a win for GLB equality or denouncing the focus on marriage rights as heteronormative misses the point. Both approaches obscure what actually happens in local sites where authority is exercised. Looking into the cracks and crevices of regulatory apparatuses generates a more complex picture. In examining contradictory rules on sex classification, for example, it becomes clear those contradictions often reflect different state projects, such as security, distribution, reproduction. Construing the election as a victory for gay rights or for homonormativity elevates grand concepts—marriage, the state—over the quotidian actions that regulate life.

Explaining Success And Failure In Climate Policies: Developing Theory Through German Case Studies, Roger Karapin

Publications and Research

Theories of environmental outcomes have been developed mostly through large-N cross-national studies, which have a structuralist bias and do not include the mechanisms through which inferred causes operate. Structured, focused case studies can help overcome those limits by incorporating political processes and identifying causal mechanisms. Here, comparisons of climate policy outcomes within Germany are used to test and develop theory, by explaining the differences among nine cases with the help of process tracing. The findings suggest that environmental-outcome theories should be modified to include: external events and advocacy-coalition formation as key processes; multiple causal paths through which green parties improve …

Climate Policy Outcomes In Germany: Environmental Performance And Environmental Damage In Eleven Policy Areas, Roger Karapin

Publications and Research

Germany has reduced its emissions of greenhouse gases more than almost any other industrialized democracy and is exceeding its ambitious Kyoto commitment of a 21% reduction since 1990. Hence, it is commonly portrayed as a climate-policy success story, but the situation is much more complex. Generalizing Germany's per-capita emissions to all countries or its emissions reductions to all industrialized democracies would still very likely produce more than a two-degree rise in global temperature. Moreover, analyzing the German country-case into eleven subcases shows that it is a mixture of relative successes and failures.

This illustrates several major problems with the literature …

Roots Of Conflict: A Multi-Level Analysis Of The South Atlantic War Of 1982, David E. Firester

Publications and Research

On 2 April 1982, the Argentinian military had invaded and occupied a series of islands known as the Islas Malvinas, or Falkland Islands.* Subsequently, The United Kingdom had responded with a counter-invasion and occupation in an effort to deny the Argentinian claim of sovereignty over the archipelago. After nearly two months and combat casualties in excess of a thousand soldiers the British military was able to negate the Argentinian success and assert its ownsovereignty over the disputed territories. While the outcome of the dispute is clear, the impetus for its initiation is somewhat murky. This paper will attempt …

Opportunity/Threat Spirals In The U.S. Women's Suffrage And German Anti-Immigration Movements, Roger Karapin

Publications and Research

Many have noted that protesters sometimes expand political opportunities for later protests, but there has been little analysis of how this occurs. The problem can be addressed by analyzing opportunity/threat spirals, which involve positive feedback among: actions by challengers (bold protests and the formation of alliances between challenger groups); opportunity-increasing actions by authorities and elites (elite divisions and support, procedural reforms, substantive concessions, and police inaction); and threat-increasing actions by authorities and elites (new grievance production and excessive repression). Interactions among these eight mechanisms are demonstrated in two cases of social movement growth, the U.S. women's suffrage movement of the …

Protest And Reform In Asylum Policy: Citizen Initiatives Versus Asylum Seekers In German Municipalities, 1989-1994, Roger Karapin

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Anti-Minority Riots In Unified Germany: Cultural Conflicts And Mischanneled Political Participation, Roger Karapin

Publications and Research

Anti-foreigner riots in eastern Germany in the early 1990s have usually been explained by ethnonationalism or racism, ethnic competition for scarce resources, and opportunistic political elites. If anti-minority riots are analyzed as a distinct phenomenon with a cross-sectional approach, local political processes emerge as more important causes. Cultural conflicts, the channeling of mobilization from nonviolent into violent forms, local political opportunities for success, and mobilization by social movement organizations convert ethnic conflict and violence into riots. A comparison of riot and non-riot localities in eastern Germany supports this argument.