Political Theory Commons^™

Policy Brief: Unscr 1325: The Challenges Of Framing Women’S Rights As A Security Matter, Natalie Florea Hudson

Political Science Faculty Publications

While UN Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1325 has certainly increased awareness among international actors about women’s and gender issues in armed conflict, opened new spaces for dialogue and partnerships from global to local levels, and even created opportunities for new resources for women’s rights, successes remain limited and notably inconsistent. To understand some of these shortcomings and think creatively about how to move the women, peace and security agenda forward, it is essential to understand the conceptual assumptions underscoring UNSCR 1325.

Politics And Philosophy In Aristotle's Critique Of Plato's Laws, Kevin M. Cherry

Political Science Faculty Publications

Whether on matters of politics or physics, Aristotle's criticism of his predecessors is not generally considered a model of charitable interpretation. He seems to prefer, as Christopher Rowe puts it, "polemic over accuracy" (2003, 90). His criticism of the Laws is particularly puzzling: It is much shorter than his discussion of the Republic and raises primarily technical objections of questionable validity. Indeed, some well-known commentators have concluded the criticisms, as we have them in the Politics, were made of an earlier draft of the Laws and that Plato, in light of these criticisms, revised the final version. I hope …

Ethics In Public Management, H. George Frederickson, Richard K. Ghere

Political Science Faculty Publications

This volume follows two earlier projects undertaken by Frederickson (1993) and Frederickson and Ghere (2005) to present collections of theoretical essays and empirical analyses on administrative ethics. Three years before the publication of the first volume —Frederickson's Ethics and Public Administration — the National Commission on the Public Service released Leadership for America (also known as the Volcker Commission Report) that attested to "the quiet crisis" in government whereby "too many of the best of the nation's senior executives are ready to leave government, and not enough of its most talented young people are willing to join. This erosion in …

Ngo Leadership And Human Rights, Richard K. Ghere

Political Science Faculty Publications

This book provides preliminary understanding of what the term NGO means; explains how "human rights" affect NGO missions; and focuses on the meaning of "leadership" in NGOs in comparison to private sector and government agency leadership. It also encourages readers with vocational aspirations in human rights work to think strategically in preparing for their professional futures.

Play Fair With Recidivists, Richard Dagger

Political Science Faculty Publications

Retributivists thus face a difficult challenge. Either we must go against the social grain, and perhaps our own intuitions, by insisting that a criminal offense carry the same penalty or punishment no matter how many previous convictions an offender has accrued; or we must find a way to justify the recidivist premium. I shall take the second route here by arguing that recidivism itself is a kind of criminal offense. In developing this argument, I shall rely on Youngjae Lee's insightful analysis of "recidivism as omission." I shall complement his analysis, however, by grounding it in a conception of criminal …

Did Secularism Fail? The Rise Of Religion In Turkish Politics, Zeynep Taydas, Yasemin Akbaba, Minion K.C. Morrison

Political Science Faculty Publications

Religious movements have long been challenging the modernist and secularist ideas around the world. Within the last decade or so, pro-religious parties made significant electoral advances in various countries, including India, Sudan, Algeria, and the Palestinian territories. In this article, we focus on the rise of the pro-religious Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi- AKP) to power in the 2002 elections in Turkey. Using the Turkish experience with political Islam, we evaluate the explanatory value of Mark Juergensmeyer's rise of religious nationalism theory, with a special emphasis on the "failed secularism" argument. Our analysis indicates that the …

The Practice Of Government Public Relations, Mordecai Lee, Grant W. Neeley, Kendra Stewart

Political Science Faculty Publications

With the recent change of administration in the U.S. executive branch, we have seen increased attention to issues of public information, transparency in government, and government and press relations in the United States and abroad. In addition, rapidly evolving technology and its influence on public communication have left many in government struggling to remain current in this area. Citizens and constituents learn to use interactive tools when searching for information, utilize technology for communications, and now expect government information and services to exist in the same information space as private entities.

This book is an effort of leading experts in …

The Lilliputians Of Environmental Regulation: The Perspective Of State Regulators, Michelle C. Pautz, Sara R. Rinfret

Political Science Faculty Publications

When we think about environmental policy and regulation in the U.S., our attention invariably falls on the federal level and, more specifically, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Although such a focus is understandable, it neglects the actors most responsible for the implementation and maintenance of the nation's environmental laws — the states. Recognition of the importance of the states still ignores an even smaller subsection of actors, inspectors. These front-line actors in state environmental agencies are the individuals responsible for writing environmental rules and ensuring compliance with those rules. They play an important role in the environmental regulatory state.

With …

One Tough Nut: The Development Of Legislative Structure And Procedure In The Constitution Of The Buckeye State, Nancy Martorano Miller, Ronald D. Hedlund

Political Science Faculty Publications

American state legislatures have evolved dramatically throughout their history. In particular, the structures, rules and procedures governing the operations legislatures have changed significantly over the course of the 20th and 21st Centuries. The purpose of this paper is to present a theoretical framework for studying the development and evolution of American state legislatures. We then apply that framework to the case of constitutional provisions impacting the legislative branch in Ohio and conclude that the initial decision to invest significant authority in the legislative branch significantly impacted the evolution of legislative evolution and development in the state.

Network Legitimacy And Accountability In A Developmental Perspective, Richard K. Ghere

Political Science Faculty Publications

Public networks typically function beyond the lines of the hierarchical authorities that hold bureaucracies accountable, as is shown here in the case of a business-dominant network that exhibited ethically questionable behaviors at the expense of its community credibility. Public networks can build external legitimacy by engaging in critical organization learning processes, much the way some nongovernmental organizations respond to a diversity of stakeholders.

Republicanism, Richard Dagger

Political Science Faculty Publications

Republicanism is an ancient tradition of political thought that has enjoyed a remarkable revival in recent years. As with liberalism, conservatism, and other enduring political traditions, there is considerable disagreement as to exactly what republicanism is and who counts as a republican, whether in the ancient world or contemporary times. Scholars agree, however, that republicanism rests on the conviction that government is not the domain of some ruler or small set of rulers, but is instead a public matter - the res publica - to be directed by self-governing citizens.

Social Contracts, Fair Play, And The Justification Of Punishment, Richard Dagger

Political Science Faculty Publications

In recent years, the counterintuitive claim that criminals consent to their own punishment has been revived by philosophers who attempt to ground the justification of punishment in some version of the social contract. In this paper, I examine three such attempts—“contractarian” essays by Christopher Morris and Claire Finkelstein and an essay by Corey Brettschneider from the rival “contractualist” camp—and I find all three unconvincing. Each attempt is plausible, I argue, but its plausibility derives not from the appeal to a social contract but from considerations of fair play. Rather than look to the social contract for a justification of punishment, …

Religion, Politics, And Polity Replication: Religious Differences In Preferences For Institutional Design, Joshua D. Ambrosius

Political Science Faculty Publications

This article presents a theory of polity replication in which religious congregants prefer institutions in other realms of society, including the state, to be structured like their church. Polities, or systems of church governance and administration, generally take one of three forms: episcopal (hierarchical/centralized), presbyterian (collegial/regional), or congregational (autonomous/decentralized). When asked to cast a vote to shape institutions in a centralizing or decentralizing manner, voters are influenced by organizational values shaped by their respective religious traditions‘ polity structures. Past social scientific scholarship has neglected to explicitly connect religious affiliation, defined by polity, with members‘ stances on institutional design. However, previous …

Religion And Regionalism: Congregants, Culture And City-County Consolidation In Louisville, Kentucky, Joshua D. Ambrosius

Political Science Faculty Publications

Literature on religious involvement in public affairs typically examines the national scene, particularly public opinion and political behavior in presidential elections. Few scholars examine religious actors in urban politics and policymaking. Those who do study local politics emphasize morality policy and ignore issues of metropolitan governance and institutional design, central concerns of the urban politics field. This dissertation fills that gap by studying Louisville, Kentucky, site of the first large-scale city-county consolidation since 1969. I ask: does religion affect how people vote in a consolidation referendum and shape their opinions about merged government? I employ a survey instrument (N=807), collected …

Are They Ready For Their Close-Up? Civil Servants And Their Portrayal In Contemporary American Cinema, Michelle C. Pautz, Laura Roselle

Political Science Faculty Publications

Norma Desmond famously says in Billy Wilder’s Sunset Blvd. (1950), “All right, Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my closeup.”1 Since then, this phrase has been uttered countless times to ensure the camera does not start rolling until everyone is ready. But all are not afforded the opportunity to get ready and civil servants fall squarely into this category. We know that government bureaucrats are among those individuals that Americans love to hate and attacks on the civil service come from a plethora of sources.2 And because of the ability of film (as well as other narrative forms) to influence perceptions …

Virtue, Richard Dagger

Political Science Faculty Publications

In political theory, the word virtue usually refers to the disposition or character traits appropriate to a citizen. Someone who takes the responsibilities of citizenship seriously, to the point of putting the common good ahead of his or her personal interests, is thus said to display civic virtue. Political theorists have frequently warned that such virtue cannot be taken for granted, however, and many of them have urged that steps be taken to promote or foster civic virtue. This concern for the fragility of civic virtue is a clear theme in ancient (or classical) political thought, but it has …

Gender, Human Security And The United Nations: Security Language As A Political Framework For Women, Natalie Florea Hudson

Political Science Faculty Publications

This book examines the relationship between women, gender and the international security agenda, exploring the meaning of security in terms of discourse and practice, as well as the larger goals and strategies of the global women's movement.

Today, many complex global problems are being located within the security logic. From the environment to HIV/AIDS, state and non-state actors have made a practice out of securitizing issues that are not conventionally seen as such. As most prominently demonstrated by the UN Security Council Resolution 1325 (2001), activists for women's rights have increasingly framed women's rights and gender inequality as security issues …

Why Urbanists Need Religion, Joshua D. Ambrosius

Political Science Faculty Publications

This essay summarizes a conference paper presented at the October 2008 Society for the Scientific Study of Religion meeting in Louisville, Kentucky. The paper was reviewed by several leading scholars.

Republicanism And Crime, Richard Dagger

Political Science Faculty Publications

These are but two of the difficult questions that arise when one examines the claim that crime is a public wrong. I take it, though, that their difficulty is an indication of the importance of thinking through the presuppositions and implications of this conception of crime, not a reason to abandon it. A thorough 'thinking through' is too large and complex a task for this chapter, but it is possible to make a case here for the right way to proceed with such an undertaking. That right way, in my view, is to look to the republican tradition of political …

Can Deliberative Democracy Work In Hierarchical Organizations?, Jason Pierce, Grant W. Neeley, Jeffrey Budziak

Political Science Faculty Publications

Some measure of equality is necessary for deliberative democracy to work well, yet empirical scholarship consistently points to the deleterious effect that hierarchy and inequalities of epistemological authority have on deliberation. This article tests whether real-world deliberative forums can overcome these challenges. Contrary to skeptics, it concludes that the act of deliberation itself and the presence of trained moderators ameliorate inequalities of epistemological authority, thus rendering deliberative democracy possible, even within hierarchical organizations.

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 …

Autonomy, Domination, And The Republican Challenge To Liberalism, Richard Dagger

Political Science Faculty Publications

Like Sunstein and other advocates of 'republican' or 'civic' liberalism, I believe that it is historically unsound and politically unwise to insist on a sharp distinction between liberalism and republicanism. Others disagree, however, and there is much to be learned from their position even if, ultimately, we should not adopt it. Those who take this more radical neo-republican view advance two main lines of argument: first, that the liberal emphasis on neutrality and procedural fairness is fundamentally at odds with the republican commitment to promoting civic virtue; and, second, that republicans and liberals conceive of liberty or freedom in incompatible …

Politics, Rights, And The Refugee Problem, Richard Dagger

Political Science Faculty Publications

In The Origins of Totalitarianism, the political philosopher Hannah Arendt pointed to the years between World War I and World War II as the time when the plight of refugees became a pressing political problem.' If Arendt were still alive (she died in 1975), she would no doubt agree that the problem is at least as pressing in the early twenty-first century as it was sixty or more years ago, when she herself was a refugee from Nazi Germany. Who would not agree? According to a report of the U.N. Population Division, 16 million people were refugees at the …

Communitarianism And Republicanism, Richard Dagger

Political Science Faculty Publications

Communitarianism and republicanism are closely related schools of thought - so closely related that friend and foe alike sometimes conflate them. The relationship is evident in their Latin roots: communitarians are concerned with communitas, the common life of people who form a community, and republicans are devoted to the res publica, the good of the public. Of the two, however, only republicanism traces its lineage as well as its name to ancient Rome. Indeed, scholars often look beyond Rome to the philosophers and city-states of ancient Greece, particularly Aristotle and Sparta, for the origins of republicanism. For the …

Cultural Rights And Internal Minorities: Of Pueblos And Protestants, Andrew M. Robinson

Political Science Faculty Publications

This article considers the question: should rights extended to cultural communities to help them preserve themselves include the right to discipline dissident members who violate cultural norms? The case of the Pueblo Protestants is employed to consider two important defenses of cultural rights (revisionist liberal and cultural communitarian) that offer conflicting answers. Both are found unsatisfactory because of their implicit reliance on “cultural monism” (that is, the assumption that individuals identify with only one cultural community). An approach to defining cultural rights is then outlined that avoids this assumption and its application is illustrated with respect to the Pueblo case.

The Decline In Average Weekly Cinema Attendance, 1930-2000, Michelle C. Pautz

Political Science Faculty Publications

Since the beginnings of the motion picture industry, with the one small Edison studio in New Jersey in the early 1900s, America has fallen in love with films. One could argue and debate the reasons, employing everything from sociology to psychology to economics; but one thing is certain: This love affair has changed over the years. This change is perhaps most evident in the decline in the percentage of the United States population that goes to the cinema weekly. One interesting aspect of cinema attendance is that during the Great Depression, which swept the United States in the 1930s, a …

Republican Citizenship, Richard Dagger

Political Science Faculty Publications

'Republican' and 'citizen', in fact, are old and intertwined words - so old that some may wonder at their relevance in the brave new world of the twenty-first century, and so intertwined that the phrase 'republican citizenship' seems almost redundant to others. There is no republic without citizens, after all; and, according to the classical republican thinkers, there is no citizenship, in the full sense of the word, except among those who are fortunate enough to inhabit a republic. But this view of citizenship's connection to republicanism no longer seems to prevail. If it did, there would be no need …

La Repubblica Di Sandel E L'Lo Incarnato, Richard Dagger

Political Science Faculty Publications

Quelli che vogliono conoscere cio per cui Sandel parteggia e cio contro cui combatte, quindi, hanno una buona ragione per dare il benvenuto a Democracy's Discontent. Se credono che la politica americana trarrebbe profitto da una corroborante (per non dire generosa) dose di repubblicanesimo, troveranno anche molte cose salutari nel libro. Come uno che si considera dentro entrambi questi gruppi, io credo che Sandel sia stato saggio a prendere una qualche distanza dal comunitarismo, e ancora piu saggio a sottoscrivere l'enfasi repubblicana sulla formazione dei cittadini e la coltivazione delle virtU civiche. Ma sbaglia nel continuare a opporsi al …

Comment On Benhabib's "Dismantling The Leviathan": A Republican-Liberai Perspective, Richard Dagger

Political Science Faculty Publications

Those who think of themselves as republican or civic liberals, as I do, will surely be of two minds about Seyla Benhabib's "Dismantling the Leviathan: Citizen and State in a Global World" [Spring 2001 ]. In some respects, Professor Benhabib' s thoughtful essay is quite congenial to republican liberalism. She insists on the importance of human rights, for instance, and she looks for ways to expand political participation. Her indictment of "civic republicanism," however, requires a republican-liberal response.