Political Theory Commons^™

Congressional Hearings: Immigration Frames In Expert Testimonies, Joshua Woods, C. Damien Arthur Phd

Political Science Faculty Research

This book offers a broad interdisciplinary approach to the changes in the U.S. immigration debate before and after 9/11. A nation’s reaction to foreigners has as much to do with sociology as it does with political science, economics and psychology. Without drawing on this knowledge, our understanding of the immigration debate remains mundane, partial, and imperfect. Therefore, our story accounts for multiple factors, including culture and politics, power, organizations, social psychological processes, and political change. Examining this relationship in the contemporary context requires a lengthy voyage across academic disciplines, a synthesis of seemingly contradictory assumptions, and a grasp of research …

Engagement In A Public Forum: Knowledge, Action, And Cosmopolitanism, Jennifer F. Brewer, Natalie Springuel, James Wilson, Robin Alden, Dana Morse, Catherine Schmitt, Chris Bartlett, Teresa Joihnson, Carla Guenther, Damian Brady

Geography

Facing challenges to the civic purpose of higher education, some scholars and administrators turn to the rhetoric of engagement. Simultaneously, the political philosophy of cosmopolitanism has gained intellectual favor, advocating openness to the lived experiences of distant others. We articulate linkages between these two discourses in an extended case study, finding that a cosmopolitan ethos of engagement in a rural context can improve (1) understanding among people ordinarily separated by spatialized social-ecological differences, (2) prospects for longer term environmental sustainability, and (3) the visionary potential of collaborative inquiry. Despite globalization of food systems and neoliberal shifts in fishery management, an …

Trump’S Electoral Speeches And His Appeal To The American White Working Class, Michele Lamont, Bo Yun Park, Elena Ayala-Hurtado

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

This paper contributes to the study of social change by considering boundary work as a dimension of cultural change. Drawing on the computer-assisted qualitative analysis of 73 formal speeches made by Donald Trump during the 2016 electoral campaign, we argue that his political rhetoric, which led to his presidential victory, addressed the white working class’s concern with their declining position in the national pecking order. He addressed this group’s concern by raising their moral status, that is, by (1) emphatically describing them as hard-working Americans who are victims of globalization; (2) voicing their concerns about ‘people above’ (professionals, the rich, …

Sexuality In The Time Of War, Or, How Rape Became A Crime Against Humanity, Sharon Sliwinski

Data and Test Instruments

Working closely with women's testimonies from the genocides in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, this chapter aims to widen space in contemporary human rights discourse for discussion about sexuality--and in particular about the ways sexual violence functions as one of the forces of sovereign power. There is an intimate and largely non-visible strategy that sovereign power has at its disposal to cleave a subject from their capacity to live a human life, namely, by attacking the individual’s sense of sovereignty over her own body.

Civic Dignity And Meaningful Political Participation, Melissa Mahoney Smith

CGU Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation looks at how enhanced political participation opportunities can increase individual liberty and improve public-sector reform efforts. It blends political theory with contemporary concerns for individual well-being and government accountability. To do this, several research methodologies are used, including normative, qualitative process-tracing, and quantitative analysis.

First, the dissertation draws insights from ancient and modern political philosophy and the political thought and example of Jane Addams in 19th Century Chicago. It begins with Josiah Ober’s work on civic dignity, which he defines as “equal high standing” among citizens, marked by “non-infantilization and non-humiliation.” This definition is a useful starting point …

Regime Shifts And Panarchies In Regional Scale Social-Ecological Water Systems, Barbara Cosens

Articles

In this article we summarize histories of nonlinear, complex interactions among societal, legal, and ecosystem dynamics in six North American water basins, as they respond to changing climate. These case studies were chosen to explore the conditions for emergence of adaptive governance in heavily regulated and developed social-ecological systems nested within a hierarchical governmental system. We summarize resilience assessments conducted in each system to provide a synthesis and reference by the other articles in this special feature. We also present a general framework used to evaluate the interactions between society and ecosystem regimes and the governance regimes chosen to mediate …

Corruption May Worsen In Democratizing Economies: But Don't Let It Erode Our Faith In Democracy, Shaomin Li, Ilan Alon, Jun Wu

Management Faculty Publications

This commentary is based on a recent study we conducted on the relationship between regime type, corruption, and economic development. We build a theory that links corruption and regime type to economic growth and test it on 158 countries, using multiple databases including Polity IV, transparency international, the World Bank, and others. We first distinguish three regime types, autocracy (dictatorship), anocracy (countries in early stage of democratization), and mature democracy. We found that when autocratic countries begin democratize, corruption usually gets worse. As the infant democracies mature, corruption decreases.

Federalism All The Way Up: State Standing And "The New Process Federalism", Jessica Bulman-Pozen

Faculty Scholarship

This commentary considers what federalism all the way up means for Gerken’s proposed new process federalism. The state-federal integration she documents underscores why judicial policing of “conditions for federal-state bargaining” cannot be limited to state-federal relations in the traditional sense. It must extend to state challenges to the allocation and exercise of authority within the federal government. The new process federalism would therefore do well to address when states will have standing to bring such cases in federal court. After Part I describes contemporary federalism-all-the-way-up litigation, Part II suggests that Gerken’s “Federalism 3.0” complicates both traditional parens patriae and sovereignty …

La France Contemporaine Face Au Défi De La Créolisation, Nathalie Etoke

Publications and Research

Inspired by Jane Gordon's book, Creolizing Political Theory: Reading Rousseau through Fanon, this article examines the paradoxes of Creolization within the French context. How do post-colonial French identities of Maghrebi, Sub-Saharan African or Caribbean descent Creolize French society? Instead of being an opportunity that must be seized by the Nation, why is creolization perceived as an imminent threat to the Republic? How can one think of Creolizing politics in the former colonial power? How does Creolization compel us to rethink how we live together? And how does it require us to rethink freedom and equality for all? These are …

Evolutionary Paths And Confining Cages: The Genealogy Of American State Constitutions, Nancy Martorano Miller

Political Science Faculty Publications

With this poster, Dr. Miller explained her work to identify how provisions and concepts in state constitutions are related to one another and evolved over time and to understand how the provisions in these documents impact the work of state officials in the policymaking process.

Her goals: 1. Provide a “genealogical” mapping of state constitutional evolution that will allow the testing of path dependency and other theories of institutional development. 2. Create a series of scores that can be used to assess the extent to which a state government’s capacity to act in a specific policy area (e.g., Health, Education, …

Communities Of Resistance: Welfare Queens And The Infrapolitics Of Black Hair Tutorials On Youtube, Reandra Johnson

Scripps Senior Theses

The author raises the question of what black women do to resist acts taken by the government to control their bodies such as the welfare queen trope. Many authors demonstrate that the welfare queen is used to control black women as a labor force as well as their reproduction. An infrapolitical reading of black hair tutorials is done to analyze the ways that black hair care is a form of political resistance. Robin Kelley's use of infrapolitics to understand actions taken by working class black people is used as a model.

Democracy In The Dark: An Energy Democracy Model Centering Property And People, Feby Boediarto

Pitzer Senior Theses

The United States’ electric macro-grid provides electricity for all people to sustain our lifestyle. The current governing institutions that generate our electricity limit community representation, causing procedural injustice particularly to communities of color. This thesis is a contribution to the Energy Democracy literature, describing a community-based electricity model that includes two components: property and people. I argue to include an in-depth study of John Locke’s theories on property, in addition to Elinor Ostrom’s Institutional Analysis and Development Framework to promote local knowledge in understanding how physical space and governing bodies strengthen the Energy Democracy movement. In addition, I utilize the …

Paintbrushes And Crowbars: Richard Rorty And The New Public-Private Divide, John P. Anderson

Journal Articles

In an often-quoted passage, Richard Rorty wrote that “J.S. Mill’s suggestion that governments devote themselves to optimizing the balance between leaving people’s lives alone and preventing suffering seems to me pretty much the last word.” In this Article, I show why, for Rorty, maintaining a strong public-private divide that cordons off final vocabularies—the religious, racial, ethnic, sexual, gender, philosophical, and other terms so important for citizens’ private pursuits of self-creation and self-perfection—from public political discourse is a crucial means to accomplishing both of these goals in post-secular liberal democracies. Public political justifications should instead be articulated in the foundation neutral …

Charting Syriza's Swift Rise And Fall, Despina Lalaki

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Assessment Of And Outlook On China's Corruption And Anticorruption Campaigns: Stagnation In The Authoritarian Trap, Shaomin Li

Management Faculty Publications

Since the beginning of China's economic reform in the late 1970s, corruption has been progressing alongside of economic growth. In 2012, when Xi Jinping took power, he waged the largest and longest anticorruption campaign known in the history of the Chinese Communist Party. This study provides an assessment on his campaign and projects an outlook on the future of corruption and anticorruption in China. The author argues that China will enter into an "authoritarian trap," in which the authoritarian power enables the state to effectively carry out the economic reform and achieve economic growth, while suppressing the demand for the …

Laws, Norms, And The Institutional Analysis And Development Framework, Daniel H. Cole

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Elinor Ostrom’s Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework has been described as ‘one of the most developed and sophisticated attempts to use institutional and stakeholder assessment in order to link theory and practice, analysis and policy’. But not all elements in the framework are sufficiently well developed. This paper focuses on one such element: the ‘rules-in-use’ (a.k.a. ‘rules’ or ‘working rules’). Specifically, it begins a long-overdue conversation about relations between formal legal rules and ‘working rules’ by offering a tentative and very simple typology of relations. Type 1: Some formal legal rules equal or approximate the working rules; Type 2: …

An Ethical President Elect?, Cameron Mackenzie

Augustana Center for the Study of Ethics Essay Contest

An ethics paper intended to take an unbiased stance, while breaking down the ethics surrounding then President Elect Donald Trump's 100-day plan.

Considering Clausewitz Across Contexts, Laura Salter

Tenor of Our Times

Carl von Clausewitz’s On War has been heralded as one of the most influential theories of war. It has influenced statesmen as diverse as Dwight Eisenhower, Vladimir Lenin, and Adolf Hitler. After having been incorporated into various schools of thought, taught to soldiers and studied extensively, it begs the question: what explains the continuous relevance of Clausewitz’s theory, despite changing contexts and technology? This paper posits that Clausewitz presented war as an extension of politics composed of a trinity of forces, used methodology that would transcend eras, and wrote about war’s very nature. In doing so, On War gained its …

Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, And Champeta: The Colombian Conflict As Case Study In Sovereignty, Anna Shepard

CMC Senior Theses

I will argue that a discussion of sovereignty as it relates to internal conflict deepens our understanding of the Colombian conflict, and in turn, the Colombian conflict deepens the ongoing discussion on sovereignty. Internal armed conflict is a tool to free and dominate populations, to save and kill individuals, and to destroy and build institutions. Thomas Hobbes and John Locke set an initial framework for understanding sovereignty. Armed actors use violence to create a sphere of influence that overlaps with the state’s legal jurisdiction: armed actors use violence as a strategy of hegemonic state building. Overlapping territorial claims challenge the …

The Making Of A Hero: Cultivating Empathy, Altruism, And Heroic Imagination, Ari Kohen, Matt Langdon, Brian R. Riches

Department of Political Science: Faculty Publications

Heroes are not born; they’re made. This article examines the commonalities in the backgrounds of people who take heroic action on behalf of others to theorize the ways in which our society can encourage citizens to prepare themselves to act heroically. In looking closely at a variety of people who have acted heroically, in a single moment or over time, we argue they have at least four crucial commonalities: They imagined situations where help was needed and considered how they would act; they had an expansive sense of empathy, not simply with those who might be considered “like them” but …