Political Theory Commons^™

Cutting The Fuse: The Explosion Of Global Suicide Terrorism And How To Stop It, Sunil K. Sahu

International Dialogue

Since 9/11 there has been a burgeoning literature on terrorism written by journalists, scholars, policy makers, diplomats, and military professionals. The last decade has also witnessed a dramatic increase in suicide terrorist attacks—violent attacks designed to kill others where the death of the attacker is a necessary part of the action—especially against American interests. There were twenty suicide terrorist attacks worldwide in 2000, one of which was anti-American inspired; the number of such attacks increased ten-fold by 2010, 90% of which were anti-American inspired. Although suicide bombing was used by imperial Japan at the end of World War II, the …

The Power Of Religion In The Public Sphere, Robin Alice Roth

International Dialogue

Of the numerous topics current philosophy is attentive to certainly the issue of religion is central. This anthology starts with Jürgen Habermas’ notion of “the public sphere” and works to connect this notion to the issue of religion. Of course, religion has long been part of the public sphere. For much of human history, people established their various formations of society and state in a manner continuous with religion. Their discourses were compact. Habermas’ early works argue for a differentiation of the religious and political spheres from the public sphere that eventually overcame “representational” culture, with its authoritarianism, particularly with …

Genocide And The Europeans, Kate Ferguson

International Dialogue

Next year the world will commemorate twenty years since the Rwandan genocide and the following year will mark twenty years since the genocide at Srebrenica. As the International Community prepares to honor these grim milestones, somber deliberation of the mistakes of the past must inform the development of a more committed future. Karen Smith’s book, Genocide and the Europeans, provides just such a reflection for Europe, tracing the continent’s policy responses to incidents of genocide since the Holocaust. It is an important text that draws a detailed history of the past sixty years, pairing the careful analysis of an international …

The Foundations Of Deliberative Democracy: Empirical Research And Normative Implications, Lauren Johnston

International Dialogue

As the theory of deliberative democracy developed in the late-1980s and 1990s much of the focus was on its normative foundations. However, for the last decade there has been a greater focus on practice and institutionalization, accompanied by a wealth of empirical evidence on deliberative democracy. Therefore, there is now a need to return to these normative debates in light of this empirical evidence. Jürg Steiner’s book aims to contribute to this endeavour by concentrating on the “interplay between normative and empirical aspects of deliberation” (1). In undertaking this goal he acknowledges that he is not a professional philosopher, but …

Respect For Nature: A Theory Of Environmental Ethics, Edward Abplanalp

International Dialogue

Paul Taylor’s Respect for Nature was first published 1986 when environmental ethics was a relatively new field. In it he defended a deontological biocentric environmental ethic predicated on the idea that all living beings have inherent value. It was a groundbreaking work in non-anthropocentric ethics, and since then it has been frequently anthologized and used in ethics and environmental philosophy courses taught around the world. The Twenty-fifth Anniversary Edition of Respect for Nature (2011) contains a two-page forward by Dale Jamieson, who notes the continued urgency for intellectuals to consider the meaning of “respect for nature.” When Respect for Nature …

Just Democracy: The Rawls-Machiavelli Programme, Joseph Bien

International Dialogue

Professor Philippe Van Parijs is attempting nothing less than to examine and resolve the age old question of how one might have a just democracy in a modern state, especially when one is referring to those member states of the European Union. This is at the very least difficult but admirable task.

Hopi Oral Tradition And The Archaeology Of Identity, Brady Desanti

International Dialogue

Native American activists of the civil rights era leveled heavy critiques at archaeology and anthropology for their prior support of colonial legislation and lack of sensitivity towards Native viewpoints. Archaeology in particular was taken to task for the destruction of numerous burial sites and the theft of thousands of Native American bodily remains and cultural items for over a century. The decades-long efforts by Native Americans and their non-Indian allies (which included some archaeologists) to secure the return of these remains and objects paid off in 1990. The passage of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) mandates …

Kant's Political Theory: Interpretations And Applications, Alice Pinheiro Walla

International Dialogue

For a long time in Anglo-American political philosophy “Kant’s political philosophy” meant not Kant’s own developed political thought, but an application of his moral theory to political issues. Thankfully, Kant’s legal and political thought is experiencing a renaissance in the English-speaking world after a long period of neglect. Not only Kant’s short political writings such as Toward Perpetual Peace, “On The Common Saying: This May be True in Theory but it Does Not Hold in Practice,” and “An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment” are being rediscovered; also the Doctrine of Right, the first part of the Metaphysics of …

Table Of Contents, Rory J. Conces

International Dialogue

Table of Contents for Volume 3

Insurgent Encounters: Transnational Activism, Ethnography, And The Political, Julie A. Pelton

International Dialogue

nsurgent Encounters: Transnational Activism, Ethnography, and the Political, edited by Jeffrey Juris and Alex Khasnabish, opens with a vignette describing an encounter between international activists and Zapatista base communities in 2006–7. The moment, and the thick description of it in the introduction, serves as an exemplar of the ethnographic approach to studying social movements advocated in this book: at once romantic, mysterious, and radical, while also rife with contradictions, struggles, and tensions. Juris and Khasnabish have gathered together a diverse collection of work on transnational activism that highlights the importance of ethnography as a set of methods largely neglected in …

Coalitions Of Convenience: United States Military Interventions After The Cold War, Jeffrey A. Griffin

International Dialogue

Sarah Kreps’ Coalitions of Convenience: United States Military Interventions after the Cold War provides a timely comparative analysis of military intervention in the context of a continuously globalizing world. Kreps endeavors to shed light on an important facet of international society today—military intervention. The study explores the question of why states, when they have the capacity to act unilaterally, often choose to take a multilateral approach. More specifically, Kreps questions why coercive and powerful states, particularly the United States, intervene multilaterally when the capacity exists for unilateral action. As the sole superpower in the international system, the way in which …

Balkan Genocides: Holocaust And Ethnic Cleansing In The Twentieth Century, Marko A. Hoare

International Dialogue

The sudden explosion of interest in genocide as a topic of academic study over the past decade or so has involved academics rushing to produce “big” general theories in their efforts to have their voices heard. But more often than not, their haste has produced books that are insufficiently researched and theses that strain to be profound. In Balkan Genocides: Holocaust and Ethnic Cleansing in the Twentieth Century, Paul Mojzes has attempted something more moderately ambitious: an overview of the Balkan genocides of the twentieth century, focusing principally on the territory of the former Yugoslavia but involving forays into other …

Islam In Denmark: The Challenge Of Diversity, Aje Carlbom

International Dialogue

In public debates contemporary Denmark stands out as an extraordinary nationalist and racist country. This is particularly so on issues concerned with Islam and Muslim immigration. The growth of the nationalist political party Dansk folkeparti, the Muhammad caricatures and harsh laws regulating family reunion are often used as examples by outside observers trying to describe political transformations in the country. These, and some other themes, are discussed in the anthology Islam in Denmark: The Challenge of Diversity (2012), edited by Jørgen S. Nielsen, professor and director of The Centre for European Islamic Thought at the University of Copenhagen. What kind …

Ethical Decision Making And Leadership: Merging Social Role And Self-Construal Perspectives, Crystal L. Hoyt, Terry L. Price

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

This research extends our understanding of ethical decision making on the part of leaders by merging social role and self-construal perspectives. Interdependent self-construal is generally seen as enhancing concern for justice and moral values. Across two studies we tested the prediction that non-leading group members’ interdependent self-construal would be associated with lower levels of unethical decision making on behalf of their group but that, in contrast, this relationship would be weaker for leaders, given their social role. These predictions were experimentally tested by assigning participants to the role of leader or non-leading group member and assessing the association between their …

Interest Group Scorecards And Legislative Satisfaction: Using Ratings To Explore The Private Bias In Public Policy, Daniel E. Chand

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Despite their importance to our system, the study of interest groups has produced few concrete findings compared to other actors such as administrative agencies and political parties in the policymaking process. The absence of generalizable findings is partly explained by the unpopularity of the topic, but is primarily due to a deficiency of easily accessible data and lack of agreement over how to operationalize important concepts. In the following dissertation, I employ interest group "scorecards" (ratings of members of Congress) as an approach to examining interest groups in a generalizable manner. Specifically, I use scorecards to test the pluralist assumptions …

An Interview With Sue Donaldson And Will Kymlicka, Angus Taylor

Between the Species

Angus Taylor interviews Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka, authors of Zoopolis: A Political Theory of Animal Rights (Oxford University Press, 2011).

Economic Inequality's Correlation With Political Inequality And Inequality Of Opportunity And The Implications For Social Justice Theory, Staci Leigh Schoff

Dissertations and Theses

In 2004 the American Political Science Association ("APSA") published research exploring whether the rising income inequality in the United States had an effect on political equality. Although the APSA found tremendous evidence of a correlation between income and political power, the APSA nonetheless concluded that the issue could not be conclusively determined without further analysis.

The intent of this thesis is to argue the position that economic inequality is heavily implicated in both political equality and equality of opportunity, and to propose a political theory that directly addresses - rather than evades - this issue. A conclusion drawn in this …

The Contextual Presidency: The Negative Shift In Presidential Immigration Rhetoric, C. Damien Arthur

Political Science Faculty Research

Party platforms from 1993 through 2008 show a positive approach to immigration policy. Presidential rhetoric, however, does not match the tone of the platforms. There are negative frames (illegality, criminality, terrorism, and economic threats) in nearly 50% of immigration speeches. We argue that social context motivates presidents to talk about immigration negatively. This analysis provides insight into rhetoric as responsive to context rather than a mechanism of power. We coded each speech on immigration from Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama, and found statistically significant results that show that immigration rhetoric is more negative when certain social …

Repair To The Lamps And Rake The Language, Daniel Malachuk

Democracy & Education

Boatright and Faust rightly recommend Emerson’s active reading style, but they misrepresent him as pragmatist who believed readers to be “makers of meaning.” Emerson was a transcendentalist whose fundamental message was that moral “truth exists, though all men should deny it.” Especially in his antislavery writings, Emerson teaches two ways for readers to find (not make) these moral truths in the texts they read: by reading with their souls, or intuitively (“repairing to the lamps”), and by reading for the facts (“raking the language”) that will awaken moral sensibilities. Rather than continue to invent an Emerson who flatters our contemporary …

Invisible Ink: Intersectionality And Political Inquiry, Dara Z. Strolovich

Indiana Journal of Law and Social Equality

No abstract provided.