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201. Politics and Strategy: Partisan Ambition and American Statecraft

Author:
Meena Bose
Publication Date:
08-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Political Science Quarterly
Institution:
Academy of Political Science
Abstract:
In the twenty-first century, the numerous and diverse challenges — security, economic, political — that the United States faces in a highly interdependent internationalsystempointtotheneedforanoverarchinggrandstrategytoguide foreign policy making. But the obstacles to developing such a strategy can be daunting, both substantively, in identifying long-term interests and the resources to achieve them, and politically, in building support for a doctrine to reshape policy priorities and choices. Peter Trubowitzʼs ambitious undertaking to examine the development of grand strategy from the origins of the American Republic to the present significantly advances prospects for achieving such far-reaching goals.
Topic:
Security
Political Geography:
United States and America

202. Leaders at War: How Presidents Shape Military Interventions

Author:
David A. Crockett
Publication Date:
08-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Political Science Quarterly
Institution:
Academy of Political Science
Abstract:
In The Federalist, No. 70, Alexander Hamilton argues in favor of an executive office comprising one person, principally because that unitary structure will provide “energy in the executive,” which for Hamilton is a “leading character in the definition of good government.” Qualities directly associated with this unity – energy relationship include “decision, activity, secrecy, and dispatch.” This structural feature of the second branch of government would seem to make the identity of the president rather important. After all, the loss of one member of Congress leaves 534 legislators to soldier on. Change the president, however, and you end up with a completely different administration, even if subordinate personnel do not change.
Topic:
Military Strategy

203. Changing Inequality

Author:
Patrick Flavin
Publication Date:
08-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Political Science Quarterly
Institution:
Academy of Political Science
Abstract:
In recent years, a growing chorus has sounded the alarm about rising income inequality in the United States. Concerned citizens, ranging from academics to political pundits to those participating in the "Occupy Wall Street" protests, contend that decisive action is necessary to reverse this trend. Amidst this backdrop, a crucial question often goes neglected: Why, exactly, has income inequality increased so markedly? In her highly accessible book, Rebecca Blank sets out to empirically answer this question.
Political Geography:
United States

204. Agenda Setting in the U.S. Senate: Costly Consideration and Majority Party Advantage

Author:
Gregory Robinson
Publication Date:
08-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Political Science Quarterly
Institution:
Academy of Political Science
Abstract:
Chris Den Hartog and Nathan W. Monroe note that for a variety of reasons, the study of the U.S. Senate has been stubbornly resistant to scientific, theoretically sound inquiry. For them, previous arguments about the Senate have tended to be as post hoc and inductive as the process and procedure of the chamber are thought to be ad hoc and idiosyncratic. The authors seek to change this with their ambitious attempt to integrate the descriptive understanding of the Senate found in the literature with a deductive theory of Senate politics centered on majority party advantage.
Political Geography:
United States

205. American Neoconservatism: The Politics and Culture of a Reactionary Idealism

Author:
Jonathan D. Caverley
Publication Date:
08-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Political Science Quarterly
Institution:
Academy of Political Science
Abstract:
In attacking neoconservatism, this book does not launch a broadside so much as unleash the Samson option. Like Israelʼs all-azimuth nuclear doctrine, it scores many hits at the cost of the precision required for the offensive. Rather, its battering of concepts only partially linked to neoconservatism — Neoliberalism, the “American Right,” theconceptofpolyarchy — makes American Neoconser- vatism adefenseof “progressive politics” (p. 3) against a multitude of forces threatening to overrun it.
Political Geography:
America and Israel

206. American Politicians Confront the Court: Opposition Politics and Changing Responses to Judicial Power

Author:
Katy Harriger
Publication Date:
08-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Political Science Quarterly
Institution:
Academy of Political Science
Abstract:
The reconciliation of judicial power with democracy has preoccupied American scholars and politicians since the Founding era. The counter-majoritarian difficulty of life-tenured judges overturning the work of the democratic branches has sometimes been justified as essential to a written constitution that aims to limit the power of government and control majority tyranny. Others have criticized the exercise of judicial power as undemocratic and illegitimate. Over the centuries, presidents, candidates for the presidency, and members of Congress have used various tools at their disposal to challenge the Supreme Court and its exercise of power. And yet, despite this persistent questioning of the Courtʼs legitimacy, its place in the American political system appears more fixed and more important than it has ever been. How should we understand this seemingly contradictory development?
Political Geography:
America

207. Decision Making by the Modern Supreme Court

Author:
Jeffrey Budziak
Publication Date:
08-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Political Science Quarterly
Institution:
Academy of Political Science
Abstract:
Social science researchers face the challenge of balancing the competing demands of parsimony and comprehensiveness when attempting to explain human behavior. In the study of Supreme Court decision making, scholars have generally chosen the former, creating models of decision making that prioritize one factor at the expense of other considerations. In Decision Making by the Modern Supreme Court, Richard Pacelle, Brett Curry, and Bryan Marshall opt for the latter, rejecting the notion that any of the three dominant models (attitudinal, legal, and strategic) of Supreme Court decision making exhaustively explains the Courtʼs collective decisions. Rather, the authors construct an integrative model of Supreme Court decision making predicated on two theses. First, each model has something to contribute to our understanding of Court decision making. Second, the varying conditions faced by the Court will affect how each of these models impacts the Court ʼ s decisions. The authors argue that case con- text (constitutional vs. statutory review) and salience (civil rights vs. economic) structures when each model is likely to impact Court decision making. In the case of constitutional civil rights cases, attitudinal factors are predicted to dominate. For statutory economic decisions, legal factors are hypothesized to be most important. When the Court hears statutory civil rights cases or constitutional economic cases, strategic considerations are expected to play a central role (p. 52).
Topic:
Disaster Relief

208. Digitally Enabled Social Change: Activism in the Internet Age

Author:
Jackie Smith
Publication Date:
08-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Political Science Quarterly
Institution:
Academy of Political Science
Abstract:
In this fascinating new book, Jennifer Earl and Katrina Kimport take up the compelling question of whether Internet-based mobilization simply allows activists to “supersize” their efforts by enhancing the scope and speed of organizing, or whether it signals fundamental changes in the social processes related to political mobilization. Digitally Enabled Social Change draws from a systematic analysis of a random sample of Web sites promoting electronic tactics (e-tactics) and e-mobilization to test whether the Internet has transformed activists ʼ “repertoire of contention” (p.16 – 17) and other dynamics relatedto political organizing. Their quantitative study is supplemented with interviews of Web site organizers.

209. Mass Informed Consent: Evidence on Upgrading Democracy with Polls and New Media

Author:
Howard Schuman
Publication Date:
08-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Political Science Quarterly
Institution:
Academy of Political Science
Abstract:
Adam F. Simon believes that “sample surveys are the finest democratic technology yet devised ...” (p. 1). If pollsters faithfully convey an issue and present alternatives for the public to judge, we can have “mass informed consent,” the title and key phrase of the book. Polls provide, in the authorʼs view, one person one vote, unlike most other forms of influence on government policies.

210. Niche News: The Politics of News Choice

Author:
James T. Hamilton
Publication Date:
08-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Political Science Quarterly
Institution:
Academy of Political Science
Abstract:
Discussions by politicians and cable pundits about the existence and impact of media bias are fleeting, fevered, and often fact-free. Natalie Stroudʼs Niche News: The Politics of News Choice offers something completely different — a carefully reasoned and documented analysis of the relationships among political preferences, media choices, and political actions and opinions. By examining what she terms partisan selective exposure, the tendency of people to choose news sources whose content matches their own political views, Stroud provides a reader with an excellent overview of what research in political science today suggests about the operation and impact of partisan media sources.