« Previous |
1 - 10 of 11
|
Next »
Number of results to display per page
Search Results
2. Conformity: The Power of Social Influences, Cass R. Sunstein
- Author:
- Frank J. Gonzalez
- Publication Date:
- 09-2020
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Political Science Quarterly
- Institution:
- Academy of Political Science
- Abstract:
- In the polarized, post-truth, tribal era of politics that we find ourselves in, a book on conformity—how to understand it and take concrete steps toward diminishing it—should (rightfully) be expected to be of great interest to many. In Conformity: The Power of Social Influences, the prolific Cass R. Sunstein delivers exactly this. This book stands out from Sunstein’s other books in its focus on the broad societal implications of social influence. Sunstein grounds his argument in the principles underlying American democracy, and in doing so, he makes it difficult not to become depressed at how distant our current state of affairs seems from that ideal. However, Sunstein offers optimism in the form of a framework for actionable solutions. Sunstein begins with a model of the two major features of human psychology that he says reinforce conformity: (1) the tendency to believe something is true if others believe it is true (especially “confident” others) and (2) the desire for positive social standing and reputation. In Chapter 1, he explains how conformity is frequently harmful because it encourages individuals to suppress their “private signals” (that is, expressions of what they individually think is right or wrong), which decreases the diversity of ideas in a group and ultimately leads to undesirable outcomes. In Chapter 2, Sunstein advances beyond the framework he has traditionally worked within by considering cascades, or the spread of ideas and practices through conformity pressures, which ultimately give rise to social movements. He acknowledges that cascades are not necessarily “bad”—they are likely what led to the rise of the #MeToo movement—but they were also likely crucial to the propagation of genocide during the Holocaust.
- Topic:
- Book Review, Psychology, Political Science, and Polarization
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
3. How Democracy Ends, David Runciman
- Author:
- Tom Ginsburg
- Publication Date:
- 01-2020
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Political Science Quarterly
- Institution:
- Academy of Political Science
- Abstract:
- It is hardly a secret that democracy is in trouble around the world, and the phenomenon of backsliding has prompted a small wave of books diagnosing the problem and suggesting solutions. David Runciman’s contribution to this literature is a breezy and readable tour through mechanisms and alternatives. Easily weaving political theory with grounded examples, he has produced a highly accessible analysis focusing more on diagnosis than cure. Runciman’s title is to be distinguished from accounts of how specific democracies are dying or what might be done to save constitutional democracy. Instead, he focuses on the idea that Western democracy is undergoing something of a midlife crisis. Nothing lasts forever, and while democracy has had a pretty good run, it now “looks exhausted in the places it has the deepest roots” (p. 72). Contemplating democracy’s death, the book is organized around a series of mechanisms by which this might come about: coup, environmental catastrophe, technological displacement, and the various alternatives of benevolent and not so benevolent authoritarianism that have been put on offer. His main argument is that while we are attracted to democracy because of its history, the past does not repeat itself, and we are likely to face new challenges not yet contemplated. If democracy dies, the autopsy will be a new one.
- Topic:
- Democracy, Book Review, and Political Science
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
4. What Do We Know about Post-Conflict Transitional Justice from Academic Research: Key Insights for Practitioners
- Author:
- Charlotte Fiedler and Karina Mross
- Publication Date:
- 01-2019
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- German Development Institute (DIE)
- Abstract:
- Societies that have experienced violent conflict face considerable challenges in building sustainable peace. One crucial question they need to address is how to deal with their violent past and atrocities that were committed – for example, whether perpetrators should be held accountable by judicial means, or whether the focus should be laid on truth telling and the compensation of victims. Transitional justice (TJ) offers a range of instruments that aim to help societies come to terms with their history of violent conflict. Systematic, empirical analyses of TJ instruments have been emerging over the last years. This Briefing Paper summarises the policy-relevant insights they provide regarding the main TJ instruments: trials; truth commissions; reparations for victims; and amnesties.
- Topic:
- Conflict Resolution, Transitional Justice, Political Science, Peace, and Justice
- Political Geography:
- Colombia, Germany, and Global Focus
5. Theories of Democratic Change Phase III: Transitions from Conflict
- Author:
- Jennifer R. Dresden, Thomas E. Flores, and Irfan Nooruddin
- Publication Date:
- 03-2019
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Institute of International Education
- Abstract:
- The notion that robust democracy and violent conflict are linked is commonplace. Many observers of international politics attribute violent conflict in contexts as diverse as Myanmar and Syria to failures of democracy. Conversely, most agree that continuing political violence undermines any effort to build strong democratic institutions in Libya or South Sudan. As a matter of policy, democratization has often been promoted not only as an end in itself but as a means toward building peace in societies scarred by violence. Development professionals tackle these challenges daily, confronting vicious cycles of political violence and weak democratic institutions. At the same time, scholars have dedicated intense scrutiny to these questions, often finding that the interrelationships between conflict and democracy belie easy categorization. This report, the third in a series on democratic theories of change, critically engages with this literature to ask three questions: Under what circumstances do democratic practice or movement toward democracy quell (or exacerbate) the risk of different kinds of violent conflict? Under what circumstances do the risk and experience of violent conflict undermine democratic practice? How can external interventions mitigate risks and capitalize on opportunities inherent in transitions to democracy and peace? To answer these questions, a research team at George Mason University and Georgetown University spent eight months compiling, organizing, and evaluating the academic literature connecting democratic practice and violent conflict, which spans the fields of political science, economics, peace studies, anthropology, sociology, and psychology. This work was funded by USAID’s Center of Excellence on Democracy, Human Rights, and Governance (the DRG Center), under the Institute of International Education’s (IIE’s) Democracy Fellows and Grants Program. Beginning in May 2018, the authors organized a team of three research assistants, who read and summarized more than 600 journal articles, books, reports, and newspaper articles. The resulting White Paper was the subject of an August 2018 workshop with representatives from USAID and an interdisciplinary group of eight scholars with expertise in conflict and democracy. Based on their feedback, the authors developed a new Theories of Change Matrix and White Paper in October 2018. This draft received further written feedback from USAID and another three scholars. The core team then revised the report again to produce this final draft. This report’s approach to the literature differs from past phases of the Theories of Democratic Change project. While past reports detailed the hypothesized causes of democratic backsliding (Phase I) and democratic transitions (Phase II), this report focuses on the reciprocal relationship between democratic practice and conflict. The report therefore organizes hypotheses into two questions and then sub-categories within each question.
- Topic:
- Democratization, Development, Education, Democracy, Conflict, Political Science, and USAID
- Political Geography:
- Libya, Syria, North America, Myanmar, South Sudan, Global Focus, and United States of America
6. Cultural Evolution: People’s Motivations are Changing, and Reshaping the World, Ronald F. Inglehart
- Author:
- George E. Marcus
- Publication Date:
- 07-2019
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Political Science Quarterly
- Institution:
- Academy of Political Science
- Abstract:
- Consolidating more than four decades of research, Ronald F. Inglehart elaborates on the enlightenment story that reliance on science and technology enables nations to meet the material needs of their populations. To that story he adds that populations, finding their security needs being met, are increasingly abandoning materialist values for post-material values. The meaning of life satisfaction is changing. Inglehart advances this story by converting it into explicit hypotheses and subjecting them to extensive empirical testing. Inglehart marshals considerable evidence chiefly drawing on the World Values and European Values Surveys covering something on the order of 90 percent of the world’s population from 1981 to 2014. Along the way, Inglehart demonstrates the potent role of culture in advancing or retarding the overall trajectory of economic growth and life satisfaction. These shifts occur on a time scale marked in decades through intergenerational change.
- Topic:
- Culture, Book Review, Political Science, State, and Corporations
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
7. Are Politics Local? The Two Dimensions of Party Nationalization around the World, Scott Morgenstern
- Author:
- Arjan H. Schakel
- Publication Date:
- 07-2019
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Political Science Quarterly
- Institution:
- Academy of Political Science
- Abstract:
- The statement that geography matters for politics probably will not be contested by many political scientists. Therefore, it is quite surprising that few studies have systematically explored how the territorial distribution of preferences affects political processes and policy outcomes. This book by Scott Morgenstern is an important landmark study that puts geography high on the research agenda of comparative political science. Three features make this book worthwhile reading for scholars working on the nationalization of elections and parties. First, Morgenstern identifies two dimensions of party nationalization and shows that they are theoretically and empirically unrelated. Static nationalization refers to the extent to which party vote shares are homogeneously distributed across districts at a particular point in time. Dynamic nationalization taps into the consistency in the change of a party’s vote shares across time. The combination of these two dimensions leads to a useful fourfold categorization of nationalized, unstable, unbalanced, and locally focused parties. As Morgenstern shows in Chapters 7, 8, and 9, each type of party has different implications for electoral accountability and bill co-sponsorship among legislators.
- Topic:
- Politics, Book Review, Political Science, Political Parties, and Nationalization
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
8. Theories of Democratic Change II : Paths Away from Authoritarianism
- Author:
- Jeffrey Conroy-Krutz and Erica Frantz
- Publication Date:
- 12-2017
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Institute of International Education
- Abstract:
- Despite the global spread of democracy following the end of the Cold War, dictatorships still rule about one-third of the world’s countries. The persistence of authoritarian governments poses a challenge for the international community on a variety of fronts: dictatorships are more likely to repress their citizens, instigate wars, and perpetrate mass killing, among others. This challenge is even more pressing given the gradual decline in the number of democracies worldwide over the last decade. Practitioners confront critical questions about which strategies are likely to pave the way for democratization versus which are likely to stifle it. Through a research grant funded by USAID’s Center of Excellence on Democracy, Human Rights, and Governance (the DRG Center), under the Institute of International Education’s (IIE’s) Democracy Fellows and Grants Program, a research team from Michigan State University worked with the DRG Center to organize and evaluate the body of current academic scholarship that can contribute to understanding how and why countries move on paths from authoritarianism to democracy. The publication was informed and vetted in two peer review workshops by a group of democratization scholars from American University, Brown University, Columbia University, George Washington University, Harvard University, Pennsylvania State University, Rutgers University, and the University of Chicago. The publication begins by providing an overview of the concept of democratization and the difficulties of identifying and defining it. The theories related to democratization are offered in a simple theory matrix, allowing practitioners to quickly and easily: Survey the body of academic work dedicated to democratization through a succinct presentation of 34 theories organized within seven thematic theory families; Interpret the cause-and-effect relationships that academic research identifies through the presentation of brief hypotheses; Understand how scholars evaluate the strength and reliability of each hypothesis through a brief summary of the research team’s assessment of causal arguments and evidence; and Explore how each theory can support the assessment and design of development programs, through basic questions that offer guidance for how to determine the relevance of that theory’s specific cause-and-effect pathway to a particular context. Organizing the theories into seven thematic families enables a close comparison of related theories on democratization and clear distinctions to be drawn among them. The researchers note, however, where ideas overlap across these theory families.
- Topic:
- Democratization, Political Economy, Politics, Culture, Authoritarianism, Democracy, Political Science, Institutions, and USAID
- Political Geography:
- North America, Global Focus, and United States of America
9. Strengthening Women’s Civic and Political Participation: A Synthesis of the Scholarly Literature
- Author:
- Wayne Eckert, Kyu-Nahm Jun, Sharon F. Lean, Nicole Gerring, Matthew Lacouture, Juan Liu, and Amanda Walter
- Publication Date:
- 03-2017
- Content Type:
- Special Report
- Institution:
- Institute of International Education
- Abstract:
- In 2016, USAID’s Center of Excellence on Democracy, Human Rights, and Governance launched its Learning Agenda—a set of research questions designed to address the issues that confront staff in USAID field offices working on the intersection of development and democracy, human rights, and governance. This literature review—produced by a team of WSU professors and graduate students representing the academic disciplines of communication, history, and political science—synthesizes scholarship from diverse research traditions on the following Learning Agenda question: What are the most effective ways to encourage women’s civic (e.g., volunteer, advocacy, etc.) and political (e.g., voting, running for office) participation? What are the risks to women of these strategies in contexts where resistance to changing gender norms is strong? The team identified four strategies for increasing women’s civic and political participation that are analyzed in academic scholarship: Using quotas to enhance women’s representation. Using social media platforms to mobilize women and amplify their voices. Targeting women as participants or beneficiaries of social programs. Mobilizing women through their intersecting identities. The team found that quotas are effective in increasing the number of women in elected office at the national and local levels and may also encourage women to participate in political and civic activity more generally. However, how quotas are designed and implemented greatly influences their success, and it is unclear whether more women in office leads to substantive changes to women’s agency within the legislature. In addition, although gender equity reforms implemented in the legislature can make such reforms more likely in other institutional settings, quotas are not common in other government branches. Social media is a double-edged sword: it provides a relatively inexpensive, accessible tool for women to participate in civic and political life and bring attention to issues that disproportionately affect women; however, it also creates a new space in which women are contested, harassed, and silenced. Social programs that target women also can be effective, but they almost always impose unanticipated costs, burdens, or risks on the women who participate, and so can depress women’s participation while seeking to increase it. These adverse effects have predictable patterns, and programs that target women as beneficiaries should take these patterns into consideration during the design phase. Mobilizing women through their intersecting identities—as mothers, workers, members of a religious group—is an underdeveloped area of the literature. Although several articles covered cases of this sort of mobilization, the results are ambivalent. In addition, although mobilizing women through certain frames—such as “motherhood”—can be effective, this strategy also reinforces traditional norms of gender roles.
- Topic:
- Communications, Women, Social Media, Political Science, Representation, USAID, and Participation
- Political Geography:
- North America and Global Focus
10. La pérennité du supranationalisme intergouvernemental, paradoxe de l’élargissement (The “Enlargement paradox”: Intergovernmental Supranationalism Survives despite the Winds of Change)
- Author:
- Tanja Mayrgündter
- Publication Date:
- 04-2015
- Content Type:
- Research Paper
- Institution:
- Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches Internationales
- Abstract:
- In the last decade, the EU has been challenged by major phenomena, such as the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty and the economic and financial crisis. Unlike other policy areas, where the logic of action and institutional interplays have consequently changed, enlargement constitutes a “paradox”, having largely been resistant to such impact factors. That is, “intergovernmental supranationalism” has remained the dominant feature of the enlargement polity, politics and policy. Even though the overall result has not changed, there has been change in the configuration among the intergovernmental and the supranational elements. That is, while on the one hand intergovernmental forces have increased, on the other hand, all three dimensions have primarily been hit by the “technicality turn”, consequently fostering the supranational momentum. Finally, an overall new balance has been reached under the “old” intergovernmental supranational umbrella.
- Topic:
- Politics, Regional Cooperation, European Union, and Political Science
- Political Geography:
- Europe, Global Focus, and European Union