Introduces students to the conduct of political research using quantitative methodologies. The methods are examined in the context of specific political research activities like public opinion surveys, voting behavior, Congressional behavior, comparisons of political processes in different countries, and the evaluation of public policies. Students participate in joint class projects and conduct individual projects. Does not count toward HASS Requirement.

Critical analysis of liberal, neoclassical, and Marxist perspectives on modern society. Alternative theories of economic growth, historical change, the state, classes, and ideology. Description from course home page: Political Economy I explores the major social science paradigms for analyzing relations among state, economy, and society. Through readings, lectures and discussion of original texts in political liberalism and individualism, neo-classical economics, Marxism, sociological and cultural theories, and neo-institutionalism, the seminar examines the fundamental assumptions on which our understanding of the social world and our research are based. All participants in the seminar are required to do the weekly readings before class meetings. The course also requires two 12-15 page essays on assigned topics. The seminar is open to graduate students in all departments and also to undergraduates with prior course work in economics or political science and with permission of the instructors.

This paper argues that the study of political discourse, in its various forms and taking various approaches, has become an increasingly useful aspect of Australian political science. That development, in turn, is related to a ‘discursive shift’, associated with the influence of neo-liberalism, that has taken place in Australian government discourse and that has challenged previous understandings of Australian political thought. As well, the increasing study of political discourse has been influenced by the impact of interdisciplinary approaches such as post-structuralist, postmodernist, feminist, queer, critical theory and postcolonial analyses. Such analyses can generate very useful insights. However, this paper also argues that discursive approaches should be seen as merely supplementing more traditional approaches to the study of politics.; http://arts.anu.edu.au/sss/apsa/papers.htm; Carol Johnson; Copyright © 2002 The Author The document attached has been archived with permission from the copyright holder.

Economic theories are increasingly popular in political science, and in particular in research on the relations between the legislative, the executive, and the judicial branches of government. Among these theories, principal-agent (´PA´) and transaction cost economics (´TCE´) feature particularly high in our research agenda. Yet, pushed by the view that “the content of ´science´ is primarily the methods and rules” (King et al. 1994: 9), and working with limited resources, political scientists have tended to neglect careful theorizing. PA and TCE are taken off-the-shelf without much prior scrutiny, and past conceptual mistakes are perpetuated. This paper aims at introducing and explaining the real PA, positive agency, TCE, and incomplete contracts theories for the purposes of political analysis. In a companion paper, I show the serious mistakes perpetuated by political scientists, and I argue that, faced with a choice between those four economic theories, we should place our bets on a revised version of TCE.

This paper, initially prompted by the puzzles raised from the atypical emergence of charismatic politics in the otherwise ordinary political system that our contemporary democracy is supposed to be, seeks to bring political charisma back into the study of comparative politics by reconstructing the concept and rendering it applicable to empirical research. Unlike previous approaches, which have suffered from either individual or structural reductionism, the present study examines charisma as a pure power term by focusing on what makes it appear in ordinary democratic politics as an extraordinary phenomenon, namely, its personal (as opposed to impersonal) character of leadership and the pursuit of a politically radical (as opposed to moderate) program. Accordingly, political charisma is defined as a distinct type of legitimate leadership that is personal and aims at the radical transformation of an established institutional order. Such an understanding of political charisma enables us to further analyze the core features of charismatic leadership and construct an “index of charismaticness” ready to be put under comparative empirical investigation. Sampling from postwar and contemporary European politics, a number of charismatic leaders are examined and then contrasted to non-charismatic ones. It is argued that...

Thesis (PhD) - Indiana University, Political Science, 2006; This project explores why similar organizations located in similar countries in the European Union (EU) working on behalf of similar interests will undertake very different strategies to achieve their policy goals. I focus on organizations working toward a migrant inclusion policy agenda across twenty EU countries, and compare their political activities across levels of governance. I develop an integrative model based on group interconnectedness to explain activity. In particular, I examine how an organization's ties with a range of other actors shape activity levels and activity choice, as compared to more traditional social movement explanations. A broad range of activities are examined, including lobbying, protest, judicial action, media use, and collaborative efforts with others. The findings support the proposition that the nature and strength of an organization's connections strongly influences its political activity across each level of governance. At the national level, increasingly strong connections to other like-minded actors serve to increase and moderate activity. Moreover, groups that maintain strong connections with actors beyond the state are more likely to expand their activities across levels of governance...

The election of the Howard Government has marked a paradigm shift in welfare policy with the implementation of far reaching reforms around the concept of mutual obligation. At the same time, there has been media speculation about the Government's use of “wedge politics” to sustain its political agenda with respect to welfare and other policies. Wedge politics, however, is yet to receive detailed analysis in Australian political science. We define wedge politics to be a calculated political tactic aimed at using divisive social issues to gain political support, weaken opponents and strengthen control over the political agenda. The purpose of this paper is thus twofold: to develop a definition of wedge politics and to investigate how the Howard Government's welfare reform agenda might be understood as an example of such politics, drawing out its longer-term implications.; no

Please consult the paper edition of this thesis to read. It is available on the 5th Floor of the Library at Call Number: Z 9999 P65 F47 2003; In Upheavals afThought/The Intelligence of the Emotions, and, indeed, throughout most of her philosophical work, Martha C. Nussbaum argues that th~ emotions have been inadequately understood and, consequently, unfairly restricted in moral, and political theory and practice to our " own disadvantage. She attempts tp redress the first or'these complaints by ascribing to the emotions much greater rationality than has been ascribed to them by ancient and. modern philosophers and psychologists in the West. Against mechanistic and irrationalist conceptions of emotion, which dominate Cartesian rationalism, Humean skepticism, and Kantian idealism, Nussbaum not only posits that there are cognitive components of the emotions, a thesis that has become a commonplace among contemporary philosophers, but also that the emotions are themselves rational judgments. It is through their rational or intellectual content that Nussbaum proceeds to redress aspects of the second complaint - that the emotions have been unduly prevented from informing normative theory and practice in both the private and public realms. I argue that she draws conclusions about the emotions that exceed the nature of her evidence and that traditional concern with the emotions at the normative level is justified...

Political scientists have been trying to understand how political campaigns affect voter turnout for decades. Now, with the rise and ubiquity of social media platforms such as Facebook, those who study political campaigns have access to a new and potentially vast data source on voters’ intentions. In new research, Jaime Settle analyses over 100 million Facebook updates, finding that 1.3 percent more users in battleground states posted status updates about politics, and that this increased their likelihood of voting by nearly 40 percent.

Critics of foreign aid programs have long argued that poverty reflects government failure. In this paper I analyze the effectiveness of foreign aid programs to gain insights into political regimes in aid recipient countries. My analytical framework shows how three stylized political/economic regimes labeled egalitarian, elitist and laissez-faire would use foreign aid. I then test reduced form equations using data on nonmilitary aid flows to 96 countries. I find that models of elitist political regimes best predict the impact of foreign aid. Aid does not significantly increase investment and growth, nor benefit the poor as measured by improvements in human development indicators, but it does increase the size of government. I also find that the impact of aid does not vary according to whether recipient governments are liberal democracies or highly repressive. But liberal political regimes and democracies, ceteris paribus, have on average 30% lower infant mortality than the least free regimes. This may be due to greater empowerment of the poor under liberal regimes eve though the political elite continues to receive the benefits of aid programs. An implication is that short term aid targeted to support new liberal regimes may be a more successful means of reducing poverty than current programs.

Disadvantaged groups tend also to constitute population minorities. One consequence of this is that the policies implemented by electorally accountable governments often fail to reflect minority interests. A policy solution is to enhance the political power of minority groups as a vehicle for promoting their policy interests. This paper analyzes the success of an electoral law, which does so by reserving seats for minority groups in legislatures, in promoting minority interests. The paper develops a theoretical model of the political process to analyze the policy impact of such a law. The key theoretical assumption, that candidates cannot commit to policies, implies that identity is relevant to policy choices. The analysis identifies economic reasons why this may lead parties to never field minority candidates. In such cases the model predicts that an electoral law of political reservation will influence policies. The paper takes advantage of the existence of such a law in India to test this prediction empirically. The principal finding is that minority representation has increased transfers to minorities. This suggests that political representation is central to the design of strategies that aim at promoting minority interests. More generally...

Government failure and inaction has become an increasingly common aspect of the U.S. political system, whether it is due to political polarization as in the government’s shutdown in 2013, or through poor planning, which characterized the rollout of the Obamacare website. But how do voters apportion blame for these sorts of failures? In new research, that tests how people react to expert testimony that apportions blame to a particular political party, Jeffrey Lyons and William P. Jaeger find that even when experts say otherwise, people still blame the party that rivals their own political views for the failure. They write that their findings go against the idea that a better informed electorate would be less partisan – in actuality, people simply ignore the extra information they are given if it challenges their beliefs.

The reconstruction of Kuwait, following its occupation by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in 1990, constitutes a significant though rarely studied episode of post-war recovery. On the eve of liberation in 1991, Kuwait faced a number of challenges including physical rehabilitation and reconstruction, political and constitutional issues, reconciling a deeply divided population and socio-economic recovery. The passing of more than twenty years since Kuwait’s liberation allows the paper to reflect, from a long-term perspective, on the decisions which were taken following liberation and how these have impacted the country’s subsequent political, social and economic trajectory. The timeliness of such an examination has been highlighted by the contemporary ongoing political crisis in Kuwait in the context of the Arab Spring, at the centre of which stands a widely perceived, long-standing deficit of the Al Sabah regime’s political legitimacy. The paper argues that had Kuwait’s reconstruction assumed a different shape, it is conceivable that the country would have experienced a profoundly different development trajectory over the following two decades. The authors contend that Kuwait’s contemporary political and socio-economic crises have their roots in a post-war reconstruction model which delivered substantial success in physical and rapid macro-economic recovery...

Saudi–Jordanian relations are a mismatch between broadly identical interests and differing means and capacities to realize them. Saudi Arabia has the potential to advance its interests, but is hamstrung by leadership structure, habit and political culture. Jordan has some advantages in terms of leadership structure, habit and political culture, but has only limited ability to affect its interests. Saudi Arabia’s historic sensitivities concerning its one-time Hashemite rival in Arabia are largely that; they do not directly affect Saudi policy towards Jordan. Tribal mobilization could be used by either side in the unexpected event of its neighbour’s collapse, but it is not a key means of realizing state objectives. Saudi Arabia’s internal political sensitivities do not drive its attitude towards Jordan. However, Jordan’s internal political situation makes it sensitive to Saudi Islamists, but its political problems are largely a domestic affair. These in turn affect Jordan’s foreign policy orientation. A mutual concern about domestic security vulnerabilities has long made both kingdoms relatively dependent on the US. The extent to which they cannot now wholly rely on the US, however, is one reason why they are drawn closer together. There are limits...

Parliaments have a poor record in the Middle East, often providing a vehicle to enhance the ruling authorities’ control rather than democratic representation. However, since 2011 the demands for political voice in post-revolutionary states have tended to focus on the creation of mass political parties and an effective, and democratic, parliament. This paper examines the development of the parliamentary institutions in three Gulf states: Kuwait, Bahrain and Oman. In each of these countries these institutions have, to some extent, been a forum for the articulation of demands for more political and constitutional power, but have often been prevented from addressing sensitive political issues, and their powers and membership have been manipulated to the benefit of the government. The paper examines how these dynamics have played themselves out in each of the three Gulf states, and reflects on the role that parliamentary institutions might play in the coming years in both managing those states’ political tensions and providing a catalyst for more far-reaching political reform.

This paper uses qualitative and quantitative original data to investigate the impact of mobile phones in situations of political contestation or conflict. We derive hypotheses from theories in general political science, and on the role of mobile phones specifically. These suggest that a link exists between access to better communication structures, political participation and government accountability. Given such a link, information and communications technologies—specifically mobile phones—could play a positive role in building a more accountable government, and with that, contribute to statebuilding. We examine to what extent these hypotheses hold true for ordinary citizens in South Sudan's Western Equatoria State (WES). Using interdisciplinary methods, we use data gathered through in-depth interviews and a quantitative survey and find little evidence that mobile phone coverage contributes to statebuilding or peacebuilding through a causal link between information, voting, political participation and government accountability. In a situation where administrative structures and mechanisms do not exist for citizens to hold politicians accountable, access to mobile phones might mean greater dissatisfaction with political participation and voting. People living in areas without coverage expressed a deep mistrust of government...

This is an examination of the context, content and significance of the surprising engagement of the British left with the arguments of Friedrich Hayek (1899-1992), one of the most influential theorists of the new right and an important influence on leading figures in the Conservative Government elected in the UK in 1979. The thesis examines in detail the engagement by four thinkers on the British left with Hayek's work: David Miller, Raymond Plant, Andrew Gamble and Hilary Wainwright. Its chronological parameters are the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the election of ‘New Labour’ in the UK in 1997. Important contextual factors behind this engagement include the rise and fall of the British Conservative Party, the difficulties of statist forms of socialism and Hayek's own death. The engagement with Hayek's work provides a case study that demonstrates changes in political themes, in particular, the decline of statist forms of socialism with the left's embrace of the market and individual freedom, the decline in support for the paternalistic state and the search for more ‘feasible’ alternatives. I argue that the British left's engagement with Hayek is part of a wider intellectual break that constitutes the end of a ‘short twentieth century’ in political thought...

The aim of the present study is to investigate how and why a country facing issues that needed to be tackled nationwide chose to decentralise political power and financial resources when it moved from military rule to redemocratisation. Furthermore, the study examines whether the decision to decentralise taken in Brazil in the period 1981-1991 has changed the allocation of public expenditure at sub-national level, especially to education. By analysing the decision to decentralise and its results at the sub-national level, the study embodies both an upstream and a downstream approach. The upstream approach encompasses the topics related to decentralisation in the Brazilian Constituent National Assembly that sat from 1987 to 1988. Research sources are based on the archives of the Constituent National Assembly and on interviews with key political leaders in Congress and practitioners. The decision to decentralise is analysed in three dimensions: the relationship between political parties and the State; intra- and inter-party competition; and regional cleavages. The downstream approach comprises three case studies: the state of Bahia, its capital, Salvador, and its most industrialised municipality, Camacari. The political analysis is based on (a) interviews with politicians in executive and in legislative positions...

This thesis explores whether the experience of political party membership can be enhanced for individual members whilst, at the same time, parties can increase membership productivity. This exploration is conducted via a central hypothesis: "Satisfaction with the experience of membership is a stronger predictor of commitment to a political party than partisanship." An interdisciplinary approach drawing on marketing, nonprofit studies, organizational behaviour and political science is used to identify appropriate analytical frameworks for testing this hypothesis. A questionnaire survey of 1,849 members of a political party, Plaid Cymru The Party of Wales, indicated that, in terms of behavioural commitment, one partisanship variable - values motivations - predicted whether members took part in any one activity. But two satisfaction variables - socialization and job satisfaction - predicted the numbers and types of activities in which members participated. Job satisfaction was also found to predict the making of donations. In respect of attitudinal commitment, more relationships were observed with partisanship variables than with satisfaction variables. The experience of membership was found to differ between demographic groups of members. Linguistic and membership density groups showed differing levels of overall satisfaction...