What role can the European Union play in the Arab awakening? Julien Barnes-Dacey argues that the case of Bashar al-Assad shows that short of military intervention Europe maintains a limited ability to shape its Southern neighbourhood. For the time being it remains a fairly insignificant political actor in the unfolding Syria crisis.

The results of the recent election to the Northern Ireland Assembly and the first visit in 100 years by a British monarch to what is now the Republic of Ireland represent a consolidation of what has been achieved by the peace process. The Unionist community emphatically endorsed the leadership of Peter Robinson and the DUP and the political arrangement that they manage, with Robinson extraordinarily invoking the spirit of murdered PSNI constable Ronan Kerr in his victory comments. If Sinn Féin is losing its hold in Republican areas, as dissidents claim, there was little sign of it in election results, with the gain of one seat, including the win of five out of six seats in West Belfast with two-thirds of the vote, despite the departure south to the Dáil by Gerry Adams. As was realized up to 30 years ago, political harmony in Northern Ireland has to be embedded in a strong and positive British-Irish relationship, underlined by last week’s visit of British Queen and Prime Minister. Traditional hesitations meant that the visit was not rushed into, but nor, 13 years after the Good Friday Agreement, could it have been indefinitely deferred.

The paper analyses how security sector reforms (SSRs) can contribute to statebuilding. It is argued that successful state-building requires an endogenous political process which aims at creating political legitimacy instead of certain ideal type Western state structures. In a conflict-torn society this demands security for citizens – an environment in which they feel safe and protected – allowing them to express their opinion freely and participate in a state-building process. The example of the Afghan police reform illustrates that a state-centric SSR is in danger of delegitimising and destabilising the state. In contrast, a human-centric security approach is more likely to support an endogenous process of building legitimate institutions.

USAPP Managing Editor, Chris Gilson looks at the best in political blogging from around the Beltway. Our round-up of state blogs will follow on Saturday afternoon.

Scholars have long deplored voters' lack of interest in politics and argued in favor of greater political engagement. We present a formal theory of elections where successful communication of campaign messages requires both effort by candidates and attention from voters. Voters' interest in politics affects their attention, and impacts the effectiveness of the electoral process as a screening and disciplining device. In line with existing theories, there exists a curse of the uninterested voter: When voters have little interest in politics, the electoral process performs poorly, and voters' attention to politics is low. Surprisingly, we uncover a curse of the interested voter, by which the same happens when voters have a strong interest in politics. Our results highlight the importance of distinguishing between voters' interest and attention, two notions often conflated in empirical studies. Moreover, policy interventions aimed at subsidizing the cost of acquiring political information can have unintended consequences.

A hallmark of contemporary political campaigns is that most will at some stage ‘go negative’, with attacks against the rival candidate. But what determines when candidates choose to go negative? In new research which looks at Congressional campaigning, Hans J.G. Hassell and Kelly R. Oeltjenbruns find that while candidates in open-seat races tend to begin positively, go negative, and then end positively, challengers and incumbents tend to start negative and more or less stay that way throughout the campaign.

USAPP Managing Editor, Chris Gilson looks at the best in political blogging from around the Beltway.

Do ballot initiatives help to improve people’s knowledge about politics? In new research which uses election survey data from more than 120,000 voters across 48 states Nicholas R. Seabrook, Joshua J. Dyck and Edward L. Lascher, Jr. find that ballot initiatives have no positive effect on general political knowledge. They write that these results hold no matter how often ballot initiatives are used, how many initiatives are on the ballot during an election, and how much money was spent by the initiative’s supporters and opponents.

USAPP Managing Editor, Chris Gilson looks at the best in political blogging from around the Beltway

USAPP Managing Editor, Chris Gilson looks at the best in political blogging from around the Beltway.

Peter Allen argues that the activities of political parties is now focused heavily on the national political scene as opposed to being rooted in local communities. This may help explain why politicians are increasingly perceived as out of touch.

Last Thursday, presidential candidate and former Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, gave testimony at a hearing of the House Select Committee on Benghazi, in an appearance which many commentators have characterized as a triumph for Clinton and a catastrophe for the Republican Party. Richard Brodsky writes that while the Benghazi tragedy was appropriate for a hearing, the House GOP broke long standing rules governing such legislative hearings, which meant they were able to make little political headway against the former Secretary of State.

In The End of Representative Politics, Simon Tormey challenges the assumption that politics and democracy are ‘dead’, blighted by chronic distrust of the political class and undermined by the perceived failure of representative democracy to secure social justice. As Tormey instead points towards emergent forms of ‘subterranean’ politics indicative of a ‘post-representative’ era, Ali Dadgar argues that The End of Representative Politics proposes a novel and informative expansion of the scope of ‘democracy’ and ‘politics’ in the contemporary moment.

In late 2012, Hurricane Sandy hit the East Coast of the U.S., causing much suffering and devastation. Those who could have easily helped Sandy's victims had a duty to do so. But was this a rightfully enforceable duty of justice, or a nonenforceable duty of beneficence? The answer to this question is often thought to depend on the kind of help offered: the provision of immediate bodily services is not enforceable; the transfer of material resources is. I argue that this double standard is unjustified, and defend a version of what I call “social samaritanism.” On this view, within political communities, the duty to help the needy—whether via bodily services or resource transfers—is always an enforceable demand of justice, except when the needy are reckless; across independent political communities, it is always a matter of beneficence. I defend this alternative double standard, and consider its implications for the case of Sandy

Latin America holds some of the world’s biggest oil reserves, but unstable political events in the region are hindering its potential, especially in Venezuela. Global U.S. security would benefit from a revamping of outdated policies towards Latin America, argue Andrés Cala and Michael Economides. This is a blind spot in American politics, one that threatens U.S. geopolitical and economic interests. In this book, the authors aim to offer a thorough analysis of key geopolitical and economic threats to the U.S., highlighting the need for a new Latin American policy doctrine based on military and strategic priorities. Reviewed by Luis Boscán. America’s Blind Spot: Chávez, Oil and US Security. Andrés Cala and Michael Economides. Continuum Books. 2012

"Power and Policy in Syria: Intelligence Services, Foreign Relations and Democracy in the Modern Middle East." Radwan Ziadeh. I.B. Tauris. November 2012. --- Syria’s 1970 bloodless coup by General Hafez al-Assad put in place a powerful autocratic machinery at the core of the state which continues under the control of his son Bashar. Power and Policy in Syria presents an analysis of Syria’s political structure: a ‘despotic’ state monopoly, a bureaucratic climate marked by fear, and an administrative structure through which centralized control is exercised. Andreas Aagaard Nøhr finds that this book’s value lies in the bold boundaries it attempts to push rather than its ultimate conclusion.

"The Year of Dreaming Dangerously." Slavoj Žižek. Verso Books. September 2012. --- 2011 caught the world off guard with a series of shattering political and economic events, and in this book Slavoj Žižek looks back on how protesters in New York, Cairo, London, and Athens took to the streets in pursuit of emancipation. Žižek feels that the subterranean work of dissatisfaction continues, and that a new political reality will soon emerge. Although this is a bracing read, Luke McDonagh writes that Žižek is seemingly unable to realise the dangerous ‘dream’ of an alternative way of life in any kind of coherent sense.

"Teaching Politics Beyond the Book: Film, Texts and New Media in the Classroom." Robert W. Glober and Daniel Tagliarina (eds.). Bloomsbury Academic. January 2013. --- To teach political issues such as political struggle, justice, and interstate conflict, educators rely mostly on textbooks and lectures. However, many other forms of narrative exist that can elevate our understanding of such issues. This book seeks new ways to foster learning beyond the textbook and lecture model, by using creative and new media, including graphic novels, animated films, hip-hop music, Twitter, and more. Reviewed by Caroline Varin.

"Philosophy and Resistance in the Crisis: Greece and the Future of Europe." Costas Douzinas. Polity. May 2013. --- This book is about the global crisis and the right to resistance, about neoliberal biopolitics and direct democracy, about the responsibility of intellectuals and the poetry of the multitude. Using Greece as an example, Costas Douzinas argues that the persistent sequence of protests, uprisings and revolutions has radically changed the political landscape. This new politics is the latest example of the drive to resist, a persevering characteristic of the human spirit. By asking if another world is possible, Douzinas presents some hope that the rebellion against austerity is perhaps a sign of a more democratic and equitable Europe to come, writes Jia Hui Lee.

"Questioning Secularism: Islam, Sovereignty, And The Rule Of Law In Modern Egypt." Hussein Ali Agrama. University of Chicago Press. November 2012. --- The central questions of the Arab uprisings—what is the appropriate relationship between religion and politics and what is the function of the national security state —have developed into a vigorous debate amongst actors from across the political spectrum. But what, exactly, is secularism? What is its relationship to the ‘deep state’ in Egypt? In Questioning Secularism, Hussein Ali Agrama focuses on the Fatwa councils and family law courts of Egypt just prior to the revolution, to argue that secularism is a historically contingent phenomenon that works through a series of paradoxes that it creates. He probes the meaning of secularism and the ambiguities that lie at its heart. Reviewed by Corinna Mullin.