Department News
March 31, 2012
Congratulations to Chris Tecklenburg, who has been selected by the Graduate School as a recipient of a University-wide Graduate Student Teaching Award for 2011-12.
March 30, 2012
Congratulations to Rich Conley on the publication of his new book, Historical Dictionary of the Clinton Era.
The book covers both sides of the Clinton presidency through a chronology, an introductory essay, appendixes, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 300 cross-referenced entries on important personalities, including the president, his advisors, his family, his opponents, and his critics, as well as members of Congress, military leaders, and international leaders. This book is a vital access point for students, researchers, and anyone interested in the presidency of Bill Clinton.
March 15, 2012
Congratulations to Badredine Arfi on the publication of his new book, Re-Thinking International Relations Theory via Deconstruction.
Arfi begins by providing a thorough critique of leading contemporary IR theories, including pragmatism, critical/scientific realism, rationalism, neo-liberal institutionalism and social-constructivism, and then moves on to strengthen and go beyond the valuable contributions of each approach by employing the logic of deconstruction pioneered by Derrida to explicate the consequences of taking into account the dilemmas and inconsistencies of these theories. The book demonstrates that the logic of deconstruction is resourceful and rigorous in its questioning of the presuppositions of prevailing IR approaches, and argues that relying on deconstruction leads to richer and more powerfully insightful pluralist IR theories and is an invaluable resource for taking IR theory beyond currently paralyzing ‘wars of paradigms’.
January 19, 2012
Congratulations to Larry Dodd on the publication of his new book, Thinking About Congress.
The book collects ten essays that Larry published on Congress between 1977 and 2005. Taken together, the ten essays develop a “theory of congressional cycles” that seeks to explain the forces generating long-term change in Congress. The book also includes a "Foreword" by Eric Schickler of UC-Berkeley, in which he assesses the import of the essays; provides a Preface by Dodd that describes the way in which these essays emerged across the past 35 years to create the “theory of cycles,” and includes a new essay, "Congress as Public Mirror," that introduces the book and expands on the theory presented in the previously published essays. Each essay is followed by a third-person retrospect which details the concerns Dodd had in writing the essay, the scholarly work he built on in crafting it, and subsequent publications by other scholars that speak to the issues raised in the essay, as well as suggestions for the ways in which the essay can be incorporated into undergraduate and graduate classes.
January 12, 2012
Congratulations to Ben Smith on winning a national grant from the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation to support his research on Kurdish nationalist movements.
October 29, 2011
Congratulations to Les Thiele on the publication of his new book, Working Toward Sustainability: Ethical Decision Making in a Technological World.
From the back cover:
"By building the framework for balancing technological developments with their social and environmental effects, sustainable practices have grounded the vision of the green movement for the past few decades. Now deeply rooted in the public conscience, sustainability has put its stamp on various institutions and sectors, from national to local governments, from agriculture to tourism, and from manufacturing to resource management. But until now, the technological sector has operated without a cohesive set of sustainability principles to guide its actions. By demonstrating that sustainable solutions start with ethical choices, this groundbreaking book helps professionals in virtually every sector and field of endeavor work toward sustainability."
September 27, 2011
The Department's weekly colloquium begins this Friday, September 30th, at 12:50 p.m. in Anderson 216. Josh Huder will give a talk entitled "Institutional Opposition: Reform Politics and Congressional Development, 1879-2010." More information is available here.
The Ehrlich Chair will sponsor a talk on Monday, October 10th, at 3 p.m. in Anderson 216. Ekrem Karakoc, a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Montreal will give a talk entitled, " The Democracy-Inequality Paradox." More information is available here.
August 30, 2011
The Department co-hosted a reception with FSU at the American Political Science Association Conference in Seattle, WA on Friday, September 2, at 7:30 p.m. in Convention Center 205. Co-authors, former students, and other friends were in attendance.
Congratulations to Les Thiele on the publication of his new book, Indra's Net and the Midas Touch: Living Sustainably in a Connected World (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2011).
From the publisher's website:
"We live today in a global web of interdependence, connected technologically, economically, politically, and socially. As a result of these expanding and deepening interdependencies, it has become impossible fully to control--or foretell--the effects of our actions. The world is rife with unintended consequences. Wall Street’s reckless investment in toxic assets recently produced massive defaults and a global economic recession. Our attachment to fossil energy is producing a climate default. The first law of human ecology--which declares that we can never do merely one thing--is a truth we ignore at our peril. In Indra’s Net and the Midas Touch, Leslie Paul Thiele explores the impact of interdependence and unintended consequences on our pursuit of sustainability."
August 20, 2011
Philip Williams has published a new book (co-authored w/ Manuel Vasquez, Marie Marquardt, and Tim Steigenga) entitled Living “Illegal”: The Human Face of Unauthorized Immigration (New York: The New Press, 2011).
From the publisher's website:
"Today’s polarized debates over immigration revolve around a set of one-dimensional characters and unchallenged stereotypes. Yet the resulting policy prescriptions, not least of them Arizona’s draconian new law SB 1070, are dangerously real and profoundly counterproductive.
A major new antidote to this trend, Living “Illegal” is an ambitious new account of the least understood and most relevant aspects of the American immigrant experience today. Based on years of research into the lives of ordinary migrants, Living “Illegal” offers richly textured stories of real people—working, building families, and enriching their communities even as the political climate grows more hostile."
Dan O’Neill was named a Waldo W. Neikirk Term Professor for the year 2011-2012 in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.
Laura Sjoberg published a new edited book (with J. Ann Tickner) entitled Feminism and International Relations: Conversations about the Past, Present, and Future (New York: Routledge Press).
From the publisher's website:
"Feminist International Relations scholarship in the United States recently celebrated its 20th anniversary. Over those years, feminist researchers have made substantial progress concerning the question of how gender matters in global politics, global economics, and global culture. The progress has been noted both in the academic field of international relations and, increasingly, in the policy world.
Celebrating these achievements, this book constructs conversations about the history, present state of, and future of feminist International Relations as a field across subfields of IR, continents, and generations of scholars."
August 18, 2011
Congratulations to our new Ph.Ds! Those students, their dissertation titles, their mentors, and their new positions are as follows:
Ryan Kiggins, “Wired World: United States Policy and Governance of the Internet.” Committee: Ido Oren, Chair; Leann Brown; Aida Hozic; Dan O’Neill; and David Ostroff (Journalism). Ryan is currently Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Louisiana, Lafayette.
Kimberly Martin, “Collaboration and the Policy Development Process: Intrastate Efforts to Improve Public Safety.” Committee: David Hedge, Chair; Sharon Austin; Lynn Leverty; Richard Scher; and Sheila Dickison (External Member). Kim is currently Special Assistant to the Associate Provost for Undergraduate Affairs, UF.
Jordan Ragusa, "Resolving Differences: Bicameral Disagreement and Reconciliation in the Postreform Congresses." Committee: Larry Dodd, Chair; Rich Conley; Michael Heaney; Marcus Hendershot; Michael Martinez; and Elizabeth Dale (History). Jordan is currently Assistant Professor at the College of Charleston.
Jessica Peet, “She Was a Passive ‘Victim’ in Need of Rescue: Understanding the Gendered Constructions in International Anti-trafficking Law.” Committee: Sammy Barkin and Laura Sjoberg, Co-Chairs; Leann Brown; Patricia Woods; and Tace Hedrick (English). Jessica is currently Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Southern California.
February 18, 2011
The second issue of APSA-CD, edited by a group of our comparative faculty, came out this week. The issue is devoted to “Measuring Democracy.” It includes pieces by Gerardo Munck, Jan Teorell, Zachary Elkins, Tom Ginsburg, James Melton, and Holli Semetko.
Russell Dalton, of the University of California - Irvine, gave a talk entitled "Political Representation and Democracy: The CSES Findings" on Monday, February 21st at 11:45 a.m. in Anderson 216.
Short bio:
Russell Dalton is a professor of political science at the University of California, Irvine. His research and teaching focuses on the role of citizens in the political process, and how democracies can better address public preferences and the democratic ideal. He has authored or edited more than twenty books and more than a 100 research articles. Dalton has been awarded the Developing Scholar Award by Florida State University, a Fulbright Research Fellowship, Scholar-in-Residence at the Barbra Streisand Center, German Marshall Fund Research Fellowship, the POSCO Fellowship at the East West Center, and the UCI Emeriti Award for Faculty Mentorship. He was founding director of the Center for the Study of Democracy at UC Irvine.
Avraham Sela, of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, gave a talk entitled "Egypt, Israel and the June 1967 War - A Domestic Explanation" on Monday, March 14th at 11:45 a.m. in Anderson 216.
Short bio:
Avraham Sela is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of International Relations and a research fellow of the Harry S. Truman Institute for the Advancement of Peace. He earned his Ph.D. from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (1987), was a Visiting Fellow at the Near Eastern Studies Department of Princeton University (1987-1988) and Oxford University (2000-2001), and a Visiting Professor in the History Department of San Diego State University (1993-1994); the University of Waterloo, Ontario (1995); the Middle East Technical University, Ankara (1999); the University of Tulsa, Oklahoma (2000); and Colgate University (2005-2007). Before joining the Hebrew University faculty in 1987 he served as a career officer in the research division of the IDF Intelligence Branch (1970-1986). In this capacity, he took part in the Israeli-Egyptian peace talks in the late 1970s as well as in the Israeli-Lebanese military talks in the mid-1980s.
January 28, 2011
Grigore Pop-Eleches, of Princeton University, will give a talk entitled "Associated with the Past? Communist Legacies and Civic Participation in Post-Communist Countries" on Monday, February 7th at noon in Anderson 216. The talk is sponsored by the Center for European Studies and by the Raymond and Miriam Ehrlich Eminent Scholar Chair in Political Science.
Abstract: Twenty years after the collapse of communism, there is a rough consensus among scholars that the communist past still matters. Many questions remain, however, about exactly how, when, and why the past matters, especially in terms of political values and behavior. To address this gap in the literature, I present a systematic framework for considering the effect of communist era legacies on post- communist political values and behavior, including a set of mechanisms by which these effects can be transmitted and a set of particular values and behaviors in regard to which we expect legacy effects may be particularly important. I also situate patterns of participation in postcommunist countries within the wider European context and provide an example of how the framework can be applied by examining the issue of trust in political parties.
Bio: Grigore Pop-Eleches' main research interests lie at the intersection between political economy and comparative political behavior, with a particular interest in Eastern Europe and Latin America. He has worked on the politics of IMF programs in Eastern Europe and Latin America, the rise of unorthodox parties in East Europe, and on the role of historical legacies in post-communist regime change. His first book, entitled "From Economic Crisis to Reform: IMF Programs in Latin America and Eastern Europe" was published by Princeton University Press in February 2009. His work has also appeared in a variety of academic journals, including The Journal of Politics, World Politics, Comparative Political Studies, Comparative Politics, International Studies Quarterly, Journal of Democracy, Studies in Comparative International Development, and East European Politics and Societies.
January 25, 2011
The Graduate Program in Political Campaigning will host a workshop, "The Election Landscape '10-'12: Reflections and Projections," on Friday, February 4 at the University of Florida Hilton.
January 23, 2011
Sammy Barkin’s recent book, Realist Constructivism: Rethinking International Relations Theory, was chosen as a Choice Outstanding Academic Title for 2010.
Lynn Leverty was awarded a 2010-11 College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Teaching Award.
Professor (and Dean of CLAS) Paul D'Anieri edited a new book entitled, Orange Revolution and Aftermath: Mobilization, Apathy, and the State in Ukraine.
From the publisher's website:
"After the success of the Orange Revolution, it was widely expected that civil society groups would take an increasingly prominent role in Ukrainian politics, reinvigorating democracy. Yet that influence diminished rapidly, and when the new government also became tainted with corruption, there was no protest or counterattack. This book explores why the influence of civil society groups waned so quickly."
January 21, 2011
Gao Fei gave a talk on Friday, January 21, at 11:45 a.m. in AND 216. The talk is entitled, "President Hu Jintao’s Visit to Washington and the State of Sino-U.S. Relations."
Short bio:
Gao Fei is associate professor of diplomatic studies and director of the research office at China Foreign Affairs University in Beijing. He is currently a Visiting Fulbright Scholar at George Washington University and he previously held fellowships at Robert Schuman University in Strasbourg, the University of Paris, the Diplomatic Academy of Russia in Moscow, and the University of Maryland. Dr. Gao is the Deputy Secretary General of the China National Association for International Studies. He received a BA and MA in international politics from Peking University and a PhD in international relations from China Foreign Affairs University.
This presentation was co-sponsored by the UF Asian Studies Program and the UF International Center.
December 10, 2010
Congratulations to Richard Scher on the publication of his book, The Politics of Disenfranchisement: Why Is It So Hard to Vote in America? which examines the ways that some people are formally or effectively disenfranchised and reviews how control of the ballot and the voting process is constrained, manipulated, and contested. For more information, visit the publisher's website.
November 30, 2010
Seth McKee gave a talk on Monday, December 6, at 1 p.m. in AND 216. The talk is entitled, "Redistricting, Race, and Participation in U.S. House Elections."
Abstract:
The drawing of congressional district lines can significantly affect political participation in U.S. House elections, according to recent work. But those studies have failed to explain which voters’ participation rates are most susceptible to the dislocating effects of redistricting, and whether the findings are generalizable to a variety of political contexts. Building on this nascent literature and work on Black political participation, we show that redistricting’s negative effects on participation – measured by voter roll-off in U.S. House elections – are generally strongest among African Americans, but that Black voters can be mobilized when they are redrawn into a Black representative’s congressional district. Our findings, based on data from 11 post-redistricting elections in five states from 1992 through 2006, both expand the empirical scope of previous work and suggest that redistricting plays a previously hidden role in affecting Black participation in congressional elections.
A copy of the paper can be found here.
November 8, 2010
Ken Greene of the University of Texas at Austin gave a talk on Tuesday, November 16th at 11:15 a.m. in AND 216. Professor Greene's research focuses on democratization, dominant parties and electoral politics with a focus on Mexico and on Latin America more broadly. His first book, Why Dominant Parties Lose, won the 2008 Best Book Prize of APSA's Comparative Democratization section.
October 28, 2010
Donald Songer of the University of South Carolina gave a talk entitled "Debunking the Myths of the Attitudinal Model of Supreme Court Decision Making," on Friday, November 5th at 1 p.m. in AND 216.
Professor Songer is the Olin D. Johnston Professor of Political Science at the University of South Carolina. He has written extensively on the United States Courts of Appeals, including co-authoring the University of Michigan Press book Continuity and Change on the United States Courts of Appeals. He has also written widely on comparative courts including the recent book, The Transformation of the Supreme Court of Canada: An Empirical Examination, published by the University of Toronto Press. He is the Principal Investigator for the United States Courts of Appeals Database and is one of the Principal Investigators for the High Courts Judicial Database of the decisions of the top courts of ten common law countries. Both databases were created with a series of grants from the National Science Foundation. His scholarship has appeared in articles in a number of journals including the American Political Science Review, the American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics, the Canadian Journal of Political Science, Political Research Quarterly, and Law and Society Review.
Staffan I. Lindberg (co-PI) and Jan Teorell (co-PI, Lund University) received a grant ($206,000) for the pilot phase of the project “Measuring Democracy: A Multidimensional, Tiered, and Historical Approach,” a collaborative research project with Michael Coppedge (PI, University of Notre Dame), John Gerring (co-PI, Boston University) in which our own Michael Bernhard is also a participant. Lindberg also received a grant as PI for the “World Values Survey Data, Sweden,” Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation ($265,000).
In addition, Lindberg was asked to chair “Democratization by Elections?”, a panel at the African Studies Association in the UK’s Biannual Conference, Oxford University, 16-19 September 2010, and also made a presentation on his research on elections and democracy in Africa on this panel. Lindberg was also invited to present “Election Campaigning in Ghana,” at the speaker series on Elections, Opinion, and Democracy, Gothenburg University, 13 October 2010.
October 11, 2010
Badredine Arfi has published a new book entitled Linguistic Fuzzy Logic Methods in Social Sciences (Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 2010). The book is a first of its kind. Linguistic fuzzy logic theory deals with sets or categories whose boundaries are blurry or, in other words, “fuzzy,” and which are expressed in a formalism that uses “words” to compute, not numbers, termed in engineering as “soft computing.” This book presents an accessible introduction to this linguistic fuzzy logic methodology, focusing on its applicability to social sciences. Specifically, this is the first book to propose an approach based on linguistic fuzzy-logic and the method of computing with words to the analysis of decision making processes, strategic interactions, causality, and data analysis in social sciences. The project consists of systematic, theoretical and practical discussions and developments of these new methods as well as their applications to various substantive issues of interest to international relations scholars, political scientists, and social scientists in general.
Laura Sjoberg is co-editor of a new book, Gender, War, and Militarism: Feminist Perspectives (New York: Prager Security International). Laura co-authored the introduction and conclusion with her co-editor, and contributed a chapter called “Gendering the Empire’s Soldiers: Hero Narratives from the War on Terror.”
The sixth edition of Ken Wald and Allison Calhoun-Brown’s book, Religion and Politics in the United States, has just been published by Rowman & Littlefield. The book was revised to take account of recent political developments and the outpouring of recent research on the subject.
August 13, 2010
The Summer 2010 edition of the Department newsletter, The Partisan, is now available.
The Department's New Student Orientation will be held on Thursday, August 19 at 8:30 a.m. in the Department Conference Room, Anderson 216.
During the 2010 American Political Science Association conference, the UF Department of Political Science will hold a reception on Friday, September 3 at 7:30 p.m. in the Columbia 2 room of the Washington Hilton in Washington, D.C. If you are in the area, stop by and say hello.
May 26, 2010
Ana Margheritis has published a book entitled Argentina’s Foreign Policy: Domestic Politics and Democracy Promotion in the Americas which explores the interaction of presidential power, regional issues, and domestic instability in the shaping of Argentina's foreign policy.
From the publisher's website:
Why would a state commit to foreign policy actions that do not appear to have relevance to its national interests? And what can we learn from Argentina’s extensive involvement in democracy promotion in the Americas? Addressing these related questions, Ana Margheritis explores the interaction of presidential power, regional issues, and domestic instability in the shaping of Argentina's foreign policy.
May 10, 2010
Sharon Austin was awarded a Colonel Allen R. and Margaret G. Crow Term Professorship in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences for the 2010-2011 academic year for her excellence in teaching, scholarship, and service.
Daniel Smith was named a UF Research Foundation Professor (joining Philip Williams, who was appointed in 2009). These prestigious three-year professorships recognize faculty who have established a distinguished record of research and scholarship that is expected to lead to continuing distinction in their field.
May 3, 2010
Five graduate students have garnered national fellowships to support their research. Cara Jones and Steve Lichty have been named principal candidates for Fulbright-Hays doctoral dissertation fellowships, and Dominic Lisanti, Ramon Galinanes, and Ann Witulski have been named Boren National Security Education Program grant recipients.
Joshua Huder is one of two graduate students in the nation to win a Dirksen Congressional Research Award to support his dissertation research.
Sean Walsh was awarded the 2009-2010 Calvin A. VanderWerf Award, the highest graduate teaching award at the University of Florida.
February 12, 2010
Beginning in 2010, the UF Department of Political Science will assume the editorship of an expanded newsletter for the Comparative Democratization section of the APSA, tentatively titled APSA-CD. Kate Baldwin, Michael Bernhard, Petia Kostadinova, Staffan Lindberg, Bryon Moraski, Conor O’Dwyer, Ben Smith, Philip Williams and Leo Villalon will serve as the editorial team.
The second edition of Dan Smith's book, State and Local Politics: Institutions and Reform, has just been published.
From the publisher's website:
In this second edition of STATE AND LOCAL POLITICS: INSTITUTIONS AND REFORM, Donovan, Mooney, and Smith go beyond the purely descriptive treatment usually found in state and local texts. First, the book offers an engaging comparative approach, showing students how politics and government differ between states and communities, and pointing out the causes and effects of those variations. Second, it focuses on what social scientists know about the effects of rules and institutions on politics and policy. This comparative, institutional framework enables students to think more analytically about the impact of institutions on policy outcomes, asks them to evaluate the effectiveness of one institutional approach over another, and encourages them to consider more sophisticated solutions.
February 7, 2010
Congratulations to Dan O'Neill! Dan recently won a College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Teaching Award. These awards recognize excellence, innovation, and effectiveness in teaching.
February 4, 2010
Richard Conley was awarded US$4,136 from the Government of Canada as part of the Faculty Research Grant Programme for US scholars administered by the Canadian Embassy in Washington, D.C. The funds will be used toward research at the Canadian National Archives in Ottawa on Canadian prime ministers' leadership of Parliament, 1949-2009.
January 27, 2010
The Department hosted the Research Frontiers in African Politics workshop January 30-31. This workshop brought together PhD students from Cornell University, New York University, the University of California-Davis, the University of California-Los Angeles, and the University of Florida to discuss working papers that represent cutting edge research on the politics of sub-Saharan Africa.
November 12, 2009
Richard Conley published The Historical Dictionary of the George W. Bush Era (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press/Rowman & Littlefield, 2010, 401 pp.).
From the book jacket:
“Historical Dictionary of the George W. Bush Era details the key events and major trends that defined the 43rd president of the United States from 2001 through 2008. Richard Conley has comprised detailed entries on the president's advisors, family, opponents, and critics, as well as members of Congress, military and international leaders, and other important personalities. Entries also summarize events, including those connected to the War on Terror, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and significant legislation and policy issues. A detailed chronology tracks major events during Bush's presidency, including the 2000 election and Hurricane Katrina. The appendixes provide data and graphics on Bush's advisors and cabinet, presidential success in Congress, vetoes, presidential approval, troop levels in Iraq, and military and civilian casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan. An extensive bibliography completes this vital reference for anyone interested in the presidency of George W. Bush.”
October 22, 2009
Congratulations to Laura Sjoberg! Laura is editor of the new book, Gender and International Security: Feminist Perspectives, which defines the relationship between gender and international security, analyzing and critiquing international security theory and practice from a gendered perspective.
From the publisher's website:
Gender issues have an important place in the international security landscape, but have been neglected both in the theory and practice of international security. The passage and implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 1325 (on Security Council operations), the integration of gender concerns into peacekeeping, the management of refugees, post-conflict disarmament and reintegration and protection for non-combatants in times of war shows the increasing importance of gender sensitivity for actors on all fronts in global security. This book aims to improve the quality and quantity of conversations between feminist Security Studies and Security Studies more generally, in order to demonstrate the importance of gender analysis to the study of international security, and to expand the feminist research program in Security Studies. The chapters included in this book not only challenge the assumed irrelevance of gender, they argue that gender is not a subsection of Security Studies to be compartmentalized or briefly considered as a side issue. Rather, the contributors argue that gender is conceptually, empirically, and normatively essential to studying international security. They do so by critiquing and reconstructing key concepts of and theories in international security, by looking for the increasingly complex roles women play as security actors, and by looking at various contemporary security issues through gendered lenses. Together, these chapters make the case that accurate, rigorous, and ethical scholarship of international security cannot be produced without taking account of women’s presence in or the gendering of world politics.
September 10, 2009
Staffan Lindberg is editor (and author of three chapters) of the new book Democratization by Elections: A New Mode of Transition?.
From the publisher's website:
Contested,
multi-party elections are conventionally viewed either as an
indicator of democracy's emergence or a measure of its quality. In
practice, the role that elections play in the transition from
authoritarian rule is much more significant. Focusing on one overall
hypothesis and consciously referring back to Guillermo O’Donnell and
Philippe Schmitter’s classic thesis from 1986, all authors of the
volume interrogates the proposition that elections has become a mode of
transition. Based on Robert Dahl’s original formulation of
democratization as the outcome of increasing the
costs of repression while decreasing the cost of toleration, this new volume asks if the
repetition of elections can create such a process.
The
book gathers a wide range of global, regional and comparative case
studies using original data sets and present findings never published
before, that in various ways evaluate this central question. It
represents the first collective effort at expressing the causal
properties of a theory of democratization by elections as a new mode of
transition. Staffan I. Lindberg argues that in many nations the act of
holding repeated elections—even when they are corrupt, single party, or
barely contested—plays a causal role in fostering civic-mindedness
among the polity, opening society, and ultimately advancing democracy.
The first section of the Democratization by
Elections
volume presents a debate on the democratizing power of elections
finding support for the hypothesis through a series of global as well
as regional large-N studies based on several new and unique data sets.
The second section looks closely at specific electoral mechanisms and
types of elections in Africa, postcommunist Europe and Euroasia, Latin
America, Middle East and North Africa, to uncover those that support
the longterm institutionalization of democratic transition. The
concluding section of the book develops a theory of democratization by
elections in two chapters. Andreas Schedler presents a new model of the
strategic dilemmas facing both rulers and opposition in
less-than-democratic regimes. In the final chapter Lindberg provide a
theory of elections as a mode of transition. Each chapter includes
in-depth discussions of policy implications and a wealth of statistical
information.
Featuring
contributions by leading scholars of democracy, original research, and
worldwide and country-specific data on elections and democracy, this
collaborative exploration of elections represents the cutting edge of
comparative democratization studies.
June 18, 2009
Philip Williams has accepted the position of Director of the UF Center for Latin American Studies.
The Study of the United States Institute on U.S. Foreign Policy, directed by Professors Aida Hozic, Ido Oren, and Richard Nolan, was honored by the Gainesville City Commission through the proclamation establishing June 15, 2009 as The University of Florida Institute on United States Foreign Policy Day. See the Proclamation here, and watch the Commission meeting video here.
May 9, 2009
Patricia Woods has received a University of Florida Faculty Enhancement Opportunity Award for Summer and Fall 2009 in the amount of $37,509. The award comes from the Office of the Provost and is supported by the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. The award is a grant for preliminary research on a project entitled, "Measuring the Political: Small Forms of Resistance, the Women’s Movement, and Changing Public Discourse on Rape and Violence Against Women in Israel." It will involve travel to Israel, additional methods training, as well as the visit of an external scholar to UF.
April 23, 2009
Badredine Arfi won a Course Development Grant from the Center for European Studies to support the development of a new course titled “Islamic Civilization and the Making of European Politics.”
Ido Oren has been awarded a Fulbright lectureship in the People’s Republic of China for the Spring 2010 semester.
Ana Margheritis won a course development grant from the Latin American Studies Center to develop a course on transnational perspectives on international migration for the Spring 2010 semester.
The Department has won a renewal grant from the U.S. Department of State in the amount of $288,640 to host another "Study of the United States Institute on U.S. Foreign Policy." Eighteen international scholars will participate in the Institute from June 8 to July 17, 2009 (including four weeks of academic residency in Anderson Hall and two weeks of study tours of Miami, Chicago, and Washington, DC). The grant's Principal Investigators are Aida Hozic and Ido Oren, who will co-direct the program; Richard Nolan will serve as assistant director. The participants’ countries of origin are Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela, Nigeria, Cameroon, Libya, Israel (East Jerusalem), Turkey, China, Vietnam, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, the Philippines, India, Russia, Romania, Austria, and Holland.
March 26, 2009
Laura Sjoberg (Ph.D., University of Southern California; JD, Boston College Law School) will be joining our faculty in August.
March 19, 2009
Philip Williams is co-editor of a new book, A Place to Be, which is the first book to explore migration dynamics and community settlement among Brazilian, Guatemalan, and Mexican immigrants in America's new South.
From the publisher's website:
Rutgers University Press is pleased to announce the publication of A Place to Be edited by Philip J. Williams, Timothy J. Steigenga, and Manuel A Vásquez.
"A Place to Be is a must-read for everyone interested in religion and transnational communities. The book's innovative focus on lived religion and collective mobilization considerably advances theories of both international migration and religion.”
–Alex Stepick, Director, Immigration & Ethnicity Institute, Florida International University
A Place to Be is the first book to explore migration dynamics and community settlement among Brazilian, Guatemalan, and Mexican immigrants in America's new South. The book adopts a fresh perspective to explore patterns of settlement in Florida, including the outlying areas of Miami and beyond. The stellar contributors from Latin America and the United States address the challenges faced by Latino immigrants, their cultural and religious practices, as well as the strategies used, as they move into areas experiencing recent large-scale immigration.
Philip J. Williams is a professor
of political science at the
University of Florida and coeditor of Christianity, Social Change, and
Globalization in the Americas (Rutgers University Press).
Timothy J. Steigenga is an associate professor of political science at
Florida Atlantic University and coeditor of Conversion of a Continent
(Rutgers University Press).
Manuel A. Vásquez is an associate professor of religion at the University of Florida and coauthor of Globalizing the Sacred (Rutgers University Press).
February 5, 2009
Kristin Goss, Assistant Professor of Public Policy Studies and Political Science at Duke University, will be visiting the department on Monday, March 2 from 3-4:30pm to give a talk entitled "Voice & Equality? Women's Rights and Interest Group Advocacy on Capitol Hill, 1878-2000." The talk will be held in Anderson 216.
Summary:
Since the early 20th century, American women have enjoyed significant advances in gender equality: the Constitutional guarantee of female suffrage in 1920 and the myriad policy changes associated with the feminist movement of the 1960s-1980s. Underlying these advances is the assumption that more rights means more voice for women. Using an original dataset, I examine this assumption. The data chronicle the rise and fall of women's organizations' appearances before Congressional committees over the past century, as well as the narrowing of women's groups' issue interests in the modern, post-feminist era.
January 27, 2009
The Graduate Program in Political Campaigning is hosting a workshop, "The Election Landscape '08-'10: Reflections and Projections," on Friday, January 30.
Michelle Smith (ABD, Cornell University) will be joining our faculty next August.
Grzegorz Ekiert of Harvard University will give a talk entitled "The Weakness of Civil Society in Post-Communist Europe Revisited." This research looks at the development of civil society in four new democracies (Poland, Hungary, Taiwan, and South Korea) using an original dataset on a decade of protest activity in each. The talk will take place on March 16 from 3-4:30 pm in Anderson 216.
Frank McNeil, a UF graduate and former Ambassador to Costa Rica, will be speaking in the conference room, AND 216, on February 13 from 11am-12pm. McNeil was Ambassador to Costa Rica during the Reagan and Carter Administrations and was a diplomatic advisor to the Japanese Ambassador. He has also written a book entitled War and Peace in Central America (1989, New York: Scribners).
January 16, 2009
Congratulations to Larry Dodd! The ninth edition of Congress Reconsidered, co-edited with Bruce Oppenheimer and containing three co-authored essays by Larry, has just been published at CQ Press.
Editors:
Lawrence C. Dodd, University of Florida
Bruce I. Oppenheimer, Vanderbilt University
Always a classic,
Dodd and Oppenheimer’s Congress
Reconsidered
is the recognized source for in-depth, cutting-edge scholarship on
Congress geared to undergraduates. Thoroughly updated—with ten brand
new pieces and the others completely revised—this ninth edition
includes cogent, timely analysis of the 2008 congressional elections,
as well as coverage of:
July 8, 2008
Congratulations to Patricia J. Woods! Her new book, Judicial Power and National Politics Courts and Gender in the Religious-Secular Conflict in Israel, has just been published in the SUNY Series in Israel Studies.
Book Description (from the publisher's website):
Published July 3, 2008
SUNY Series in Israel Studies
Uses the case of Israel to
examine the circumstances that
lead
national
courts to engage heated political issues.
Reviews
"This well-written book makes
an important contribution by pushing the
analysis of the controversies surrounding judicial
intervention/activism to
take ideas seriously. It provides a very persuasive account of Israel's
High
Court of Justice's involvement in religious issues and the key role of
the
judicial community in precipitating that involvement. At the same time,
Woods attends to the roles of institutional factors and social
movements in
facilitating the controversial rights actions/decisions of the HCJ.
This
book is a must read for scholars of law and politics." -- Austin
Sarat,
Amherst College
"The author's notion of an
extended judicial community of judges,
academic
lawyers, and cause lawyers is a major move forward in the 'new
institutionalism' in the study of law and courts." -- Martin
Shapiro, Boalt
Law School, University of California at Berkeley
January 15, 2008
Congratulations to Dan Smith! His new book, co-authored with Todd Donovan and Chris Mooney, State and Local Politics: Institutions and Reform, has just been published.
Authors:
Todd Donovan, Western Washington University
Christopher Mooney, University of Illinois, Springfield
Daniel A. Smith, University of Florida
In State and Local Politics: Institutions and Reform , Todd Donovan, Chris Mooney, and Dan Smith intrigue students by going beyond the purely descriptive treatment usually found in state and local texts. This book offers an engaging comparative approach, showing students how politics and government differ between states and communities, as well as the causes and effects of those variations. Written by three young, high-profile specialists who have contributed significantly to the field in the last decade, State and Local Politics: Institutions and Reform incorporates into the course the most recent scholarship available, giving students access to perspectives that no other textbook on the market currently provides. In addition, the text goes beyond the purely descriptive, traditional approach by focusing on what social scientists know about the effects of rules and institutions on politics and policy. This comparative, institutional framework enables students to think more analytically about the impact of institutions on policy outcomes, asks them to evaluate the effectiveness of one institutional approach over another, and encourages them to consider more sophisticated solutions. State and Local Politics: Institutions and Reform is the only text of its kind to dedicate three full chapters to direct democracy, land use policy, and morality politics. Throughout the text are boxed features that elaborate on the themes of institutions, comparison, and reform. These feature sections provide thought-provoking, concrete examples of the issues at state and local levels so that students can understand how institutions and systems impact individuals in real-life situations. In addition, vivid tables, maps, graphs, and photographs provide the visual tools that students need to process detailed comparative data about the states.
November 9, 2007
Congratulations to David Hedge! His new book, co-authored with Joseph Stewart and James Lester, Public Policy: An Evolutionary Approach, has just been published.
Authors:
Joseph Stewart, Jr Clemson University Ph.D. University of Houston;
David M. Hedge, University of Florida Ph.D., University of
Wisconsin-Milwaukee;
James P. Lester Late, University of Colorado
Public Policy: An Evolutionary Approach, examines how the substance and process of public policy and our understanding of that have evolved in America. After providing the reader with an analytic, historic and contextual framework for viewing public policy in the U.S., the authors offer a comprehensive look at the various elements of the governing process including agenda setting and problem definition, policy formation, implementation, program evaluation, and policy change and termination. In doing that, the authors pay particular attention to the range of theories that have been offered to explain how, why, and with what effects governments act. The authors then look at three critical policy areas - environment, education, and welfare - to further illustrate how governing proceeds in the U.S. Throughout the text the authors draw extensively on actual policy examples including recent efforts to reform education and welfare and the war in Iraq.
August 2, 2007
Congratulations to Ben Smith! His new book, Hard Times in the Lands of Plenty: Oil Politics in Iran and Indonesia, has just been published by Cornell University Press.
Book Description (from
the publisher's web site):
HARD TIMES IN THE LANDS OF
PLENTY: Oil Politics in Iran and Indonesia
That natural resources can be
a curse as well as a blessing is almost a
truism in political analysis. In many late-developing countries, the
"resource curse" theory predicts, the exploitation of valuable
resources will not result in stable, prosperous states but rather in
their opposite. Petroleum deposits, for example, may generate so much
income that rulers will have little need to establish efficient,
tax-extracting bureaucracies, leading to shallow, poorly functioning
administrations that remain at the mercy of the world market for oil.
Alternatively, resources may be geographically concentrated, thereby
intensifying regional, ethnic, or other divisive tensions.
In Hard Times in the Lands of
Plenty, Benjamin Smith deciphers the
paradox of the resource curse and questions its inevitability through
an innovative comparison of the experiences of Iran and Indonesia.
These two populous, oil-rich countries saw profoundly different changes
in their fortunes in the period 1960-1980. Focusing on the roles of
state actors and organized opposition in using oil revenues, Smith
finds that the effects of oil wealth on politics and on regime
durability vary according to the circumstances under which oil exports
became a major part of a country's economy. The presence of natural
resources is, he argues, a political opportunity rather than simply a
structural variable. Drawing on extensive primary research in Iran and
Indonesia and quantitative research on nineteen other oil-rich
developing countries, Smith challenges us to reconsider resource wealth
in late-developing countries, not as a simple curse or blessing, but
instead as a tremendously flexible source of both political resources
and potential complications.
Reviews
"Benjamin Smith has raised the
costs for anyone hoping to tell us
something new and significant about the role of oil in political
development. With Hard Times in the Lands of Plenty he has all but
cornered the market." - Robert Vitalis, University of Pennsylvania,
author of America's Kingdom: Mythmaking on the Saudi Oil Frontier.
"Hard Times in the Lands of
Plenty is thoughtful, provocative, and
innovative. It is a richly textured exploration of political
development in oil-exporting Iran and Indonesia. Employing a
methodology that is both multilayered and eclectic, Ben Smith
challenges the commonplace notion-and implicit suggestion of the
'rentier state' literature-that oil states are intrinsically unstable
and prone to breakdown. He demonstrates that political outcomes are
determined 'not by oil, but when oil' and highlights the challenges
presented by different institutional landscapes at the inception of
oil-based development. This book makes important contributions to
several literatures: among them, the rentier state and resource curse,
historical-institutionalism, transitions, the breakdown of
authoritarian regimes, and comparative methodology." -Miriam R. Lowi,
The College of New Jersey
"The fascinating Hard Times in
the Lands of Plenty is characterized by
bold ambition and real insight; Benjamin Smith admirably weaves
together a variety of methods to produce a book that is truly
comparative in scope. Smith highlights a key insight for those
interested in the politics of oil, namely that timing matters." -Eva
Bellin, Hunter College
Congratulations to Daniel
O'Neill! His new
book, The
Burke-Wollstonecraft
Debate:
Savagery, Civilization, and Democracy, has just been
published by
Penn State University Press.
Book Description (from
the publisher's web site):
According to Daniel O'Neill,
Burke is misconstrued if viewed as mainly
providing a warning about the dangers of attempting to turn utopian
visions into political reality, while Wollstonecraft is far more than
just a proponent of extending the public sphere rights of man to
include women. Rather, at the heart of their differences lies a dispute
over democracy as a force tending toward savagery (Burke) or toward
civilization (Wollstonecraft). Their debate over the meaning of the
French Revolution is the place where these differences are elucidated,
but the real key to understanding what this debate is about is its
relation to the intellectual tradition of the Scottish Enlightenment,
whose language of politics provided the discursive framework within and
against which Burke and Wollstonecraft developed their own unique ideas
about what was involved in the civilizing process.
Reviews:
"Who would have thought there
was much new and fascinating to say about
Burke and Wollstonecraft? But O'Neill's argument, rooted in their
response to the French Revolution and their relationship to Scottish
Enlightenment ideas, is wonderfully fresh and illuminating, shedding
new light on many a shadowy part of Burke's conservatism and
Wollstonecraft's feminism." -Isaac Kramnick, Cornell University
"This is an excellent contribution to the literatures on Mary
Wollstonecraft and Edmund Burke and to the growing discussions of the
significance of the Scottish Enlightenment." -Virginia Sapiro,
University of Wisconsin, Madison.
July 9, 2007
Michael
Heaney and
Lynn
Leverty have
received course development grants of $3,000
from
the Graham
Center for
Public Service. Michael
will use his award to create a new course in health policy
and Lynn is developing a new undergraduate course on policy ethics. Beth
Rosenson received a
course enhancement grant of $1,500 to
revise
her course on ethics in American politics.
Three political science majors
and their faculty mentors have
received Graham Center Policy Scholars Awards of $2,500 to conduct
original policy research during the 2007-2008 academic school year.
Wilneeda Emannuel will work with Sharon
Austin on the
problems of Haitian immigrants in south
Florida,
Krysten Rosen will work with Michael
Heaney
on a study of the governance
of the Medicare Advantage Program, and
Erika Walters (also a biology major) will work with David
Hedge
on the problems of under
utilization of the recently enacted CHOICES
program in Alachua County.
May 7, 2007
Larry Dodd was selected as UF's 2006-2007 Teacher/Scholar of the Year. The annual award is given in recognition of excellence in teaching and distinction in scholarship. It is UF's highest faculty honor and includes a $5,000 award.
April 4, 2007
Beth Ann Rosenson received a a Congressional Research Award through the Dirksen Congressional Center. The $3,100 award will be used toward her book project on the Congressional ethics process. The project examines how the definition of unethical behavior in the U.S. House of Representatives has evolved and changed over the last two centuries and examines partisanship in the ethics process.
March 5, 2007
Michael Heaney and Jason Kassel have been named Congressional Fellows by the American Political Science Association for the 2007-08 academic year. Michael and Jason will spend the year working on Capitol Hill for a member of Congress. In past years, the APSA Congressional Fellowship has been held by Larry Dodd (1974-75), as well as UF Ph.D.s, such as Marian Currinder (2003-04), Elizabeth Oldmixon (2001-02), and Fiona Wright (2001-2002).
January 31, 2007
Philip Williams (Political Science) and Manuel Vasquez (Religion) received a $450,000 grant from the Ford Foundation to support a three year study entitled, "Latin American Immigrants in the New South: Religion and the Politics of Encounter." The study will explore the multiple roles that religion plays in shaping interethnic and interracial relations, immigrant incorporation, and collective mobilization in metro Atlanta, an area that has experienced a dramatic growth in Latino population in the last decade. The project builds on Williams's and Vasquez's previous research in South Florida, that focused on the migration experiences and religious lives of Guatemalans, Mexicans, and Brazilians. Extending the scope of their research to the greater Atlanta metropolitan area will allow them to assess comparatively the impact of Latino immigration in the New South.
