University of Florida - Department of Political Science

Speaker: Stephanie Slade and Daniel A. Smith

Title: Obama to Blame? Minority Surge Voters and the Ban on Same-Sex Marriage in Florida

Speaker: Dietmar Schirmer

Title: States and Sub-State Nationalisms in the EU Brussels and the Proliferation of National Autonomy in EU Member-States

Abstract: My starting point is the remarkable proliferation of autonomy for territorially consolidated national minorities within EU member-states. That several long-standing sub-state nationalism whose claims had remained futile for many decades have successfully negotiated autonomy recently, i.e. while the states at which they directed their claims were either EU members or candidates for membership, suggests a possible causal connection between the European polity and changes in the relations between states and national minorities: the EU, it appears, makes autonomy more likely, but it is unclear by what mechanisms it does so.

The paper seeks an answer to this question in three steps: First, I frame state-minority relations in the Hirschman-ian terms of exit, voice, and loyalty and demonstrate why the conditions of a “flat” world of fully sovereign nation-states make compromises between states and the candidate nations within them excessively difficult; second, I attempt to reconstruct the direct and indirect mechanisms by which the EU changes state-minority relations in a manner that encourages agreements on autonomy as a third way between secession and the status quo; and third I argue (or better: speculate) that the EU polity makes it not only possible that states and minorities compromise on autonomy as a common second preference, but may even make autonomy their shared first preference.

Speaker: Joshua Huder

Title: Presidential Autonomy and Congressional Development: Legislative Constraint on Executive Orders, 1939-2008

Abstract: A major void in development literature is how congressional development has affected executive power. Generally, political development literature examines institutions as if they operated within a vacuum. This research is unique in that it illustrates how developments in one institution reinforce and precipitate interactions between branches of government. More specifically, this study illustrates the effect of legislative development on executive orders. The congressional reforms in the 1970s transitioned Congress from committee government to party government. While those changes drastically altered the legislative process, indirectly those reforms reverberated throughout the political system. In short, major changes to a single institution introduce new environmental dynamics between branches. In this case, presidents are forced to tailor their unilateral actions to adapt to changing institutional conditions in Congress.

Speaker: Michael Martinez

Title: The Resurgent American Voter, 1988-2008

Abstract: Sparked both by normative concerns and a classic empirical puzzle (Brody 1978), scholars developed and tested a variety of explanations for the turnout decline in the US between 1960 and 1988. Since turnout in presidential elections bottomed out at 51.7% in 1996, it has increased in three consecutive presidential elections, reaching an estimated 61.4% in 2008. In this paper, I use logit analysis of pooled cross-sectional data from the American National Election Studies to explore various explanations for the increase in turnout in the US from 1988 to 2008. Changes in basic demographics (most notably the increase in the population with at least some university education) and the increase in contacting over this period account for much of increase in turnout. Increased perceptions of partisan differences have also had a positive effect on turnout, but changes in electoral laws have not had a significant effect. These findings suggest that mobilization patterns best account for both the earlier decline and the more recent rise in turnout.

Speaker: Ryan Kiggins

Title: Wired World: US Policy and Internet Governance 

Abstract: Investigating any relationship between the internet and the security of nation-states is a gargantuan undertaking, but it is possible to investigate budding relationships between the internet and national security on a case by case basis. In this study, I am primarily concerned with the case of the United States as it developed policy towards the issue of internet governance at the cusp of the twenty-first century. Specifically, I explore how U.S. global economic policy and U.S. security policy converged as the basis for the social construction of U.S. policy towards global governance of the internet. Indeed, from the perspective of the United States, security is linked to the notion that the U.S. must expand exports by knocking down barriers to global trade, promote freedom as the basis for democratic political institutions among the nations of the world, and, by achieving the first two aims, prevent revolution that would overturn U.S. style democracy and free-market economics on domestic and global levels of politics. Three U.S. security objectives are accomplished through market expansion, promotion of freedom, and prevention of revolution. First, on the domestic side of the coin, jobs are preserved and created for workers. Second, on the global side of the coin, opening markets overseas serves to promote U.S. style political and economic institutions among the nations of the world thereby expanding the U.S. centric post-World War II pacific union. Third, the U.S. centric post-world war II pacific union is preserved against the revolutionary potential of the internet and globalization. Expanding democracy and opening overseas markets is the lynchpin of U.S. grand strategy since the late nineteenth century. U.S. grand strategy can be characterized as never-ending quest to project the self onto the other in order to secure the self.

Speaker: Sammy Barkin

Title: Racing All Over the Place: A Tiebout Dispersion Model of Regulatory Competition

Abstract: The literature on globalization and international regulatory competition tends to focus on harmonization of regulation, either downward (regulatory races to the bottom) or upward. But patterns or regulatory competition, particularly in offshored industries, often do not harmonize. Rather, they often yield an array of distinct regulatory levels across countries, even among those competing for offshored business. This paper develops a modified Tiebout dispersion model that explains patterns of regulation across countries in offshored industries.

Speaker: Osvaldo Jordan

Title: TBA 

Speaker: Paul D'Anieri

Title: Succession Politics in Hybrid Regimes: The Cases of Russia and Ukraine

Abstract: Political succession, always a problem in authoritarian societies, is a special problem for hybrid regimes, which seek to combine the political control of authoritarianism with the legitimacy provided by elections. The “third wave” of democratization has produced a variety of such hybrid regimes, and succession episodes provide important chances for their transformation either into more genuine democracies or into more consolidated authoritarian regimes. This paper considers the strategic dilemmas for hybrid regimes, both in avoiding challenges prior to the succession and in maintain control afterwards. It considers cases from post-Soviet Russia and Ukraine to examine the strategies adopted by hybrid regimes. While the strategic dilemmas are somewhat constant, we can expect leaders to be innovative in refining strategies to solve them.

Speaker: Patricia Woods

Title: TBD

Speakers: Richard Conley

Title: Signing On and Sounding Off: Signing Statements in the Administration of Dwight D. Eisenhower

Speakers: Jessica Peet

Title: Combating Human Trafficking: Creating Security or Constructing Gender?

Abstract: The most comprehensive international agreement addressing human trafficking is the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish the Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children. The Protocol is different from prior agreements addressing human trafficking because the Protocol employs a normative framework than has not traditionally been used when addressing trafficking in persons. States predominantly employed the framework of security when adopting the Protocol rather than the normative frameworks of human rights or migration. Historically there have been several treaties addressing the issue of human trafficking and none of these adopts the framework of security. Why did states choose a security framework as the most appropriate framework to address human trafficking? Using discourse analysis and a feminist framework, I trace the evolution of the Protocol in order to identify why one particular framework was chosen over another, how this creates or negates particular constructions of gender, and how these gendered constructions impact states’ attempts to combat human trafficking.

Speakers: Ana Margheritis

Title: ’Todos somos migrantes’ (We are all migrants). The Paradoxes of Innovative State-Led Transnationalism in Ecuador

Abstract: This study explores when, why, and how the Ecuadorian state has implemented programs and policies aimed at reaching out to its nationals leaving abroad. The evidence shows an increasing activism on the part of the state that has intensified under Rafael Correa’s administration and acquired some innovative traits; it has also translated into foreign policy actions that placed Ecuador in a leadership role in the Andean region. The timing, motivation, and nature of those transnational policies do not exactly fit the assumptions and typologies of existing literature on the subject. The characteristics of this case, as well as some contradictions and tensions in policy content and implementation, are better explained by domestic political factors such as the nature and internal dynamics of the coalition in government, the political discourse that helped to sell and give shape to Correa’s political project, and the serious institutional instability and fragility in which a new ambitious reform of the state has been launched recently.