Research Seminar in Politics
Spring 2008 Schedule | Fall 2007 Schedule | Spring 2007 Schedule | Fall 2006 Schedule
Time: Wednesday Period 6 (12:50-1:40 PM)
Place: Seminar Room, Anderson 216
Coordinator: Won-ho Park - Email: wpark+RSP@ufl.edu

November 7, 2007
Speaker: Jonathan Wadley
Title: Sex Trafficking and the Re-creation of Europe

Abstract: Over the last decade, stories about women who are trafficked into Europe and forced into sexual slavery have captured the world's attention. Out of the histrionic narratives appearing in newspapers, the policy responses of governments, and the writings of academics, discourses of this phenomenon have formed, and not without consequence for the actors involved. This presentation is part of a larger project that explores how these discourses continue to affect one of those actors, the European Union. It argues that current sex trafficking discourses provide legitimacy for the EU by defining the activity as a problem for Europeans, and thus demanding an actor capable of providing a Europe-wide response. To understand how sex trafficking becomes a problem for Europeans, the presentation will consider the parallel stories of two subjects who play privileged roles in the process of European identity formation: Ukraine and migrant Ukrainian sex workers. Both will be discussed as liminal figures - existing simultaneously within and outside of the idea of Europe - whose over-representation in the sex trafficking discourse serves a useful function. Such an approach reveals both the importance of liminality in collective identity formation and the connections that exist between women's bodies and state bodies within the sex trafficking debate.
Paper: Paper available upon request
November 9, 2007
Speaker: Marija Bekafigo
Title: Parallel Leaders: Party Leader and Committee Chair Leadership in the U.S. House from 1945-199

Abstract: My dissertation research is a longitudinal study that compares and contrasts party leaders and committee chairs in the U.S. Congress in the post-World War II era. My central hypothesis is that party leaders and committee chairs should not be studied as separate leadership positions targeting different goals, but they should be examined together as "parallel leaders" who have similar objectives and similar methods of meeting those objectives. Specifically, I squarely take on the question of whether the power exercised by committee chairs and party leaders is different, and if so, why. I examine the "actions" that leaders perform in their leadership positions utilizing David R. Mayhew's research in "America's Congress". To date, scholars have focused on the relative independence of committee chairs in the legislative process. My findings underscore that the policy positions and legislative leadership of committee chairs and party leaders do not differ as much as previously thought. This research clears a new path for scholars of the legislative process, for as much as scholars have accentuated the import of the era of "committee government," committee chairs and party leaders worked far more in concert towards common party goals than scholars have heretofore noted.
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October 31, 2007
Speaker: Connor O'Dwyer
Title: Political Cleavages and Party System Stability: A Survey of Postcommunist Eastern Europe

Abstract: Why do party systems in some new democracies stabilize quickly while others remain in an extended period of flux? In postcommunist Europe, this question presents itself with particular urgency, and not just to scholars of party systems. Large flows of newly established parties into parliament, and even government, undermine the capacity of new democracies to support programmatic party competition, an ideal in which public policies reflect the choices of voters through the agency of programmatically defined political parties. Illustrating the dangers of constant party system flux, coalitions of outsiders and illiberal populists whose party organizations did not even exist in the 1990s have, in recent years, come to power in Poland, Slovakia, and Latvia -- to name some of the more extreme cases. Building on existing literature about the nature of party competition in multidimensional policy spaces, this paper tests the hypothesis that the number and character of party cleavages in a particular system influences its stability. The empirical analysis makes use of a recent dataset created by Benoit and Laver (2006) containing data on the placement of parties along a variety of issue dimensions.
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October 24, 2007
Speaker: Dan Smith and Dustin Fridkin
Title: Giving Power to the People: The Adoption of Direct Democracy in the American States

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October 17, 2007
Speaker: Kimberly Martin
Title: Delegated Power: The Role of Discretionary Experimenters and the Implementation Process

Abstract: Understanding bureaucratic behavior during the policy implementation process requires social scientists to identify the group of implementers who inevitably make decisions. These implementers are entrusted with the power to bring a program to fruition after it is approved by the legislature or an executive. In this study I focus on what scholars have labeled "discretionary experimenters." These actors can be found at the cabinet, agency, and local levels of government. Although these discretionary experimenters come from a variety of backgrounds and education levels, they are entrusted with broad decision making authority. When a discretionary experimenter is developing a program, what variables does he assume will lead to successful policy implementation? What expectations for successful implementation does he take with him into the process?
This study addresses these questions by identifying a group of discretionary experimenters who implement policy at the state level. I then conduct a simultaneous interview and survey meant to test common variables associated with prevailing theories.
Paper: martink-2007.doc
October 15, 2007
Speaker: Jason Kassel
Title: Constructing a Professional Congress: The Development of the American State, 1783-1851.

Abstract: The physical creation of a capital city containing a stand alone building for Congress helped sustain and enhance the nascent American state. The design and continual expansion of the Capitol Building throughout the first half of the 19th century helped the rapid expansion of the American state prior to the Civil War. Without a stable physical environment in which to work, the Congress would not have been capable of sustaining the output required to develop the American state. Thus, American political development itself is intricately bound together with the establishment of a physical "Congressional Work Environment." In this paper, I explore the Congressional Work Environment from both organizational and individual level perspectives. I explore two sets of primary documents for insights into the congressional institution circa 1850. Through triangulating the organizational and individual perspectives, I identify three organizational and seven individual Congressional Work Spaces within the broader Congressional Work Environment.
Paper: kasselj-2007.pdf
October 10, 2007
Speaker: Ken Wald and Michael Sccichitano
Title: Rush to Judgment? Determinants of Public Prejudgments About Muslims Accused of Terrorist Crimes

Abstract: In the wake of 9/11, many scholars and activists argued that widespread animus against Arabs and Muslims prevented fair trials for suspects charged with terrorist crimes. In particular, it was argued, widespread stereotyping and hostility to Arabs and Muslims undermined the cornerstones of the jury system, the assumption that jurors would begin a trial of such defendants with an open mind and a commitment to the innocence of defendants. Using the case of Sami Al-Arian, a Palestinian accused of providing financial support to terrorists abroad, we test these arguments with data from surveys administered to potential jurors in five venues across Florida and the southeastern United States. Our study differs from previous research by (1) comparing the impact of ethnic prejudice against other factors known to induce both prejudgment and partiality and (2)treating prejudgment and partiality as separate domains subject to the influence of prejudice rather than assuming their equivalence.
Paper: waltk-sccichitano-2007.pdf
September 19, 2007
Speaker: Ben Smith
Title: Rethinking the Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Useful Lessons From the Qualitative Canon on Democratization

Abstract: In this essay I assert that the central foundations of a recent and much-praised book are largely undercut by the very cases the authors claim support them best. Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy has won critical acclaim since its publication in 2006, with a glowing review in Science and the APSA's Woodrow Wilson and William Riker Prizes as well as the Best Book in Economics and Finance from the American Association of Publishers. Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson build a unified theory of political regime emergence based on two fundamental statements: that economic inequality levels drive class relations between elites and non-elites, and that only democratic institutions can provide a credible commitment by elites to maintain redistributive policies to the masses. They use the cases of Argentina, Britain, Singapore, and South Africa to illustrate the argument. Using both historical narrative analysis of their cases and brief comparisons of subsets of the four countries, I demonstrate two things. First, inequality appears to have almost nothing to do with democratization. Second, dictatorships do as good a job at credibly committing to redistribution as democracies. These two simple observations call much of the claimed theoretical scope of Economic Origins into question and remind us of some fairly simple but time-tested lessons of comparative inquiry.
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October 3, 2007
Speaker: Richard Scher
Title: Looking for Answers in All the Wrong Places: E-Voting in the United States

Abstract: Following the "Florida fiasco" presidential election of 2000, virtually all states moved rapidly to revamp their electoral systems. Grasping at straws and rushing to judgment, they quickly adopted a variety of e-voting technological panaceas designed to prevent another debacle. But as it presently stands, e-voting causes more problems than it solves. Indeed, in the end, e-voting as currently practiced seriously undermines American democracy. To spell out this argument, the paper will proceed by addressing the following questions:
What was the political impetus for adopting e-voting in the United States?
Who were the political winners and losers in the switch to e-voting?
What forms does e-voting take in the United States, and what problems do they cause?
What are the consequences of using e-voting technology in the United States, what dangers do they pose, and what solutions exist, if any, to them?
Paper:scher-evoting-2007.pdf
November 14, 2007
Speaker: Marissa Silber
Title: What makes a president quack? Understanding Lame-Duck Status

Abstract: While both academic scholars and the media have used the term "lame duck" to describe a President, there is little consensus over its meaning or impact on presidential politics. This paper will explain when and why Presidents are referred to as "lame ducks" and discuss the implications of the term. Tracing the term to the 1880s, the analysis underscores that the term has taken on multiple meanings that have shifted over time. The press and politicians began to use the term in a negative light in 1946 during debates over whether Truman, or any second-term President, could legitimately hold office. Within this meaning, Presidents are seen as weak and lacking in what Paul C. Light terms "political capital." No systematic analysis has been undertaken to verify how, or if, lame duck Presidents differ in the resources considered vital to them, such as public approval generally and amongst government elites and the media, or how that in turn affects agenda success, party support in Congress, decision-making processes, and electoral success for their party in Congress.
Using as a starting point Paul Light's definition of "political capital," the author uses content analysis to develop a typology of lame duck Presidents that analyzes the frequency of uses of the term by The New York Times and The Washington Post and identifies the issues or behaviors used to label the President as a lame duck. The analysis focuses on the three most recent Presidents to serve two terms, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and Ronald Reagan. The results of the analysis accent that media are much more prone to ascribe lame duck status to incumbent Presidents when they are suffering dwindling composite scores on political capital and when they are subject to scandals or congressional investigation. The analysis concludes that however damaging lame duck status may be to incumbent Presidents, it is not wholesale a bane on their policymaking ability. The author provides evidence that because such Presidents are freed from the shackles of worrying about reelection or approval ratings, they may use a focus on foreign policy or unilateral powers to engage in substantial policy change.
Paper: silberm-nov2007.doc
November 28, 2007
Speaker: Jordan Ragusa
Title: Contextual and Institutional Explanations for Macro-level Policy Change

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december 5, 2007
Speaker: Won-ho Park
Title: Partisans without Parties: Ten Things to Watch for in the South Korean Presidential Election

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