University of Florida - Department of Political Science

Speaker: Ana Margheritis

Title: State-Led Transnationalism and International Migration: Reaching Out to the Argentine Community in Spain

Speaker: Margaret Kohn

Title: Unblinking: Surveillance and Citizenship in a Post-Panoptic Age

Speakers: Katrina Schwartz and Conor O'Dwyer

Title: Europe's New Illiberals: Anti-Gay Rhetoric and Party Politics in Postcommunist Poland and Latvia

Abstract: Schwartz and O’Dwyer examine the recent upsurge of anti-gay mobilizing by populist outsider parties in Poland and Latvia. They seek to explain this surprising phenomenon with the aid of three arguments about the influence of EU accession on political liberalization in new member states. They consider whether the rise of populist parties with an anti-gay rhetoric is best considered (1) a temporary blip in a gradual process of Europeanization and liberalization; (2) a return to historical illiberal tendencies in this region's politics and hence a sign of the increasingly limited liberalizing influence of the EU; or (3) an unintended consequence of EU integration itself. These developments are surprising. In Latvia, they are surprising given the low saliency of this issue in politics until now; ethnic issues, not anti-gay ones, have been the primary mobilizing issue for illiberal parties since independence. The use of anti-gay rhetoric to mobilize votes in the electoral arena is also recent development in Poland, at least by parties that could be considered government material. The authors’ choice to analyze these two countries is motivated both by this puzzle – why the sudden explosion of anti-gay mobilizing? – and by the fact that they have witnessed the most intense anti-gay activism in the region.

Paper: PDF Format

Speakers: Ido Oren and Ty Solomon

Title: WMD: Words of Mass Distraction

Abstract: Oren and Solomon present a genealogy of the notion "Weapons of Mass Destruction" as a metonymical concept, that is, a figure of speech that uses one signified to stand for another signified. Following Nietzsche's formulation, they analyze "Weapons of Mass Destruction" as a "sum" of past political and social "human relations." They describe how this figure of speech was coined by the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1937 in the context of the aerial bombing of Spanish and Chinese towns, how it was "transposed" by presidential science advisor Vannevar Bush in 1945, how it was "transposed" again and "enhanced" in UN disarmament negotiations in 1946–48, how it subsequently fell into obscurity, how the U.S. government and media did not use this term when Iraq used gas against Iran and the Kurds in the 1980s, and how the concept experienced a minor revival in the aftermath of Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait. Oren's and Solomon's account of the genealogy of "Weapons of Mass Destruction" ends on the eve of the election of George W. Bush. They leave for future work the task of analyzing how this metonym was "embellished poetically and rhetorically" in 2002–2003 and how its incessant incantation turned it into a truth, that is, into a "worn out" figure of speech or a coin that has "lost [its] picture and now matters only as metal."

Paper: DOC Format

Speaker: Michael Heaney

Title: Partisans, Nonpartisans, and the Antiwar Movement in the United States

Abstract: Activists within American social movements are often bitterly divided about whether their objectives are better achieved by working with one of the major political parties or by operating independently. We argue that these divisions are consequential for how social movements and political parties interrelate with one another. First, differing partisan attitudes shape the structure of activist networks, leading activists to join organizations with others that share their party loyalties or disloyalties. Second, partisan attitudes affect how activists participate in the movement, with strong partisans more likely to embrace institutional tactics, such as lobbying. Third, partisanship affects the ability of activists to gain access to the institutions of government, such as Congress. Relying on surveys of antiwar activists attending large-scale public demonstrations in 2004-2005, we suggest that some activists integrate into major party networks through what we call the "party in the street," which is an arena of party-movement interaction.

Paper: PDF Format

Speaker: Patricia Woods

Title: Strategic Alliances and the Homogenizing Nation-State: Religion, Family, and Tribe in Iraq and Israel

Abstract: Nation-states have sought to extend the reach of the state into social life at least to the extent of claiming the right to delegate authority to institutions that pose potential threats to state-based solidarity. Religion, family, tribe and similar perennial social ties have been seen as potentially dangerous to solidarity based on the homogenized nation-state. Israel and Iraq provide examples of nationalist regimes, which made concessions to religious authorities by incorporating them into the state, and which suppressed religious authorities by undermining social ties with religion and family, respectively. At critical moments in early state development, both states had leaders who modeled state development on the centralized state model of Soviet Bolshevik Party, distrusted religious institutions, and were self-defined ardent atheists. In Israel, religious institutions were incorporated into the state, whereas in Iraq, social ties to religious institutions were undermined through state-sponsored changes in social structure. In Iraq, however, alliances were made with tribes, including the incorporation of certain tribal institutions into the state. In both cases, alliances between the state and perennial social institutions led to unintended changes in both state ideology and institutions. Family and gender norms appear to be critical in the power of religion, in Israel, and tribe, in Iraq, to capture the imagination of society and to change the ideological and institutional nature of the state.

Speaker: Kuniyuki Nishimura

Title: Whose Discourse? Which Discipline? A Contextualist Investigation of E. H. Carr and the Birth of International Relations Theory

Abstract: This study uncovers philosophical aspects of E. H. Carr through a contextualist-oriented analysis. By critiquing Brian Schmidt's discursive approach to disciplinary history of IR, it is clarified that the distinction between internalists and contextualists is a pseudo dichotomy. Choice of context is a political issue which every historian has to grapple with. In this light, this study examines what Carr meant by science in The Twenty Years' Crisis within the context of Hegelian aftermath as to the problem of knowledge.

Speakers: Ty Solomon and Sean Walsh

Title: TERROR OF THE SUBLIME: Ideological Fantasy and the Iraq War

Abstract: A curious set of contradictions emerges in the time prior to the American invasion of Iraq. On one hand the threat of weapons of mass destruction, actualized by the specter of terrorism was provided as the casus belli. On the other, American officials repeatedly asserted that its military would be greeted as liberators and showered with gifts. Thus, while Iraq was purportedly infested by terrorists with ready access to potentially devastating weapons, the prevailing strategy appears to have ignored the possibility of an insurgency. Our paper addresses the question of why the United States failed to anticipate the insurgency despite consistently offering terrorism as a sufficient provocation for war. Drawing upon theories of discourse analysis and ideological fantasy as articulated in the works of Jacques Lacan, Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, and Slavoj Zizek we argue that the reason terrorism was unanticipated while being concurrently and repetitiously referred to in public rhetoric was the result of discursive strategies. Precisely because of efforts to graft it on to the larger war on terrorism, Iraq was never there. Only an empty vessel remained behind which terrorism could lurk.

Speaker: Staffan Lindberg (Rescheduled for April 11th)

Title: Does Liberalization Prevent Military Intervention in Politics?

Abstract: This study investigates if there is an association between a trajectory of political liberalization and the absence of military interventions. The liberal consensus on democracy rests on a hypothesis that new democracies are relatively secure against military intervention in politics when viewed as legitimate by major elites and the population. Putting this hypothesis to a test in what is arguably the 'least likely-case' region in the world, and analyzing the experience of 55 regimes in Africa between 1990 and 2004 representing 526 regime-years, we find strong support for this hypothesis. Liberalizing, and in particular democratic, regimes have a significantly lower risk of being subjected either successful or failed military interventions. The analysis suggests that democratic regimes are about 7.5 times less likely to be subjected to attempted military interventions than electoral authoritarian regimes and almost 18 times less likely to be victims of actual regime breakdown as a result. Through an additional case study analysis of the 'anomalous' cases of interventions in democratic polities, our results are largely strengthened as most of the stories behind the numbers, suggests that it is only when democratic regimes perform dismally and/or do not pay soldiers their salaries that they are at great risk of being overthrown. We find thus find evidence that legitimacy accrued by political liberalization seems to 'inoculate' states against military intervention in the political realm. This is further evidenced by the finding that the more successive elections these regimes experience, the fairer their elections, and the more civil liberties are respected, the less likely it is that military actors will seek to intervene in politics.

Speaker: Indira Rampersad

Title: The (Cuban) Anti-Embargo Movement in the US

Abstract: Ever since the imposition of a partial embargo on Cuba by the Kennedy administration in 1960, more than one hundred organizations in the United States have been challenging the U.S. government on this policy. Collectively, these organizations constitute a dynamic social movement which represents the crucible of a new contentious ferment triggered by an intriguing blend of international, national and sub-national impulses, ironically sparking intensified relations between the two nations, particularly in the post-Cold War era. Over time, the movement has invariably re-energized, reinvented, redefined and reconstituted itself to persistently reject and attempt to reform this state policy which restricts tourist, family, cultural and academic travel, limits remittances and prohibits free trade with Cuba. This study investigates the organizations which constitute the movement. It explores their history, goals, strategies, tactics, resources, leadership, successes, failures and future aspirations. Employing a social movement theoretical framework, the study attempts to understand what accounts for the movement’s sustained activism when it has met with such limited success over time.

Speaker: Benjamin Smith

Title: It's the Growth, Stupid: The Social Construction of Corruption Data

Abstract: Benjamin Smith uses cross-national time series data from nearly 200 countries between 1995 and 2005 to replicate past findings and to estimate the determinants of perceptions of corruption in both the Corruption Perception Index by Transparency International and the World Bank's Governance Project. Recent research in political economy and development economics has focused our attention on "good governance," and international financial organizations have amplified that message. With that focus has come an increasingly uniform understanding of growth as inversely related to corruption: high growth = low corruption. However, in cross-national datasets corruption has been measured in perceptual terms-as a function of how corrupt survey respondents believe a country to be. Smith hypothesizes that respondents often refer back to economic growth as a proxy for corruption, a phenomenon they have little direct means of assessing. The analysis suggests that annual perceptions are heavily driven by the previous year's, or previous several years', growth rates, and are especially sensitive to economic contractions. In short, survey respondents tend in the years following an economic contraction to change their estimations of corruption dramatically, despite the lack of any reason to believe that actual levels of corruption change so quickly. Smith uses content analysis of World Bank reports on Argentina, Korea, and Russia in the years before and following serious economic crises to illustrate how quickly conventional wisdoms change regarding the relative "cleanness" of economies as a result of changing growth rates.

Speaker: Daniel O'Neill

Title: Burke on India: Prolegomenon to a Revisionist View

Abstract: The question of how to think about the relationship between political theory and empire has recently emerged as an important topic. Within this context, Edmund Burke, often regarded as the founding father of modern conservatism, has been depicted by a number of contemporary scholars as a staunch anti-imperialist and a strong defender of cultural pluralism and difference. Daniel O'Neill argues against this view in two ways. First, he contends that Burke was not an “anti-imperial” thinker in the strict sense of that term. That is to say, if by “anti-imperial” we mean a wholesale opposition to the project of empire, the claim that Burke was anti-imperial is simply wrong and demonstrably false. The second argument operates within the framework of Burke's commitment to the imperial project – rightly understood – and seeks, within that framework, to understand the basis for Burke's criticism of the British Empire in India under the auspices of the East India Company. This latter analysis comprises the bulk of the paper. O'Neill concludes very briefly by comparing Burke’s arguments about empire in India with his arguments about empire in the New World, and suggests that a coherent and consistent view of Burke on empire begins to emerge from such a comparison, albeit one that challenges scholarly orthodoxy on this topic. O'Neill argues, moreover, that this alternative view is also consistent with Burke's conservative political theory generally, and poses troubling questions for those who want to press the greatest modern conservative thinker into the service of the anti-imperial cause, past or present.

Speaker: Staffan Lindberg

Title: Does Liberalization Prevent Military Intervention in Politics?

Abstract: This study investigates if there is an association between a trajectory of political liberalization and the absence of military interventions. The liberal consensus on democracy rests on a hypothesis that new democracies are relatively secure against military intervention in politics when viewed as legitimate by major elites and the population. Putting this hypothesis to a test in what is arguably the 'least likely-case' region in the world, and analyzing the experience of 55 regimes in Africa between 1990 and 2004 representing 526 regime-years, we find strong support for this hypothesis. Liberalizing, and in particular democratic, regimes have a significantly lower risk of being subjected either successful or failed military interventions. The analysis suggests that democratic regimes are about 7.5 times less likely to be subjected to attempted military interventions than electoral authoritarian regimes and almost 18 times less likely to be victims of actual regime breakdown as a result. Through an additional case study analysis of the 'anomalous' cases of interventions in democratic polities, our results are largely strengthened as most of the stories behind the numbers, suggests that it is only when democratic regimes perform dismally and/or do not pay soldiers their salaries that they are at great risk of being overthrown. We find thus find evidence that legitimacy accrued by political liberalization seems to 'inoculate' states against military intervention in the political realm. This is further evidenced by the finding that the more successive elections these regimes experience, the fairer their elections, and the more civil liberties are respected, the less likely it is that military actors will seek to intervene in politics.

Speaker: Sharon Austin

Title: Concentrated Poverty, Social Isolation, and Political participation in the Southern Black Belt

Abstract: This research project will examine the consequences of poverty in Southern, black belt neighborhoods for the political attitudes and participation of whites and African Americans. More specifically, it will assess the impact of concentrated poverty and social isolation on political beliefs and participation by examining the question: What impact does residence in neighborhoods plagued by concentrated poverty and social isolation have on the political behavior of whites and African Americans? The main research question will be examined through survey research, ordinary least squares regression, and the analysis of covariance technique. The significance of this project lies in the fact that most studies of this nature examine the impact of poverty on urban political attitudes and behavior. The black belt region is an ideal one for this study because almost 1 in every 5 of its residents live in poverty in mostly rural communities. Moreover, the few analyses of poverty in the region have been of a historical or sociological, rather than of a political, nature.

Speaker: Bryon Moraski

Title: Designing Post-Communist Courts: Political Transitions and Judicial (In-) Dependence

Abstract: Few scholars have examined the design of constitutional courts cross-nationally in Eastern Europe and those who have often employ the results of elections held after the design of a constitutional court to estimate the actors' perceptions of the balance of power prior to the court's design. Moraski demonstrates that the range of electoral information available to institutional designers in post-communist Europe varied more, and in different ways, than previous works have acknowledged. Accordingly, Moraski reexamines the politics of court design while taking variations in uncertainty more seriously. At the same time, he contends that while existing literature assumes that institutional designers see courts as neutral arbiters, in Europe's post-communist transitions courts were viewed as politicized institutions. As a result, politicians seeking to hedge their bets chose to weaken the courts rather than make them independent. Thus, electoral outcomes shaped judicial design in ways that the existing literature does not anticipate.