Search Results

Global Ideological Conflict: Concept and Measurement

Erik Voeten

in Ideology and International Institutions

This chapter discusses the definition of institutions and then of ideology. Ideology is a set of widely understood more or less cohesive and stable ideas about how a set of issues should be resolved ... More

This chapter discusses the definition of institutions and then of ideology. Ideology is a set of widely understood more or less cohesive and stable ideas about how a set of issues should be resolved and who should resolve them. It is a vehicle not just for spreading values but also for transmitting information. This information is especially valuable in contexts where actors care deeply about the future intentions of others, including international institutional politics. The chapter then assesses how this definition differs from other treatments in the international relations literature, how ideology constrains policy positions, and what global ideological debates are about. It also outlines an approach to estimate the ideological positions of states from votes in the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA). It evaluates the validity of this measure. For example, changes in UNGA ideal points correlate strongly with various indicators of liberalism: such as changes in government ideology, regime type, and capital openness.Less

No There There: Social Movements and Urban Political Community

Chris Rhomberg

in No There There: Race, Class, and Political Community in Oakland

In the early 1920s, a powerful Ku Klux Klan movement burst forth in many American cities, targeting immigrant Jews and Catholics and people of color and attracting an estimated four to six million ... More

In the early 1920s, a powerful Ku Klux Klan movement burst forth in many American cities, targeting immigrant Jews and Catholics and people of color and attracting an estimated four to six million members. This book uses an explanatory framework built on three basic analytic dimensions: socioeconomic structure, institutional politics, and urban civil society. It introduces concepts drawn from three corresponding, well-known paradigms in sociology and political science: traditional political sociology; the “new institutionalism”; and social movement theory. Furthermore, it provides a case study of three social movements in Oakland, from the point of view of urban political development in twentieth-century America. The focus is on the struggles of groups and actors to forge a political solidarity and community in an urban context. An overview of the chapters included in this book is finally presented.Less

A wider definition of politics and political participation

Cristina Rosillo-López

in Political Conversations in Late Republican Rome

The first chapter focuses on outlining the study of politics in Rome beyond institutions. It reviews who participated in politics, going beyond the classic model of the adult male citizen with full ... More

The first chapter focuses on outlining the study of politics in Rome beyond institutions. It reviews who participated in politics, going beyond the classic model of the adult male citizen with full political and legal rights, and including many other groups that were active in politics through their participation in the network of meetings and conversations, especially women and freedmen. The chapter argues that political participation also happened outside institutions, so the number of people who took part in politics becomes much larger. Both extra-institutional and institutional politics, both of which were used by the elite and the people in their own ways, constituted the body of Roman politics.Less

Conclusions

Cristina Rosillo-López

in Political Conversations in Late Republican Rome

The conclusion sums up the findings of the book and addresses the question whether the political culture of conversations could be applied to previous and later periods of Roman history. The Roman ... More

The conclusion sums up the findings of the book and addresses the question whether the political culture of conversations could be applied to previous and later periods of Roman history. The Roman political system ran on conversation and face-to-face meetings. The main objective of this book has been to offer an extra-institutional perspective on Roman politics through the proxy of conversations and meetings. Orality has long been identified as an important component for the analysis of Roman institutions and was also crucial for the circulation of rumours and public opinion. The present book has argued that in Rome, oral communication was the default mode in politics, especially for all politics carried out outside institutions. Only when they could not reach each other in person did Roman senators and their peers resort to letters.Less

Mediating the publics of public participation experiments

Nick Mahony

in Rethinking the public: Innovations in research, theory and politics

This chapter begins from the normative proposition – in the Power enquiry of 2006 and elsewhere – that the polity and the public sphere are in crisis, and that this crisis needs to be addressed ... More

This chapter begins from the normative proposition – in the Power enquiry of 2006 and elsewhere – that the polity and the public sphere are in crisis, and that this crisis needs to be addressed through enhancing opportunities and modes of participation. In each of the three case studies (of a participative budgeting exercise, a TV game show, and a social movement gathering), it shows how claims are made about the value of direct forms of participation over a discredited and unresponsive form of institutional politics. The first section of the chapter illuminates some of the contradictory qualities of the publics summoned up through publicity materials. The second section uses the work of sociologists of experimentation to reflect on the particular forms these events took and on the practices of facilitation. The last section examines how people interacted during the bouts of participation during each event.Less

Introduction: The Day They Drove Old Dixie Down

in Reconsidering Roosevelt on Race: How the Presidency Paved the Road to Brown

This chapter provides a tour of the Roosevelt administration's judicial policy, beginning with an examination of the union between the broad movements of rights-centered liberalism and legal realism, ... More

This chapter provides a tour of the Roosevelt administration's judicial policy, beginning with an examination of the union between the broad movements of rights-centered liberalism and legal realism, and ending with an analysis of specific Supreme Court civil rights decisions. While the 1932 election may have created an opportunity for constitutional change, it did not presage a revolution in the judiciary's attitude toward individual rights. The Court's institutional mission of 1940 and 1950 was a consequence of Democratic Party and institutional politics. A variety of forces influenced the development of this mission, but the combination of Roosevelt's party leadership and his pursuit of the modern presidency, each defined by the three presidential motivations and shaped by his conclusion that southern democracy was inconsistent with his vision for the nation, ensured that the ideal of a more inclusive democracy was woven into the fiber of the Court's midcentury doctrine.Less

The Cultural Economy of Urban Sexuality

Stephen Ellingson, Jenna Mahay, Anthony Paik, and Edward O. Laumann

in The Sexual Organization of the City

This chapter reviews the key findings about the cultural economy and the social structure of urban sexuality. It also places the study in conversation with larger, enduring themes in American ... More

This chapter reviews the key findings about the cultural economy and the social structure of urban sexuality. It also places the study in conversation with larger, enduring themes in American society, such as individualism and choice; the patterning of concomitant outcomes, particularly by race and ethnicity; the sexual revolution; and the institutional politics surrounding sexuality. Institutional control over sexuality is a common thread that unites the historical, policy, and sociological literatures on sexuality, marriage, and family. One perspective suggests that institutions exert a high degree of control over sexual identities and expressions. Perhaps the best example of this approach is the work of Michel Foucault. The early Chicago school and the more recent subcultural theory of urbanism imply strong institutional control over sexuality for the majority, but weak control over certain urban populations owing to the heterogeneity, size, and density of urban spaces.Less

New wine in old bottles? Ancien Régime schools imagine the future

Adrian O'Connor

in In Pursuit of Politics: Education and Revolution in Eighteenth-Century France

While the Assembly and the public debated the possible reform of education, the administrators, instructors, students, and others affiliated with the schools were left navigating uncertain political, ... More

While the Assembly and the public debated the possible reform of education, the administrators, instructors, students, and others affiliated with the schools were left navigating uncertain political, social, and institutional terrain. They too participated in the wide-ranging debate over educational reform discussed in the preceding chapters, proposing their own answers to questions about whether the educational institutions inherited from the Ancien Régime could be integrated into the new society and new politics, whether they could be turned into instruments of “public instruction.” This chapter examines local attempts to accommodate and realize the new politics in and through education by analyzing letters, proposals, memoranda, requests, and programs for reform generated by or for universities, collèges, petites écoles, and other educational institutions during the years of the constitutional monarchy. These sources reveal institutions and individuals trying to anticipate, accommodate, and influence the course of revolutionary politics, show mounting frustrations as the delayed promise of educational reform and as controversies over the role of religion in politics complicated the process of actually running schools, and remind us of the entanglement of practical, political, and ideological imperatives that characterized the work of revolution.Less

Beyond Biopolitics and Juridico-Institutional Politics: Aristotle on the Nature of Politics

Adriel M. Trott

in Biopolitics and Ancient Thought

This chapter argues that Aristotle’s political theory neither wholly divides the natural from the political nor makes the biological the central focus of political life. The first part defends ... More

This chapter argues that Aristotle’s political theory neither wholly divides the natural from the political nor makes the biological the central focus of political life. The first part defends Aristotle against the view that his politics are chiefly concerned with the biological. The second part makes the case for the unity of the body and soul and their respective activities in Aristotle’s psychology and anthropology and concludes that what seem like bodily concerns in Aristotle’s political theory are concerns for the whole human being. The activity of engaging in logos requires even the nutritive soul and the sensitive and appetitive soul to be active in their functions. The latter are thus not eclipsed in an included excluded structure, as Giorgio Agamben suggests, nor is the Aristotelian concern for these aspects of a unified soul exclusively biological because they ultimately serve the good of the human being as a whole.Less

Politics

David Damrosch

in Comparing the Literatures: Literary Studies in a Global Age

This chapter discusses the comparatists who reshaped the comparative literature in the United States during the 1950s and 1960s. It mentions Anna Balakian, who became a leading figure in both the ... More

This chapter discusses the comparatists who reshaped the comparative literature in the United States during the 1950s and 1960s. It mentions Anna Balakian, who became a leading figure in both the American and International Comparative Literature Associations. It also describes Anna and her family's emigration in 1921 from Turkey to western Europe and eventually to the United States. The chapter analyzes how comparatists sought to change the world in the postwar years, a time of rapid expansion in higher education and optimism about America's role in fostering international cooperation and understanding. It also focuses on the need of politics of comparative studies to have a dual focus on institutional politics, a wider political scene, and a postcolonial perspective.Less

Indivisible: Invigorating and Redirecting the Grassroots

Megan E. Brooker

in The Resistance: The Dawn of the Anti-Trump Opposition Movement

In the wake of Donald Trump’s election to the presidency, a group of former Democratic Congressional staffers set out to organize and educate the grassroots opposition to the new administration. ... More

In the wake of Donald Trump’s election to the presidency, a group of former Democratic Congressional staffers set out to organize and educate the grassroots opposition to the new administration. Indivisible began with an online guide providing an action plan of how to influence Congress. Subsequent efforts focused on ways to influence policy through conventional political channels, by stalling or defeating the Trump administration’s agenda using local, grassroots protest and advocacy tactics. Self-consciously strategic, Indivisible explicitly described its strategy as inspired by the success of the Tea Party. Like the Tea Party, Indivisible’s organizational model encouraged supporters to target members of Congress by attending town halls, making phone calls, and visiting their offices. This chapter explores how political circumstances shape the avenues of influence available to challengers and the means of contention in which they engage at any given time.Less

Refined Politics: Petroleum Products, Neoliberalism, and the Ecology of Entrepreneurial Life

Matthew T. Huber

in Oil Culture

This chapter examines an enduring promotional construct of oil-based existence—“entrepreneurial life”—that propelled the neoliberal refashioning of American social life, institutional politics, and ... More

This chapter examines an enduring promotional construct of oil-based existence—“entrepreneurial life”—that propelled the neoliberal refashioning of American social life, institutional politics, and urban settlement during the last several decades of the twentieth century. Using a Gramscian-Foucauldian approach, the chapter first articulates three interventions to the debates over “neoliberalism.” It then outlines the basics of the refining process and suggests that the very nature of the process itself ensures multiple petroleum products. It also considers a specific cultural object produced by the petroleum industry that actively constructs an imaginary of petroleum-dependent life: an “educational” film titled Fuel-Less (a parody of the hit 1995 film Clueless), prepared by the American Petroleum Institute for sixth- to eighth-graders. The chapter concludes by discarding the neoliberal politics of ecology (or nature) in favor of a framework that takes into account the ecology of neoliberal politics.Less

Hustling for Funding

Rob Kitchin

in Data Lives: How Data Are Made and Shape Our World

This chapter focuses on the role of finance and the politics of collaboration, charting the development of the Digital Repository of Ireland (DRI). DRI have been beset with institutional politics ... More

This chapter focuses on the role of finance and the politics of collaboration, charting the development of the Digital Repository of Ireland (DRI). DRI have been beset with institutional politics concerning its framing, development, and operation. The future funding issue was just the latest example in a long list of fraught exchanges that could be traced back to its original conception and funding mechanism. The DRI was born out of a funding opportunity, but seemed destined to die due to a funding failure. Without a political solution, the data life cycle would turn full circle much more quickly than initially anticipated. Unless there is a means of covering the costs for labour, equipment and other essential inputs, data are not generated or stored, and thus cannot be used or shared. Even in open data projects, the data might be free to use but they were not free to create, or to process and host.Less

United States: Evolving Determinants of Participation in Floor Debates

David Gelman and Max Goplerud

in The Politics of Legislative Debates

This chapter analyzes the trends in speaking behavior in the United States Congress from 1921 to 2010 in the House and Senate. We find that key determinants of political behavior from the existing ... More

This chapter analyzes the trends in speaking behavior in the United States Congress from 1921 to 2010 in the House and Senate. We find that key determinants of political behavior from the existing American and comparative literature (seniority, committee leader, party leadership, ideological extremism, and majority party membership) correspond to more floor speeches by members. Senators deliver more speeches per member than their counterparts in the House, although the determinants of activity are broadly similar. Splitting the results by historical period and examining the relationship by the polarization of the chamber show that the effects of certain variables have changed considerably over time. In the House, in particular, the effects of committee leader, extremism, and majority party status have increased over time while the effect of seniority has noticeably decreased in the post-Gingrich period.Less

Conclusion—Companion Planting: The Crucible of GM Crops, Global Processes, and Social Movements

Pablo Lapegna

in Soybeans and Power: Genetically Modified Crops, Environmental Politics, and Social Movements in Argentina

The conclusion returns to the puzzle of mobilization/demobilization posed in the introduction and answers it by discussing the links between institutional politics and social movements, and the ... More

The conclusion returns to the puzzle of mobilization/demobilization posed in the introduction and answers it by discussing the links between institutional politics and social movements, and the relationships within and between social movements. The chapter analyzes the impacts of GM herbicide-resistant crops in Argentina elaborating two points. First, the conclusion underlines that, at least in Argentina, any potential environmental gains that may result from GM herbicide-resistant crops are contradicted by the realities of agrarian production. Second, the pleas of small farmers and peasants in Argentina suggest that the gains that GM crops may bring to the rural poor in abstract techno-productivist scenarios are overwhelmingly countered by their actual negative social impacts. The conclusion thus closes by critically examining the techno-productivist discourse on GM crops and arguing that a closer inspection of social movements and the incorporation of multiple scales can improve the literature on agriculture, globalization, and food regimes.Less