Time to Discuss: Data to Crunch or Problems to Solve? A Rejoinder to Robert Thomson

Testing the insights from qualitative case studies (Falkner et al. 2005 Falkner, G., Treib, O., Hartlapp, M. and Leiber, S. 2005. Complying with Europe. EU Harmonisation and Soft Law in the Member States, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]) in quantitative models is a challenging task (see Thomson 2007). This article argues that in political science, our evaluation standards for quantitative analyses need to go far beyond the sophistication of calculations. They should include the quality of assumptions imputed, of data used, and of reasoning as to the political – as opposed to statistical – significance of regressions. When presenting statistical findings that counter solid qualitative work, scholars therefore are under an obligation also to present reasoned arguments for their case, taking into full account the qualitative findings on processes and mechanisms unveiled in these empirical studies.     

Responsibility to Protect or Right to Punish?

Abstract

This essay argues that the new global regime of R2P bifurcates the international system between sovereign states whose citizens have political rights, and de facto trusteeship territories whose populations are seen as wards in need of external protection. Under the direction of the UN Security Council, the International Criminal Court has become an integral part of the international R2P regime by allowing for the legal normalization of certain types of violence (such as Western counterinsurgency efforts), while arbitrarily criminalizing the violence of other states as ‘genocide’. In place of this unequal global regime, the essay concludes by arguing for an internally-driven process of political reform and legal reconciliation, as pioneered in South Africa.     

Africanization： The dilemma to Africanize or to globalize a curriculum

Africanization is generally seen as a renewed focus on Africa-reclaiming what has been taken from Africa--and the emergence of a new sense of pride. With regard to the local curriculum, there is a renewed focus on indigenous knowledge and an African community competing in a global society. In this article the author will reflect on a literature search on Africanization by firstly attempting to create an awareness of the topic by local problems, for example an Africanized curriculum and study material specifically designed for the higher education student in South Africa （who might be in rural or urban） or in the rest of Africa, or even a local student who has migrated to another part of the globe; secondly, looking at relevancy problems that arise when designing local study material on a global platform; thirdly, suggesting ways to design an Africanized environment that not only reflects the underpinning of an African philosophy, but also takes cognizance of the global curriculum. Therefore, an attempt to create an awareness in all communities worldwide of the need is involved in their own curricula by not only looking at problems such as language, culture and values, but also starting at the very beginning, namely with the philosophy behind the design of such a curriculum.     

Time to vote?

Despite the centrality of voting costs to the paradox of voting, little effort has been made to measure these costs accurately, outside of a few spatially limited case studies. In this paper, we apply Geographic Information Systems (GIS) tools to validated national election survey data from New Zealand. We calculate distance and travel time by road from the place of residence to the nearest polling place and combine our time estimate with imputed wages for all sample members. Using this new measure of the opportunity cost of voting to predict turnout at the individual level, we find that small increases in the opportunity costs of time can have large effects in reducing voter turnout.     

Where to Begin?

If what goes on in human societies are viewed as "institutionalfacts"rather than "brutefacts," then basic issues are raised withregard to the meaning of federalism. Institutional facts areconstituted by reference to rules and rule-ordered arrangements.Such arrangements turn upon design concepts and their placein the constitution of order in human societies. Constitutingsocieties through patterns of covenantal relationships impliesthat federal societies cannot be understood by placing primaryreliance on forms of government. The question "where to begin?"raises basic ontological and epistemological problems bearingon the place of language and culture in the constitution ofcovenanting societies.     

Getting to justice?

This article addresses whether Albert Weale’s view in Democratic Justice and the Social Contract (OUP 2013) fits into one of two strands of social contract traditions, and how his account stands up to critics. He claims to stand in the contractarian tradition, which seeks to justify normative principles of justice from non-moral premises. The alternative is the contractualist tradition which assumes that individuals are also motivated by other-regarding moral considerations. The aim of the latter theories is often limited to systematise and specify vague and contested normative judgements concerning shared institutions. There are tensions in Weale’s account as to whether it addresses the question of concern to contractarians or rather that of contractualists. A second challenge concerns Weale’s attempt to extrapolate principles of justice from common property resource regimes within the basic structure of society to that basic structure of a ‘great society’ itself. The impact of the basic structure on individuals is so pervasive that the principle Weale proposes seems misapplied. A claim to the marginal product in complex modes of production supplemented by a social insurance scheme says little about the distributive principles for assessing how the basic structure as a whole should engender the distribution of marginal products among us.     

What is the Problem with High Prison Temperatures? From the Threat to Health to the Right to Comfort

In recent years, extreme heat in United States (US) jails and prisons has become a contested political issue. This article takes high prison temperatures, and prisoners’ demands for air-conditioning, as a case to reconsider established ways of thinking about the prison and punishment. Most advocates of air-conditioning focus on the health risks of exposure to extreme heat. This article, alternatively, identifies two limitations of such health-based approaches. First, they re-legitimize a standard of “humane treatment” that allows significant suffering short of a threat to health. Second, they avoid the public’s ambivalence about the suffering of incarcerated people. Drawing on the work of Michel Foucault and Lisa Guenther, I develop an alternative line of critique: problematizing the prison. Problematization seeks to illuminate the logics that channel our thinking in order to unsettle them. I argue that in the present political moment, considering prisoners’ right to comfort can have such an unsettling effect and activate intolerance of the prison.     

To adapt or to disregard? Parties’ reactions to external shocks

How do parties react to unanticipated events such as external shocks? Do they adapt to the consequences of the external shock or do they disregard them? Using the global financial crisis as an empirical example and testing the expectations for parties’ economic policy shifts in 23 European democracies based on Chapel Hill Expert Survey data, the article demonstrates that government parties react more to an external shock than opposition parties, particularly in countries where the external shock has been more severe. This has implications for a broader literature in comparative politics by fostering the dialogue between the political economy literature on external shocks and the literature on party policy shifts by showing the significant impact exogenous events can have on party positioning.     

The Road to Hell? Third‐Party Intervention to Prevent Atrocities

Preventing large‐scale atrocities has emerged as an important policy goal of the post–Cold War period. However, a debate exists about the effects of creating an international institution to prevent atrocities. Advocates of intervention argue that a credible threat to intervene should deter perpetrators and stop atrocities when deterrence fails. Critics argue that third‐party intervention, by strengthening weak minority groups and lowering the cost of war, encourages rebellions and so makes war and atrocities more likely. We develop a model of intervention to analyze this debate. The model shows that the negative effects of intervention highlighted by critics can be mitigated if the third party is relatively neutral and if alternative costs are imposed on decision makers. We conclude that with appropriate institutional design, the net impact of stronger third‐party commitments to end atrocities will be to lower the expected level of atrocities.     

Whatever Happened to Greece?

The sovereign debt crisis in Greece and other periphery countries is a yardstick for the viability of the European project: if Greece defaults and exits the Euro‐zone, then the entire European architecture will be questioned. This article examines the origins of the Greek debt crisis and argues that the key sources of the debt are the economic and political factions that have dominated Greek politics since the fall of the Colonels in summer 1974 amidst the Cyprus calamity. These factions (political parties, comprador economic interests etc.), whose policy actions and preferences are amalgamated with the interests of Euro‐Atlantic elites, are now being severely undermined, both politically and economically, as the prosperity of the Greek middle classes is eroded following two years of harsh austerity measures imposed on the Greek ruling factions by those Euro‐Atlantic elites. Furthermore, this article outlines ways out of the Greek debt crisis, putting into test some reasonable policy proposals that are being widely discussed in Greece and abroad.     

Using housing vouchers to move to the suburbs: How do families fare?

Abstract

When families with Section 8 housing vouchers move from inner‐city communities to the suburbs, are they more likely to move to neighborhoods with higher socioeconomic status and to perceive improvements in housing and neighborhood conditions than those who make local moves or those who first move to the suburbs but then return to the central city? Both crosstabular and logistic regression analysis are applied to a telephone interview sample of 300 Section 8 voucher recipients in Oakland and Berkeley, CA.

As predicted, compared with the other two groups, suburban‐bound movers were more likely to move to neighborhoods with higher socioeconomic status and to experience better residential conditions, even when relevant background characteristics were controlled. Furthermore, few suburban‐bound movers experienced adjustment problems with neighbors or landlords, and their children quickly and smoothly adjusted to their new schools. The implications of these results for the Section 8 housing voucher program are discussed.     

Whatever Happened to Overloaded Government?

Anthony King was, among other things, an outstandingly acute public intellectual. His work on overload and policy fiasco exemplifies this. His original diagnosis in his famous paper of 1975 was deeply pessimistic in character, but subsequent adaptations by government solved many of the original problems arising from dependency relations. These adaptations amounted to the creation of a Madisonian system of regulation that insulated policy makers from democratic pressures. But these adaptations in turn created new difficulties that lie at the root of the analysis in King and Crewe's The Blunders of our Governments, published nearly four decades after King's original classic paper.     

Limits to EU technocratic regulation?

Abstract. This article has three main objectives. Firstly, it seeks to re–formulate the debate on technocracy in the European Union by drawing upon the concept of the EU regulatory state as developed by Majone (1996). Secondly, it illustrates the limits and tensions of a once politicised technocratic policy–making process by tracing the formulation of media ownership regulation. Although media ownership policy has been presented by the European Commission as a typical regulatory policy, it has followed a more politicised path than previous EU regulatory policies. This implies that media ownership policy does not follow the model of technocratic regulation presented by Majone in his characterisation of the EU regulatory state. Thirdly, the paper contributes to the debate on EU regulation by suggesting a new typology of regulatory policies in the EU. In the conclusion, it is argued that politicisation (which includes inefficiency and prolonged conflict) may be the price that the EU is forced to pay in its progress toward a more democratic polity.