ISA Presidential Selection: A Discussion of Alternatives

During fall 2000, all ISA members will be asked to vote on a set of changes to the association's constitution. Most of the proposed changes are required to bring ISA's constitution up to date with current practices and association circumstances (for example, instead of having only the Editor of ISQ as a member of the Governing Council, one of the proposed changes adds the Editors of ISR and ISP to the council). In the course of examining and reflecting on possible changes to the constitution, the ISA Governing Council discovered that there was controversy among its membership regarding how officers are elected. As a result of this discussion, the Governing Council voted to put a referendum before the membership concerning the election issue and the other requested constitutional changes (though only the officer election issue is discussed in the following pages). To ensure that all members of the association are aware of what the election issues are, we have asked members representing the various positions to discuss their views in the pages of ISP . In addition, Craig Murphy, 2000–2001 ISA President, has written an introduction to the election debate that is printed below. ISA members will be asked to choose between these options in a mail ballot this fall.     

Bridging the two Sides of a 30-Year Controversy over Gender Differences in Perpetration of Physical Partner Violence

In the longstanding controversy over gender differences in perpetration of physical intimate partner violence (PV), one side argues for gender asymmetry (i.e., mainly men perpetrate PV) and the other side argues for gender symmetry (i.e., women perpetrate PV in similar proportions to men). This article proposes an empirical bridge between the two sides of the controversy, through a typology that inherently recognizes both the symmetrical and asymmetrical aspects of PV. This empirical bridge may facilitate a broader and deeper view of the problem.     

The Why and What of Intimate Conflict: Effect of the Partners’ Divergent Perceptions on Verbal Aggression

The aim of this study is to explore the effect on expressions of verbal aggression of intimate partners’ divergent perceptions of what the conflict is about (its subject) and why fight over it (its motive), together with the effect of the period of cohabitation. The study focused on the couple as the unit of analysis. A structured self-report questionnaire was administered to a stratified probability sample drawn from the general population in Israel, including 452 couples (904 men and women). Findings show that there is an association between the couples’ divergent perceptions of the conflict motive and of its subject, and that these disagreements amplify the partners’ aggression toward each other. However, the perception of conflict motive has a stronger effect on the expressions of aggression than that of conflict subject, while duration of cohabitation has a moderating effect on the divergent perceptions of conflict subject and on aggression between the partners. The discussion embraces both the theoretical and practical implications of the findings, as well as the limitations of the study.     

Proportional representation: An empirical evaluation of single-stage,non-ranked voting procedures

Rapoport, Felsenthal and Maoz (1988) have proposed three alternative methods to discern the fair proportion of seats that a party in a representative assembly ought to receive as a function of voters' preference orderings. All three methods assume that the ratio between the number of voters preferring party i over j to the number of voters preferring party j over i can be tested for consistency, and, if sufficiently consistent, can be appropriately scaled to discover the proportion of seats each party ought to receive. Using these methods as standards, we use exit-poll data gathered during the 1985 elections to the general convention of the Israeli General Federation of Labor (Histadrut) to examine the extent to which plurality- and approval-voting procedures provide a fair allocation of seats. The findings indicate that: (a) all three methods yield sufficiently consistent matrices of preference ratios; (b) the plurality- and the approval-voting procedures yielded significantly different proportional representations; (c) the proposed proportion of seats according to the three aggregation methods fall midway between the proportion of seats that the plurality and the approval procedures allocate. We discuss practical implications of these findings. Requests for reprints should be sent to: Professor Amnon Rapoport, Department of Psychology, University of North Carolina, Davie Hall 013A, Chapel Hill, NC 27514.     

The Effects of Strategic and Economic Interdependence on International Conflict Across Levels of Analysis

This study develops a Social Network Analytic approach to conceptualize and measure interdependence across levels of analysis. This framework contains several innovations. First, it integrates "sensitivity interdependence"—the effects of changes in one state on other states—with "vulnerability interdependence"—the opportunity costs of breaking a relationship. Second, it measures interdependence at different levels of analysis and across multiple relationships. Third, it integrates multiple dimensions of interdependence into a single measure. I derive hypotheses from the realist and liberal paradigms regarding the effects of strategic and economic interdependence on monadic, dyadic, and systemic conflict. These hypotheses are tested via data on alliances, military capability, and trade. The findings provide robust support to the expectations of the liberal paradigm regarding the effects of strategic and economic interdependence on conflict. On the other hand, the expectations of the realist paradigm are not supported. I discuss the theoretical and empirical implications of this approach.     

Diagnosing and Explaining the Global Financial Crisis: Central Banks, Epistemic Authority, and Sense Making

This article explores a key facet of the ideational dynamic underlying the politics of the global financial crisis, examining the interpretative and communicative practices through which the two most powerful central banks in the world—the Fed and the ECB—made sense of the events. Drawing on a constructivist neoinstitutional perspective, the study traces and analyzes the diagnoses and causal accounts of the global financial crisis formulated and voiced by these two actors, mapping and examining their evolution from the beginning of the events in the American subprime market in mid-2007 through the peak of the crisis in global financial markets in mid-2009. The analysis assesses the extent to which the two central banks diagnosed and explained the crisis in ways that challenged dominant notions and conceptual assumptions regarding the economic field, particularly the financial realm, or rather in ways that served to ratify them. While in the first stages of the crisis the diagnoses and causal accounts tended to ratify dominant notions and understandings of the financial field, they later evolved as involving a partial, but still significant, reassessment of established truths. These coherent and detailed sense-making plots touched upon some of the most basic attributes of global financial capitalism, carrying with them the potential for helping to open up the political space for a reevaluation of some of its ideational underpinnings.     

Reviews

Tsuyoshi Hasegawa & Alex Pravda, eds, Perestroika: Soviet Domestic and Foreign Policies. London: Sage Publications, 1991, xxi+276 pp., £27.50 h/b, £11.95 p/b.

Ronald J. Hill & Jan Ake Dellenbrant, eds, Gorbachev and Perestroika: Towards a New Socialism? Aldershot: Edward Elgar, 1989, 234 pp., £32.50

Uri Ra'anan & Igor Lukes, eds, Gorbachev's USSR: A System in Crisis, London: Macmillan, 1990, xxi+154 pp., £35.00.

Martin McCauley, ed., Gorbachev and Perestroika. London: Macmillan, 1990, xii+222 pp. £35.00 h/b, £14.99 p/b.

Pawel Dembinski, The Logic of the Planned Economy: The Seeds of Collapse. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991, xii+249 pp., £30.00.

Mildred Turnbull, Soviet Environmental Policy and Practice. Aldershot: Dartmouth Publishing Company, 1991, xiv+215 pp., £35.00

Chandran Kukathas, David W. Lovell & William Maley, eds, The Transition from Socialism: State and Civil Society in the USSR. Melbourne: Longman Cheshire, 1991, vii+227 pp., $24.99.

Vladimir Tismaneanu, In Search of Civil Society: Independent Peace Movements in the Soviet Bloc. London: Routledge, 1990, x+191 pp., £30.00.

John Feffer, Beyond Detente. New Options on East‐ West Relations. London: I. B. Tauris & Co., 1990, xviii+238 pp., £14.95

Robert Hall, Soviet Military Art in a Time of Change: Command and Control of the Future Battlefield. London: Brassey's (UK), 1991, xix+203 pp., £22.50, $40.50 h/b.

Alfred D. Low, Soviet Jewry and Soviet Policy. New York: Columbia University Press, 1990, 249 pp., $37.50