Expertise and Bias in Political Communication Networks

Citizens minimize information costs by obtaining political guidance from others who have already assumed the costs of acquiring and processing political information. A problem occurs because ideal informants, typically characterized by the joint presence of political expertise and shared viewpoints, are frequently unavailable or rare within the groups where individuals are located. Hence, individuals must often look beyond their own group boundaries to find such informants. The problem is that obtaining information from individuals located beyond their own groups produces additional costs. Moreover, the availability of ideal informants varies across groups and settings, with the potential to produce (1) context‐dependent patterns of informant centrality, which in turn generate (2) varying levels of polarization among groups and (3) biases in favor of some groups at the expense of others. The article's analysis is based on a series of small‐group experiments, with aggregate implications addressed using a simple agent‐based model.     

An imaginary orthodoxy — a reply to Laurence Harris

The view that world religions contain inherent implications for economic and political action is examined and criticised. Some of the inherent implications attributed to Islam are reviewed. Various authors have attributed contradictory implications to Islamic doctrines. This is because they have referred to different parts and aspects of Islamic religion and society, which like all other complex religions and civilisations have manifested a great variety of forms. The historical development of Islam is divided into three stages and these are in turn related to the economic and political processes basic to all pre-capitalist empires. Patterns of economic and political activism are related to the conditions prevailing at the different stages and to the religious formations within Islam. In particular, it is argued that the failure of the bourgeoisie of Muslim cities to achieve political autonomy and dominance (in contrast to their Western European counterparts) is not a consequence of religious attitudes favouring passivity, but results from the position of these classes in relation to the State and the dominant military classes.     

Reviews

Japan's International Relations, by Takashi Inoguchi. Pinter Publishers, London, 1991. xii + 190 pp. £10.95 paperback, £39.50 hardback. ISBN 0–86187–095–6, 0–86187–076‐X.

NIPPON: New Superpower, Japan since 1945, by William Horsley and Roger Buckley. BBC Books, London, 1990. x + 278 pp., 24 pp. plates. £15. ISBN 0–563–20875–9.

Korea Briefing, 1990, edited by Chong‐Sik Lee. Westview, Boulder, CO, 1991. viii + 175 pp. £9.95 paperback. ISBN 0–8133–8010–3.

Britain and the Korean War, by Callum MacDonald. Blackwell, Oxford, 1990. viii + 112 pp. £17.50 hardback, £8.95 paperback. ISBN 0–631–16769–2, 0–631–16771–4.

The Future of South Korean‐U.S. Security Relations, edited by William J. Taylor Jr., Young Koo Cha, John Q. Blodgett, and Michael Mazarr. Westview Press, Boulder CO, 1989. £22.50. ISBN 0–8133–7889–3.

The Cambodian Crisis and U.S. Policy Dilemmas, by Robert G. Sutter. Westview Press, Boulder, CO, 1991. vi + 135 pp. £15.50, paperback. ISBN 0–8133–8047–2.

Opium and Foreign Policy: The Anglo‐American Search for Order in Asia: 1912–1954, by William O. Walker III. University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill and London, 1991. xvi + 345 pp. $43.95. ISBN 0–8078–1970.

Beautiful Imperialist: China Perceives America, 1972–1990, by David Shambaugh. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1991. 326 pp. £25, $35. ISBN 0–691–07864–5.

Building Sino‐American Relations: An Analysis for the 1990s, edited by William T. Tow. Paragon House, New York, 1991. vii + 327 pp. $18.95 paperback. ISBN 0–88702–061–5.

Molding the Medium: The Chinese Communist Party and the Liberation Daily, by Patricia Stranahan. M. E. Sharpe, Armonk NY and London, 1991. x + 189 pp. $39.95 ISBN 0–87332–662–8.

The Privatization of China: The Great Reversal, by William Hinton. New York, Monthly Review Press, 1990; Earthscan Publications, London, 1991.191 pp. £7.95 paperback. ISBN 1–85383–098–4.

Rural Reform and Peasant Income in China, by Zhu Ling. Macmillan, Houndmills and London, 1991. xiv + 204 pp. £35 hardback, £14.99 paperback. ISBN 0–333–49743–0, 0–333–49744–9.

China's Defence Modernisation and Military Leadership, by Ngok Lee. Australian National University Press, Sydney, 1989. xxi + 395 pp. ISBN 0–08–033046–0.

Taiwan: China's Last Frontier, by Simon Long. Macmillan, Houndmills and London, 1991. xix + 264 pp. £40 hardback, £14.99 paperback. ISBN 0–333–51292–8, 0–333–51293–6.

Party‐Military Relations in the PRC and Taiwan: Paradoxes of Control, by Cheng Hsiao‐shih. Westview Special Studies on China and East Asia, Boulder, CO, 1990. xiv + 178 pp. £18.50. ISBN 0–8133–7738–2.

Modern Taiwan in the 1990s, edited by Garry Klintworth. Canberra Papers on Strategy and Defence No. 75. Australian National University, Canberra, 1991. 216 pp. A$15. ISBN 07315–11689.

Shanghai, by Harriet Sergeant. Jonathan Cape, London, 1991. xi + 371 pp., 16 pp. plates, maps. £16.99. ISBN 0–224–02816–2.

An Illustrated History of Hong Kong, by Nigel Cameron. Oxford University Press, Hong Kong, 1991. 362 pp., maps, illus. £25. ISBN 0–19–584997–3.

Hong Kong 1977: dans la gueule du Dragon rouge, by Jules Nadeau with Mathieu‐Robert Sauvé and Judith Bélanger. Editions Québec/Amérique, Montreal, 1990. 306 pp., maps, illus. Can$26.95. ISBN 2–89037–513–7.

Australia in the International Economy in the Twentieth Century, by Barrie Dyster and David Meredith. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1990. xvi + 362 pp. £39.50 hardback, £15.00 paperback. ISBN 0–521–33496–9, 0–521–33689–9.

Art and Identity in Oceania, edited by F. Allan Hanson and Louise Hanson. University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu, 1990. viii + 315 pp., illus. £37. ISBN 0–8248–1304–0.

The Pacific, by Simon Winchester. Hutchinson, London, 1991. xi + 501 pp. £19.99. ISBN 0–09–173485–1.     

The anti-political economy

This paper develops Michel Callon's analysis of the technological economy in two ways. First, the paper is concerned with the way that political activity is framed through the use of a variety of technical devices. Arguing against the view that politics can be located in all forms of social and economic activity, the paper suggests that politics should be regarded as a rather specialist activity that is often directed towards 'anti-political' ends. Second, through a discussion of what the paper terms 'the fragility of metrological regimes' and the 'inventiveness of measurement', the paper argues that measurement and calculation can have the effect of disrupting the frame of politics, and creating a conduit for the cross-contamination of the economic and the political.     

Logics of interdisciplinarity

Abstract

This paper interrogates influential contemporary accounts of interdisciplinarity, in which it is portrayed as offering new ways of rendering science accountable to society and/or of forging closer relations between scientific research and innovation. The basis of the paper is an eighteen-month empirical study of three interdisciplinary fields that cross the boundaries between the natural sciences or engineering, on the one hand, and the social sciences or arts, on the other. The fields are: 1) environmental and climate change research, 2) ethnography in the IT industry and 3) art-science. In the first part of the paper, in contrast to existing accounts, we question the idea that interdisciplinarity should be understood in terms of the synthesis of two or more disciplines. We stress the forms of agonism and antagonism that often characterize relations between disciplinary and interdisciplinary research, and distinguish between three modes of interdisciplinarity. In the second part we outline three distinctive logics or rationales that guide interdisciplinary research. In addition to the logics of accountability and innovation, we identify the logic of ontology, that is, an orientation apparent in diverse interdisciplinary practices in each of our three fields towards effecting ontological transformation in the objects and relations of research. While the three logics are interdependent, they are not reducible to each other and are differently entangled in each of the fields. We point to the potential for invention in such interdisciplinary practices and, against the equation of disciplinary research with autonomy, to the possibility of forms of interdisciplinary autonomy.     

Conventional Politics for Unconventional Drilling? Lessons from Pennsylvania's Early Move into Fracking Policy Development

The emergence of hydraulic fracturing techniques is generating a dramatic expansion of the development of domestic natural gas resources in the United States and abroad. Fracking also poses a series of environmental protection challenges that cut across traditional medium and program boundaries. Formal constraints on federal government engagement thus far devolve considerable latitude to individual states for policy development. This provides an important test of whether recent scholarly emphasis on highly innovative state environmental and energy policies can be extended to this burgeoning area. Pennsylvania has moved to the epicenter of the fracking revolution, reflecting its vast Marcellus Shale resource and far‐reaching 2012 legislation. This article examines the Pennsylvania case and notes that the state's emerging policy appears designed to maximize resource extraction while downplaying environmental considerations. The case analysis generates questions as to whether this experience constitutes an influential state early mover that is likely to diffuse widely or is instead an aberration in a rapidly diversifying state policy development process.