Political Science Perspectives on Human Rights

This special issue of Human Rights Review is devoted to an exploration of the current human rights research agendas within the political science discipline. Research on human rights is truly an interdisciplinary quest in which various epistemologies can contribute to each other and form a larger dialogue concerning rights and wrongs. This special issue is devoted to an expansive understanding of the state of research on human rights in the political science discipline. One common theme throughout these contributions is the need for a more nuanced conceptualization of human rights, tools to promote these rights and as social scientists, methodologies employed to study these rights. A second theme is the policy relevance that can be derived from our empirical analysis. This volume demonstrates that the integration of theoretically and normatively rich concepts, empirical social science, and policy relevance do not have to be mutually exclusive when studying human rights.     

Anger and Declining Trust in Government in the American Electorate

Partisanship in the United States in the contemporary era is largely characterized by feelings of anger and negativity. While the behavioral consequences of this new style of partisanship have been explored at some length, less is known about how the anger that is at the root of this growing partisan antipathy affects Americans’ views of the national government. In this paper, I utilize data from the 2012 American National Election Studies to show that higher levels of anger are associated with a greater level of distrust in government across a variety of metrics. I then present evidence from a survey experiment on a national sample of registered voters to show that anger has a causal effect in reducing citizens’ trust in government. Importantly, I find that anger is able to affect an individual’s views of the national government even when it is aroused through apolitical means. I also find that merely prompting individuals to think about politics is sufficient to arouse angry emotions. In total, the results suggest that anger and politics are closely intertwined, and that anger plays a broad and powerful role in shaping how Americans view their governing institutions.     

The durability of governance reform: A two-wave audit of notice and comment policymaking in China

The notice and comment process, in which government organizations make public draft laws and regulations and solicit feedback on these proposals, is a prominent governance reform in contemporary China. This article examines the durability of notice and comment policymaking by conducting a pair of audits of the practices of dozens of central government ministries and provincial governments. There are a number of reasons to expect that it is difficult to sustain governance reforms in China. Nevertheless, the audits—which the authors carried out in 2014 and 2021—demonstrate that, subject to a number of constraints, notice and comment policymaking was routinely implemented by government organizations throughout the period under analysis. Although the notice and comment process is a durable governance reform, additional research is needed before it can be concluded that the procedure brings more than a veneer of transparency to Chinese policymaking.     

Reducing women's poverty by shifting social security benefits from retired couples to widows

This article examines proposals to transfer Social Security benefits from married couples to surviving widows in terms of effects on poverty rates, trust fund expenditures, and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) expenditures. Because widows are much more likely to be living in poverty than older married women, it makes sense to consider Social Security benefits in a lifetime framework and transfer some benefits from the time both the husband and wife are alive to the time when there is only one survivor, usually the wife. Because of expected life span and age differences of marital partners, a $1 reduction of the couple's benefit can finance a $1.45 increase in the widow's benefit. The 1990 Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) matched to the Social Security Administration's benefit records are the basis for the estimates.     

Plugging the capability-expectations gap: towards effective,comprehensive and conflict-sensitive EU crisis response?

Since the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty in 2009, the European Union (EU) has spent considerable time and energy on defining and refining its comprehensive approach to external conflicts. The knock-on effects of new and protracted crises, from the war in Ukraine to the multi-faceted armed conflicts in the Sahel and the wider Middle East, have made the improvement of external crisis-response capacities a top priority. But has the EU managed to plug the capability–expectations gap, and develop an effective, comprehensive and conflict sensitive crisis-response capability? Drawing on institutional theory and an approach developed by March and Olsen, this article analyses whether the EU has the administrative capacities needed in order to be an effective actor in this area and implement a policy in line with the established goals and objectives identified in its comprehensive approach.     

The United States,Japan and the aerospace industry: from capture to competitor? 1

Abstract

For all its success in other high-technology sectors, Japan has largely failed to develop a strong aerospace sector. Its leading firms do not market finished aircraft and, in stark contrast to other sectors, the aerospace industry features a trade deficit with the United States. Japanese firms seem trapped as suppliers of components and sub-assemblies, mainly for the US industry. The general explanation for this state of affairs is that the Japanese industry has been effectively ‘captured’ by the United States; Boeing in particular dominates the sector and has effectively locked the Japanese firms into a relationship where moving up the value chain is difficult. This relationship may be changing. Japan's government has placed renewed emphasis on developing Japan's aerospace sector, while matters are evolving at the corporate level too, with Boeing's relations with Japan revealing a steadily increasing work share for the Japanese industry. The rise of Asia as an important market, and technological change making aerospace more like other manufacturing industries, presents Japanese firms with new incentives and opportunities beyond the US relationship.     

Studying the New Communication of Politics

A research agenda set forth in the 1975 book Political Communication is well suited for study in an era when conventional mass communication gives way to less centralized channels. Features of this approach include a focus on behavior and cognitions rather than inferred attitudes, close attention to measurement of media experience, conceptualization of curvilinear processes that occur over time, comparative theorizing that can be tested across different national systems, and reconceptualization of communication as a process defined more by its functions than whether it occurs via mass media or interpersonal channels.