Innovation and Alliances

Explanations for national success in science and technology typically focus on domestic institutions and policies. However, that line of research has yet to identify any particular set of institutions or policies that explain variation in national innovation rates across cases or over time. This article offers new evidence that the problem with domestic institutions approaches stems from their failure to consider international security factors. Specifically, this article finds a positive effect for U.S. security alliances on innovation. This finding is robust across different specifications and periods of analysis. While countries that ally militarily with the United States are found to realize benefits in economy‐wide, indigenous innovation, such an effect is not observed in military technologies. This suggests that alliances may substitute for being on the frontier in military technologies. Therefore, this article contributes not just to debates over S&T competitiveness, but also to alliance formation.     

EU Simulations and Engagement: Motivating Greater Interest in European Union Politics

While the effects of simulation-based courses on the knowledge of participating students may be marginal in relation to standard lecture and discussion-based courses, this article argues that the greatest leverage is gained by increasing participating students’ level of interest in the subject of study and in politics more broadly. Participants tend to become increasingly absorbed in their roles and in the politics of the institutions at the center of the simulation. To better consider this possibility, we conducted a survey of students participating in the 2015 Mid-Atlantic European Union Simulation and of appropriate control populations. The survey results indeed suggest that, much more than simply acquiring knowledge about the EU, the simulation experience serves to generate more robust interest in the subject of study.     

How Does Violence Threaten the State? Four Narratives on Piracy

Violence characterized by similar actions, actor motivations, group structures, or level of damage still poses qualitatively distinct genera of threats to states. For instance, “terrorism” can threaten a particular state, be used by a state, or threaten the entire state system. Building on the threat construction literature, this study argues that threat is best understood through narratives on the relationship between violence and the boundary-producing practices that construct the state. Four ideal-typical basic narratives on this relationship are produced—entrant, resource, revisionist, and criminal. Each narrative is then demonstrated by looking at how it was used in a historical case of piracy. The action (piracy as raiding at sea) is held constant while the threat in each varies with the narrative. Understanding how threat is narratively constructed can help us to understand particular historical episodes of violence and state responses to them.     

NATO: The United States, Transformation and the War in Afghanistan

During the Bush years, NATO exhibited in stark form two trends which have long characterised its development: periodic exposure to crisis and division, and a subordination to American leadership. Despite signs of American indifference towards the alliance, talk of the Bush administration levering a break with NATO was always overstated, particularly so during its second term of office. Views of NATO after 2004 were shaped by Afghanistan giving rise, in fact, to a return to the alliance on America's part. NATO remains important to Bush's successor but on terms which are as demanding as those of his predecessors. NATO, in other words, is valued in so far as it accords with current US foreign policy priorities. The safest assumption in this regard is that Obama will continue to favour the trend towards a global NATO pursued by the Bush administration. However, retreat (or defeat) in Afghanistan could hasten a contrary trend towards a consolidating NATO with a renewed concentration on the wider Europe.     

Gas Supply and EU–Russia Relations

Drawing on New Institutional Economics (NIE) theory, the article argues that EU energy policy towards Russia damages security of supply because it neglects the specific aims and propensities of Russia and Gazprom. EU Commission initiatives are based on the promotion of interdependence through market opening, favouring a policy of competition over security of supply. The reason for this focus is found in the EU's embedded inclination towards liberal markets. Russia, by contrast, has chosen suboptimal state control of natural resources over the frontier capitalism of the 1990s. Sustainability of the current rent based system and geopolitical considerations are essential to Russia and Gazprom. In this situation a pragmatic approach that aims at security of supply and security of demand seems to be more successful. In this approach, liberalisation of the market can only be a long-term goal.     

Inclusive Masculinity Theory: overview,reflection and refinement

In 2010, this journal published an early exposition of inclusive masculinity theory. Since then, the theory has been widely adopted within both the sport and masculinities literature. Furthermore, a large number of other scholars not using the theory have also documented and labelled new masculinity types. There has also been refinement of Inclusive Masculinity Theory, alongside theoretical critiques. In this article, we provide an overview of the genesis of the theory and its refinement, before considering and responding to published and unpublished critiques of the theory. We then suggest future directions for research.     

Small farms,smaller plots: land size,fragmentation, and productivity in Ethiopia

African agriculture is often dominated by smallholder farms composed of multiple plots. In policy circles it is often assumed that fragmentation coupled with small farm size is an impediment to increasing yields and thus decreasing poverty and food insecurity. There also exists an influential literature that explores the inverse relationship between farm size and yield. While there are many studies internationally, few have been conducted in Africa. Using an Ethiopian national survey, we explore the relationship between yield, farm size and fragmentation. We find an inverse relationship between farm size and yield, and a positive association between yield and land fragmentation.     

Living in the Past or Living in the Future? Analyzing Parties’ Platform Change In Between Elections,The Netherlands 1997–2014

Do parties change their platform in anticipation of electoral losses? Or do parties respond to experienced losses at the previous election? These questions relate to two mechanisms to align public opinion with party platforms: (1) rational anticipation, and (2) electoral performance. While extant work empirically tested, and found support for, the latter mechanism, the effect of rational anticipation has not been put to an empirical test yet. We contribute to the literature on party platform change by theorizing and assessing how party performance motivates parties to change their platform in-between elections. We built a new and unique dataset of >20,000 press releases issued by 15 Dutch national political parties that were in parliament between 1997 and 2014. Utilizing automated text analysis (topic modeling) to measure parties’ platform change, we show that electoral defeat motivates party platform change in-between elections. In line with existing findings, we demonstrate that parties are backward-looking.     

Credibility Enacted: Understanding the Meaning of Credible Political Leadership in the Dutch Parliamentary Election Campaign of 2010

In times of perception politics, the credibility of electoral candidates is a crucial asset in political marketing. This raises the question to which political leaders citizens attribute credibility and how political credibility is gained and lost through media performance. We analyze and compare two contrasting cases during the Dutch parliamentary election campaign of 2010. Whereas in this campaign Mark Rutte—leader of the liberal party VVD—gained credibility, the credibility of Job Cohen—at the time, leader of the social-democratic PvdA—waned substantially. To understand this we extend the source credibility approach with a dramaturgical approach, and as such we shed light on what happens in the dynamic, interactive process between leaders and audiences in which credibility is constructed.