Women ‘s experiences ‐text or relation? Looking at research practices from a sociological and feminist perspective

As a paradoxical result of the very developments within women's research, the whole notion of “women's experiences” is now being questioned. In this article it is argued that this question should be dealt with not only on the metatheoretical or theoretical level, but also on the level of actual research practices. Starting with the level of research practices, we can find theoretical and methodological arguments for regarding experience as a proper object for study and politics. Arguments which in turn challenge the approaches on the metatheoretical level and which provide the missing links between these two levels. It is in the process of articulation of an experience (verbally, in writing, by gestures, and so forth) ‐ in contrast to the lived experience ‐ that we as social scientists enter the scene. Two different methods ‐ the interview and memory work ‐ are here discussed to illustrate how different relations of productions of knowledge (positivistic and non‐positivistic) will result in different ways of articulating and understanding the experience. It is argued that the extent to which an articulated experience is both “text and relation” varies with the method being used. It is, however, further argued that it is precisely the discursive dimension in the articulation of an experience that provides a constructive tension in relation to the lived experience. A tension that makes reflection and change possible. And pursuit of change, as a feminist enterprise within the production of knowledge is finally argued as a challenge to the pursuit of truth as the enterprise within the philosophy of science.     

State Capacity,Bureaucratic Politicization,and Corruption in the Brazilian State

Responding to recent articles in Governance highlighting the need for improved measurement of bureaucratic characteristics, this article describes efforts to map Brazil's federal agencies on three dimensions—capacity, autonomy, and partisan dominance—derived from data on more than 326,000 civil servants. The article provides a “proof of concept” about the utility of agency‐level measures of these variables, demonstrating how they relate to an output common to all agencies: corruption. The article provides a first step in the direction of building a comparative research program that offers objective evaluation of bureaucracies within nation‐states, with the intent of better disentangling their impact on governance outcomes.     

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.