Political Science Research Articles

Why path dependence leads to a fossilized Alberta: regionalism and the climate transition in Canada

ABSTRACT Canada is the world’s fourth largest producer of oil and fifth largest producer of natural gas. Yet, the country faces a ‘twin’ challenge in tackling the climate crisis. On the one hand, Canada’s federal climate goals state that it must achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. On the other hand, regionalism stronghold in fossil-producing provinces lead to difficult trade-offs between an ambitious climate transition and reluctant actors supporting the fossil fuel industry. This situation is characterized as ‘fossilized’ petro-provinces by political scientist Angela Carter. This article explores how Alberta, Canada’s largest oil and natural gas producer, became fossilized. The article develops a path dependence argument organized around the role of regionalism in Alberta’s political development. Regionalism is a crucial persistent feature of Alberta to explain its fossilization because it influenced the formation of an interdependence between the government and the industry, a distinct political culture, and a conservative-led party system.

Party Competition Over Democracy: Democracy as Electoral Issue in Germany

Elected leaders increasingly undermine liberal democratic institutions with the support of their voters, openly challenging liberal democratic institutions in election campaigns. However, political scientists thus far have lacked the theoretical and empirical tools to study the role of elections in democratic backsliding. This article theorizes the degree to which democracy in general and liberal democracy more specifically can and should be conceptualized as valence and positional issues in multiparty electoral competitions of established liberal democracies. By investigating how German citizens and parties of the postwar period spoke about democracy per se and liberal democracy in their regional and national election manifestos, this article shows that democracy per se and liberal democracy, in particular, have been issues of different qualities in German postwar elections. While parties have used references to democracy in general as a mixed issue, showing both signs of valence and positional issues, parties’ emphasis on liberal democracy is shaped by a positional logic. Social and direct democracy have also been positional issues. Studying democracy and its various conceptions as electoral issues will help us address many important questions concerning the stability of democracies, shifting researchers’ focus to the competition of parties over citizens’ support for reforms that undermine or stabilize liberal democracy.

Evidential pluralism in the social sciences: What can be established in case study research?

This article responds to Yafeng Shan and Jon Williamson’s 2022 volume Evidential Pluralism in the Social Sciences, focusing on the applicability of Evidential Pluralism in the field of case study research through the use of examples from political science. The article argues that Shan and Williamson’s guidance on (a) what evidence one needs to establish causation in singular case studies and (b) what one may conclude at the population level once one has done so is lacking in some important respects. Therefore, this article will speak to the wider community of social scientists and methodologists who are sympathetic to using a plurality of evidence in case study research, but who still want guidance of how to do so in a philosophically grounded manner.

Linking Entrepreneurial Orientation, Learning Orientation, Organization Structure and the Growth of Government

The growth of government (GoG) has garnered significant attention among scholars and practitioners across disciplines such as economics, political science, and public management. Despite the optimism surrounding this concept, its future trajectory in the twenty-first century remains uncertain. Extant literature explaining the rationales for organizational growth in the public sector is inconclusive which pertains mostly to the absence of an appropriate methodological approach. Therefore, this research underscores the need for a comprehensive framework to examine the determinants of the growth. Particularly, the burgeoning literature on new public management (NPM) as well as behavioural public administration provides huge potentials to examine the role of the interplay of organizational structure and learning orientation in exacting the impact of entrepreneurial orientation on the growth of government on GoG. The conceptual framework was guided by the hermeneutic approach that focuses on interpreting texts or phenomena by understanding the contextual elements to uncover deeper meaning and insights. It does so by drawing upon different streams of literature including entrepreneurial orientation, learning orientation, organizational structure, and the growth of government. In order to operationalize the framework, a succinct set of propositions is proposed. The proposed conceptual framework along with suggested research propositions will potentially guide future research to further extend the growth of government literature.

The Nexus between Electoral Management System and Post-Election Violence in Kenya Since 1963

The study investigates the relationship between Kenya's electoral management system and post-election violence, which has persisted despite numerous reforms since the country's independence in 1963. The primary aim was to identify structural issues within the electoral administration that contribute to violence following elections. The research analyzed key components of the electoral management system and the causes of post-election violence. Utilizing consociationalism theory, voting theory, and rational choice theory, the study employed a historical design with both qualitative and quantitative methods. The research was conducted from July to December 2022. The target population included eligible voters (260), politicians (50), IEBC officials (40), political analysts (60), humanitarian-aid organizations representatives (10), local election observers (5), international election observers (5), security personnel (10), and county administrative staff (10). A stratified random sampling method was employed to collect data using both questionnaires and interviews. The targeted population established the strata of 641,396, and a random sample was taken from each stratum, arriving at a sample size of 450 respondents. The findings revealed that Kenya's electoral system is primarily based on the First Past the Post (FPTP) model, which is a plurality/majority system. The study identified several key factors contributing to post-election violence, including the "winner-takes-all" nature of elections, disputes over election results due to perceived bias in the electoral management body, and voter incitement by politicians. A statistically significant correlation was established between the electoral management system and post-election violence (β=.685, t = 16.225, Sig. =.000). The findings indicated that the self-interest and impunity of political leaders, along with ethnic divisions and mistrust, hinder the IEBC's ability to conduct fair and credible elections. A significant association was also found between the causes and consequences of post-election violence (β=.757, t = 19.088, Sig. =.000). The study recommends exploring alternative electoral systems, such as proportional representation and mixed-member models, to promote inclusivity and fair representation. By establishing a connection between the electoral management system and post-election violence, this research contributes to peace and conflict studies, addressing a relatively understudied area in Kenya and the broader region.

Air Pollution and Urban Economic Growth: A Study Based on Dynamic Models

<p class="Paragraph"><span lang="EN-US">With China's economic growth, the issue of air pollution has become increasingly prominent. As the core of political and economic development, 184 major cities in China face severe air pollution and significant environmental pressures due to high population density. Consequently, China has established key urban environmental monitoring stations in these cities to monitor pollution emissions in real time. This paper utilizes panel data from 184 Chinese cities spanning 2012-2022 and employs dynamic GMM models, fixed effects models, and mediation effect models to empirically examine the impact of air pollution on urban environmental pollution and its mediation mechanisms. From the perspective of cities with different income levels, a dynamic GMM model is established to determine the correlation between air pollution and various factors influencing urban economic growth. The study finds that air pollution significantly reduces economic growth in Chinese cities at the 1 per cent level, with each unit increase in air pollution reducing economic growth in Chinese cities by 0.84 units. Urbanization and human capital are identified as two crucial channels through which air pollution affects the economic development of Chinese cities. The negative impact of air pollution on economic growth is more pronounced in larger cities compared to smaller ones, and the adverse effects of haze pollution become increasingly significant over time. Therefore, policymakers should take the cultivation and application of new quality productivity as a key strategy to enhance the quality of economic development, and realise a win-win situation between economic growth and environmental protection through scientific and technological innovation and industrial restructuring. This will not only help alleviate the air pollution problem, but also inject new momentum into the high-quality development of China’s economy.</span></p>

Political Participation Among Scheduled Castes: A Study on West Godavari District, Andhra Pradesh

Political Participation Among Scheduled Castes: A Study on West Godavari District, Andhra Pradesh “One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors”. ―Plato “Plato had no perception of the uniqueness of every individual, of his incommensurability with others, of each individual as forming a class of his own. He had no recognition of the infinite diversity of active tendencies, and the combination of tendencies of which an individual is capable.” ― Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, Annihilation of Caste KONDAPALLI SRINIVASU, M.A. Research Scholar Department of Political Science and Public Administration Andhra University, Visakhapatnam PETETI PREMANANDAM M.A., B.L., B.Lisc., PGDSM., Ph.D. Professor and Head of the Department Department of Political Science and Public Administration Andhra University, Visakhapatnam ABSTRACT India's democracy is the largest among countries in the world. The National Election Commission Report of India listed 900 million eligible voters, 468 million male and 432 million female. These Indian voters were spread over 29 states. A notable element of the 2019, 17th Lok Sabha Election was the participation of 15 million first-time voters aged 18–19. Only 14.39 percent of the 2019 Parliament was female, with 78 MPs. In comparison, 85.61 percent of the group was male (464). General Elections 2019, the National Election Planner, reports 3,66,61,315 Andhra Pradesh voters. According to NEP data, AP has 18,123,437 men, 18,474,714 women, and 3,745 others as voters. The Electoral Roll 2019 contains 56,908 services and 2,511 abroad Indian electors. Female voters grew by 3,51,277, or 1.93 percent. Andhra Pradesh has 539,804 18–19-year-old voters. Political engagement and understanding are essential to any political system. These tools make voters efficient and link them to politics. The International Encyclopaedia of Social Sciences defines political involvement as the main way a democracy grants or revokes consent and holds power accountable to the people. It includes voting, acquiring information, discussing and persuading, attending meetings, donating, and communicating with representatives. Democracy and political participation are linked. Participation lets citizens express their interests. It fosters national stability and organization. It maximizes benefits for most people. Scholars define political participation differently depending on how they understand the different sorts of political activity. Growth generally requires involvement. The UNDP's "Human Development Report 1993" lists four interconnected forms of involvement: family, economic, socio-cultural, and political.

Political and legal analysis of the mechanisms of providing Ukraine with resources of strategic importance in the context of increasing the national defence potential

This study addresses the critical issue of enhancing Ukraine’s defence capabilities through the efficient management of strategic resources amidst ongoing Russian aggression. The research aims to develop substantiated recommendations for optimizing the legal and political mechanisms that govern the provision of strategic resources to Ukraine. The study employs a formal legal method to analyze key national and international legal frameworks, including the Law of Ukraine “On the National Material Reserve” and the Code of Ukraine “On Subsoil,” focusing on their efficacy in wartime conditions. Also, political analysis, comparative analysis, legislative review and document analysis were used. The research highlights the gaps in existing legislation, particularly in adapting to the needs of martial law and the complexities of interagency coordination. The findings reveal that while Ukraine has established an extensive legal framework for managing strategic resources, significant issues persist in areas such as transparency, interagency cooperation, and bureaucratization. The study advocates for legislative amendments to better suit wartime needs, the implementation of a unified monitoring system, and enhanced international cooperation, particularly with bodies like the UN and World Bank. The conclusions emphasize the importance of Ukraine’s participation in international transparency initiatives and the need to align national legislation with EU standards. Overall, the thesis of this work is the development of substantiated recommendations for optimizing Ukraine’s strategic resource management in the context of war, while the research niche focuses on the analysis of political and legal mechanisms that influence the state’s defence capabilities.

Evolution of public administration and its implication to management and business education

The paper offers a thorough analysis of the historical development of public administration, aiming to gain deeper insights into the current challenges facing the discipline. Utilizing an evolutionary theoretical lens, the study sheds light on the transitional development of Public Administration (PA). Additionally, it discusses the New Public Administration (NPA) and its implications for the integrity of the public administration discipline. Through a comprehensive review of literature, the paper establishes that despite the logical progressions of public administration presented in literature, there is evidence of a recurring identity crisis within the discipline, with significant implications for business education. Furthermore, the paper proposes an ideal concept of a lesson on Public Administration based on current literature, while examining the notion of the dichotomy between political science and public administration. It also argues that the theoretical framework underpinning the development of public administration is likely to evolve due to the dynamic societal consciousness that shapes this discipline. Ultimately, the paper suggests a theoretical framework that may gain traction in management and business education by combining the founding principles of public administration with the contemporary emerging needs of a transitional industrial order.

Thematic mapping of biosecurity highlights divergent conceptual foundations in human, animal, plant and ecosystem health

Effective biosecurity policies are essential to address several major sociological and environmental challenges facing humankind including existential pandemic risks, threats to food security, loss of ecosystem services and public resistance to pesticides and vaccines. Yet biosecurity is subject to multiple interpretations that include dealing with the threats from bioterrorism, managing laboratory biosafety to prevent the escape of pathogenic organisms, handling food and agricultural production systems to prevent disease introduction and addressing the threat of introduced organisms to flora, fauna and humans. The absence of a shared vision of what biosecurity encompasses means that decision-makers are often challenged to design appropriate biosecurity policies at national and global scales. The design of effective policy strategies requires an understanding of the methodological and conceptual barriers that constrain attempts to build an interdisciplinary approach to biosecurity. Here, the first thematic map of the biosecurity research landscape is undertaken to assess just how diverse the interpretation of biosecurity is amongst the global research community and the extent to which the articles published since 2000 represent a common conceptual foundation or are largely clustered within sectors. Co-citation, bibliographic coupling and co-word analyses highlighted that the field of biosecurity encompasses a wide range of domains from biochemistry through to political science, but the research supporting different sectors largely draws from a distinct literature base. While ecosystem and plant health were clustered together within the broad grouping of biological invasions, there was a clear separation from both human and animal health. Yet, there is considerable scope for the management of biological invasions to benefit from insights derived from social perspectives in human and animal health. Biosecurity remains divided by conceptual differences and specialised vocabularies that limit the effectiveness of biosecurity policies addressing biodiversity conservation, public health and food security. To overcome these constraints requires the building of a global biosecurity community that accepts a broader definition of biosecurity, avoids sectorial jargon and establishes mechanisms to cultivate interdisciplinarity through specialised collaborative centres, cross-sectorial research programmes and conceptually rich training programmes.

Self-government, Social Change, and Conflict in Oxchuc, Chiapas: The Long Road of Internal War in an Indigenous Mexican Municipality

During the 2015 post-electoral conflict in the municipality of Oxchuc, Chiapas, came the demand for the election of municipal authorities through its own internal regulatory system. After going through several phases, proponents of change in electoral proceedings obtained legal recognition for Indigenous self-government. This achievement led to an interlude in the long history of political conflict and social change in the municipality. In this article we examine the contemporary history, processes, and recent political developments in the municipality of Oxchuc, which led to institutional recognition of this municipality’s self-government.

The politics of journal content: Breadth, depth, flexibility and reflexivity in 25 years of BJPIR

This article reflects on the past, present and future of the BJPIR through a content analysis of all 999 articles that have been published in the journal between its launch in April 1999 and the latest issue in May 2024. By charting ‘core’, ‘secondary’ and ‘peripheral’ pools of scholarship, this reveals a politics of journal content which, in turn, can be used to raise critical questions concerning shifting intellectual boundaries and a changing socio-political context. More specifically, the results of the content analysis focus attention on the twin-themes of flexibility and reflexivity in journal publishing. The central argument emerging from this analysis is that if the BJPIR is to continue along its highly successful trajectory, then it may well need to embrace greater flexibility in terms of reaching beyond political science and international relations, while engaging with greater reflexivity as to societal linkage and relevance.

Electoral rules and the two-party system: A methodological inquiry with reference to Duverger’s law

The law of Duverger posits that the single-member plurality electoral system favours the two-party system. The empirical tests of Duvergerian effects often rely on the effective number of parties as the most common measure of party system fragmentation. This study, proceeding from the notion that more focused measures of two-partyness could be of greater utility for this purpose, examines the build-up of two already existing, albeit underused, indices that are intended to operationalize the concept of the two-party system and introduces a new family of party-system indices for the purpose of cross-validation. The quantitative analysis performed on simulated and real-life datasets shows that the measures of two-partyness can improve the methods of inquiry in research on Duvergerian effects, and that some of the indices introduced in this study can serve as useful supplements to the toolkit of political science.

Value model of political communications of the Russian elite in conflictual and deviant polysubject environment

The article, based on the results of a comprehensive political analysis, substantiates that in the modern socio-political reality, the formation of a multipolar world, the problem of the effectiveness of political communications are closely related to the potential of political and administrative power elites. The communicative qualities of a modern politician are enhanced by value-civilizational and moral parameters, the ability of strategic vision and the ability to maintain civilizational and value discourse in the political and economic system and direct it towards sustainable advanced development of society. This, in turn, involves the analysis and development of parameters for diagnosing the quality of modern Russian political and administrative elites, their moral and professional adequacy and aptitude; so is the actualization and solution of the problem of deviations at the elite level of political power. In order to form a value model of political communications of the Russian elite, it is necessary to comprehensively consider management systems based on specific values (including management of public values), identify and position public values as determinants of socio-political development, develop mechanisms to counteract the value degradation and marginalization of national elites, take into account the propensity of the Russian government to identify internal and external enemies in the previous stages of development, and also to the uncritical borrowing of the models of democracy alien to the Russian cultural and civilizational code, and the image imitation of elite qualities.

Sentiment Analysis of Political Parties on social media: A Machine Learning and Lexicon-Based Approach

Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube have become central to communication and entertainment, with users sharing opinions on various topics. These opinions, often categorized as positive, negative, or neutral sentiments, provide valuable data for sentiment analysis. Our research analyzed political YouTube comments related to India’s Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) and Indian National Congress (INC) using a combination of the AFINN lexicon and machine learning techniques. We applied feature representation methods such as Bag of Words (BoW) and Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency (TF-IDF), alongside five machine learning algorithms: Multinomial Naïve Bayes, Logistic Regression, Random Forest, Support Vector Machine (SVM), and K-nearest neighbor (K-NN). We aimed to determine the most efficient sentiment analysis approach by comparing the performance of these models using standard evaluation metrics. For the BJP dataset, Logistic Regression performed best with BoW, while SVM was most effective with TF-IDF. Similarly, for the INC dataset, Random Forest excelled with BoW, and SVM outperformed others with TF-IDF. The AFINN lexicon showed poor performance across both datasets, and K-NN consistently achieved lower accuracy. Our findings suggest that SVM and Random Forest are more suitable for political sentiment analysis.

Event communication of university museums and scientific organizations (based on the experience of the “Night of Museums – 2024” in St. Petersburg)

The article is devoted to the consideration of event communication using the example of participation in the all-Russian event “Night of Museums” by museums of universities and scientific organizations of St. Petersburg in 2024. A sociological survey of St. Petersburg residents showed sufficient awareness of the “Night of Museums” event: every second person knows both about the event and about its holding in 2024 in the Northern capital. However, those wishing to take part in it in 2024 did not exceed 20%, especially to visit museums of universities and scientific institutions (2%). Analyzing the category ‘event communication’ at the intersection of methodological approaches of political science and discourse science, the author considers it promising to study the mutual influence of three discursive constructs: museum discourse – discourse of state memory policy – discourse of national identity, considered in relation to modern political realities of Russia in the context of the implementation of the national security strategy.

The pathways of political elites in the modern information and communication reality

The article is devoted to the socio-political understanding of the functioning of the political and administrative elite in the modern information and communication space. The relevance of the research topic is based on the need to redefine, in current political and social reality, the concepts of political elite and administrative elite, as well as to identify its distinctive features. The authors lead theoretical foundations for defining the concepts of political elite and administrative elite from the point of view of linguistics and political science, analyse the approaches and models of western and domestic researchers on the problem of relations between the political and administrative elites, and put forward the thesis about the relative independence of the administrative elite as a category of political science analysis and the validity of studying public administration outside the framework of the concept of the dichotomy of political and administrative elites. The final part of provides the authors’ assessment of the role and the pathways of Western political elites in the context of modern geopolitical reality.

Macau, Bali and the Malay World: A Gastronomic Perspective

Macau’s location on the South China Sea suggests that any syncretic activity would have been of Sinitic-Portuguese variety. However, the situation is rather more nuanced, as the culture of the Macanese people, who consider themselves the ‘sons of the land’, reflects Portuguese colonial activity across the Indian Ocean and especially Malacca. Links between Macau and the ‘Malay World’ are deep and complex, and this paper approaches this issue through historical and political analysis, but also through the specifics of etymology and cuisine. The paper also draws comparisons with other ‘creolised’ cuisines in Southeast Asia such as Peranakan food in Malaysia and Western-Indonesian hybrids that have arisen in the tourism context of Bali. Given the importance played by women in preparing dishes for Portuguese men in Macau, parallels are drawn with the role of enslaved Hindu-Balinese women in colonial Batavia (Jakarta) who prepared pork dishes for their Dutch masters.

Political communication from the standpoint of ideational turn: cognitive representation of the idea of Shanghai Cooperation Organization (in English)

The article examines the specifics of political cognition as a structural element of political communication. The main task of the study is to identify, in the conditions of an ideational turn, the characteristics of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization political and media axis, modeled in scientific and media publications and conditioned by different logic and political cognitions of the authors. The mediatization of modern political discourse makes it possible to consider ideology as a potential opportunity that creates grounds for organizing the institutional present through the symbolism recontextualization of the institutional past. The Argentine sociologist, anthropologist and semiotic, Professor of Communication Sciences at the University of San Andres, Elisio Verona’s position is recognized as a priority in understanding ideology. Critical linguistics is considered to be the most productive in terms of representing and describing the multiplicity of interaction between participants in political communication, balancing communication of political cognitions. In the conceptual modeling process, elements of political analysis are used, based on the appeal to ideas as causal variables. The research is carried out taking into account the importance of causal-constitutive logics, while causal logic is recognized as the priority logic of communication, with an orientation towards the idea as a focal point. The authors consider the idea of cooperation, which models the SCO’s institutional functions, through cognitive presentations in scientific and media sources, and ground its interpretation on the terminological and conceptual apparatus of Russian constructivism.

Would teaching gender as core, not boutique, move us closer to the SDG gender equality goal?

ABSTRACT The Sustainable Development Goals, through Goal 5 on Gender Equality, put gender as a focus at the heart of every endeavour. Yet with 2030 looming, across the globe, we have made insufficient progress towards gender equality. Despite a plethora of mentions of the aim to achieve gender equality in regional and international documents, progress is slow (see https://www.unwomen.org/en/digital-library/publications/2022/09/progress-on-the-sustainable-development-goals-the-gender-snapshot-2022 and https://pacificdata.org/dashboard/sdg-5-gender-equality). What can be done? If transformative change is required, then a range of options needs to be explored. Could expanding exposure as to who studies gender be just one tool for building a pipeline of actors who take a gender lens when engaging with key issues, and speeding up progress towards the gender equality goal of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG Goal 5)? How should we rethink the teaching of gender and development? My proposition is that gender should be mainstreamed in every course through a revised curriculum as a practical lever for change and to hasten progress towards Goal 5. The hope is that this paper can encourage conversation both in gender and development circles and the scholarship of teaching and learning, and prompt new lines of research and action towards rethinking the teaching of gender and development, which can then strengthen the knowledge base in the pipeline of political decision-makers and development actors. This paper is a call to action for the repositioning of gender at the heart of all studies – not as an elective or “boutique”, but as core to every subject.