Political Science Research Articles

From Global to Local: Service-Learning in a Comparative Politics Course

Students enrolled in introductory general education courses in Political Science are often uninterested in and unfamiliar with the subject matter and do not see its relevance to their lives. Hoping to overcome these obstacles, I implemented service-learning into my introductory Comparative Politics course. In order to do this, I partnered with local nonprofits and government agencies working on topics relevant to the course content. Students then selected one of these partners to work with throughout the semester. The goal was for them to not only see how the course subject matter might apply in their own lives but specifically how the global issues we learn about in our course apply in our local area. Students were surveyed at the beginning and end of the semester and wrote multiple reflection papers regarding their experiences. They generally reported high levels of satisfaction with the service-learning approach as well as understanding of the importance of civic and community engagement.

Voter Perceptions: A Segmentation and Positioning Analysis of the US Political Climate

Today’s political climate is turbulent and polarized. It appears that liberals and conservatives and their respective parties are continuing to grow further apart ideologically, making it increasingly difficult to work together for the good of our country. Marketing researchers use segmentation and positioning analysis to gain a better understanding of consumers’ perceptions to increase their success in the marketplace. In this paper, we demonstrate that these same multivariate methods can be used to investigate the current political climate. Across three samples, we find support for political polarization based on voters’ views of important political issues. We also find that although the political parties align well with their ideologically typical issues, the presidential candidates (Trump and Biden) do not align well with the issues or their parties. This leads to the conclusion that they may not the best candidates for their parties or the voters. Consumer centric marketers want to help consumers make better decisions so that they are more satisfied with their consumption choices. Ideally, politicians should also want to help voters make better decisions so that voters are more satisfied with their choices of who is best suited to lead our country. The primary contribution of this paper is to demonstrate the application and benefits of using two common marketing analytics methodologies in the investigation of important political issues and voter perceptions. Additionally, this paper also provides practical implications that are applicable to political scientists, political practitioners, and voters.

Conspiracy Theories as Productive Practices: Toward a Theory of Conspiratorial Style, Agency, and Politics

This article reviews anthropological explorations of conspiracy theories—in dialogue with insights from other disciplines, primarily political science, philosophy, and social psychology—to frame conspiracy theories as productive social practices. While conspiracy theories are often depicted through their epistemological shortcomings and associated with social and political margins, this article traces the nascent threads across anthropological scholarship to reach an emic understanding of those narratives and their sociopolitical reverberations and proposes approaching conspiracy theories through their style, agentive implications, and political effects. Conspiratorial style, the article argues, pertains not to the content of the narrative but to its incessant seeking of covert operations beyond readily visible forms as well as a growing flexibility regarding the narrator's belief in the narrative's veracity. The agentivizing dynamic generated through conspiracism differentiates contemporary conspiracism from its predecessors and involves an empowering current. Finally, the article focuses on how contemporary conspiracism is intricately linked to political contestations.

Institutional Logic of Fragile States: Afghanistan and South Sudan in Comparative Perspective

ABSTRACT In the violence trap framework, ruling elites use rents to control contending elites who pose a violent threat. Political development results in transitions from a fragile state, wherein rents are tentative and personalized, to a basic natural state, and then a mature natural state, through standardization of elite privileges, consolidated state control of the political-military apparatus, and the enactment of a credible contracts regime. Accordingly, the institutional logic of fragile states is rooted in the incentives that undergird elite bounded rationality, transacting under highly personalized, tentative patronage networks. The paper addresses the question of why fragile states fail to develop into basic natural states. In doing so, it applies the violence trap analytical framework to illustrate the logic of the fragile state through a most different systems (MDS) comparison of Afghanistan and South Sudan. The main finding is that the institutional logic of the fragile state in the two cases is rooted in a lack of three necessary conditions: institutional incentives for broadening elite consensus, credible patronage agreements among different elite groups, and a consolidated state with specialized political and military functions.

The Many Semantic Lives of Geopolitics: Evidence from the New York Times Archive 1900-2023

ABSTRACT Henry Kissinger’s death foregrounds a puzzle in the history of geopolitics. How did a word made infamous by Nazi Germany become so ubiquitous and popular in the English-speaking world? Was Kissinger, a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany, responsible for its rehabilitation into respectability in English? Historians, geographers and political scientists have traced how Western geopolitical thought developed in the twentieth century through transatlantic imperial rivalry and knowledge field formations. But there is no quantitative discourse analysis of the many ways in which the word is used in the English language. Responding to this absence, this paper uses both quantitative and qualitative discourse analysis to study how the word was employed in the New York Times from 1900 to 2023. Analysis of this corpus, and select examples from it, reveals the limits of three common presumptions about geopolitics: that it entered English as a synonym for Nazi foreign policy philosophy, that its use carried a stigma, and that Henry Kissinger led a revival of the word from the 1970s. Rather, the corpus record reveals a term with many semantic lives, a stigma that did not endure, and a synonym for great power competition and resource rivalry whose popularity is due to many factors besides Kissinger’s influence. Cluster of meaning around rivals and resources, books and culture, and US power define the term’s use in American geopolitical culture.

A Critical Comparison of Kautilya's 'Arthashastra' and Machiavelli's 'The Prince', Their Political Theories and Philosophies

Kautilya’s Arthashastra was translated to English in the year 1915, since then its comparison with Machiavelli started. Chanakya is credited with the creation of Arthashastra, a magnum opus on statecraft, law, military, and other matters of the state. The Arthashastra is the oldest book on political science and political ethics, and he introduced many other prominent issues to be kept in mind compared to Machiavelli. Machiavelli only concentrates on political and fiscal matters, Kautilya writes about the importance of land settlements, promotion of economic activity, rules of society, construction of infrastructure, defence, and communication. He has given a list of behavioral codes for ministers, king, and civilians. There is mention of diverse levels of administration, various departments and the roles for the officials are clearly defined. And the entire administration was based on the foundation of ‘Dharma’. Arthashastra is a comprehensive, coherent, original document while on the other hand Machiavelli was seeking a job and he sent his manuscript with job application. Consequently, he covered a very few topics and did not analyze any topic in depth. Though written and complied centuries apart and prior to Machiavelli’s Prince, The Arthashastra is much more detailed and complete text on state craft which is relevant even today. Some researchers have even gone to the extent of saying that, comparing Machiavelli’s Prince to Kautilya’s Arthashastra is like comparing a candlelight to that of sunlight.

Regime support in Singapore: from enigma to ‘new normal’

ABSTRACT Singapore is seen as an outlier or abnormal case by political scientists, defying predictions in the social science literature about the causal connection between economic development and democratization. Using data from three different waves of the Asian Barometer Survey (ABS), we found that Singapore’s regime resilience is a product of citizen support for the government’s performance in providing economic welfare, together with positive evaluations of the current regime. But our findings also indicate that the degree to which these factors influence regime resilience has changed over time. What we found suggest that Singapore’s regime resilience cannot be simply reduced to elite repression, or an electorate that has chosen to trade freedom for economic development. The consistent electoral support received by the ruling party in Singapore is the product of a more complex relationship with democracy than just a vote for authoritarianism or prioritizing economic development over democracy.

The impact of the internationalization of political science on publishing in two languages: the case of Japan, 1971–2023

The impact of the internationalization of political science on publishing in two languages: the case of Japan, 1971–2023

The Need to Reconnect Public Administration Education, Research, and Practice

How relevant is current public administration pedagogy to the discipline and to those working in public service? Public administration education prepared leaders during World War II and the New Deal and once was viewed as a critical subfield of political science. Over the years, and despite various Minnowbrook incarnations, public administration has become a self-standing but narrowly defined body of knowledge characterized as “the business of government,” without any relational emphasis on its historical, legal, and economic context. This diminished intellectual scope poses a serious challenge to its practical relevance.

The Pursuit for Cosmic Wisdom and ‘Promethean’ Leadership in the Pythagorean and Al-Fārābīan Political Philosophy

This study reflects on aspects of the Pythagorean political philosophy and compares them to those of Abu Nasr Muhammad al-Fārābī’s thought. Both share a key assumption: excellent rulers must be political scientists who seek divine guidance to ensure the prevalence of reason over passions in public life while reconciling society with the harmony and wisdom of the cosmos. By imitating God’s perfection and incorporating divine wisdom into governance, virtuous rulers promote felicity, prosperity and peace within a city. We highlight al-Fārābī’s emphasis on the role of religion in enabling citizens to internalize the wisdom of the cosmos, thereby minimising the need for coercion in the pursuit of order and social concord. In addition, the populace leverages the superior knowledge of each governor while observing their behaviour. Thus, the people have a share in the exercise of political power. This insistence on the involvement of the populace in politics aligns with the concept of ‘political Prometheism’.

Какая гендерная теория нужна российской социальной психологии

<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Objective</strong>. The article problematizes the theoretical field of gender studies and the concept of “gender”, which are currently vulnerable in the socio-political context. The aim of the article is to determine the range of theories of Russian psychologists capable of solving topical issues in the field of gender social psychology outside of a politically conflicting discourse. <br><strong>Background</strong>. According to political theory, psychological knowledge can become a guide for political practice, this area of political science is called biopolitics. The constructivist theoretical field of gender studies belongs to the field of biopolitics; in Western gender theory, the deconstruction of gender is allowed not only as a social phenomenon, but also as a change in biological sex. Moreover, the possibility of deconstructing gender and sex is currently determined by political practice, not by psychological or psychiatric indications. The use of Western gender theory and the concept of “gender” in political conflicts pushes Russian social psychology to search for a theory based on the concepts of Russian psychologists focused on the analysis of the socio-psychological reality of gender relations. <br><strong>Results</strong>. The article emphasizes the impossibility of the reverse movement of science and the choice of the gender-role approach as outdated, not responding to the needs of modernity. Three theories are called productive and adequate to modern problems: the cultural-historical theory of L.S. Vygotsky, the subject-activity approach of S.L. Rubinstein, the theory of relations by V.N. Myasishchev. The concept of gender relations by I.S. Kletsina, one of the most popular modern concepts of gender in Russian psychology. <strong>Conclusions</strong>. Gender psychology is a new branch of social psychology, which turned out to be vulnerable to political initiatives in a period of socio-political instability. The search for new theoretical constructs and the educational activity of psychologists in the biopolitical field will help gender psychology overcome the crisis period.</p>

Best Practices and the Need for Research on MA Degree Programs in Political Science

ABSTRACT Recent research suggests that master’s (MA) education in the United States could be restructured to better meet the expectations of students who seek nonacademic careers. This article considers the state of terminal MA degree programs in political science to assess whether they are preparing students to enter the workforce. We examine programs across various dimensions and supplement this analysis with survey data to gain additional information about the purpose of terminal MA degree programs. The results suggest that their reconceptualization is needed in the discipline of political science.

Review: Masagutov R.F., Ibragimov M.Kh. (eds.) Western Urals in the light of the formation of the Tatar and Bashkir Republics in 1917–1922: hopes and realities: collection of documents and materials. Kazan: Redaktsionno-izdatel’skii tsentr «Shkola», 2023, 256 p.

The publication presents an analysis of the work «Western Urals in the light of the formation of the Tatar and Bashkir republics of 1917–1922: hopes and realities: collection of documents and materials». The reviewer emphasized that the documents and materials contained in the collection reflect the goals set by its compilers. The historical materials included in the collection fairly fully characterize the processes of delimitation of the borders of the Tatar and Bashkir republics in 1917-1922, and also show the stages of the struggle of political groups of this time. The authors carried out comprehensive work to search for archival materials, organize and systematize them. The work under review is a significant contribution to the development of Tatar historiography and allows us to expand the scope of research on the history of Tatar statehood. This collection will be of interest not only to historians, political scientists, local historians, but also to lawyers involved in research into the development of Tatar statehood.

Scientific knowledge in pedagogy about learning tools

A scientific review of the problems that are relevant for researchers in the field of education in the last decade is presented. The issues of the content of education and its impact on the surrounding reality were considered by researchers from different fields of scientific knowledge: sociology, cultural studies, history, philosophy, political science, psychology. Scientific publications note that changes in education and its impact on personality occur due to various tools of the educational process, which can be identified in the generalized definition of «learning tools». The analysis of scientific literature and regulatory documents in the field of educational services in the Russian Federation allowed us to identify research areas that are of priority importance for pedagogical practice. It is significant for the authors to use a set of exercises, educational courses, design methods, situational tasks, and game technologies to form professional competencies of specialists. Most researchers note the need to justify the use of digital technologies to solve innovative pedagogical tasks. The scientific publications included in the review attempt to develop criteria for evaluating the effectiveness of teaching tools used in educational practice, their ranking and classification on various grounds, as well as the didactic potential of digital educational resources.

Cyberspace and the Responsibility to Protect Populations from Atrocity Crimes

Abstract This article has two principal aims. First, it seeks to frame this special issue examining the intersection of cyberspace, digital platforms, and atrocity prevention frameworks – including the Responsibility to Protect (r2p). It does so by defining and scoping cyberspace, highlighting the limited extant research on cyber and atrocity prevention, and providing a brief overview of each article within this special section. By bringing together distinct perspectives – international law, political science, international relations, and policy – this special section hopes to ignite a timely, rich debate on 21st century technologies and atrocity prevention. Second, after setting the scene for the issue, this article offers its own novel contribution. In countering (continued) accusations of r2p’s irrelevance into the 2020s, this article argues that the norm’s three pillars must be re-examined in light of cyberspace. This is especially vital, as perpetrators of atrocities continue to employ cyber-enabled technologies and as r2p approaches its 20th anniversary.

Evolution of the Concept of Traumatic Experience: Cultural Aspect

The purpose of the article is to conduct a cultural reflection to clarify the peculiarities of the evolution of the concept of traumatic experience, to outline the specifics of its conceptual and semantic deployment in the European socio-cultural space. The research methodology includes general scientific principles of systematisation and generalisation of the problem under study, which allowed to identify and scientifically substantiate existing theories, conceptual approaches to understanding the content of the concepts of ‘trauma’, ‘traumatic experience’, ‘trauma of modernisation’, ‘trauma of social change’. The purpose and objectives of the article led to the use of an axiological approach, which allowed identifying the interdisciplinary nature of the theories under consideration, revealing personalised scientific positions and their cultural context. The use of the analytical method allowed us to identify conceptual foundations for further scientific perspectives on the problematisation of traumatic experience, namely, to clarify the role and significance of cultural/creative practices in processing traumatic experience by studying the evolution of this concept within the framework of the formation of trauma studies as an independent field of scientific knowledge and to make an attempt to develop algorithms for their practical implementation in the discourse of applied cultural studies. The scientific novelty lies in the cultural analysis of personalised scientific positions on the evolution of the concept of ‘traumatic experience’, in view of the specifics of its conceptual and semantic deployment in the European socio-cultural space. Conclusions. The conceptual and semantic development of the concept of traumatic experience unfolds against the dynamic change in the European general socio-cultural context caused by the outbreak and course of the First World War. Already during the war and after its end, on the basis of the empirical experience gained in the treatment of numerous traumas and mental disorders, scientific understanding of their nature, the specifics of traumatic experience manifestations began, and practicing military doctors, psychiatrists and psychologists developed recommendations for its experience, overcoming, and processing/working through. The evolution of the concept of traumatic experience in the discourse of classical psychoanalysis developed in the unity of epistemological and hermeneutical theory of experience, playing a leading role in explicating trauma and traumatic experience in the sphere of interest of various social sciences and humanities, from art history and cultural studies to sociology and political science. By expanding the subject field of studying trauma and traumatic experience, Freud laid the foundation for a methodological principle that is called interdisciplinary and becomes one of the basic ones for further studying trauma and traumatic experience against the broad background of a holistic picture of human existence in society and the world of culture.

Enhancing tourism’s role in alleviating poverty: a bureaucratic approach to implementing SDG1 in China

ABSTRACT By adopting bureaucratic concepts from political science, this study seeks to identify effective strategies within the tourism industry to enhance the implementation of SDG1 in China’s governmental policies. Through a critical discourse analysis of policy documents from two county governments in Western Hunan Province and semi-structured interviews with local cadres, the study proposes a unified dual policy implementation model. This model encompasses two key dimensions: ‘hard’ institutional mobilisation and ‘soft’ relational governance. Furthermore, the study offers insights into a potential pathway for developing countries engaged in tourism-based poverty alleviation, especially those grappling with the challenges of implementation capacity traps.

Bentuk Kias Berunsur Tangan dan Aktivitas dengan Tangan pada Korpus Digital

The role of language as a communication tool is very important because it carries messages and provides information from the speaker or to the interlocutor. One of the uses of language to convey messages is by using hand activities. The research aims to analyze forms of figurative expressions involving the hand, specifically the use of figurative language and expressions that correlate with body parts, with the object being the Digital Corpus. The research approach used in this study is a qualitative approach through descriptive exposition. The methodological steps will be elaborated by the researcher through observation, analysis process, and description. Based on the analysis results, it can be concluded that, first: In the digital corpus CQPweb Lancaster University, a total of 91 figurative expressions involving the hand and hand activities were found. Second: In the process of forming figurative expressions involving the hand, only morphological processes of blending or composition in meaning formation were found. Third: The internal relation in figurative expressions involving the hand is formed by the arrangement or elements of two words that form a compound word. These compound words then indicate figurative meaning. This figurative meaning is produced from the combination of the meanings of the two combined words. Fourth: Several functions of figurative expressions involving the hand include: (1) creating poetic effects, (2) conveying implied meanings, (3) creating cultural identification, (4) creating expressive meanings, and (5) creating social and political critique.

A Matter of Respect: A Review Essay about Respect and Loathing in American Democracy: Polarization, Moralization, and the Undermining of Equality

Abstract In their new and theoretically innovative book, Respect and Loathing in American Democracy, Jeff Spinner-Halev and Elizabeth Theiss-Morse argue that the nation's politics suffers from a lack of respect among political opponents. In making their argument, they build a lot of bridges: between the normative and empirical sides of Political Science, between qualitative and quantitative research, and between contemporary scholarship and many of the seminal works from an earlier era. To address the respect deficit, they call for greater attention to civic education and—perhaps counterintuitively—less attention to politics.

LAND REFORM POLICY FORMULATION IN SOUTH AFRICA AND ZIMBABWE: IMPLICATIONS FOR SOCIO-ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT

Intense ideological and political standoffs persist over land and agrarian reform in former settler countries where land access, ownership, and utilisation wield enormous socio-economic and political implications. Focusing on South Africa (SA) and Zimbabwe, this article contributes to the ongoing debate on land reform. Drawing on qualitative secondary literature review and abstraction, this article identifies land reform policy evolution in SA and Zimbabwe and explores the implications of land reform policy on socio-economic and political development. The article shows that since colonial times, asymmetrical land access, ownership, utilisation, and widespread land expropriation by settlers have been the major source of political instability, landlessness, rural poverty, high population densities, and poor land management in SA and Zimbabwe. The article argues for the need for theoretically and conceptually mature land reform debates located within the broad framework of trajectories of transformation, not only economic but also structural.