Study Of Political Institutions Research Articles

Bringing men and masculinities into political science

Most politicians are men, yet there is a surprising lack of focus within political science on the causes and consequences of male dominance. This article outlines how political science could benefit from greater engagement with scholarship on men and masculinities. The concept of ‘political masculinities’ has focused on the importance of ‘the political’ to masculinities scholarship; we argue for extending this concept to analyse men and masculinities within political science. We identify insights from scholarship on masculinities that would deepen our understanding of power within formal political arenas. We consider how gender and politics scholarship could benefit from expanding its focus on men. We highlight feminist institutionalism as a tool for bringing masculinities into the study of political institutions. We then offer a framework for taking this research agenda forwards, showing how we can better understand male dominance by thinking about how men access, exercise, maintain and reproduce power.

Models of institutional approach in the study of political institutions

Models of institutional approach in the study of political institutions

Sleeping giant: A research agenda for politics and chronobiology.

Sleep research presents an important frontier of discovery for political science. While sleep has largely been neglected by political scientists, human psychology is inextricably linked with sleep and so political cognition must be as well. Existing work shows that sleep is linked to political participation and ideology, and that contentious politics can disrupt sleep. I propose three directions for future research-on participatory democracy, on ideology, and on how context shapes sleep-politics links. I also note that sleep research intersects with the study of political institutions, of war and conflict, of elite decision-making, and of normative theory. In short, political scientists across subfields can and should consider whether and how sleep influences political life in their area of expertise and how to influence relevant policies. This new research agenda will enrich our theories of politics and enable us to identify pressing areas for policy interventions to revitalize our democracy.

An Eclectic Political Scientist: A Tribute to Robert Elgie

AbstractRobert Elgie's contribution to comparative politics is considerable. His work covers a range of subfields, including the study of political institutions, French politics, political leadership, presidentialism and semi-presidentialism. He became the leading scholar of semi-presidentialism and indeed defined much of the research agenda in this subfield.

POWER TECHNOLOGIES OF THE ORGANIZATIONAL MODEL OF FRENCH REGIONAL POLICY

The purpose of writing this article is to highlight the features of organization of the regional policy in France on the basis of the theoretical understanding of the concepts of regional policy, model of regional policy and policy analogy. The research topic is the content of the French policy of organizing a regional political space. The object of the research is the power technologies of regional policy. The systemstructural method, which considers political relations as an integral system of interconnections of phenomena and events of the political process, makes it possible to determine the main essential content of this research topic. Institutional approach involves the study of political institutions and their content. An analysis of Russian and foreign sources suggests that the main issue posed in the article is relevant at the present stage of development. The study is made possible on the basis of existing research. A comprehensive study of the conceptual theoretical characteristics of the regional policy as such allowed the author to identify the model and features of the political toolkit for the organization of thecenterregions relations in modern French Republic.

Parliament and Foreign Policy-Making Process

Objective: The study discusses the role of the parliament in foreign policy-making. The role of the parliament has increased over time in light of the complexities and intertwined interests among countries and the emergence of globalization phenomenon, which has dehumanized the nature and reality of international relations, the need to deepen cooperation among the parliamentarians of countries has increased and expanding it to various fields, and hence emerged the role of parliament in foreign policy-making, so that Public Diplomacy is a substitute for government diplomacy.Method: The study is based on the institutional approach, which is one of the oldest methods used in political analysis. It stems from the study of political institutions in terms of composition and competencies. The institutional approach in its origins is due to the traditional constitutional school in the study of political systems, which was confusing the concept of state and the political system, and the latter is seen as the system of government as defined by constitutional law, i.e. the set of rules and laws governing public authorities and defining their terms of reference and functions.Results: The study concluded that parliamentary diplomacy has become a substitute for the official diplomacy and contributes side by side to the exclusion of war crises and finding the pursuit peaceful diplomatic solutions. The Public Diplomacy is a tributary of support for official diplomacy if coordinated together and the value of Public Diplomacy increases as the goals and orientations of the country's foreign policy express the values and aspirations of the people truthfully.Conclusion: The study concluded that parliaments - especially in democratic systems - play an important role in the process of foreign policy-making, and that there are external and internal factors affecting the effectiveness of the role of parliament in foreign policy. The Kuwaiti parliamentary experience reflected this development of parliamentary diplomacy and its role in foreign policy-making.

El poder político en España

The study of political institutions in general, and particularly in Spain, has devoted limited attention to the analysis of political elites, although there is a growing interest in recent times. However, the decisions that emanate from representative institutions are conditioned by the profiles, preferences and dispositions of the individuals in positions of authority. That is why a systematic analysis of the Spanish political elites is necessary, especially in times of widespread political disaffection. Based on data collected in an original study, this paper analyzes the fundamental characteristics of political representatives in the autonomous and national chambers in Spain, their political preferences, the ideas they have about the problem of political disaffection, the origins of their political vocation and the way in which parliamentary activity takes place within parliaments.

Behavioral rationality as a foundation for public policy studies

Cognitive processing applies to a single human being, yet most key social processes are organized in collectives, and connecting them is not a simple task. I review the basic ways in which social and behavioral scientists have tried to link the individual with the system, illustrating the progress that has been made in this endeavor. We are closer than we ever have been to producing a behavioral model that integrates cognitive science yet does not produce a confusing overabundance of findings that have systems level implications. I conclude that we may well be at a tuning point in which the fully rational model of human choice, currently used as the microfoundation for economics and the study of political institutions, is replaced by a more robust behavioral model of choice that relies on developments in the cognitive sciences.

The Federalist papers and institutional power in American political development

1. The Federalist Theory of Institutional Power 2. The Separated Institutions Sharing Power: Powers, Organization, and Constituency in The Federalist 3. Stability, Change, and Power in the Study of Political Institutions 4. Powers, Organization, and Constituency in Early American Political Development 5. The Second Republic: The Era of Presidential Power and the Personal Branches 6. Conclusion

Problems in the Study of Political Institutions and Financial Crises: Time Period Dependence and Measurement Errors

Much of our understanding about possible links between systemic financial crises and political institutions -- such as democracy, electoral accountability, and checks and balances -- is based on empirical work with data that does not include the recent 2007/09 financial crisis. This is an important problem as countries affected by the recent crisis have systematically different political institutions from those that experienced crises over at least the previous 30 years. Results about political institutions may be severely biased if they are based on only data from the 1970s-mid 2000s period. They will tend to underestimate the probability that countries with highly accountable politicians will experience crises and overestimate the effectiveness of their crisis responses. Research into financial crises is also plagued by another more general measurement error problem. Crisis outcomes are opaque and can often take many years to fully materialize. This can produce highly biased variables in the near to medium term. But this problem is often not acknowledged by researchers. We show what effects these data problems can have by updating Keefer's (2007) research on the relationship between elections and financial crises. Based on these results, we argue that previous findings about the effect of political accountability on crises using pre-2007/09 crisis data likely overestimates their positive impact. We strongly urge researchers to carefully consider the possible affect time period dependence and measurement errors may have on previous research findings and the conclusions they draw from their data.

Field Experimental Work on Political Institutions

A nascent but growing research area examines political institutions through the use of field experiments. I consider why field experimentation has been used infrequently in the study of political institutions and note that some research questions are not amenable to field experimentation. I review areas of research inquiry where field experimentation has enhanced scholarly knowledge about political institutions and representation. These areas include the study of race, representation, and bias in legislatures and courts; and policy responsiveness and legislative accountability. I synthesize this research by examining puzzles that emerge between the field experimental and observational work. I conclude with suggestions for promising research avenues, including the use of field experiments to study the bureaucracy. The discipline's understanding of political institutions could be improved with a greater emphasis on field experimental work.

Comparative Study of Political Institutions in Developed and Developing Countries Based on institutional Economy

From institutional view, development can't occurs in vacuum. Economic maturation and growth in the markets need institutional framework which facilitates the transactions in a regular order. Actors know that made decisions and contracts are supported and executed by the law. Savors, investors, consumers, employers, workers, and risk takers need a framework of rational laws which support their decisions. They need confidence about economic stability which is provided by strong leaders and decision-makers. On the contrary, the lack of ownership rights, laws, and political stability will lead to economic anarchy. This study aims to examine different indicators of political institutions related to economic development, reflecting the differences of developed countries with other regions. It also attempts to investigate whether effective political institutions can provide the grounds for economic development as the good indicators of governance or not. This study uses the data of worldwide governance indicators. The indicators include voice and accountability, political stability and absence of violence, government effectiveness, regulatory quality, rule of law, control of corruption from 1996-2011 in 215 countries of the world. The results show the better status of economically developed countries regarding good governance indicators. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2013.v4n2p97

Executive Control and Legislative Success

The higher legislative success of parliamentary governments relative to presidential governments has been used to argue that legislative success is driven by parliamentary governments' superior agenda power or their control of legislative majorities. We show that this approach is at odds with some of the empirical regularities across and within political systems. We then propose a legislative bargaining model to elucidate this puzzle. In the model the policies of a confidence-dependent parliamentary government enjoy less uncertain support from governing coalition members, because their short-term policy goals are less important than the government's survival. This support is stronger when the government has more agenda power and is weaker with a larger ruling coalition. We explore the empirical implications of these findings and their consequences for the comparative study of political institutions.

Mapping Trends in the Study of Political Institutions

The Oxford Handbook of Political Institutions. Edited by Rod Rhodes, Sarah Binder, Bert Rockman. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. 816 pp., $150.00 (ISBN: 0-19-927569-4). Ever since James March and Johan Olsen (1984) heralded the return of institutionalism, institutional schools and institutional studies of varying stripes and colors have blanketed the social sciences. The “New” Institutionalism gave rise to the “next revolution in political science” (Goodin and Klingemann 1996:25)—a movement that many political scientists have joined. The attraction of institutionalism is anything but self-evident. Discourses on institutions and institutional theories tend to be maddeningly vague, and, as Mick Moran (p. 146) observes in The Oxford Handbook of Political Institutions , they often bog down in what amount to theological debates about the meaning of institutions. They also tend to leave readers with a feeling that something profoundly important is happening and an urgent wish to understand what that something is. Anybody who has read even a few scholarly books or articles on institutions, institutionalization, or institutionalism should thus be interested in a handbook on the study of political institutions. In this context, The Oxford Handbook of Political Institutions , edited by Rod Rhodes, Sarah Binder, and Bert Rockman, promises to bring some much needed clarity. Rhodes, Binder, and Rockman have assembled a star-studded cast of contributors who generally deliver crisply written and reasonably accessible essays that outline the dominant schools of institutional thinking. The chapters discuss a wide array of political institutions—ranging from local government to international security organizations, from constitutions to bicameralism. The handbook ends with a small set of delightful essays written by stalwarts Samuel Beer, Jean Blondel, and Hugh Heclo. The Oxford Handbook of Political Institutions provides an authoritative sweep of the field, charting the state of affairs and the field's historical roots. It identifies dominant research questions and presents key findings. All this, of course, is exactly what one would expect of a book published as part of Robert Goodin's handbook …

Westminster Lilliputs? Parliaments in Former Small British Colonies

ABSTRACTTaking a point of departure in rationalistic versus cultural and historical approaches to the study of political institutions, the article investigates to what extent former small British colonies did introduce at independence a Westminster-styled metropolitan conception of the legislature. The findings are that both approaches claim validity, although the diffusion perspective has the better of the rationality perspective. Only a small handful of the 24 colonies represent a perfect fit with the Westminster model, and only one colony represents a total rejection of the model. Concerning the transfer of individual devices, the plurality electoral method and the principle of cabinet dominance are well represented in the colonies; on the other hand, bicameralism and the principle of parliament sovereignty are less appreciated.

Political Freedom, Political Instability, and Policy Uncertainty: A Study of Political Institutions and Private Investment in Developing Countries

This paper examines whether democracy and other major characteristics of political institutions have any significant consequences for private investment. I isolate three political determinants that may affect property rights and private investment: political freedom, political instability, and policy uncertainty. The major findings in this paper can be characterized as follows: Political freedom promotes private investment, particularly through the channel of improving human capital formation. Political instability, as measured by the variability of political freedom, has a negative effect on private investment. Finally, policy uncertainty, as measured by the variability of government capacity, adversely affects private investment. These findings have been tested rigorously through using variables controlling for both domestic and international conditions.

Political Development, Revisited

This article reviews four decades of scholarship on political development. It contends that the theoretical ambitions of the early political development literature to frame the comparative inquiry of politics and political change in less developed countries were undermined by intellectual challenges to the paradigms of modernization and structural functionalism and that the literature’s teleological dimension was contradicted by real-world events. Nonetheless, in subsequent decades, the field made great advances in the study of political institutions, democratic stability and breakdown, state structures, civil society, and the uneven character of political development itself. The article argues that amid manifold evidence of plural forms of political development and decay at the century’s end, the field should avoid relapses into neomodernization theory and instead focus on such issues as state reform, democratic governance, political representation and accountability, and the organization of civil societies. Such an expansive and fluid research agenda will enable the field of political development to generate important theoretical advances in comparative politics.

Ethnicity and Institutional Reform: The Dynamics of “Indigenization” in the Moldovan ASSR*

Since the early 1980s, the study of political institutions has made a remarkable come-back within political science. After a long period of concentrating on the “outputs” of the political process, many political scientists have begun to give greater attention to the formal and informal structures that circumscribe political behavior: governmental departments, ministries, standard operating procedures, social norms, duties, obligations. Especially in its more inductive, interpretive forms, contemporary institutional analysis has focused less on political outcomes and more on the political process itself—the “how” questions of politics rather than the “why” questions addressed both by highly quantitative methods and by deductive, rational choice approaches. One legacy of the behavioral revolution has been a propensity for researchers to see the elucidation of why some groups win out over others in the political process as the chief end of political science. But by examining the strategic boundaries within which action takes place, modern institutional analysis—labelled the “new institutionalism” as early as 1984—seeks to remind political scientists that, quite simply, institutions matter.

The Catholic Study of Political Institutions

The Catholic Study of Political Institutions

Government and Change in Lesotho, 1800–1966: a study of political institutions by L. B. B. J. Machobane Basingstoke and London, Macmillan, 1990. Pp. xix+374. £14.99 paperback.

Government and Change in Lesotho, 1800–1966: a study of political institutions by L. B. B. J. Machobane Basingstoke and London, Macmillan, 1990. Pp. xix+374. £14.99 paperback.