Scholarly Works, Political Science
Permanent URI for this collection
Browse
Recent Submissions
- Historias for the Empire: Indigenous Translators and the Reproductions of Linguistic ConquestCaraccioli, Mauro J. (University of Michigan Press, 2026-02)
- ConclusionWigen, Einar; Caraccioli, Mauro J. (2026-02)
- Introduction: Global Politics in a Polyglot WorldCaraccioli, Mauro J.; Wigen, Einar (2026-02)
- Fossil fuel industry influence in higher education: A review and a research agendaHiltner, Sofia; Eaton, Emily; Healy, Noel; Scerri, Andrew J.; Stephens, Jennie C.; Supran, Geoffrey (Wiley, 2024-11)The evolution of fossil fuel industry tactics for obstructing climate action, from outright denial of climate change to more subtle techniques of delay, is under growing scrutiny. One key site of ongoing climate obstructionism identified by researchers, journalists, and advocates is higher education. Scholars have exhaustively documented how industry-sponsored academic research tends to bias scholarship in favor of tobacco, pharmaceutical, food, sugar, lead, and other industries, but the contemporary influence of fossil fuel interests on higher education has received relatively little academic attention. We report the first literature review of academic and civil society investigations into fossil fuel industry ties to higher education in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia. We find that universities are an established yet under-researched vehicle of climate obstruction by the fossil fuel industry, and that universities' lack of transparency about their partnerships with this industry poses a challenge to empirical research. We propose a research agenda of topical and methodological directions for future analyses of the prevalence and consequences of fossil fuel industry–university partnerships, and responses to them.
- From politics to democracy? Bernard Williams' basic legitimation demand in a radical realist lensPrinz, Janosch; Scerri, Andrew J. (Wiley, 2024-09)
- Civilian Agency and Peacebuilding from Below: Agricultural Cooperatives in Conflict-Affected ColombiaDavila Saad, Andrea (SAGE Publications, 2026)This paper examines how rural collective organization shapes patterns of violence and peacebuilding in conflict-affected Colombia. It combines municipal-level panel data (2016–2022) with qualitative analysis of testimonies from the Colombian Truth Commission (1958–2016) and a regional case of agricultural cooperatives in Sur del Tolima. The quantitative analysis identifies where collective organization is associated with variation in victimization, showing that agricultural cooperative membership is linked to lower victimization only in PDET municipalities—the territories most affected by conflict and institutional weakness—while peasant associations exhibit no robust protective relationship once structural controls are included. The qualitative analysis then examines how this conditional protection is produced in practice, identifying three mechanisms: strategic noncooperation, social cohesion and trust, and economic alternatives. Together, the findings suggest that institutionalized cooperation can function as civilian infrastructure for protection and recovery, while remaining contingent on baseline security, political recognition, and sustained support. The study contributes to peacebuilding scholarship by linking civilian agency with Latin American debates on the social and solidarity economy, showing how cooperatives translate solidarity into stability within fragile governance environments.
- Unnamed but Reassuring: Quasi-Secrecy and Public Support for Foreign PolicySuong, Clara H. (Oxford University Press, 2024-02-26)How does quasi-secrecy—the selective revelation of foreign policy secrets—affect public attitudes toward the use of force by democracies? Existing research on secrecy and on public attitudes toward war has yet to consider the role of quasi-secrecy, such as unattributable communication by unnamed bureaucrats, in affecting public opinion about military action. I argue that unattributable communication can boost public support for the use of force by rallying individuals to infer policy success. My analyses of two survey experiments on nationally representative samples show that anonymous bureaucrats’ unattributable messages can rally individuals around a government’s use of covert action, relative to attributable messages. I also find that the positive effect of unattributable communication is informational, rather than partisan. The positive effect stems from its interaction with the audience’s inferences about success, rather than the political attributes of the source or the audience. By problematizing the previously understudied topic of quasi-secrecy in conflict processes, this paper contributes to existing literature on secrecy and on public opinion about foreign policy and generates important policy implications about the democratic foreign policymaking process.
- From Laggard to Leader: Central and Eastern Europe’s (CEE) Women Presidents and Prime MinistersJalalzai, Farida; Rincker, Meg (Wiley, 2025-02-11)This article analyzes women executives (presidents and prime ministers) in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). Specific questions posed include: How successful have CEE countries been in promoting women to executive positions? What conditions facilitate women's executive presence in the region? We offer some preliminary assessments regarding implications of patterns identified. Juxtaposing patterns identified in CEE against global trends reveals encouraging developments but also persistent barriers to women's full inclusion.
- Targeting the Weak: Exploring Transnational Digital RepressionBrantly, Aaron F. (NASK National Research Institute, 2025-05-02)Much of the cyber conflict literature is heavily focused on state-on-state cyber conflict. Yet, data is available indicating that the most vulnerable are the non-state actors who comprise civil-society organisations, religious, cultural, or political minorities who seek refuge in diaspora communities. The communities and individuals who seek refuge in third-party nations with more permissive legal environments are increasingly being targeted by the regimes in their origin states via cyber means. These attacks meant to safeguard the ‘sovereignty’ or will of the attacking (home) nation, undermine the sovereignty and security of the harbouring nation, and the rights of the people residing within it. This analysis examines how cyber conflict extending across borders, but not targeting foreign governments, is an increasingly common and pernicious phenomenon. These attacks are clandestine in nature and meant to undermine domestic adversaries residing abroad. This paper examines why and how states target these populations and the implications of these attacks on host nation sovereignty. The analysis seeks to expand the cyber conflict literature by presenting data and cases on cyber conflicts targeting the weakest members of the global community, those seeking refuge from oppressive regimes.
- Feminist approaches to environmental politicsLawrence, Jennifer L.; Altamirano-Jimenez, Isabel; Daggett, Cara; MacGregor, Sherilyn; Ray, Emily; Wiebe, Sarah Marie; Battersby, Hannah; Rodekirchen, Magdalena; Urquhart, Heather (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025-03-01)
- Citizenship in the shadow of law: identifying the origins, effects, and operation of legal ambiguity in JordanFrost, Lillian; Schaaf, Steven D. (Cambridge University Press, 2024-12-01)What are the origins and effects of legal ambiguity in authoritarian regimes? Using a detailed case study of nationality rights in Jordan - which draws from interviews with 210 Jordanian political officials, judges, lawyers, activists, and citizens/residents - we develop a framework for understanding how legal ambiguity emerges, and how it matters, under authoritarianism. We first conceptualize four discrete forms in which legal ambiguity manifests: lexical ambiguity (in legal texts); substantive ambiguity (in status as law); conflictual ambiguity (between contradictory legal rules); and operational ambiguity (in enforcement processes). We then scrutinize the emergence and effects of legal ambiguity in Jordanian nationality policy by integrating historical process tracing, detailed interview evidence, and a content analysis of archival documents, laws, and court verdicts pertaining to nationality rights. Our findings contribute to scholarship on legal ambiguity, authoritarian legality, and discretionary state authority by showing that (1) crisis junctures make the emergence of legal ambiguity more likely; (2) legal ambiguity takes a variety of different forms that warrant conceptual disaggregation; and (3) different forms of legal ambiguity often have disparate effects on how authoritarian state power is organized and experienced in public life.
- Path Dependence, Institutional (Non-)Change and Politicisation: The EU-Turkey Customs Union and the Evolution of German-Turkish Trade TiesTsarouhas, Dimitris (Routledge, 2025-05)How can one account for flourishing trade relations between Turkey and Germany despite multiple political crises? Adopting a historical institutionalist approach, combined with the politicisation literature, I make a twofold argument. First, the 1995 EU-Turkey Customs Union (CU) constitutes a critical juncture with important long-term consequences for bilateral trade and the integration of Turkish industry to European and global value chains. The CU has enforced the modernisation of administrative and regulatory structures of the Turkish industrial sector, which serve as a default stabiliser in maintaining relations between Germany and Turkey through turbulent political times. Second, the politicisation of Germany-Turkey relations, due to the dense EU-Turkey regime complex and the prominent role that the ‘Turkey question’ now plays in EU politics, has prevented the modernisation of the CU. The fact that this non-change has occurred despite strong support by German and Turkish business circles demonstrates the salience of politicisation, and the subordinate role economic ties play in boosting Turkey’s EU vocation.
- Negotiating the recovery and resilience facility: the emergence of coordinative conditionalityLadi, Stella; Tsarouhas, Dimitris; Copeland, Paul (Springer Nature, 2025-02)This paper analyses the design and negotiations of the National Recovery and Resilience Plans (NRRPs) which the EU member states were required to formulate so as to access the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF). By focusing on three Eurozone members (Austria, Greece, and Slovakia) which represent distinct voices and experiences within the EU integration project, we argue that a new form of conditionality, coordinative conditionality, can be identified. While this conditionality shares many features with previous conditionality forms, it is also unique as it results from what has been described as coordinative Europeanisation, namely early coordination between the EU and member states; informal channels of communication alongside formal negotiations; and a heightened salience of ownership by national governments. We argue that although evidence of coordinative Europeanisation can be found during the design and negotiation of the NRRPs in all three countries, the intensity of conditionality’s different aspects is mediated by the credibility of a given member state’s government.
- The Dark Enlightenment and the Anthropocene: Readings from the Book of Third Nature as Political TheologyLuke, Timothy W. (Telos Press, 2021-03-19)
- Author's Response: Writing from the RuinsCaraccioli, Mauro J. (Sage, 2024-12-10)
- Learning how to count: Pedagogies of accountability in the pandemic universityCaraccioli, Mauro J. (Sage, 2024-09-28)This article examines the pedagogical politics at play in the quantification of faculty labor in contemporary U.S. academia. It focuses on the author’s experiences at a large, land-grant, R1 university, going through the Promotion and Tenure (P&T) review process and reflecting on the various kinds of responsibilities that emerged from structural and personal transformations during the COVID-19 pandemic. By developing a pedagogy of accountability against quantitative compartmentalization, the essay outlines how to posit care, empowerment, and reflexivity as central to all learning, especially for teachers and particularly in times of crisis. In this context, ‘learning how to count’ means going against faceless metrics of one-to-one correspondence with other faculty or peer institutions and instead embracing what Paulo Freire called the ‘civic courage’ to teach as a commitment to others and the self.
- Climate Change Deniers versus Climate Change Decriers: The Pragmatics of Climate Defense in the Age of DisinformationLuke, Timothy W. (University of Texas at Arlington Libraries, 2024-10-29)Thirty-five years ago, Bill McKibben published his best-selling popular depiction of climate change, The End of Nature. Nearly a decade ago, Naomi Klein's global best-seller This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate presented her detailed brief: “thought leaders” must resist and reverse the degradation of Earth's climate in the face of denials that this policy change was impossible. As popular activists, McKibben and Klein both believe “more information leads to good and great change.” This gambit presumes when presented disturbing facts on how and why rising fossil fuel use is degrading the climate, like-minded readers will wisely rise, readily organize and rationally stop such destruction. Both authors have thriving careers as “thought leaders,” but the gamble that informative writing would inspire game-changing decisive actions has backfired. In fact, the intensity of their climate decrying for millions of “action laggards” is twisted into disinformation to justify climate denying. Nature has not ended, and climate change has not changed everything. Costly climate disasters are increasing; but habits of embedded symbolic action tied to moralistic decrying suggest McKibben and Klein now play new roles as artful traders in the networks of disinformation. In today’s ESG-guided climate politics, major energy companies nod appreciatively to climate decriers, pledging future perfection at carbon reduction in contrite denialist exchange for sustaining the continued present degradation of their carbon emissions. This is a puzzle. Are answers to the puzzle to be found in Klein’s latest book, Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World, which explores to what degree everyday life now is not engaged with the natural world? Instead, denial and disinformation seem to ensnare it in “trips into the Mirror World” where sustainable degradation produces “digital doubles” of fulfilled future pledges of true sustainability in the 24x7 attention economy underpinned by the falsehoods of current concentrated carbon intensity.
- The Anthropocene and Freedom: Terrestrial time as political mystificationLuke, Timothy W. (2013-10)
- Black Representation and District Compactness in Southern Congressional DistrictsGoedert, Nicholas; Hildebrand, Robert; Pierson, Matthew; Travis, Laurel; Fravel, Jamie (2024-04-01)This paper explores the assumed trade-off between district compactness and Black representation in legislative districts in the American South. We perform analysis both on heuristically generated districts using current US demographics, and on historical congressional maps since the 1970s. Computations are performed using an iterative heuristic to find feasible solutions guided by multiple objectives. We find that while the trade-off has been strongly observed historically, it is possible to effectively address both goals simultaneously in most cases. We are able to demonstrate maps substantially superior to the present enacted maps on both dimensions in at least seven of nine states analyzed. Nevertheless, the trade-off appears more necessary in states with larger and/or more heavily rural Black populations than in more urbanized states, where the drawing of compact Blackinfluence districts is easier.
- Sustainabilization: A Critique of Green Economy(s)Luke, Timothy W. (2016-09-22)