Archives

Gender Diversity and Environmental Performance: A Quantitative Assessment Miriam B. Ott
The goal of this paper is to quantitatively assess the empirical validity of the claim that gender diversity is an important determinant of environmental performance. My research question is: Does a causal link exist between increased participation of women in environmental politics and a country’s environmental performance? If the answer is yes, how strong is the effect? To answer this question, I will estimate five Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression models testing the validity, robustness, and causality of the hypothesized positive relationship between women’s participation in environmental politics and a country’s environmental performance.

Roots of the Headscarf Debate: Laicism and Secularism in France and Turkey Gulce Tarhan
This paper will try to answer two questions: 1. How can we explain the emergence of laicité as a unique state policy towards religion in France and Turkey? 2. Why and how laicité/laiklik, which has origins as an inclusive and cohesive principle, caused such great social polarization within these societies? To start, the paper explains the historical conditions that led to this principle. The existence of an ancient regime based on an alliance of monarchical and religious authority was the main reason for the emergence of exclusionary religious policies. Additionally, the principle of laicité/laiklik was/is strongly linked with national identity. The second part of this paper unravels the current debates over headscarves. Contrary to the claims of Republicans, this principle caused polarization within society by creating a separation between public and private spheres and by excluding ethno-religious differences from the former.

Contemporary Financialization: A Marxian Analysis Gilad Isaacs
Over the past forty years, there has been a resurgence of global financial capital. Finance, always having played an important role in the circulation of capital and reproduction of capitalism, has taken on distinctive and more expansive roles. Financial profit, and new ways of harnessing it through an array of more and more exotic financial assets, has become central to both financial and non-financial corporations. Intricately connected with this has been the financialization of the household through household and consumer debt and the related growth in asset bubbles. This system, as vividly demonstrated in the 2008 global financial crisis, has become increasingly unstable. This paper unpacks various facets of contemporary financialization using Marxian political economy to ground the phenomenon in a theoretical framework and real historical movements.

Overcoming Colonial Vestiges in Cote d’Ivoire and Ghana Kasia Broussalian
Cote d’Ivoire and Ghana are examples of nations still dealing with the aftermath of over a hundred years under colonial rule. In Cote d’Ivoire, the French created a centralized bureaucratic administration focused on suppressing an African identity and replacing it with their own. The British, in seeking a self-sufficient colony, took a more hands-off approach in Ghana, setting up an administration adaptable to local institutions already in place. These two Sub-Saharan nations started in similar colonial contexts, but the French, through their assimilation policies, failed to install a foundation of effective institutions and concrete national identity that resonated with the people and the existing government. On the other hand, the UK’s policy of self-help and indirect rule reinforced traditional institutions, hierarchies and identity, which not only made independence desirable for the people, but also facilitated its easy transition. The British system, even if unintentional, fostered nation building, a component crucial to development.

Baldwin on History Joe Beaglehole
James Baldwin’s powerful essays on life as a black citizen are not traditional fodder for political theorists. By abstracting far-reaching lessons about the role that history plays in politics from these works, I show them to be an immense resource for inquiry into social life. While Baldwin is most well known for his analysis of racial and sexual politics and identity, his work also provides an important model for thinking about politics historically; that is to say, for considering and valuing the historical legacy of political and social institutions and exploring what it means to come to terms with these legacies in the present. Baldwin helps us to recognize the dead hand of the past in the minds and language of the living, and in doing so reveals the significance of history to any theory of politics. He is one of the great theorists of the idea that “acceptance” is required to break with the past and make possible a politics of social change. Only by acknowledging history can we escape its grasp.

How Effective is Disarmament, Demobilization and Rehabilitation Research on the Cases of Burundi and Sierra Leone? Simone Peloquin
There are many organizations and program dedicated to restructuring and rehabilitating post-conflict states, yet not much is known about the effectiveness of one relatively new type of program – Disarmament, Demobilization and Rehabilitation (DDR). Through a DDR program, former rebel combatants are reintegrated into civil society. There has been some experimental evidence on the effectiveness of DDR, drawn from programs in Burundi and Sierra Leone. Both of these case studies however, show inconclusive results. Further study into the effectiveness of DDR programs is needed in order to improve the tactics used to rehabilitate societies and further protect the people within them from the economic and psychological damages of civil war.

The Great Transformation of the Poulantzasian Modern Capitalist State Under Globalization Clement Salomon
The Poulantzasian Western capitalist state has reconfigured its national, territorial structure upward towards supranational bodies such the WTO, the IMF, the World Bank or the EU, and downward towards a sub-national network of global cities. In both cases, the state has delegated to the latter its economical, political and ideological functions to reproduce the process of capital accumulation and labor production on a global scale. At the supranational level, Western modern capitalist states have mainly utilized international bodies to assert their political domination and economical exploitation of Third World states to benefit the TCC. At the sub-national level, they have favored the formation and growth of global cities within their territory to maintain their competitiveness with each other and establish key central locations from which to direct the flows of transnational capital on a global scale.

Nuclear Normalization: Rapprochement with a Nuclear Iran Kayvon Afshari
On an almost daily basis, American pundits and government officials warn of the consequences of a nuclear-armed Islamic Republic of Iran and outline what the United States must do about it. Some argue for preventive action to fend off apocalypse, as President George W. Bush famously warned of a “Middle East under the shadow of a nuclear holocaust.” Others temper this dystopia with reassurances that Iran, even with nuclear weapons, can be effectively contained and deterred from first strike. Neither scenario addresses the broader implications on US-Iran relations. In fact, Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons capability would have a stabilizing effect on US-Iran relations. The two states would move toward rapprochement because the benefits of normalization and the costs of non-normalization will become greater and more obvious to both sides.

Defining the Rogue State – A Definitional Comparative Analysis Within the Rationalist, Culturalist, and Structural Traditions Jason Rose
This paper demonstrates that norms are a weak and muddled approach that nearly all scholarly literature employs to define the behavior of rogue states. This confounds rather than clarifies rogue state membership. Instead, this paper insists that future scholarship acknowledge interests and not norms as the definitional foundation of classifying rogue states. Corroborating evidence to support this clarified definition is provided through the scrutiny of the three comparative analytical traditions.

SPRING 2010

Latin America’s Democratic Alternative: Can Populism Sustain and Consolidate Democracy? Maggie Shum

Corruption and Organized Crime: Does Governance Impede Symbiosis Alejandra Lopez Martinez

Deterrence Against a Nuclear Iran Jason Rose

Costa Rica: Costs of Foreign Direct Investment Led Development Joseph Tutt

A Disastrous Misperception of the Kenyan IDP Crisis: A Game Theoretic Analysis Adeline Lo

The Political Psychology of Alexis de Tocqueville: An Appraisal of His Account of the French Revolution Javier Calderon

Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide Molly O’Toole

SPRING 2009

Contributors

Three Paradigms of North Korea’s Nuclear Ambitions Yewon Ji

Misappropriation Of Aid: Why is Aid Not Reaching the Internally Displaced People in Northern Uganda? Lindsey Leonard

Democracy as the Conceptual Battlefield of East-West Encounters: A destruction of the ‘Incompatibility Claim’ and Islamist Discourse of Democracy Sarah Rendtorff-Smith

A Tale of Two Parties: Social Islamism in Modern Turkey and the Palestinian Territories Daniel Urbankowski

Book Reviews: The Thin Blue Line: How Humanitarianism Went to War (Conor Foley); Humanitarian Imperialism: Using Human Rights to Sell War Joel Wilson

SPRING 2008