Faculty Books
Catastrophic Success
Alexander Downes, Associate Professor of Political Science and International Affairs, compiles all instances of regime change around the world over the past two centuries. In relying upon an impressive data set, Downes shows that regime change increases the likelihood of civil war and violent leader removal. Furthermore, regime changes fail to reduce the probability of confict between intervening states and their targets. Downes urges regime change to be reserved for exceptional cases and interveners must realize that these changes instifate a new period of uncertainty and conflict that impedes their interests from being realized.
Promoting Justice Across Borders: The Ethics of Reform Intervention
Lucia Rafanelli, assistant professor of political science and international affairs, interrogates the nuanced ethics of intervention to ascertain when attempts to promote justice in foreign societies are morally permissable. In Promoting Justice Across Borders, Rafanelli develops ethical standards for justice-promoting interventions that serve as a model on how to engage in political struggles for justice on a global scale, from conditions of supreme emergency, to ordinary circumstances of everyday global politics. In this way, Professor Rafanelli shows how promoting justice everywhere is a legitimate political concern for all.
Globalizing Patient Capital
In his new book, Stephen Kaplan, explores how China’s state-led capitalism affects national level governance. China, as the world’s largest saver, has more than doubled its overseas banking presence since the 2008 global financial crisis. Compared to the West’s private-sector capital, China’s overseas financing is a distinct form of patient capital that marshals the country’s vast domestic financial resources to create commercial opportunities internationally. Its long-term horizon, high risk tolerance, and lack of policy conditionality have allowed developing economies to sidestep the fiscal austerity tendencies of Western markets and multilaterals. Employing a multi-method research strategy that includes statistical tests and extensive field research from across China and Latin America, this book finds that China’s patient capital endows national governments more room to maneuver in formulating their domestic economic policies. At the same time, however, China’s state-led financing features considerable commercial conditionality, which risks intensifying developing nation’s ongoing struggles with debt and dependency.
News Hole
In his new book, Danny Hayes, examines current trend within local journalism. As struggling newspapers have slashed staff, they have dramatically cut their coverage of mayors, city halls, school boards, county commissions, and virtually every aspect of local government. In turn, fewer Americans now know who their local elected officials are, and turnout in local elections has plummeted. Hayes suggests, in order to reverse this trend and preserve democratic accountability in our communities, the local news industry must be reinvigorated – and soon.
Shock to the System: Coups, Elections, and War on the Road to Democratization
In his new book, Michael K. Miller answers the question, how do democracies emerge? Shock to the System presents a novel theory of democratization that focuses on how events like coups, wars, and elections disrupt autocratic regimes and trigger democratic change. Through in-depth examinations of 139 democratic transitions, Miller shows how democratization frequently follows both domestic shocks (coups, civil wars, and assassinations) and international shocks (defeat in war and withdrawal of an autocratic hegemon) due to autocratic insecurity and openings for opposition actors. Disputing commonly held ideas about violent events and their effects on democracy, Shock to the System offers new perspectives on how regimes are transformed.
After Nationalism: Being American in an Age of Division
Samuel Goldman, professor of political science, examines the upward trend of nationalism in the Western World by highlighting the contemporary challenges to any national level social cohesion. Goldman notes how most of today's nationalists fail to understand the potentially troubling consequeneces of a renewed nationalism. In order to ensure the general welfare in America, the future of unity lies in embracing differences as a fundamental component of American society and political projects grounded in local communities.
The Party and the People: Chinese Politics in the 21st Century
Bruce Dickson, professor of political science and international affairs, explores how the Chinese Communist party has maintained control over the country through both repressive tactics and surprisign responsiveness to the public. Furthermore, Dickson illuminates this dual approach is essential to the party's practices by utilizing repression for poltical and existential threats, and responding favorably when managing social unrest. The text also provides insight into what the relationship between the Chinese State and its citizens could look like in the future.
Rights Claiming in South Korea
Celeste Arrington, professor of political science and international relations, edited this text which looks at the challenging process of obtaining rights protections in South Korea. Furthermore, this volume seeks to illuminate how certain groups have defined and articulated grievances and mobilized to remedy them.
Where Great Powers Meet: America and China in Southeast Asia
David Shambaugh, Gaston Sigur Professor of Asian Studies, Political Science, and International Affairs, examines the competition between China and the United States, while also making predictions about their future relationship. Shambaugh effectively pushes back against the narrative that China will be the "inevitable" dominant power with the United States's "inexorable" decline.
Humanitarianism and Human Rights: A World of Differences?
Michael Barnett, professor of political science and international affairs, edited this book that examines the ever evolving relationship between human rights and humanitarianism. Though often seen as separate until the twentieth century, leadomg scholars look at the different meainings of human rights and humanitarism fromm a diverse range of disciplinary perspectives.
How Insurgency Begins: Rebel Group Formation in Uganda and Beyond
Janet Lewis, Assistant Professor of Political Science, examines how and why rebel groups initially form through investigating the ways in which rumors circulating in places where rebel groups form can influence civilians' perceptions of both rebels and the state. Lewis reveals hows how ethnic networks facilitate the spread of pro-rebel rumors.
Curbing the Court: Why the Public Constrains Judicial Independence
Brandon Bartels, professor of political science, and Christopher Johnston present a new theory of how citizens perceive the Supreme Court. The public seeks to limit the Court's powers when it is politically expedient, particularly during times of heightened political division. Bartels investigates the ways in which judicial institutions are vulnerable to the influences of politics.
The Gender and Security Agenda: Strategies for the 21st Century
Michael E. Brown, professor of political science, looks at gender dynamics in relation to international and national security challenges. In examining security issues such as terrorism, armed conflict, environment, human rights, and more, Brown looks at their impact on gender issues.
Politics for Profit: Business, Elections, and Policymaking in Russia
David Szakonyi, professor of political science, examines Putin-era Russia to illuminate the reasons why businesspeople enter the political sphere and the consequences of these actions for their firms and society at large. Szakonyi provides evidence that businessperson candidacy is a response to both weak political parties and economic competition. These candidates help their firms gain in profitability, at times to the detriment of human capital.
China and the World
David Shambaugh, professor of political science and international affairs, edited this comprehensive volume exploring China's contemporary roles in international affairs and foreign relations. In examining the impact of China's past and present, both domestically and internationally, the contributors also offer challenges that China may endure in the future.
Planning to Fail: The U.S. Wars in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan
James Lebovic, professor of political science and international affairs, examines the United States’ failed efforts to intervene in wars around the globe since World War II. Lebovic traces the pattern of doomed interventions through Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan.
Of Privacy and Power: The Transatlantic Fight over Freedom and Security
Henry Farrell, professor of political science and international affairs, investigates how the United States and the European Union have navigated their differing approaches to freedom and security in the face of issues like global terrorism and growing data networks. Abraham Newman co-authors.
Developments in Russian Politics 9
Henry E. Hale, professor of political science and international affairs, contributes to this collection of essays from international experts discussing contemporary politics in the world’s largest state. Hale also co-edited the volume.
Electoral Rules and Democracy in Latin America
Cynthia McClintock, professor of political science and international affairs, provides a rigorous assessment of the implications of runoff rules in presidential elections throughout many Latin America nations. She compares them to plurality rules and demonstrates that, in contrast to early scholarly skepticism about runoffs, they have been positive for democracy in the region.
God's Country: Christian Zionism in America
Samuel Goldman, assistant professor of political science, combines original research with insights from the work of historians of American religion to craft a provocative narrative that chronicles Americans' attachment to the State of Israel. He looks at the controversial special relationship between the two nations through the story of Christian Zionism in American political and religious thought from the Puritans to 9/11.
America's Middlemen: Power at the Edge of Empire
Eric Grynaviski, associate professor of political science and international affairs, examines how and why the U.S. government has formed alliances with militias, tribes and rebels. Sometimes, these alliances have been successful. But they have also risked creating larger wars in regions where the United States has no real interest. By developing broader views about political agency—how people come to make a difference in world politics—he brings into focus new histories of world politics.
Money for Votes: The Causes and Consequences of Electoral Clientelism in Africa
Eric Kramon, assistant professor of political science and international affairs, looks at examples of politicians distributing money to voters during campaigns in low-income democracies and develops an alternative theory of electoral clientelism beyond “vote buying.” Instead, he emphasizes the role of monetary handouts in conveying information to voters, helping politicians enhance the credibility of their promises to deliver development resources and particularistic benefits to their constituents.
Women on the Run: Gender, Media, and Political Campaigns in a Polarized Era
Danny Hayes, associate professor of political science, co-authored this book which offers a unified argument for understanding the role that gender plays in contemporary congressional elections. The book argues that the declining novelty of women in politics, coupled with the polarization of the Republican and Democratic parties, has left little space for the sex of a candidate to influence modern campaigns.
The New Arab Wars: Uprisings and Anarchy in the Middle East
Marc Lynch, professor of political science and international affairs, illuminates how the hope-filled Arab uprisings morphed into a dystopia of resurgent dictators, failed states and civil wars. He details the costs of the poor choices made by regional actors, delivers a scathing analysis of Western misreadings of the conflict and condemns international interference that has stoked the violence.
The Star and the Stripes: A History of the Foreign Policies of American Jews
Michael N. Barnett, professor of international affairs and political science, examines how American Jews envision their role in the world. As Jews, he argues, they are committed to their people's survival. As Americans, they identify with, and believe their survival depends on, the American principles of liberalism, religious freedom and pluralism.
Accidental Activists: Victim Movements and Government Accountability in Japan and South Korea
Celeste L. Arrington, Korea Foundation Assistant Professor of Political Science and International Affairs, examines the politics of redress to understand why victims of government wrongdoing are not equally effective at obtaining redress. She compares the Japanese and South Korean movements of victims of harsh leprosy control policies, blood products tainted by hepatitis C and North Korean abductions.
China's Future
David Shambaugh, professor of political science and international affairs, examines whether China will implement a new wave of transformational reforms that could make it the world's leading superpower, or whether its leaders will shy away from drastic changes. He argues China’s future path depends on key decisions yet to be made by its leaders, pressures from within Chinese society and actions by other nations.
Urban Neighborhoods in a New Era: Revitalization Politics in the Postindustrial City
Robert P. Stoker, professor of political science, co-edited this collection of studies by distinguished political scientists and urban planning scholars offering a rich analysis of shifts in North American cities, showing how politicians and philanthropic organizations now see economic growth and neighborhood improvement as complementary goals.
Making Law and Courts Research Relevant
In his esteemed book, Brandon Bartels, associate professor of political science, argues that research can be more directly relevant to broader audiences outside of academia.
Constructive Illusions
Eric Grynaviski, assistant professor of political science and international affairs, argues that when nations mistakenly believe they share a mutual understanding, international cooperation is more likely and more productive than if they had a genuine understanding of each other's position. Grynaviski shows how such constructive misunderstandings allowed for cooperation between the U.S. and the Soviet Union between 1972 and 1979.
Orgies of Feeling: Melodrama and the Politics of Freedom
Elisabeth Anker, assistant professor of American studies and political science, argues that American politics is often influenced by melodrama narratives from cinema and literature. This book focuses on the role of melodrama in the news media and presidential speeches after 9/11.
The Politics of Nation-Building: Making Co-Nationals, Refugees, and Minorities
Professor of Political Science and International Affairs Harris Mylonas explores the factors that drive states to assimilate, accommodate, or exclude groups within its territory in his leading work on the influence of international politics on nation-building. This book explains how the politics of ethnicity at the international level determine how different ethnic groups fare in the politics of their home states.
Globalization and Austerity Politics in Latin America
Professor of Political Science and International Affairs Stephen Kaplan explores whether markets and democracy are compatible with a focus on the developing nations in Latin America. By combining statistical tests and extensive field research, Kaplan examines the effect of financial globalization on economic policymaking, and challenges the conventional wisdom that political business cycles are prevalent in newly democratizing regions.
The Arab Uprising
Deeply informed by inside access to the Obama administration’s decision-making process and first-hand interviews with protestors, politicians, diplomats, and journalists, Professor of Political Science and International Affairs Marc Lynch highlights the new fault lines forming between forces of revolution and counter-revolution, and how it can affect American policy. The result is an indispensable guide to the changing lay of the land in the Middle East and North Africa.
When Victory Is Not an Option: Islamist Movements in Arab Politics
Throughout the Arab community, Islamic political movements are becoming a part of the electoral process, evoking both enthusiastic and alarmed reactions from observers. Professor of Political Science and International Affairs Nathan J. Brown analyzes the Islamic political movements in Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, and Palestine, examining their evolving structure and ideological values and how their growing involvement in the electoral process might impact the Islamic political system.
