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This paper considers what role regional organizations can and should play in implementing the R2P principle. Addressing a set of basic issues concerning regional organizations' formal responsibility and actual ability to take on protection tasks, the paper aims to contribute to the further operationalization of R2P. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contemporary discourse on security has been dominated by general and sometimes even ideological considerations in which attention is paid to consequences of deepening and broadening of meaning of the term security. Critical approaches, assessment of the sense of human security or extension of the sense of security to provision of public goods are dominating the discourse on security. Only in some cases a question is being asked: What security is about?Usually security is dealt with such concepts as threat, danger, risk, vulnerability, resilience, etc. In the present discussions we can even observe replacement of the term threat with the concept of risk (“risk society”). As to make the discussion on security more relevant to the needs of policy making, it is necessary to identify attributes of security in a systemic sense. It has been already accomplished by this author in the research project of AFES-PRESS. Other members of AFES-PRESS and associated authors also have conducted research on the role of prediction in security theory, or on the role of time and space in theoretical considerations on security. Results of research have been published in a book edited by an international team of scholars under auspices of AFES-PRESS (Hexagon Series published by Springer Verlag). In the book this author has proposed a core concept of security including basic components of any discourse on security â€" threat, risk, securitization, referent object, disturbance, vulnerability, etc.Prediction and anticipation can be regarded as most important factors in any application of the utterance of security. Therefore it is necessary to study how attributes (characteristics) of the concepts used in every discourse on security can be identified and interpreted. In the contemporary considerations such terms as risk, threat, vulnerability, resilience and similar ones are more frequently applied in studies on broadened and deepened ideas of security. It is obviously not possible the define those terms unequivocally but at the same time it is not acceptable that in too many instances they are used as freely interpreted notions, almost “buzzwords”. It is thus necessary to elaborate more detailed and precise definitions of those terms along with identification of the links between their interpretations and applications in policy making.The aim of this paper is to provide a deepened interpretation of such terms as threat, risk, vulnerability, resilience and similar ones in relation to security-oriented considerations. Majority of dominant interpretations of security (widened and broadened) will be taken into account. The role of prediction and anticipation in identification of threats and vulnerabilities will be the main topic of analysis. The basic epistemological assumptions of research on the role of prediction and anticipation in analysis of risk and similar concepts will stem both from mathematical modeling, including the so-called complexity approach (complex systems approach) as well as from hermeneutical considerations. Results of the study presented in the paper will allow for better understanding of the sense of risk, threat, vulnerability and associated notions in security discourse as well as for better understanding of relations between them. I addition to theoretical significance, such a clarification will facilitate policy oriented activities and communication both for policy purposes and for social communication. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In what way can international organizations influence the development of domestic ethnic protest movements? Since the beginning of the 1990s there has been a growing movement of Romani activists who have sought to redress the problems that face the largely impoverished and marginalized Romani populations in Central Europe. They have found support from a large number of internationally active non-governmental organizations. Gradually, the situation of the Roma also attracted the attention of international governmental organizations, in particular the Council of Europe, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and the European Union (EU). This paper seeks to find out how this new transnational space for discourse and action affected the development of the Romani movement in the countries of Central Europe. By locating empirical findings from research in Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Hungary within a theoretical framework that combines insights from social movement analysis and international relations, the paper not only seeks to make a contribution to understanding of the case of the Romani movement, but also adds to ongoing debates on political action and ethnic identity formation, showing how ethnic minority movements are ultimately conditioned by the interplay of strategies of mobilization, with wider domestic and international policies towards minorities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to enhance our understanding of the ways in which decentralizing reforms influence and shape party politics at both the statewide and non-statewide level, looking at the special case of asymmetric devolution. In asymmetric devolution, statewide political parties have to adapt to the presence of new arenas of political competition at the subcentral level, but these new arenas are either not present, or not equally developed, in the whole state territory. The paper hypothesizes possible party reactions and adaptations to these circumstances, focusing on changes in party organization, interparty cooperation and interparty competition. It then goes on to assess the emerging reality of party politics under asymmetric devolution in two prominent Western European cases: Spain, where asymmetric devolution has developed over the past two decades, and the United Kingdom, where devolution has been established more recently. This comparative analysis illustrates the organizational strains that asymmetric devolution creates for political parties, and assesses its impact on party competition and government formation at the statewide level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When do hegemonic parties breakdown? This paper argues that one important part of the explanation are the effects of elite ruptures. This paper compares the PRI and the KMT to understand the calculations of both members of the minority and majority factions within hegemonic parties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the question of how national party leaders set their party’s policy positions. Currently, the literature on this question exhibits a gap between theory and reality; spatial models predict convergence of party policy positions in a two-party setting, while empirical scholars found divergence in real world situations. Our paper is an attempt to fill in this gap. We do so by introducing two additional issues that have been relatively neglected in the existing literature. First, we stress the importance of establishing a party label for national party leaders as part of a strategy for the goal of seat-maximization in addition to the Downsian convergence strategy. Second, we address the issue that national party leaders are likely to adjust their party policy positions in response to heterogeneous preference distributions of voters across districts, in which the party has varying degrees of success. Incorporating these two issues, we show in a simple spatial model that in a two-party, single-member plurality system, two parties’ positions on a given policy issue are likely to converge if the given policy issue is at stake in closely competed districts, while two parties’ positions on a given policy issue are likely to diverge if the given issue is at stake in districts where one of the parties already has a secure majority. We use the case of the US party system (1945-2000) as the empirical test and find that the regression results are consistent with this hypothesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Moving beyond studies of institutional creation and specific moments of change, this paper focuses on institutional resilience and institutional development over time. It attempts to further explanation of such continuity and development by analyzing the changing nature of investments social actors make in institutions and institutional arrangements. The paper draws on the political economy literature focused on asset specificity, exploring its usefulness in the study of institutions. This literature suggests a number of mechanisms that embed institutions and that can enhance their resilience over time. Recognizing these mechanisms also allows us to infer when (and which aspects of) institutions are more or less susceptible to change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prominent and influential theorizing suggests that rules of the political game explain major political puzzles and are solutions to diverse political problems. But this theorizing relies on the assumption that these institutions become insulated from exogenous factors, including those which led to their original adoption. To explain this, institutional theorists argue that institutions largely endogenize their own support through diverse mechanisms of positive feedback. This emerges as a key micro-foundation in the institutionalist project in political science. This paper argues that institutionalists offer two main models of self-perpetuation: "proactive" endogenization of support, characteristic of major social policies; and "defensive" endogenization, characteristic of technologies and diverse social conventions. Several prominent studies argue rules of the political game approximate the second model, since they are solutions to coordination problems. I argue these rules do not meet the criteria of either model. Because these rules are caught up in distributional conflicts and the costs of their revision is not that high, they remain dependent on conditions exogenous to the rules themselves. As such, wider socio-political contexts rather than institutions provide the predominant explanation of several major outcomes. The conditions which generate stability vs. change in rules of the game are stylized in terms of variations in levels of distributional conflict and power asymmetries. The paper concludes that this dependence of rules on exogenous conditions profoundly jeopardizes our ability to recommend rules of the game as solutions to problems in other countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper utilizes a simple model of redistributive politics with voter abstention to analyze the impact of nonpartisan 'get-out-the-vote' efforts on policy outcomes. Although such efforts are often promoted on the grounds that they provide the social benefit of increasing participation in the electoral process, we and that they have a meaningful impact on policy outcomes and are an important political in uence activity for nonprofit advocacy organizations. In equilibrium, nonpartisan gotv efforts are more likely to arise in those segments of the electorate that are sufficiently small and disenfranchised (as measured by the ex ante voter abstention rate). Among those segments in which such efforts arise, the resulting gains are increasing in the level of disenfranchisement of the voters in the segment and decreasing in the segment's size. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the transformation of India’s party system fromdominance by the Indian National Congress Party to a competitivemultiparty format since 1989. The recent literature has highlighted theimportance of processes of economic decentrali ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper tests interest group hypotheses on state PACs in the health sector. A unique feature is a dataset connecting individual lobby groups registered in 1998 with individual PACs contributing money in ‘98. We also track nonconnected PACs. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper summarizes research on the emergence and the significance of "inclusive global institutions" which are conceptualized as institutions that provide a variety of organized actors (public and private) with the possibility of membership and endows them with certain rights in the policy-making process. It seeks to substantiate four propositions: a)there is an observable definite trend towards the creation of inclusive global institutions, b)it is possible to pinpoint certain conditions which give rise to, and shape the creation of, these institutions, c)these inclusive institutions have the potential to reduce governance gaps which plague governance through intergovernmental institutions in the global political economy and thus enhance output and input/process legitimacy, and d)inclusive global institutions can be conceived as the underpinnings of a system of heterarchical governance in the global political economy. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the ability of the National Rifle Association to affect turnout in House races in 1994, 1996, and 1998. We construct models of turnout in congressional elections that include NRA candidate endorsements and membership numbers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I suggest that debates about the relative success of development organizations and the associated the concept of "bridging" social capital can be linked and be enriched by insights from the literature on interest groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the civic potential of community-based energy. Through content analyses and participant surveys, we examine citizens' motivations for joining and participating in such organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses a comparison of Japanese koenkai and American political machines in order to build an analytical framework with which to better understand reciprocal relationships between those in power and their constituents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how the European Union changes national-level politics, focusing on the role of Euroskeptic political parties. I argue that (1) Euroskeptic parties are less likely to participate in government coalitions than are Europhile parties; (2) parties with an elite-mass division over the EU will have a Europhile leadership and Euroskeptic masses; (3) when parties change their positions on the EU, they will be more Euroskeptic when in opposition and more Europhile when in government; and (4) parties that are extremist on non-EU dimensions are more likely to be Euroskeptic. These results will not be found in majoritarian political systems because they stem from the party coalition formation process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public-private partnerships have existed in the United States since the colonial period. However, in particular, government and nonprofit interactions?embedded in social, economic, and political structures?have taken different forms and have varied over time, among different fields of service, and in different contexts. In recent times, especially in the last two and a half decades, not only has there been an expansion in the types of human services once provided primarily by government agencies, but also the list of viable not-for-profit providers continues to broaden including a variety of organizations. Scholars note that in this era of devolution, the trend towards ?privatizing? human services is expected to continue the advancement of networks and network structures between the public, private, and not-for-profit sectors in public policy implementation. Even the widespread use of terms like ?cooperation?, ?collaboration,? ?strategic alliances,? ?joint ventures,? and ?partnership? across the sectors have become commonplace. Moreover, public discourse in policy circles, academic arenas and in practice seem to accept the taken-for-granted benefits of such alliances with the increasing popularity of such approaches to address America?s social problems, even though there is limited research evaluating the actual nature and process of the effects of existing partnerships in light of theory. The following paper attempts to begin to fill this gap by exploring collaboration between government agencies and faith-based organizations utilizing principal-agent theory. Such arrangements may pose serious legal and administrative challenges that may not be easily overcome. Providing government services through contracts with private organizations raises traditional management and accountability concerns and have implications for public management, in general. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many analyses of comparative political systems, particularly in the study of coalitions and party systems, rest on assumptions about issue dimensionality. However, empirical measures of issue dimensionality have not kept pace. No cross-national measure exists that captures both variation between countries and within countries over time. Using data from the Comparative Manifestos Project this paper develops a measure of the effective number of issues dimensions, constructed similarly to Laakso and Taagepera?s Effective Number of Parties, that incorporate the relative weight of issues and their similarity. The measure is explained in detail theoretically, and empirical results for the postwar period for 17 West European countries are shown. The added value of this measure is shown in analyses of government durability. While prior cross-sectional estimates of issue dimensionality have not performed well, the effective number of issue dimensions has a significant, robust impact on government durability. The higher the dimensionality, the less durable government is. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Party identification and core values are central elements in mass belief systems that influence a wide range of more specific political evaluations, preferences, and behaviors. But how do these predispositions relate to one another? Does partisan bias color core values, or are partisan identities grounded in core values? My paper tackles this question as follows. I draw upon theoretical work on partisan bias and value-based reasoning to generate competing hypotheses about whether partisanship shapes values or values shape partisanship. I test these hypotheses by using structural equation modeling techniques to estimate dynamic models of attitude constraint with data from the 1992-94-96 National Election Panel Study. The statistical analyses reveal that (1) partisan identities are significantly more stable than the core values of equal opportunity, limited government, traditional family values, and moral tolerance; (2) party identification systematically affects these values; and (3) these values do not affect party identification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the link between local party organizations at a county level, voter turnout and party outcomes. The theoretical background for this link is examined and an argument is developed that local party organizations should play a successful role in increasing turnout and improving party outcomes. Using data from Illinois' 2002 gubernatorial election, the data show that while the Democratic Party enjoyed increased success in areas where it's local party organization was strong, the Republican Party did not, almost certainly this relates to the unique context of the election. The effect was rather mild, but given the limitation of the methodology, the findings support the hypothesis that local party organizations remain an important source of electoral mobilization in American politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Starting a new political party is always a costly endeavor, but it is a well-known fact that doing so and challenging the existing two-party system usually ends up in miserable electoral defeat under the first-past-the-post voting system, at least in most circumstances. If this is the case, why would anyone want to launch a third party in such a situation in the first place? Employing the concepts of organizational repertoire and organizational form, hitherto used primarily in sociological research on social movements, this paper seeks an answer to this question by investigating why a couple of reformist social movements, prohibitionists and labor reformers, began forming their own political parties several years after the Civil War. In the course of analysis, two subproblems to the original research question are addressed. First, why did the social movement leaders think creating a political party was better suited to achieve their reform than their previous mode of action? Second, even if forming a political party was superior to their earlier organizational form in terms of policymaking, why did they think that they could win elections once they formed a political party? My analysis, which treats these reformers as utility-maximizing actors rather than narrow-sighted zealots, reveals that the political experience of the immediate past, namely the rise of the Republican Party and its conduct of the war, served as an organizational model that changed their views on political parties and party system change in a positive way. This experience convinced the reformers to follow its course by starting a party founded on a reformist political issue, thereby realizing their reform through federal public policy after a party realignment, just as the Republicans did, in the reformers’ view, with the slavery issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the contributions to democratization made by the Pachakutik Political Movement in Ecuador, a party founded by a coalition of indigenous organizations, social movements and labor unions in 1996. Despite the high levels of social mobilization and political volatility experienced in Ecuador during the 1990s, I argue that democracy was strengthened in this period by the emergence of this party. The two-pronged argument begins by referring to Rustow’s (1970) notion of the importance of ‘habituation’ to democratic rules and procedures as a key stage in democratic consolidation, and offers evidence that this has been taking place within the indigenous movement. Secondly, I argue that Pachakutik has been enriching democratic practice and challenging traditional hierarchical and clientelistic patterns of politics by introducing new participatory practices and by developing mechanisms designed to create greater transparency and accountability in government and by elected authorities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although both George W. Bush and Al Gore praised the work of religious organizations and pledged to provide faith-based groups a voice in their administration, the bipartisan support of faith-based legislation quickly dissolved in the 107th Congress. How did the policy environment shift so dramatically from consensus to conflict? This paper compares and contrasts the role of the faith-based initiative in the Bush and Gore campaigns to identify important differences in the two candidates? rhetoric and focus. A final section considers several political factors that contributed to the divisiveness of the debate as the new President sought to implement the faith-based policies promised in his campaign. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many of the policy proposals for improving life in U.S. metropolitan areas come from non-academic groups yet, collectively, these organizations have received little scholarly attention. Using approximately two hundred reports by citizens groups in Cleveland, Jacksonville, Kansas City, Minneapolis-St. Paul, and St. Louis as well as on-site interviews with key participants in each group, this paper examines the issues they address, the policy cycle stages they emphasize, the processes they use, the geographic scale they cover, the units they seek to influence, the values they stress, the implementation tools they favor, the advocacy strategies they employ, and the impact they have had. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a strategy for a unified approach in political science. We analyze two fundamental limitations that prevent rational choice and cultural explanations from offering satisfactory explanations of political behavior: unrealistic assumptions and deterministic reasoning. We show how and why a combination of the two approaches offers a basis for a better conceptualization of political behavior. Hence, we elaborate a systematic classification in which political behavior can be understood through the interaction of three fundamental categories: motivations, mechanisms and institutions. Within this schema, self-esteem, practices and cultural norms are analogous to the rational choice use of, respectively, interests, strategies and formal institutions. Thereby, we argue that what the literature commonly labels ?institutions? and ?culture? can be conceptualized as institutions, varying on a spectrum from formal to informal. In addition, we argue that institutions, both formal and informal, need not be understood only as long-term phenomena. Both cultural and legal norms can change very rapidly, thus affecting belief formation and political behavior. The result of this unified approach is to grant culture a non-residual explanatory role in political analysis and to thus introduce a framework for the study of political behavior that is better equipped to analyze variation over space and time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper argues that the fundamental assumption that ‘elected organizations are (therefore) accountable’ does not -- as is often assumed by both [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]