Abstract Responding to renewed interest in political rhetoric among contemporary International Relations (IR)–realists, this article advances three main claims. First, it suggests that tragedy—the dominant aesthetic-narrative mode to which these realists have turned in their rhetorical considerations—is ill-suited to the contemporary political moment. In the context of a late-modern “nuclear condition,” the turn to classical tragedy seems set to reproduce the resentful, anti-realist hubris that its promulgators hope to dispel or disenchant. Second, it suggests that late modern politics is […]
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Abstract Last month, the Trump administration reopened its effort to allow Kentucky to require low-income citizens to work in exchange for health-care coverage — part of its larger goal of imposing work requirements nationwide for all kinds of benefits, including assistance buying food. The Kentucky effort has run afoul of at least one federal judge, who wrote that the administration “never adequately considered whether Kentucky HEALTH would in fact help the state furnish medical assistance to its citizens, a central […]
Read More from “Do work requirements for federal assistance help people escape poverty? No. Here’s what really happens.”
Abstract This paper analyzes the demographic attributes of people with views indicating support for explicit white identity politics, finding that there is a strong correlation between these attitudes and income and education levels.
Read More from “The Demography of the Alt-Right”
Abstract Fearful talk surrounding ISIS discloses two ‘public secrets’ that collectively define the dilemma of late modern politics. The first is a transition from politics that is experienced and narrated chiefly as tragedy to one that is experienced chiefly as melodrama. The second is a motivated wish to shed the moral burden which tragedy places on the contemporary political subject. ISIS, then, is terrifying not because it represents a throwback to premodern forms of charismatic domination or political […]
Read More from “Threat inflation as political melodrama: ISIS and the politics of late modern fear.”
Daniel J. Levine (University of Alabama) & David M. McCourt (University of California, Davis) Abstract Pluralism has become a buzzword in International Relations. It has emerged in a number of linked literatures and has drawn the support of an unusual coalition of scholars: advocates of greater methodological diversity; those who feel that IR has degenerated into a clash of paradigmatic “-isms”; those who favor a closer relationship between academics and policy-makers; and those who wish to see greater reflexivity […]
Read More from “Why Does Pluralism Matter when We Study Politics? A View from Contemporary International Relations.”
Abstract In response to the ‘non-manifesto’ penned by David Chandler, Stephen Hobden and Erika Cudworth, we advance five points in the coming pages. First, we deal with questions of nomenclature. We grapple with what is at stake in using the term ‘the Anthropocene’ and in bringing human politics into geological processes and timescales. Second, we counter Chandler et al.’s erroneous claim that ‘Planet Politics’ advances an occult liberal-imperialist agenda. Third, we refute their charge that our work smuggles in transcendentalism […]
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Abstract Vote misreporting is a major concern for studies of electoral participation. Concern over nonvoters in surveys who claim to vote is especially relevant for black turnout studies in the U.S., because blacks misreport voting more than others. This research tests theories that black Americans feel special pressure to vote that increases misreporting and causes turnout studies to overestimate the influence of participation in black churches, racial group consciousness, and other factors. Tests comparing results from self-reported and validated […]
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Abstract Is kneeling during the national anthem disrespectful to the American flag, and by extension, to the U.S. military? That’s the charge President Trump recently leveled at NFL players who began “taking a knee,” to use the athletes’ language, to protest police brutality against people of color. But underneath that charge is an unexamined assumption that veterans and service members would not share the athletes’ views — and are white. We examine that underlying assumption to shed light on what […]
Read More from “Plenty of service members are likely to sympathize with #TakeAKnee .” Blog Post
Abstract Street-Level Sovereignty: The Intersection of Space and Law is a collection of scholarship that considers the experience of law that is subject to social interpretation for its meaning and importance within the constitutive legal framework of race, deviance, property, and the communal investiture in health and happiness. This book examines the intersection of spatiality and law, through the construction of place, and how law is materially framed.
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Abstract We examine gender bias in political institutions through a novel lens: oral arguments at the US Supreme Court. We ask whether female lawyers are afforded less speaking time during oral arguments compared to male lawyers. We posit that justices, while highly educated and more aware than most of laws requiring equal treatment, may be influenced by gender schemas that result in unconscious biased treatment of male and female lawyers. Applying automated content analysis to the transcripts of 3,583 […]
Read More from “Lawyer, Interrupted: Gender Bias in Oral Arguments at the US Supreme Court.”