Department News
07-08-2008
Congratulations to Patricia J. Woods ! Her new book, Judicial Power and National Politics Courts and Gender in the Religious-Secular Conflict in Israel, has just been published in the SUNY Series in Israel Studies.
Book Description (from the publisher's web site):
Published July 3, 2008
SUNY Series in Israel Studies
Uses the case of Israel to examine the circumstances that lead national
courts to engage heated political issues.
Reviews
"This well-written book makes an important contribution by pushing the
analysis of the controversies surrounding judicial intervention/activism to
take ideas seriously. It provides a very persuasive account of Israel's High
Court of Justice's involvement in religious issues and the key role of the
judicial community in precipitating that involvement. At the same time,
Woods attends to the roles of institutional factors and social movements in
facilitating the controversial rights actions/decisions of the HCJ. This
book is a must read for scholars of law and politics." -- Austin Sarat,
Amherst College
"The author's notion of an extended judicial community of judges, academic
lawyers, and cause lawyers is a major move forward in the 'new
institutionalism' in the study of law and courts." -- Martin Shapiro, Boalt
Law School, University of California at Berkeley
01-15-2008
Congratulations to Dan Smith! His new book, co-authored with Todd Donovan and Chris Mooney, State and Local Politics: Institutions and Reform, has just been published.
Authors:
Todd Donovan, Western Washington University
Christopher Mooney, University of Illinois, Springfield
Daniel A. Smith, University of Florida
In State and Local Politics: Institutions and Reform , Todd Donovan, Chris Mooney, and Dan Smith intrigue students by going beyond the purely descriptive treatment usually found in state and local texts. This book offers an engaging comparative approach, showing students how politics and government differ between states and communities, as well as the causes and effects of those variations. Written by three young, high-profile specialists who have contributed significantly to the field in the last decade, State and Local Politics: Institutions and Reform incorporates into the course the most recent scholarship available, giving students access to perspectives that no other textbook on the market currently provides. In addition, the text goes beyond the purely descriptive, traditional approach by focusing on what social scientists know about the effects of rules and institutions on politics and policy. This comparative, institutional framework enables students to think more analytically about the impact of institutions on policy outcomes, asks them to evaluate the effectiveness of one institutional approach over another, and encourages them to consider more sophisticated solutions. State and Local Politics: Institutions and Reform is the only text of its kind to dedicate three full chapters to direct democracy, land use policy, and morality politics. Throughout the text are boxed features that elaborate on the themes of institutions, comparison, and reform. These feature sections provide thought-provoking, concrete examples of the issues at state and local levels so that students can understand how institutions and systems impact individuals in real-life situations. In addition, vivid tables, maps, graphs, and photographs provide the visual tools that students need to process detailed comparative data about the states.
11-09-2007
Congratulations to David Hedge! His new book, co-authored with Joseph Stewart and James Lester, Public Policy: An Evolutionary Approach, has just been published.
Authors:
Joseph Stewart, Jr Clemson University Ph.D. University of Houston;
David M. Hedge, University of Florida Ph.D., University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee;
James P. Lester Late, University of Colorado
Public Policy: An Evolutionary Approach, examines how the substance and process of public policy and our understanding of that have evolved in America. After providing the reader with an analytic, historic and contextual framework for viewing public policy in the U.S., the authors offer a comprehensive look at the various elements of the governing process including agenda setting and problem definition, policy formation, implementation, program evaluation, and policy change and termination. In doing that, the authors pay particular attention to the range of theories that have been offered to explain how, why, and with what effects governments act. The authors then look at three critical policy areas - environment, education, and welfare - to further illustrate how governing proceeds in the U.S. Throughout the text the authors draw extensively on actual policy examples including recent efforts to reform education and welfare and the war in Iraq.
08-02-2007
Congratulations to Ben Smith ! His new book, Hard Times in the Lands of Plenty: Oil Politics in Iran and Indonesia, has just been published by Cornell University Press.
Book Description (from the publisher's web site):
HARD TIMES IN THE LANDS OF PLENTY: Oil Politics in Iran and Indonesia
That natural resources can be a curse as well as a blessing is almost a truism in political analysis. In many late-developing countries, the "resource curse" theory predicts, the exploitation of valuable resources will not result in stable, prosperous states but rather in their opposite. Petroleum deposits, for example, may generate so much income that rulers will have little need to establish efficient, tax-extracting bureaucracies, leading to shallow, poorly functioning administrations that remain at the mercy of the world market for oil. Alternatively, resources may be geographically concentrated, thereby intensifying regional, ethnic, or other divisive tensions.
In Hard Times in the Lands of Plenty, Benjamin Smith deciphers the paradox of the resource curse and questions its inevitability through an innovative comparison of the experiences of Iran and Indonesia. These two populous, oil-rich countries saw profoundly different changes in their fortunes in the period 1960-1980. Focusing on the roles of state actors and organized opposition in using oil revenues, Smith finds that the effects of oil wealth on politics and on regime durability vary according to the circumstances under which oil exports became a major part of a country's economy. The presence of natural resources is, he argues, a political opportunity rather than simply a structural variable. Drawing on extensive primary research in Iran and Indonesia and quantitative research on nineteen other oil-rich developing countries, Smith challenges us to reconsider resource wealth in late-developing countries, not as a simple curse or blessing, but instead as a tremendously flexible source of both political resources and potential complications.
Reviews
"Benjamin Smith has raised the costs for anyone hoping to tell us something new and significant about the role of oil in political development. With Hard Times in the Lands of Plenty he has all but cornered the market." - Robert Vitalis, University of Pennsylvania, author of America's Kingdom: Mythmaking on the Saudi Oil Frontier.
"Hard Times in the Lands of Plenty is thoughtful, provocative, and innovative. It is a richly textured exploration of political development in oil-exporting Iran and Indonesia. Employing a methodology that is both multilayered and eclectic, Ben Smith challenges the commonplace notion-and implicit suggestion of the 'rentier state' literature-that oil states are intrinsically unstable and prone to breakdown. He demonstrates that political outcomes are determined 'not by oil, but when oil' and highlights the challenges presented by different institutional landscapes at the inception of oil-based development. This book makes important contributions to several literatures: among them, the rentier state and resource curse, historical-institutionalism, transitions, the breakdown of authoritarian regimes, and comparative methodology." -Miriam R. Lowi, The College of New Jersey
"The fascinating Hard Times in the Lands of Plenty is characterized by bold ambition and real insight; Benjamin Smith admirably weaves together a variety of methods to produce a book that is truly comparative in scope. Smith highlights a key insight for those interested in the politics of oil, namely that timing matters." -Eva Bellin, Hunter College
08-02-2007
Congratulations to Daniel O'Neill ! His new book, The Burke-Wollstonecraft Debate: Savagery, Civilization, and Democracy, has just been published by Penn State University Press.
Book Description (from the publisher's web site):
According to Daniel O'Neill, Burke is misconstrued if viewed as mainly providing a warning about the dangers of attempting to turn utopian visions into political reality, while Wollstonecraft is far more than just a proponent of extending the public sphere rights of man to include women. Rather, at the heart of their differences lies a dispute over democracy as a force tending toward savagery (Burke) or toward civilization (Wollstonecraft). Their debate over the meaning of the French Revolution is the place where these differences are elucidated, but the real key to understanding what this debate is about is its relation to the intellectual tradition of the Scottish Enlightenment, whose language of politics provided the discursive framework within and against which Burke and Wollstonecraft developed their own unique ideas about what was involved in the civilizing process.
Reviews:
"Who would have thought there was much new and fascinating to say about Burke and Wollstonecraft? But O'Neill's argument, rooted in their response to the French Revolution and their relationship to Scottish Enlightenment ideas, is wonderfully fresh and illuminating, shedding new light on many a shadowy part of Burke's conservatism and Wollstonecraft's feminism." -Isaac Kramnick, Cornell University
"This is an excellent contribution to the literatures on Mary Wollstonecraft and Edmund Burke and to the growing discussions of the significance of the Scottish Enlightenment." -Virginia Sapiro, University of Wisconsin, Madison.
07-09-2007
Michael Heaney and Lynn Leverty have received course development grants of $3,000 from the Graham Center for Public Service. Michael will use his award to create a new course in health policy and Lynn is developing a new undergraduate course on policy ethics. Beth Rosenson received a course enhancement grant of $1,500 to revise her course on ethics in American politics.
07-09-2007
Three political science majors and their faculty mentors have received Graham Center Policy Scholars Awards of $2,500 to conduct original policy research during the 2007-2008 academic school year. Wilneeda Emannuel will work with Sharon Austin on the problems of Haitian immigrants in south Florida, Krysten Rosen will work with Michael Heaney on a study of the governance of the Medicare Advantage Program, and Erika Walters (also a biology major) will work with David Hedge on the problems of under utilization of the recently enacted CHOICES program in Alachua County.
05-07-2007
Larry Dodd was selected as UF's 2006-2007 Teacher/Scholar of the Year. The annual award is given in recognition of excellence in teaching and distinction in scholarship. It is UF's highest faculty honor and includes a $5,000 award.
04-04-2007
Beth Ann Rosenson received a a Congressional Research Award through the Dirksen Congressional Center. The $3,100 award will be used toward her book project on the Congressional ethics process. The project examines how the definition of unethical behavior in the U.S. House of Representatives has evolved and changed over the last two centuries and examines partisanship in the ethics process.
03-05-2007
Michael Heaney and Jason Kassel have been named Congressional Fellows by the American Political Science Association for the 2007-08 academic year. Michael and Jason will spend the year working on Capitol Hill for a member of Congress. In past years, the APSA Congressional Fellowship has been held by Larry Dodd (1974-75), as well as UF Ph.D.s, such as Marian Currinder (2003-04), Elizabeth Oldmixon (2001-02), and Fiona Wright (2001-2002).
01-31-2007
Philip Williams (Political Science) and Manuel Vasquez (Religion) received a $450,000 grant from the Ford Foundation to support a three year study entitled, "Latin American Immigrants in the New South: Religion and the Politics of Encounter." The study will explore the multiple roles that religion plays in shaping interethnic and interracial relations, immigrant incorporation, and collective mobilization in metro Atlanta, an area that has experienced a dramatic growth in Latino population in the last decade. The project builds on Williams's and Vasquez's previous research in South Florida, that focused on the migration experiences and religious lives of Guatemalans, Mexicans, and Brazilians. Extending the scope of their research to the greater Atlanta metropolitan area will allow them to assess comparatively the impact of Latino immigration in the New South.
10-26-2006
Congratulations to Katrina Schwartz. Her new book, Nature and National Identity after Communism: Globalizing the Ethnoscape, is now available from the University of Pittsburgh Press.
Book Description (from the publisher's web site):
In this groundbreaking book, Katrina Schwartz examines the intersection of environmental politics, globalization, and national identity in a small East European country: modern-day Latvia. Based on extensive ethnographic research and lively discourse analysis, it explores that country’s post-Soviet responses to European assistance and political pressure in nature management, biodiversity conservation, and rural development.
These responses were shaped by hotly contested notions of national identity articulated as contrasting visions of the “ideal” rural landscape. The players in this story include Latvian farmers and other traditional rural dwellers, environmental advocates, and professionals with divided attitudes toward new European approaches to sustainable development. An entrenched set of forestry and land management practices, with roots in the Soviet and pre-Soviet eras, confront growing international pressures on a small country to conform to current (Western) notions of environmental responsibility—notions often perceived by Latvians to be at odds with local interests.
While the case is that of Latvia, the dynamics Schwartz explores have wide applicability and speak powerfully to broader theoretical discussions about sustainable development, social constructions of nature, the sources of nationalism, and the impacts of globalization and regional integration on the traditional nation-state.
09-12-2006
Congratulations to Staffan Lindberg. His new book, Democracy and elections in Africa, is now available from the Johns Hopkins University Press.
Book Description (from the publisher's web site):
This book studies elections as a core institution of liberal democracy in the context of newly democratizing countries based on data from every nationally contested election in Africa from 1989 to 2003, covering 232 elections in forty-four countries to argue that democratizing nations learn to become democratic through repeated democratic behavior, even if these elections are often flawed.
Refuting a number of established hypotheses, Lindberg finds no general negative trend either in the frequency or the quality of African elections. Rather elections in Africa based on his findings are more than just an end to a transition towards democracy or mere formal procedure. The inception of multiparty elections usually initiates liberalization, and repeated electoral activities create incentives for political actors fostering the expansion and deepening of democratic values. In addition to improving the democratic qualities of political regimes, a sequence of elections tends to expand and solidify de facto civil liberties in society.
Controlling for other standard factors of democratization Lindberg demonstrates that the impact of repetitive elections, even if "imported", is consistent in Africa's diverse contexts. With a wealth of data, he makes the case that this democratic practice is an important causal factor in the development of democracy. Lindberg's comprehensive analysis thus extends Rustow's (1970) theory that democratic behavior produces democratic values.
09-07-2006
Congratulations to Leslie Thiele. His sixth book, The Heart of Judgment: Practical Wisdom, Neuroscience, and Narrative , has just been published by Cambridge University Press.
Book Description (from the publisher's web site): In The Heart of Judgment, Leslie Paul Thiele explores the historical significance and present-day relevance of practical wisdom. Though primarily a work in moral and political philosophy, the book relies extensively on the latest research in cognitive neuroscience to confirm and extend its original insights. While giving credit to the roles played by reason and deliberation in the exercise of judgment, Thiele underscores the central importance of intuition, emotion, and worldly experience. In turn, he argues that narrative constitutes a form of ersatz experience, and as such is crucial to the development of the faculty of judgment. Ever since the ancient Greeks first discussed the virtue of phronesis, practical wisdom has been an important topic for philosophers and political theorists. Thiele observes that it remains one of the qualities most demanded of public officials and that the welfare of democratic regimes rests on the cultivation of good judgment among citizens. The Heart of Judgment offers a new understanding of an ancient virtue while providing an innovative assessment of the salience of practical wisdom in contemporary society.
09-07-2006
Congratulations to Conor O'Dwyer. His new book, Runaway State-Building: Patronage Politics and Democratic Development, is now available from the Johns Hopkins University Press.
Book Description (from the publisher's web site): Here, Conor O'Dwyer introduces the phenomenon of runaway state-building as a consequence of patronage politics in underdeveloped, noncompetitive party systems. Analyzing the cases of three newly democratized nations in Eastern Europe - Poland, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia - O'Dwyer argues that competition among political parties constrains patronage-led state expansion. O'Dwyer uses democratization as a starting point, examining its effects on other aspects of political development. Focusing on the link between electoral competition and state-building, he is able to draw parallels between the problems faced by these three nations and broader historical and contemporary problems of patronage politics - such as urban machines in nineteenth - century America and the Philippines after Marcos. This timely study provides political scientists and political reformers with insights into points in the democratization process where appropriate intervention can minimize runaway state-building and cultivate efficient bureaucracy within a robust and competitive democratic system.
07-17-2006
Congratulations to Patricia Woods, whose book is now under contract with SUNY Press. The working title is 'Judicial Power and National Politics: Courts and Gender in the Religious-Secular Conflict in Israel.'
07-12-2006
Sharon Wright Austin's book, The Transformation of Plantation Politics: Black Politics, Concentrated Poverty, and Social Capital in the Mississippi Delta, has just been published by SUNY Press. It is part of the SUNY series in African American Studies edited by John R. Howard and Robert C. Smith.
Book Description (from the publisher's web site): The Transformation of Plantation Politics explores the effects of black political exclusion, the sharecropping system, and white resistance on the Mississippi Delta’s current economic and political situation. Sharon D. Wright Austin’s extensive interviews with residents of the region shed light on the transformations and legacies of the Delta’s political and economic institutions. While African Americans now hold most of the major political offices in the region and are no longer formally excluded from political participation, educational opportunities, or lucrative jobs, Wright Austin shows that white wealth and black poverty continue to be the norm partly because of the deeply entrenched legacies of the Delta’s history. Contributing to a greater theoretical understanding of black political efforts, this book demonstrates a need for a strong level of black social capital, intergroup capital, financial capital, political capital, and a human capital of educated and skilled workers.
06-05-2006
Aida Hozic won a Fulbright fellowship for AY 2006-07. She will spend the year in Sarajevo, Bosnia.
06-05-2006
Dan Smith's 2005 APSA paper, "Do State-Level Ballot Measures Affect Presidential Elections? Gay Marriage and the 2004 Election" (with Todd Donovan and Caroline Tolbert), received the best paper award from the State Politics and Policy Section.
06-05-2006
Rahmane Idrissa has been awarded a Social Science Research Council/American Council of Learned Societies (SSRC/ACLS) International Dissertation Research Fellowship to carry out his dissertation fieldwork in Niger. These awards are extremely competitive; this year there, over 1,200 applicants from 132 universities competed for 50 fellowships. Rahmane will spend AY 2006-07 in Niger and he plans to be back in Fall '07.
06-05-2006
Stephen Boyle has been awarded a research grant by the LBJ Foundation to conduct research at the Lindon B. Johnson presidential library.
06-05-2006
Ingrid Giglio has been awarded a Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship from the Center for Latin American Studies to support her doctoral studies next year and to support her study of Portuguese for her work on her dissertation.
05-22-2006
Bryon Moraski's book, Elections by Design: Parties and Patronage in Russia's Regions, was recently published by Northern Illinois University Press.
Book description (from the publisher's web site): Legislative elections are the defining institution of a representative democracy. They determine how the power to govern society is distributed among political actors, regardless of whether those actors are political parties, ethnic groups, or business interests. Yet the rules that decide how thousands, if not millions, of popular votes are translated into a relatively small number of parliamentary seats vary widely across, and sometimes within, countries. Elections by Design—based on a skillful blend of statistical analyses and detailed case studies—seeks to uncover how electoral rules are chosen within the Russian Federation, and by whom. To enhance our understanding of electoral system choice, Moraski investigates the origins of the legislative electoral systems in the eighty-nine regions of the Russian Federation. These subnational units serve as a natural experiment by allowing an opportunity to observe the creation of representative institutions in a state transitioning from authoritarian rule. The regions also offer a rare glimpse into the dynamics of electoral system choice where political parties do not necessarily guide the decisions. Despite the unique qualities of Russia’s political transition, Elections by Design reveals insights that can be applied to other transitioning states. Moraski emphasizes that institutional choice remains a political process, despite scholars’ recommendations that certain electoral systems are better for democracy than others. At the same time, he shows how electoral system choice at the regional level can frustrate party development and democracy at the national level. This study is particularly valuable at a time when American politicians seek to spread the seeds of democracy to areas where people differ along ethnic or religious lines and where a federal framework is needed to bring dissenting interests to the negotiating table.
05-22-2006
Congratulations to political science undergraduate major David Kerner. David was recently named as police "officer of the year" by the City of Alachua's Chamber of Commerce.
04-28-2006
Congratulations to Melinda Negron for winning a Fulbright award to fund her dissertation research in Turkey.
04-28-2006
Bob Uttaro has been selected by the Graduate School as a recipient of a 2005-06 Graduate Student Teaching Award.
04-28-2006
On April 6, Peggy Kohn gave an invited lecture at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. Her talk was titled "Homo Spectator: Public Space in the Age of the Spectacle."
04-14-2006
Kelli Moore successfully defended her dissertation, titled "How Do Civic Organizations Matter? The Role of Civic Organizations on Ethnic Relations, England and Beyond." Her committee consisted of Goran Hyden, Sharon Austin (for Jim Button), Peggy Kohn, Ken Mease, and Zoharah Simmons (dept. of religion)
04-14-2006
Leslie Anderson was awarded the University of Florida Research Foundation Professorship. The university-wide award is given to professors for their previous distinction and ongoing outstanding accomplishments in research. Within the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (CLAS) only 6 professors were awarded this distinction this year.
04-08-2006
Ken Wald has accepted an invitation from APSA president Ira Katznelson to join a newly-formed "Task Force on Religion and American Democracy." The group "will examine how relevant disciplinary knowledge can help Americans understand the role that religion plays in their public life, and consider both the opportunities and dangers to democracy that flow from the presence of significant numbers of citizens who possess strong religious convictions." Like other APSA task forces, the group will produce a short statement and an edited volume. Ken will also join a Russell Sage Foundation workshop on "Nationalism in U.S. Public Life and Policy Formation," discussing the contribution of religion to the surge in American nationalism in the post-9/11 period.
04-08-2006
Three of our undergrads won University Scholars Awards:
- Bryan Arbeit (working w/ Peggy Kohn)
- Steven Flood (working w/ Lynn Leverty)
- Emily Hedrick (working w/ Michael Heaney)
Congratulations to these students and their faculty advisors!
04-03-2006
Kudos to Richard Conley and Won-ho Park
Rich and Won-ho won Internationalizing the Curriculum Awards ($3,000 each) from the UF International Center. Won-ho will use the award to develop a new course on East Asian politics while Rich will develop a course on Irish politics with a spring break add-on trip to Ireland.
04-03-2006
Kudos to Dan Smith
Dan was awarded a six month residence fellowship at Stanford University in Western Politics and Governance at the Bill Lane Center for the Study of the North American West. He will begin his residence in April 2007.
03-20-2006
Sammy Barkin's new book, International Organization: Theories and Institutions, was recently published by Palgrave-Macmillan.
Book description (from the publisher's web site, at http://www.palgrave-usa.com/catalog/product.aspx?isbn=1403972508): This book is an introduction to the study of international organizations in the field of international relations directed toward students in the discipline. It looks at the different ways in which IOs are studied and then applies these different modes of study to a variety of specific case studies. Do international organizations matter? What are their effects on international relations? Where do they fit into the international relations literature? How should we study them?
03-03-2006
On Friday, March 3, Dan Smith gave an invited talk at The Ohio State University's Moritz College of Law, entitled "How the Option of Direct Democracy Influences the Legislative Process."
02-23-2006
Patricia Woods was selected to be a Screener for the Social Science Research Council International Dissertation Research Fellowship program in 2005-2006, for the 2006 competition. It was the second year that she has acted as a Screener for the IDRF program.
02-24-2006
Congratulations to Goran Hyden for being selected as one of five recipients for UF's 2005-06 Doctoral Dissertation Advisor/Mentoring Award! I believe this is the first time one of our faculty has received the University-wide award. It is fitting recognition of Goran's many contributions to the graduate program over the years. (P.Williams).
02-28-2006
Congratulations to Sue Lawless for being selected to receive a 2005-06 UF Superior Accomplishment Award. This is well deserved recognition for Sue's hard work and dedication to our graduate program.
02-27-2006
Congratulations to Leslie Anderson and Larry Dodd who received a NSF grant ($127,000) to fund their study of the 2006 presidential election in Nicaragua and their continued research on democracy in Nicaragua. This will allow them follow-up the research they published in Learning Democracy (Chicago, 2005).
