scholarly journals Analyzing Failed Institutional Change Attempts

2021 ◽  
pp. 106591292198944
Author(s):  
Sukriti Issar ◽  
Matthias Dilling
Keyword(s):  
Institutional Change ◽  
Comparative Politics ◽  
Change Agents ◽  
The United States ◽  
Coalition Building ◽  
Strategic Action ◽  
Formal Stability ◽  
Political Effects ◽  
Analytical Strategies ◽  
Empirical Regularity

Theoretical advances in the study of institutional change center around a productive paradox. While change agents can take strategic action to change institutions, institutions display a remarkable level of formal stability. From this paradox, we expect that attempts to change institutions are an empirical regularity and that many formal change attempts will fail. This article contributes to historical institutionalism by analyzing the political effects of failed formal institutional change attempts on institutional sequences. Failed institutional change attempts could be mere blips, having little effect on subsequent institutional trajectories, or even inoculate against future attempts. Failed attempts could also lay the ideational groundwork, aid in coalition building, and garner concessions for subsequent institutional change, or convince change agents to alter their strategy. The article suggests analytical strategies to assess the effects of failed institutional change attempts, drawing on examples from comparative politics and two extended case illustrations from Italian party politics and the Affordable Care Act in the United States.

After Victory

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. John Ikenberry
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Politics ◽  
World Order ◽  
Balance Of Power ◽  
The United States ◽  
Big Bang ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Napoleonic Wars ◽  
Power Politics ◽  
The Cold War

The end of the Cold War was a “big bang” reminiscent of earlier moments after major wars, such as the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 and the end of the world wars in 1919 and 1945. But what do states that win wars do with their newfound power, and how do they use it to build order? This book examines postwar settlements in modern history, arguing that powerful countries do seek to build stable and cooperative relations, but the type of order that emerges hinges on their ability to make commitments and restrain power. The book explains that only with the spread of democracy in the twentieth century and the innovative use of international institutions—both linked to the emergence of the United States as a world power—has order been created that goes beyond balance of power politics to exhibit “constitutional” characteristics. Blending comparative politics with international relations, and history with theory, the book will be of interest to anyone concerned with the organization of world order, the role of institutions in world politics, and the lessons of past postwar settlements for today.

scholarly journals Discursive Strategies and Sequenced Institutional Change: The Case of Marriage Equality in the United States

2021 ◽  
pp. 003232172110205
Author(s):  
Giulia Mariani ◽  
Tània Verge
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Institutional Change ◽  
The United States ◽  
Marriage Equality ◽  
Agent Based ◽  
Discursive Strategies ◽  
Policy Debates ◽  
The Status ◽  
Private Actors

Building on historical and discursive institutionalism, this article examines the agent-based dynamics of gradual institutional change. Specifically, using marriage equality in the United States as a case study, we examine how actors’ ideational work enabled them to make use of the political and discursive opportunities afforded by multiple venues to legitimize the process of institutional change to take off sequentially through layering, displacement, and conversion. We also pay special attention to how the discursive strategies deployed by LGBT advocates, religious-conservative organizations and other private actors created new opportunities to influence policy debates and tip the scales to their preferred policy outcome. The sequential perspective adopted in this study allows problematizing traditional conceptualizations of which actors support or contest the status quo, as enduring oppositional dynamics lead them to perform both roles in subsequent phases of the institutional change process.

Political Competition and Right-Wing Terrorism: A County-Level Analysis of the United States

2021 ◽  
pp. 106591292110067
Author(s):  
Stephen C. Nemeth ◽  
Holley E. Hansen
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Politics ◽  
Political Competition ◽  
The United States ◽  
County Level ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Social Changes ◽  
Electoral Outcomes ◽  
Economic Anxiety ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Level Analysis

While many previous studies on U.S. right-wing violence center on factors such as racial threat and economic anxiety, we draw from comparative politics research linking electoral dynamics to anti-minority violence. Furthermore, we argue that the causes of right-wing terrorism do not solely rest on political, economic, or social changes individually, but on their interaction. Using a geocoded, U.S. county-level analysis of right-wing terrorist incidents from 1970 to 2016, we find no evidence that poorer or more diverse counties are targets of right-wing terrorism. Rather, right-wing violence is more common in areas where “playing the ethnic card” makes strategic sense for elites looking to shift electoral outcomes: counties that are in electorally competitive areas and that are predominantly white.

Ethnographic Approaches to Contentious Politics: The What, How, and Why

2021 ◽  
pp. 001041402110255
Author(s):  
Diana Fu ◽  
Erica S. Simmons
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Politics ◽  
The United States ◽  
Contentious Politics ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Ethnographic Methods ◽  
Political Ethnography ◽  
Units Of Analysis ◽  
Social Meanings ◽  
Methodological Tool ◽  
Why Questions

How should we study contentious politics in an era rife with new forms of contention, both in the United States and abroad? The introduction to this special issue draws attention to one particularly crucial methodological tool in the study of contention: political ethnography. It showcases the ways in which ethnographic approaches can contribute to the study of contentious politics. Specifically, it argues that “what,” “how,” and “why” questions are central to the study of contention and that ethnographic methods are particularly well-suited to answering them. It also demonstrates how ethnographic methods push scholars to both expand the objects of inquiry and rethink what the relevant units of analysis might be. By uncovering hidden processes, exploring social meanings, and giving voice to unheard stories, ethnography and “ethnography-plus” approaches contribute to the study of contention and to comparative politics, writ large.

“The Pleasures of Merely Circulating”

2014 ◽  
Vol 69 (2) ◽  
pp. 151-174
Author(s):  
Caroline Gelmi
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
The Public ◽  
Early American ◽  
Female Authors ◽  
Political Effects ◽  
Early National ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Cultural Functions

Caroline Gelmi, “‘The Pleasures of Merely Circulating’: Sappho and Early American Newspaper Poetry” (pp. 151–174) This essay examines how early national verse cultures Americanized the popular figure of Sappho. Newspaper parodies of fragment 31, which circulated widely in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, mocked English poet Ambrose Philips’s well-known translation of Sappho’s “Phainetai moi” ode in order to address concerns over the role of Englishness in the United States. The parodies achieved these political effects by allegorizing their own conditions of print circulation and deflating the cultural associations of fragment 31 and Philips’s translation with the lyric. In this way, these poems were able to address a number of political issues, from English imperialism in Ireland to the specter of English aristocracy in the U.S. federal government. This study of Sappho’s role as a figure for American print circulation in the early nineteenth century also offers a pre-history of the more familiar midcentury association of Sappho with the Poetess. As a figure for the Poetess, Sappho came to embody anxieties over female authors in the marketplace, representing concerns that the public circulation of the Poetess’ work and the promiscuous circulation of her body were one and the same. This essay tells the rich backstory to these more familiar concepts, tracing Sappho’s earlier entanglements with print circulation and the political and cultural functions she served.

The Comparative Politics of Environmental Justice

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kemi Fuentes-George
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Justice ◽  
Environmental Justice ◽  
Comparative Politics ◽  
Agricultural Development ◽  
Close Association ◽  
The United States ◽  
Industrialized Countries ◽  
Environmental Injustice ◽  
Environmental Advocacy

Although the terms “environmental justice” and “environmental racism” emerged due to race-based mobilization in the United States, justice is a constant feature of environmental struggles around the world. Pursuing social justice in environmental advocacy can be difficult, but case studies of activism in places including New Zealand, Mexico, Jamaica, Brazil, and the United States show that it is possible. Environmental injustice emerges when populations that are already politically and socioeconomically marginalized disproportionately bear the costs of environmental consumption, and they are often systematically excluded from the benefits of this consumption. Although different political systems vary in how they structure marginalization, this close association of social injustice with environmental injustice characterizes cases like fossil fuel extraction in industrialized countries and agricultural development in the Global South alike. While skeptics have argued that promoting environmentalism is counterproductive to social justice, because environmental regulations often constrain economic growth, combining the two can lead to more sustainable environmental practices.

scholarly journals Exit, Voice and Political Change: Evidence from Swedish Mass Migration to the United States

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mounir Karadja ◽  
Erik Prawitz
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Political Change ◽  
The United States ◽  
Travel Costs ◽  
Mass Migration ◽  
Initial Wave ◽  
Political Effects ◽  
Welfare Expenditures ◽  
Using Data

We study the political effects of mass emigration to the United States in the nineteenth century using data from Sweden. To instrument for total emigration over several decades, we exploit severe local frost shocks that sparked an initial wave of emigration, interacted with within-country travel costs. Our estimates show that emigration substantially increased the local demand for political change, as measured by labor movement membership, strike participation, and voting. Emigration also led to de facto political change, increasing welfare expenditures as well as the likelihood of adopting more inclusive political institutions.

The Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers International Union: Refining Strategies for Labor

1997 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 125-138 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Wooding ◽  
Charles Levenstein ◽  
Beth Rosenberg
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Movement ◽  
The United States ◽  
Environmental Crisis ◽  
Coalition Building ◽  
Political Struggle ◽  
Organizational Goals ◽  
Trade Unionism ◽  
Community Activists ◽  
History Of ◽  
Traditional Roles

In a period of declining union membership and severe economic and environmental crisis it is important that labor unions rethink their traditional roles and organizational goals. Responding to some of these problems and reflecting a history of innovative and progressive unionism, the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers Union (OCAW) has sought to address occupational and environmental health problems within the context of a political struggle. This study suggests that by joining with the environmental movement and community activists, by pursuing a strategy of coalition building, and by developing an initiative to build and advocate for a new political party, OCAW provides a model for reinvigorating trade unionism in the United States.

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