Publication Type: Paper/Poster Proposal
Abstract: While we have found that comparative trade-off tasks had inferior validity compared to rating tasks, our prior studies had respondents evaluate elements that were highly differentiated in terms of importance or favorability. However, comparative tasks have been proposed to function better when the elements to be evaluated are harder to differentiate in terms of importance or favorability. Based on the results from a pilot study, we created element sets that were either clearly differentiated from high to low in importance and positivity or were less differentiated (all more desirable/important). Respondents were then randomly assigned to 1 of 6 evaluative tasks (rating, 5 comparative tasks - full ranking of elements, top 3 ranking, top-bottom ranking, constant sum, and paired comparison). We replicated and extended many of our earlier results. Some notable differences between the tasks emerged when the elements were less clearly differentiated.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: In this essay I propose an approach for integrating the study of courts into the mainstream analysis of institutional politics. It is designed to shift the attention of our field away from those familiar research questions that appeal to court buffs—including the determinants of judicial decision making, the internal dynamics of opinion-writing, and the specialized doctrines of constitutional law—and to focus instead on questions that should be central to scholars who study American politics, comparative politics, international institutions, or inter-institutional relations. It suggests that students of law and courts spend less time on the behavior of judges and more time explaining the ways in which law, courts, and judges routinely figure into the broader interests and agendas of other power holders. It is a “regime politics” approach in the sense that it attempts to situate the distinctive stories of judicial politics into a more general set of stories about how regimes organize, exercise, and protect their power.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This essay suggests a strategy for teaching political philosophy. In response to the usual difficulties in capturing the interest of students and in an attempt to guide them through a detailed consideration of a political theory, a two-step approach is suggested. First the student’s attention is directed to the contemporary relevance of the questions posed by the classical political theorists, and then, a simple model of the internal structure of a political theory is used in order to facilitate the analysis and comparison between theories.

Supporting Publications:
Supporting Document

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: To understand the role of creative agency in organizations, structural and systemic perspective need to be complemented with actor-centric perspectives. This article discusses ‘organizational action’ as the composite of individuals acting with interrelated (but not uniform) intentions. My analytical framework divides organizational action into three core elements: routine, planned, and improvisational. While routine action is commonly acknowledged both as the source and outcome of social institutions, the extant theory has largely ignored the effects institutions have on the other two elements of organizational action. This exposes an integral but yet underemphasized role of planning and deliberation should have in neo-institutional theory. Social institutions influence the formation of plans, while plans themselves represent important micro-institutions in contemporary organizations. My analysis also contributes to the understanding of organizational improvisation by examining the factors affecting the interpretation of action situations and the construction of pragmatic responses. Routines and plans are identified as the key elements which mediate institutional effects to improvisation.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to critically assess of the possi-bili-ties, limita-tions and specific demands of the use of the camera and its im-agery (photo-graph, film, video) within the social sciences as well as to provide a theoreti-cal and methodologi-cal basis for the use of visuals in social scientific en-deav-ours. The object of this enquiry directly ties in with the recent efforts of emerging subdisciplines of the social sciences: 'visual sociology' and 'visual an-thropology', which seek to ex-plore the potential of visual media to collect data and facilitate scientific com-mu-ni-cation.