Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This paper explores the ways in which political foundings matter for democratic theory. In the first part, I engage with the "normative" and "decisionist" notions of founding offered by Habermas and Derrida, respectively. While for Habermas the act of foundation marks a "constitutional beginning", for Derrida it is a manifestation of "originary violence". I suggest that both approaches are unsatisfactory. Contra Habermas, I argue that democratic theory should not ignore the dark side of political foundings, such as historical injustices and the construction of hegemonic identities. Yet, contra Derrida, I do not take founding violence as an indication of a profound paradox inherent in the normative grounds of democracy. In the second part, I develop an alternative approach that unfolds the impact of founding on political culture. On this reading, political foundings produce persistent patterns of inclusion and exclusion, identity and difference, remembrance and forgetting, all of which are woven into the very fabric of the political community, lingering in its institutions, practices and self-understanding. My thesis is that the legacies of founding, for better or worse, have a strong influence on the course of democratic politics.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This paper will look at the development of civil religion in America. We will focus particularly on the role of the Founding Fathers and pre-modern presidents (Washington-LBJ) in shaping America’s civil religion. We will also examine the use by political actors of the Founders for partisan purposes.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Understanding conditions that encourage or discourage diversity among organizations in any sector is an issue of great theoretical and practical significance. Surprisingly, little research has investigated either the degree of diversity in a set of organizations at any time or changes in organizational diversity over time. Our paper fills this gap. We use one core attribute -- production technology -- to determine organizational forms. We focus on newly founded organizations because variation at founding has a direct impact on the composition of any sector. We are particularly interested in newly formed niches because in such settings, organizational variation is likely to have long-lasting effects. We develop hypotheses concerning the impact of regulative, normative, and cognitive environmental features on the diversity of newly-founded firms, and test them using data on the independent power industry in the United States, examining variation among small-power producers and industrial cogenerators founded into a niche created by the Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act of 1978. Our results show that greater regulative support and cognitive legitimacy for this niche increased founding heterogeneity, while the creation of normative institutions in the niche decreased founding heterogeneity.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: I analyze under what conditions nation-states are likely to construct modern education systems embracing educational ministries and laws over two centuries 1800-2000. More than eighty percent of contemporary nation-states have founded educational ministries and compulsory education laws over the past two centuries. The current explanations for the formation and expansion of national education systems focus on functional needs of modern schooling for economic development or social progress. These approaches are useful, but they miss the important organizational reality of state action. I argue that (1) the expanded world culture (e.g. a worldwide emphasis on education) enhances the founding rates of educational ministries and laws; (2) newly independent countries are more likely to adopt world models of educational systems; (3) nation-states that have conformed to world culture tend to incorporate world models of educational systems. Data on educational ministries and laws are derived from The Stateman’s Yearbook and a variety of other sources. In this study quantitative event history models are utilized to examine the factors that affect founding rates of 140 countries’ educational ministries and laws during the period 1800-2000. This paper aims to reformulate the existing accounts for educational expansion, beyond society-specific ideas that focus on educational functions.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This paper developed from several hundred hours of research into antebellum court opinions dealing with search and seizure issues. The author is preparing an article on the subject of the exclusionary rule and the Constitutional Framers' intent. This paper lays out some of the pathbreaking findings of this research, and suggests that popular conceptions of the exclusionary rule as a recent imposition of judicial activism are incorrect; there were exclusionary-rule corollaries among Founding-era case law and trial practice.