Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Does political affiliation affect criminalization and the criminal process, and if so, how? This paper aims to answer this question by examining and comparing two types of ideological opposition to military service in Israel: the 2002-2003 left-wing objection to serve in the army due to the occupation of Palestinian territories, and the 2005 right-wing objection to serve due to the disengagement from the Gaza strip, which involved evacuating Jewish settlers. Both groups challenged the ethos of compulsory and egalitarian military service in Israel, but differed in their demographic characteristics and motivations. The paper uses a multi-method ethnographic analysis to compare the criminalization policies, and case disposition practices, applied by the Israeli military justice system to these two groups. I begin by offering a genealogical account of how investigatory and prosecutorial policies were created and shaped, and then move on to provide a comparative quantitative analysis of case disposition, based on Personnel Unit and Military Advocate General records. The findings are supplemented by in-depth interviews with military legal personnel and initial findings from a media survey. The findings address three possible criminal processing models: a formal-legal model, emphasizing legally-relevant variables; a substantive-political model, highlighting the political and demographic differences between the groups; and an organizational model, highlighting concerns about caseload. Initial findings from this work in progress lend support to a complex combination of these models as an explanation for the army’s policies in criminalizing and processing disobedient soldiers.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: The analysis of political competition as one-dimensional (left-versus-right) is widespread. This single dimension is a useful shortcut for a number of positions on a variety of issues and policies. Nonetheless, political conflict is often multi-dimensional. Using a single dimension for describing political competition in such circumstances is inappropriate. I present a simple model with two dimensions and three actors (constituencies) with preferences over policies associated with each of the two dimensions. I use this model to analyze the most recent presidential elections in three European countries: France, Romania, and Ukraine.

Publication Type: Proceeding

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: We argue that past efforts to seek, measure, and understand left-wing authoritarianism (LWA) were flawed. Specifically, we argue that the values scales in past research do not resonate with the contemporary left and that the threat measures and manipulations do not sufficiently threaten today’s liberals and leftists. We create new values and threat scales and compare their performance to some of the measures from past work. We also use an experiment to manipulate threat. We find little to no evidence that an interaction between values and standing decision threat predicts LWA. We do find that our values scale interacts with the experimental manipulation of threat in the predicted manner. We find that our two new scales (liberal justice and liberal threat) are strong predictors of authoritarian attitudes and behavioral intentions when modeled as direct additive effects.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: While many political scientists agree that radical right-wing parties are significant actors in the politics of a number of western democracies, in particular in the form of transnational networks and movements, assessment of their impact has been lacking. This paper endeavors to fill this gap. It explores the methodology of impact measurement dealing with opposition political parties outside of parliament and social movements. The paper presents a framework for the analysis of impact on three levels: institutional, agendas, and policy. The issue focus for analysis is on immigration politics from 1990 to the present in Western Europe. Future research should investigate other indicators for the various levels of impact analysis and may perhaps argue for additional levels of impact. Yet this study provides an important step toward measuring impact by providing a framework for levels of analysis and initial tests of three indicators, one for each level. It concludes with several observations about the evidence of impact from radical right-wing parties.
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