Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Sociologists and philosophers provide a number of different ways to distinguish "real" science from psuedo-science, ranging from boundary maintenance (Gieryn 1999) to institutional norms (Merton 1973), from the social construction of scientific knowledge (Bloor 1991) to the rhetorical analysis of science (Taylor 1996). I do two specific things in this paper. First, I present a new way to demarcate science from other systems. I then present the findings of an exploratory project that compares parapsychologists with cognitive psychologists as a way of examining whether theoretical implications are accurate. The findings tentatively indicate that the structural theory of legitimacy does help explain how to differentiate science from psuedo-science.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: The legitimacy of democratic governments is intimately tied to the conduct of elections. Since the early 1990s, international monitoring and certification of elections has grown from a cottage industry to a multi-national enterprise as organizations around the globe have moved into the business of election observation and monitoring. How does the rise of international election monitoring effect the legitimacy of democratic regimes? What links can be drawn between international election monitoring and electoral manipulation? Since domestic, democratic legitimacy is intimately tied to the holding of “free and fair” elections, these two seemingly unrelated questions are in fact, tightly integrated in practice. This paper presents the conceptual background to a larger project that aims to investigate these issues. The paper presents a research strategy and set of hypotheses to test several aspects of the relationship between international election monitoring, domestic political legitimacy, and electoral manipulation. First, the paper examines how and when the judgments of international observation missions affect legitimacy of regimes, both domestically and internationally. It presents a range of hypotheses about why and when international observer and monitoring missions will affect domestic legitimacy. The second section evaluates various methods of electoral manipulation, attempting to trace how the techniques used by incumbents have evolved over time. The third section of the paper will lay out a research program that will attempt to link the above two sections, aiming to show that when the conditions are right for effective international observation and monitoring, incumbents who nevertheless see it in their interests to manipulate elections will shift their methods. The paper will argue that the impact of international observation and monitoring efforts on domestic politics (measured through electoral fraud) is filtered through several intervening variables, such as vulnerability to internal threats, pre-existing levels of internal legitimacy, the presence or absence of a security dilemma situation in transitional regimes, and loan/aid dependence.
NOTE: This paper represents a work in progress, and is in the infancy stage at this point. Therefore, I am not comfortable placing it up on the web. Please contact me directly if you wish to obtain the complete paper.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This paper examines the effect of terrorism on the legitimacy of state. Primarily, this paper investigates whether terrorism challenges or reinforces legitimacy. To address this question of state legitimacy, the paper starts with an interrogation of the concept of legitimacy. The paper then moves to reveal how the state ensures its legitimacy by framing the act and actor, terrorism and terrorist, in a specific light. In this review, historical continuities and breaks reveal more than a simple embodiment of a nation’s will to fight an already fully given hazard in the international arena. This paper argues that, whatever real and imagined challenges terrorism as violence pose to the United States, it has also given impetus to the rise of a field of policies and practices historically instrumental for the American Statecraft. This paper also demonstrates that U.S. foreign policy has taken terrorism away from the terrorists, particularly its genealogies and histories as well as its meanings and effects. It readily appropriates and recasts terrorism as a tool in American statecraft.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: My paper explores the concept of legitimacy in non-state polities, under which I understand in particular governance in failed and fragile states. I argue that traditional theories of political legitimacy are not applicable in these contexts because they

Publication Type: Proceeding