Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: We live, as all of us here by virtue of our interest in politics know, in a time when completely contrary movements seem to simultaneously gather strength, including globalization and nationalism. So, to speak about North American studies is immediately to bring to mind such disturbing and valid challenges to historical ecumenicism as the demands for recognition of those struggling for autonomy in Quebec and Chiapas, of native peoples throughout the continent, and of strong but still frustrated movements for the overdue revision of the historical record to include women, gays, and ethnic groups. In meeting such aspirations we are still, to paraphrase Winston Churchill on World War II, not at the end but perhaps at the end of the beginning.The authors, with considerable experience in teaching courses on North American studies in a leading Mexican university, argue that for success, such a program should be thematic and problem oriented. In addition the cultural implications of the North American Free Trade Agreement should be analyzed closely.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: How does trade affect the persistence of imposed polities? The newly imposed governments in Afghanistan and Iraq draw attention to imposed polities and pose questions about their survival. To assess the likelihood of an imposed polity's success an examination of its political, social, and economic characteristics is necessary. This study analyzes the influence of trade on polity survival. Previous research indicates imposed polities are fragile over their entire existence. For a polity to survive it is important the government pursue policies that encourage economic development. Trade is central to economic development. It enables leaders to distribute rents to its supporters, and is correlated with higher wages for workers and low inflation. On the other hand, disruption of trade may lead to economic crises and encourage regime failure. The influence of trade on the persistence of an imposed polity is dependent upon the stability of the polity prior to imposition. If a stable polity is replaced through external imposition, it is important for trade to continue to maintain the support of the winning coalition. However, if an unstable polity is replaced, trade will not have as large of an impact on persistence because there is no winning coalition that must be satisfied. To examine the effect of trade on imposed polity persistence, I rely on a sample of 90 imposed polities from 1885-2000 and an event history framework.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This paper examines the current political debates and discursive strategies provoked by the question of Turkish accession into the European Union. The specter of Turkey, a predominantly Islamic nation, becoming a member of the European Union (EU) divides European Parliamentary (EP) political parties. Our analysis indicates that recent EP debates reveal a sense of political anxiety over the nature and future of the EU if Turkey were to join. Turkish admission cuts to the core issue as to whether and how the EU would hold onto its political legitimacy in a post-accession era as a confederated democratic polity. This legitimacy that anchors the EU is perceived in nationalist terms across the spectrum of EP political parties, although how this legitimacy is articulated differs according to political persuasion. The debate over Turkey thus devolves into a debate over the Europe of the EU, its structures, politics and character as a political system and culture. But the question of a post-national Europe hardly arises as such within the debates regarding Turkish admission. In this, reside the manifestations of organized hypocrisy: what is said is delinked from what is done during the course of EU-Turkish negotiations, and, more recently, what is stated by EP Members of Parliament (MEP) with respect to what the Turks must do to satisfy accession criteria. The EP debates thus omit what Europeans must do to reconstitute the EU as a viable (at least) or effective (at most) political structure at the supranational level. This defines the discursive strategies shaping EP debates: how to avoid confronting the political task of creating a truly supranational polity that is at once political but tolerant, multiperspectival but unified, while emphasizing the presumed threats posed by Turkish accession to the EU as a whole but grounded in traditional notions of national interest. We find that debates over Turkish EU accession demonstrate a pervasive pattern of denial regarding the political fragility of state legitimacy within the EU. This discursive pattern ignores the central issue of the hegemonic status of the EU as constituted by a “community of sovereign states ” and the need to develop a “popular” form of supranational politics, one that would engage European citizens in a manner appropriate to a singular political formation. To demonstrate this, we review the history of negotiations leading to conferral of candidacy status on Turkey and critically examine the discursive or rhetorical templates clustering around the major EP political parties, particularly during the EP debates over the Eurling Report recommending a positive vote on behalf of Turkish candidacy. Finally, we examine the dynamics of Turkish accession in reverse images by analyzing how and in what ways the EU and Turkish membership is represented by Turkish political parties in order to assess congruence between discursive strategies, political persuasion and popular will.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Abstract: An independent media does not arise from altruistic impulses of elites or from normative concerns of the masses. Rather, the institutional safeguards that provide operating room for an independent media are the result of elite bargaining. To the extent that this bargaining occurs, a free press will be possible. If elite groups do not need to bargain in order to assume power, an independent media will be relatively unsustainable. I seek support for this theoretical assertion using data on the now independent nations of the former Soviet bloc.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Recently, the question of the taking of private property for general economic development has loomed large in American constitutional jurisprudence. In particular, a recent decision by the United States Supreme Court which upheld the taking of modest private homes for the purpose of commercial and residential economic development ignited an unprecedented outcry from politicians, journalists, and ordinary citizens. This paper will explore the deeper structural issues in property and its protection that cases like this raise in the American and other constitutional (and non-constitutional) systems. It will argue that justice, in such cases, requires recognition of the deep linkages among property, the meaning of community, and socio-economic inequality.