School of Social and Political Sciences - Research Publications

Permanent URI for this collection

Search Results

Now showing 1 - 10 of 742
  • Item
    Thumbnail Image
    Geopolitan Democracy in the Anthropocene
    ECKERSLEY, R (Sage Journals, 2017)
    The proposed new epoch of the Anthropocene, whereby humans have become the dominant geological force shaping Earth systems, has attracted considerable interest in the social sciences and humanities but only scant attention from democratic theorists. This inquiry draws out the democratic problems associated with the two opposing narratives on governing the Anthropocene – Earth systems governance and ecomodernism – and juxtaposes them with a more critical narrative that draws out the democratic potential of the Anthropocene as a new source of critique of liberal democracy and a new resource for democratic renewal. While Ulrich Beck welcomed reflexive cosmopolitan democracy (understood as a civil culture of responsibility across borders) as the appropriate response to the world risk society, this narrative develops an account of hyper-reflexive ‘geopolitan democracy’ based on a more radical extension of democratic horizons of space, time, community and agency as the appropriate response to navigating the Anthropocene.
  • Item
    Thumbnail Image
    Ecological democracy and the rise and decline of liberal democracy: looking back, looking forward
    Eckersley, R (Taylor and Francis Group, 2020)
    The critical environmental political theory (EPT) of ecological democracy emerged in the 1990s when liberal democracy and cosmopolitanism appeared to be on the rise. A quarter of a century later, as both went into decline in the western heartland, a new iteration of ecological democracy has emerged, reflecting a significant shift in critical normative horizons, focus and method. Whereas the first iteration sought to critique and institutionally expand the coordinates of democracy – space, time, community and agency – to bring them into closer alignment with a cosmopolitan ecological and democratic imaginary, the second has connected ecology and democracy through everyday material practices and local participatory democracy from a more critical communitarian perspective. The respective virtues and problems of each iteration of ecological democracy are drawn out, and the complementarities and tensions between them are shown to be productive in maintaining theoretical and methodological pluralism and enhancing the prospects for sustainability and a multifaceted democracy.
  • Item
    Thumbnail Image
    Capital Punishment in Singapore: A Critical Analysis of State Justifications From 2004 to 2018
    Yap, A ; Tan, SJ (Queensland University of Technology, 2020)
    This article examines state justifications for capital punishment in Singapore. Singapore is a unique case study because capital punishment has largely been legitimised and justified by state officials. It illustrates how Singapore justifies capital punishment by analysing official discourse. Discussion will focus on the government’s narrative on capital punishment, which has been primarily directed against drug trafficking. Discussion will focus on Singapore’s death penalty regime and associated official discourse that seeks to justify state power to exercise such penalties, rather than the ethics and proportionality of capital punishment towards drug-related crimes. Critical analysis from a criminological perspective adds to the growing body of literature that seeks to conceptualise social and political phenomena in South-East Asia.
  • Item
  • Item
    No Preview Available
    Should we talk about the weather? How party competition and coalition participation influence parties' attention to economic issues
    Goldring, E ; Park, BB ; Williams, LK (SAGE PUBLICATIONS LTD, 2020-11)
    Media narratives of political campaigns paint a complex picture of parties carefully selecting communication strategies in response to the current social and economic climate as well as the strategic choices made by rival parties. Current empirical efforts based on simple ordinary least squares, however, fail to honor those complexities. We argue that ignoring the spatial and temporal dynamics at play produces misleading inferences about parties’ behavior. In an application of German parties’ attention to economic issues in official communications, we demonstrate that once scholars test the theories with a method that honors the inherent complexity of the process, the inferences about parties’ degree of responsiveness change. Indeed, proper specification of the model shows that scholars who ignore spatial dependence tend to overstate the degree to which parties are responsive to changing conditions (such as public opinion or economic indicators) and understate the role of other constraints. Most notably, we find that parties have varying levels of path dependence, parties emulate the strategies used by ideological neighbors, and coalition partners appear to coordinate their strategies. These findings have implications for understanding variation in parties’ messaging strategies and how voters perceive parties’ positions.
  • Item
    No Preview Available
    Pre-election violence and territorial control: Political dominance and subnational election violence in polarized African electoral systems
    Wahman, M ; Goldring, E (SAGE PUBLICATIONS LTD, 2020-01)
    Cross-national research on African electoral politics has argued that competition increases the prospects for pre-election violence. However, there is a dearth of systematic research on the effect of political competition on pre-election violence at the subnational level. We theorize that in African democracies characterized by competition at the national level but low subnational competitiveness (polarization), violence is often a manifestation of turf war and a tool to maintain and disrupt political territorial control. Consequently, contrary to expectations derived from the cross-national literature, pre-election violence is more likely in uncompetitive than competitive constituencies. Locally dominant as well as locally weak parties have incentives to perpetrate violence in uncompetitive constituencies. For locally dominant parties, violence is a tool to shrink the democratic space in their strongholds and maintain territorial control. For locally weak parties, violence can disturb the dominance of the opponent and protect their presence in hostile territory. We hypothesize that pre-election violence will be particularly common in opposition strongholds. In such locations, ruling parties can leverage their superior repressive resources to defend their ability to campaign, while the opposition can use their local capacity to reinforce the politics of territoriality. We test our hypotheses with original constituency-level election violence data from the 2016 Zambian elections. Data come from expert surveys of domestic election observers and represent a novel way of measuring low-level variations in election violence. Our analysis shows patterns of pre-election violence consistent with our theory on pre-election violence as a territorial tool.
  • Item
    Thumbnail Image
    Help is close at hand? Proximity and the effectiveness of peacekeepers
    Goldring, E ; Hendricks, M (SAGE Publications, 2018-10)
    How do the national origins of peacekeepers influence peacekeeping operations’ success? We argue that peacekeeping operations better protect civilians when a higher percentage of peacekeepers come from geographically proximate countries. These peacekeepers have been exposed to similar societal and cultural norms and are more invested in preventing conflict diffusion. Peacekeepers from proximate countries can better collect and analyze intelligence, are more effective at separating combatants, and are therefore more successful at protecting civilians. In making this argument, we also challenge the theory that diversity in a peacekeeping operation matters. We find support for both our mechanisms and show that the importance of diversity may have been overstated. Where a peacekeeping operation is present in civil conflicts, if a quarter of its personnel come from proximate countries, then all things being equal, it would completely prevent civilians dying. The results show policymakers the importance of recruiting peacekeepers from countries near to conflicts.
  • Item
    No Preview Available
    Fighting for a name on the ballot: constituency-level analysis of nomination violence in Zambia
    Goldring, E ; Wahman, M (Taylor and Francis Group, 2018-08-18)
    What factors increase the likelihood of nomination violence? Nomination violence can be an expression of both horizontal conflict, between local political elites, and vertical conflict, between national and local elites. We theorize about factors that may increase the risks of vertical and horizontal conflict and leverage a unique dataset of constituency-level nomination violence obtained from surveys with 464 domestic election observers active in the 2016 Zambian general election. Our statistical analyses show constituencies with an incumbent standing for re-election were more likely to experience nomination violence. Also, contrary to previous research on general election violence, we theorize and find that more rural constituencies had a higher propensity for nomination violence than urban constituencies. Our findings highlight the importance of intra-party power relations and the bargaining relationship between the centre and periphery.
  • Item
    Thumbnail Image
    Democracy in Reverse: The 2016 General Election in Zambia
    Goldring, E ; Wahman, M (SAGE Publications, 2016-12)
    On 11 August 2016, Zambia held elections for the presidency, National Assembly, local councillors, and mayors. Concurrently, a referendum was held on whether to enhance the Bill of Rights in the Constitution of Zambia. The elections were significant for several reasons: It was the first contest under a newly amended Constitution, which introduced important changes to the electoral framework. It also marked a break with Zambia's positive historical record of arranging generally peaceful elections. Moreover, the election featured an electoral playing field that was notably tilted in favour of the incumbent party. Ultimately, the incumbent president, Edgar Lungu of the Patriotic Front, edged out opposition challenger Hakainde Hichilema of the United Party for National Development. The election was controversial and the opposition mounted an unsuccessful legal challenge to the final results. The 2016 elections represent a reversal in the quality of Zambian democracy and raise questions about the country's prospects for democratic consolidation.
  • Item
    No Preview Available
    Rethinking Democratic Diffusion: Bringing Regime Type Back In
    Goldring, E ; Greitens, SC (SAGE PUBLICATIONS INC, 2020-02)
    Studies of democratic diffusion often emphasize geographic proximity: democratization in a country or region makes democratization nearby more likely. We argue that regime type has been underappreciated; authoritarian breakdown and democratization often diffuse along networks of similar regimes. A regime’s type affects its vulnerability to popular challenge, and regime similarity increases the likelihood that protest strategies developed against one regime are effective against similar regimes. We employ a qualitative case study from China to generate our theory, then test it quantitatively and with out-of-sample cases. We find that regime similarity strongly predicts autocratic breakdown and democratic diffusion, making both outcomes more likely. Including regime similarity significantly reduces the effect of geographic proximity, although geographic proximity may increase the effect of regime similarity. Reinterpreting democratic diffusion as a regime-type phenomenon calls for revision to conventional wisdom on the role of international factors in authoritarian breakdown and democratization.