College of Behavioral & Social Sciences
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The collections in this community comprise faculty research works, as well as graduate theses and dissertations..
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Item Rule of the Fewer: Electoral Inversions and their Consequences(2024) Friedman, Jack Ryan Chambers; Calvo, Ernesto; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The advent of democracy is supposed to represent a transition from the rule of the few to the rule of the many. In this folkloric account, majority rule is both the embodiment of democracy and its source of legitimacy. Unsurprisingly, however, democratic realities are far more complex—and sometimes more disappointing—than democratic ideals. Although democracy is often equated with the principle of majority rule, government by popular minorities is more common in modern liberal democracies than is government by popular majorities. But if the ideal of majority rule often goes unfulfilled, a redeeming quality of most elections in most democracies is that they nevertheless manage to satisfy the principle of “plurality rule.” That is, even when popular minorities govern, as is so often the case, the minority that governs is usually the largest minority. But not always. Sometimes governments are elected without even the support of a popular plurality. This phenomenon is called an electoral inversion; it is the focus of my dissertation. More precisely, electoral inversions occur when the party (or coalition of parties) that wins the most votes nevertheless loses the election. While scholars have long recognized that electoral inversions can and sometimes do occur, especially with respect to the U.S. Electoral College system for presidential elections, no systematic attempt has been made either to identify how often electoral inversions occur in the world’s established liberal democracies, or to understand what their consequences are for democracy when they do occur. I address both of these unanswered questions. My first objective is to understand where, when, and thus how often electoral inversions have occurred historically. To do so, I undertake a descriptive study of electoral inversions in 28 established democracies. The results show that electoral inversions have occurred in roughly 8% of elections between 1900 and 2022. To better understand the consequences of electoral inversions, my second objective, I examine how inversions affect democratic support in two countries that have experienced electoral inversions in recent years: Canada (2019 and 2021) and the United States (2000 and 2016). Building on the “winner-loser gap” literature, I show that electoral inversions magnify winner-loser effects on democratic support. While I find consistent evidence in the U.S. and Canada that inversions widen winner-loser gaps by weakening losers’ support for democracy, I also find, paradoxically, that the 2016 U.S. inversion increased winners’ support. I argue that the negative effect of electoral inversions on losers’ support is the consequence of a basic and widely shared normative expectation—which electoral inversions violate—that democratic elections ought to respond the preferences of the greater number. The positive effect of inversions on winners’ support in the U.S. is more difficult to explain. I consider whether this result indicates a propensity of these voters to conflate democracy with its short-term benefits, or whether it reflects underlying conditions of political polarization. Either way, since democracy depends on the support of its citizens—and in particular, on their willingness to accept the results of democratic processes—these findings have implications for continued democratic stability in countries that experience electoral inversions.Item Religious belief, religious minorities, and support for democracy(2023) Overos, Henry David; Birnir, Johanna K.; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Over the last two decades, the intersection of religion in politics and democratic backsliding has prompted questions about public support for democracy. This study investigates the link between individual-level religious beliefs, religious minority status, and support for democracy. It presents a modified authoritarian personality theory, proposing that higher religious commitment correlates with stronger support for authoritarianism and weaker support for liberal democracy. This hypothesis is tested using Latent Class Analysis (LCA) and validated through the World Values Survey data. A survey experiment in Indonesia in 2022 examines the impact of minority status on views regarding liberal democracy. The findings indicate that religious commitment is associated with reduced support for liberal democracy, and minority status can affect perspectives on democracy under specific political contexts. Additionally, this research pioneers a large-scale approach to measuring religious experience through clustering analysis. It underscores the need to explore how democracy is perceived differently by diverse segments of the population, adding depth to the study of democratic support.Item A TALE OF TWO MODERNITIES: A LIBERAL ALTERNATIVE TO A LIBERAL MODERNITY FROM VICO TO HAVEL(2014) Otruba, Alexander Peter; Tismaneanu, Vladimir; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The resurgence of the political theory of Marx, Lenin and even Communism itself is increasingly seen in left political theory as the only means of successfully mobilizing the "energy and rage" of the people against capitalism in the wake of the 2008 economic collapse. It also threatens to draw politics and political theory back into the dangerous territory of twentieth-century illusions. This dissertation--taking its cue from Jeffrey Isaac's 1995 article in DISSENT condemning the "strange silence of political theory" regarding the revolutions of 1989--looks to introduce the political thought of 1989 into contemporary left political theory. The work of Leszek Kolakowski, Adam Michnik, Vaclav Havel and Gyorgy Konrad are representative of a political theory that consciously works to avoid the ideological traps and illusions packaged within modernity's displacement of the authority of the natural world with the Cartesian promise to be able to both know, order, and modify that world. This dissertation places the east and central European dissident theorists of 1989 in conversation with Giambattista Vico--who in his oration On method in contemporary fields of study (1710) recognized the presence of this tension that would undergird modernity--and the Italian antifascist theorists Benedetto Croce, Piero Gobetti and Antonio Gramsci, whom he would later inspire. Through their similar confrontations with modern totalitarian states, both the Italian antifascist theorists and the theorists of 1989 identified within modernity a rupture between "truth", concrete reality, and humanity itself. A rupture that produced regimes and politics that promised humanity's emancipation from absolutism, while normalizing its subjugation in new and increasingly sophisticated ways. Their revised theoretical approach to modernity sets aside the ideological illusions of the twentieth-century in a compelling manner, and instead offer a principled foundation for the active preservation of democracy and human autonomy. Read collectively they represent more just a critique, but also a sophisticated set of political ideas that answer those who would otherwise approach them as naïve revolutionists or even defenders of the status quo.Item Foundations of Juristocracy(2014) Paik, Sung-Wook; Soltan, Karol E.; Elkin, Stephen L.; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Differences in institutional architecture and political culture notwithstanding, constitutional democracies worldwide are increasingly relying on courts for their maintenance, most notably in regards to the settlement of conflicts involving fundamental rights and values. This dissertation explores the foundations of juristocracy and argues that its intellectual roots lies in the proliferation of a depoliticized understanding of democracy that emerged as a reaction to the experience of totalitarianism. By examining the historical, institutional, and ethical shifts that shaped constitutional development after World War II, it reveals how contemporary democracies have accepted the diagnosis that the rise of totalitarian and authoritarian regimes was caused by an inherent flaw within democracy, particularly its inability to counteract subversive movements that harness legitimacy from plebiscitarian methods and mass mobilization. The anxiety towards unconstrained collectivities and majoritarian power has led intellectuals in both the United States and Europe to re-conceptualize democracy as the distribution of fundamental rights, as opposed to the distribution of self-governing power amongst citizens to collectively determine public affairs. As a result of this emerging consensus, the participatory dimension of democratic politics was attenuated in the name of preserving the idea of democracy safeguarded through judicial or quasi-judicial means. Although this conceptual shift has been obscured by its use of familiar jargons from early modern political thought, this dissertation offers a critical inquiry into understanding how the core premises of constitutional democracy has been historically reconstructed in a way that informs the rise of juristocracy across different parts of the world.Item Reinhold Niebuhr and an Ethic of Humility in Deliberative Politics(2014) Spino, Matthew Peter; Glass, James; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The purpose of this dissertation is to investigate the degree to which the political psychology of Reinhold Niebuhr contributes to a more capacious theory of deliberative politics and to what degree such a theory may permit individuals to express themselves with more workable forms of democratic practice. Considerations of Reinhold Niebuhr's understanding of impermanence, anxiety, self-reflection, and empathy borne of humility guide the framework of the argument in that they inform and augment individual political preferences. The author uses these ideas to develop a theory of deliberative politics built upon the empathetic tendencies found in the self-scrutinizing humility of Reinhold Niebuhr's politics. The author considers this theory in contradistinction to ascendant strains in political theory and theologies of public life, which at times may disavowal Niebuhr's understanding of natural theology, his correspondent political realism, or otherwise miscategorize Niebuhr's political claims. The degree to which Niebuhr's ethical framework can or should be separated from Christian considerations of ethics more broadly, especially from Christian eschatology, is a major topic of discussion. Contrasting Niebuhr with other Christian ethicists permits us to see in what manner Niebuhr's political psychology might retain political value beyond a particular religious community. This work also considers limits of Niebuhr's understanding of liberal politics, and whether an ethic of humility can be overly disempowering at times. Tension between individual and aggregate political perspectives frames that discussion.Item Dialectics of Disenchantment: Totalitarianism and Partisan Review(2011) Shechter, Benli Moshe; Tismaneanu, Vladimir; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation takes the literary and culturally modern magazine, Partisan Review (1934-2003), as its case study, specifically recounting its early intellectual history from 1934 to 1941. During this formative period, its contributing editors broke from their initial engagement with political radicalism and extremism to re-embrace the demo-liberalism of America's foundational principles during, and in the wake of, the Second World War. Indeed, Partisan Review's history is the history of thinking and re-thinking "totalitarianism" as its editors journeyed through the dialectics of disenchantment. Following their early (mis)adventures pursuant of the radical politics of literature, their break in the history of social and political thought, sounding pragmatic calls for an end to ideological fanaticism, was one that then required courage, integrity, and a belief in the moral responsibility of humanity. Intellectuals long affiliated with the journal thus provide us with models of eclectic intellectual life in pursuit of the open society, as does, indeed, the Partisan Review.Item Power Sharing or Power Hoarding? Conflict and Democratic Breakdown in Nigeria and Lebanon(2010) Milligan, Margaret (Maren); Lichbach, Mark I; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Power-sharing institutions--organized around the principle of group representation--have re-emerged in recent decades throughout the world. From Iraq to Afghanistan, "power-sharing" has again become a preeminent solution to ethnic and/or electoral conflict. This approach--including the variant of "consociationalism"--has long been critiqued for either strengthening inter-elite ties at the expense of mass-level linkages or working only in societies already committed to inter-group cooperation or conciliation. What these critiques miss--and dangerously so for the countries now undergoing the power-sharing treatment--is that the organization of politics around group representation is inherently unstable. This dissertation traces the impact of institutionalized group representation in two very different staples of the power-sharing literature: Nigeria and Lebanon. Although these mixed Muslim-Christian countries differ in nearly every respect considered relevant in the institutional design literature (electoral system, de/centralized government, party law regulation, size, colonial power, and region) they experience strikingly similar cycles of conflict and democratic breakdown. The dissertation argues that, rather than being a conflict resolution technique of relatively recent provenance, power-sharing is rooted in the exigencies of imperial rule. In doing so, it examines the emergence of ethnic federalism and confessionalism in colonialism in Nigeria and Lebanon. The dissertation then models how institutionalized group representation leads to conflict and democratic breakdown. Drawing on sociology, the dissertation draws on Charles Tilly's model of "Democracy." He argues that democracy operates in a self-reinforcing virtuous circle through three interlocking mechanisms: integration of trust networks, reduction in categorical inequalities and removal or autonomous bases of power. This dissertation argues that, by definition, power sharing promotes the opposite mechanisms: "opportunity hoarding," "category formation," and "certification." The operation of these three mechanisms leads to vicious cycles of conflict and democratic breakdown. The dissertation traces the operation of these three mechanisms focusing on two nested clusters of "groups" since the early 1990s: North/Middle Belt/Jasawa in Nigeria and Muslim/Shi'a/Alawi in Lebanon. Based on this examination of Nigeria and Lebanon, the dissertation argues that "group representation" regimes will lead to cycles of conflict and democratic breakdown and should not be viewed as a conflict panacea.Item CREATIVE REBELLION FOR THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY: THE REINVIGORATION OF AMERICAN POLITICAL LIFE THROUGH PUBLIC ART(2010) Boros, Diana Zsuzsanna; Glass, James M.; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Drawing on the work of Tocqueville, Nietzsche, Camus, and Marcuse, this work argues that there is an urgent political and societal need for greater support of public art projects and better access to these sources of funding. More art in public spaces would revive and animate communal environments, create new relationships between the individual and the public, strengthen feelings of community, and foster the desire to participate in the public. All art creates participatory desire and behavior, but visionary art is how political progress through individual rebellion can be best accessed and articulated. This work defines visionary artistic creation as the union of instinctual creative energies and rational reflection. Mainstream art, despite its aesthetic rearrangements, fails to connect the viewer with questions that will engage them over time. Visionary art, especially the public and social, is needed to seek out and materialize the newest, alternative possibilities for our individual lives, for our societies, and for the political systems under which they abide.Item BECAUSE WE WILL IT: THE POSSIBILITIES AND LIMITS OF DEMOCRACY IN LATE MODERNITY(2006-07-25) Olson, Lawrence James; Tismaneanu, Vladimir; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Cornelius Castoriadis' life can be characterized as one of engaged dissent. As a founding member of the Socialisme ou Barbarie group in France, Castoriadis maintained a consistent position as an opponent of both Western capitalism and Soviet totalitarianism during the Cold War. This position also placed Castoriadis in opposition to the mainstream French left, particularly Jean-Paul Sartre, who supported the French Communist Party and defended the Soviet Union. After the dissolution of the group, Castoriadis continued to assert the possibility of constructing participatory democratic institutions in opposition to the existing bureaucratic capitalist institutional structure in the Western world. The bureaucratic-capitalist institutional apparatus of the late modern era perpetuates a system where the individual is increasingly excluded from the democratic political process and isolated within the private sphere. However, the private sphere is not a refuge from the intrusion of the bureaucratic-capitalist imaginary, which consistently seeks to subject the whole of society to rational planning. Each individual is shaped by his relationship to the bureaucracy; on the one hand, his relationships with other become subjected to an instrumental calculus, while at the same time, the individual seeks to find some meaning for the world around him by turning to the private sphere. Furthermore, a crisis of meaning pervades late modern societies, where institutions are incapable of providing answers to the questions posed to them by individuals living in these societies. As a result, when individuals are able to participate in the democratic process, they tend to carry political ideas constructed in the private world into the public sphere, often to the detriment of the democratic process itself. Castoriadis seeks to reconcile liberty and broad public participation through the inclusion of the imaginary in democratic theory. He contends that it is possible to construct an autonomous society that emphasizes the creativity of the individual and the collective in the construction of the institutions that govern it. However, democratic theory conceived in this fashion must construct limits to political participation in order to insure that the democratic process itself is not destroyed by the emergence of political ideas antithetical to democracy.Item Official Secrecy: Self, State and Society(2004-07-12) Ellington, Thomas Coke; Barber, Benjamin R; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In meeting the threat posed by terrorism, the democratic state also faces a paradox: Those practices best suited to defending the state are often least suited to democracy. Such is the case with official secrecy, which has received renewed attention. Military and intelligence operations frequently depend on secrecy for their success. At the same time, democracy depends on openness, a fact too often neglected by democratic theory. Democratic theory presumes that citizens are at least minimally capable of making decisions to steer the ship of state, a presumption that requires citizens not only to have the skills necessary to make political decisions but to have the information necessary to make those decisions competently. However, in many areas of the most vital public interest (e.g. foreign policy, nuclear weapons, decisions regarding war and peace), the state intentionally conceals information from citizens. While other factors, such as high information costs, may work against an informed citizenry, official secrecy is qualitatively different and uniquely damaging to democratic governance, even granting that in some instances it may be a necessary evil. Official secrecy subverts the very democratic values it is frequently designed to protect, denying citizen competence, reducing accountability and diminishing the legitimacy of the state, as well as distorting the historical record and creating fertile ground for paranoid-style thinking. Democratic theorists have not been unaware of the importance of information to democratic citizenship. Indeed awareness has promoted the defense of the institutions of free expression as the best means for ensuring that necessary political information is accessible. However, that is no longer enough, as the last century has seen states become producers and repositories of information on a never-before-seen scale. The task for democratic theory now is to recognize this change in the information environment and recognize the importance of this new locus of political information. Understanding and minimizing the impact of official secrecy is a necessary part of this process.