Pub Date : 2023-04-03DOI: 10.1080/07393148.2023.2203061
Bernard Tamas
Abstract Two key threats facing American democracy today are gerrymandering and voter suppression. In this article, I argue that both of these threats are a direct consequence of the US using a single-member district (SMD) electoral system. This is because SMD creates significant asymmetrical disproportionality, which is a type of electoral bias that can benefit larger parties over smaller parties. This bias leads to the two largest parties in the US winning more seats than their popular vote, which in turn leads to these parties gaining significant resource advantages over smaller parties. This sets off a self-reinforcing system that keeps these larger parties in power and squeezes out the smaller parties, a process that is especially potent when this dynamic is not offset by public funding of electoral campaigns. The resource advantages that result from such bias include control over government policy, which makes it easier for the larger parties to manipulate election laws to their advantage, including through gerrymandering and voter suppression.
{"title":"Beyond Gerrymandering: A Structural Crisis of the American Electoral System","authors":"Bernard Tamas","doi":"10.1080/07393148.2023.2203061","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/07393148.2023.2203061","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Two key threats facing American democracy today are gerrymandering and voter suppression. In this article, I argue that both of these threats are a direct consequence of the US using a single-member district (SMD) electoral system. This is because SMD creates significant asymmetrical disproportionality, which is a type of electoral bias that can benefit larger parties over smaller parties. This bias leads to the two largest parties in the US winning more seats than their popular vote, which in turn leads to these parties gaining significant resource advantages over smaller parties. This sets off a self-reinforcing system that keeps these larger parties in power and squeezes out the smaller parties, a process that is especially potent when this dynamic is not offset by public funding of electoral campaigns. The resource advantages that result from such bias include control over government policy, which makes it easier for the larger parties to manipulate election laws to their advantage, including through gerrymandering and voter suppression.","PeriodicalId":46114,"journal":{"name":"New Political Science","volume":"45 1","pages":"359 - 379"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2023-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47656574","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-04-03DOI: 10.1080/07393148.2023.2203063
Kathleen Sullivan
Abstract The lawsuits challenging the 2020 election tried and failed to overturn the results of the election. This article positions their contribution to constitutional decay by considering the affidavits filed by Republican election challengers who observed the processing of absentee ballots in Detroit. Using the concepts of legal consciousness and legal mobilization, this article traces the mechanisms that carried doubts about the election processes from politics to law, returning that doubt as legally acknowledged truth that could be deployed in ongoing politics. Features of the affidavits allowed the voter fraud narrative to borrow a legal concept seemingly detached from politics. Given that constitutional theories recognize strict legality as a tool of authoritarians, this article considers the affidavits’ use as a legal and political tool, indicating particular ways that it can be wielded for antidemocratic purposes.
{"title":"234 Pages of Sworn Affidavits: Legalism Without Politics in the Attempt to Overthrow the 2020 Election","authors":"Kathleen Sullivan","doi":"10.1080/07393148.2023.2203063","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/07393148.2023.2203063","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The lawsuits challenging the 2020 election tried and failed to overturn the results of the election. This article positions their contribution to constitutional decay by considering the affidavits filed by Republican election challengers who observed the processing of absentee ballots in Detroit. Using the concepts of legal consciousness and legal mobilization, this article traces the mechanisms that carried doubts about the election processes from politics to law, returning that doubt as legally acknowledged truth that could be deployed in ongoing politics. Features of the affidavits allowed the voter fraud narrative to borrow a legal concept seemingly detached from politics. Given that constitutional theories recognize strict legality as a tool of authoritarians, this article considers the affidavits’ use as a legal and political tool, indicating particular ways that it can be wielded for antidemocratic purposes.","PeriodicalId":46114,"journal":{"name":"New Political Science","volume":"45 1","pages":"224 - 238"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2023-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44312617","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-04-03DOI: 10.1080/07393148.2023.2205319
Don Van Atta
{"title":"Klimat: Russia in the Age of Climate Change,","authors":"Don Van Atta","doi":"10.1080/07393148.2023.2205319","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/07393148.2023.2205319","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46114,"journal":{"name":"New Political Science","volume":"45 1","pages":"420 - 422"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2023-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45696771","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-04-03DOI: 10.1080/07393148.2023.2205289
Stephen Pimpare
{"title":"“Listen to the Hysterics: A New(?) American Political Economy”","authors":"Stephen Pimpare","doi":"10.1080/07393148.2023.2205289","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/07393148.2023.2205289","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46114,"journal":{"name":"New Political Science","volume":"45 1","pages":"405 - 409"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2023-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49058133","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-04-03DOI: 10.1080/07393148.2023.2205290
Robert A. Denemark
{"title":"The Oxford Handbook of Economic Imperialism,","authors":"Robert A. Denemark","doi":"10.1080/07393148.2023.2205290","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/07393148.2023.2205290","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46114,"journal":{"name":"New Political Science","volume":"41 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135674434","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-01-02DOI: 10.1080/07393148.2023.2181546
L. K. Olson
{"title":"Response to Peter A. Swenson","authors":"L. K. Olson","doi":"10.1080/07393148.2023.2181546","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/07393148.2023.2181546","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46114,"journal":{"name":"New Political Science","volume":"45 1","pages":"201 - 201"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48297977","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-01-02DOI: 10.1080/07393148.2023.2183576
Alexander T. Stubberfield
Abstract This paper uses Thomas Hobbes’ argument for Commonwealth and the existence of the Leviathan as a foil within an immanent critique rejecting the notion of “the state’' presenting an escape from “the state of nature’' as Hobbes characterized it. It does so through a negative dialectic arguing that both conceptually and materially “civilization” needs “the wild,” or “the wilderness” to justify its everyday existence but, instead, rethreads wildness and wilderness through the production of lifeforms necessary for its continued expansion. I motivatie this Lukean ecocritique of Hobbes through Benton MacKaye’s philosophy of regional planning drawing from work in anthropology, sociology, geography, critical animal studies, and environmental studies to argue that “civilization” not only transcends the nation-state but is constituted as material fact through the manifestation of wildness within its environs. The Leviathan co-authors environment but has the power to unleash wildness on a planetary scale – creating localized states of nature, and cannot help but do so. I argue that as the Leviathan attempts to rid itself of wildness, it simply creates “wilderness” elsewhere in its material being through its material needs. This displacement is coupled with a critique recognizing that through Hobbes’ logic, those living within “states of nature,” or civilizational wildernesses have no reason to bind themselves to the Leviathan as it is the Leviathan that threatens their lives by displacing wildness through the rule of artifice. We may, after this examination, conclude that the Leviathan does not end the “State of Nature” but in fact extends and energizes it through manifesting multiple “states of nature” where life may be “solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short.”
{"title":"Kubi-Nage Hobbes: An Ecocritique","authors":"Alexander T. Stubberfield","doi":"10.1080/07393148.2023.2183576","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/07393148.2023.2183576","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This paper uses Thomas Hobbes’ argument for Commonwealth and the existence of the Leviathan as a foil within an immanent critique rejecting the notion of “the state’' presenting an escape from “the state of nature’' as Hobbes characterized it. It does so through a negative dialectic arguing that both conceptually and materially “civilization” needs “the wild,” or “the wilderness” to justify its everyday existence but, instead, rethreads wildness and wilderness through the production of lifeforms necessary for its continued expansion. I motivatie this Lukean ecocritique of Hobbes through Benton MacKaye’s philosophy of regional planning drawing from work in anthropology, sociology, geography, critical animal studies, and environmental studies to argue that “civilization” not only transcends the nation-state but is constituted as material fact through the manifestation of wildness within its environs. The Leviathan co-authors environment but has the power to unleash wildness on a planetary scale – creating localized states of nature, and cannot help but do so. I argue that as the Leviathan attempts to rid itself of wildness, it simply creates “wilderness” elsewhere in its material being through its material needs. This displacement is coupled with a critique recognizing that through Hobbes’ logic, those living within “states of nature,” or civilizational wildernesses have no reason to bind themselves to the Leviathan as it is the Leviathan that threatens their lives by displacing wildness through the rule of artifice. We may, after this examination, conclude that the Leviathan does not end the “State of Nature” but in fact extends and energizes it through manifesting multiple “states of nature” where life may be “solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short.”","PeriodicalId":46114,"journal":{"name":"New Political Science","volume":"45 1","pages":"154 - 182"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48573251","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-01-02DOI: 10.1080/07393148.2023.2178751
Zachary Wheeler
nature of international capitalism that does not mention political parties even once and that assumes away cultural and group differences between consumers and workers at the ends of international supply chains by invoking common interests in freedom and justice strikes me as unconvincing. McKean would no doubt answer by doubting the capability of the ubiquitous sovereignty of states to deliver the results he wishes and by invoking the power of participation aimed at reducing injustice to change orientations. I would agree. I do not think that appeals to states to promote the outer limits of freedom are realistic either, especially across political boundaries. But the use of state power, pushed by political parties and social movements, is, I think, more likely to succeed than McKean’s less complicated vision. I also think such a combination is more likely to accomplish the disorientation from neoliberalism McKean wants. Disenthralling whole societies from the very real illusions of neoliberal freedom will take some long boring on very hard boards. I think it will take a combination of the dislocating experience of social movements and the consistent effort of democratic participation through political parties to attempt it. I should say a few final words about the effort that went into this book. I disagree with McKean about his final recommendations, but this is a substantial intellectual product. Indeed, I found his originality and rigor both stimulating and unsettling. I will have more thinking to do as a result of reading Disorienting Neoliberalism and it will lead me to reassess my initial responses to questions of social activism in the future. My guess is that, whatever our disagreements about strategy, McKean would be satisfied with such a result.
{"title":"The Travails of Trumpification","authors":"Zachary Wheeler","doi":"10.1080/07393148.2023.2178751","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/07393148.2023.2178751","url":null,"abstract":"nature of international capitalism that does not mention political parties even once and that assumes away cultural and group differences between consumers and workers at the ends of international supply chains by invoking common interests in freedom and justice strikes me as unconvincing. McKean would no doubt answer by doubting the capability of the ubiquitous sovereignty of states to deliver the results he wishes and by invoking the power of participation aimed at reducing injustice to change orientations. I would agree. I do not think that appeals to states to promote the outer limits of freedom are realistic either, especially across political boundaries. But the use of state power, pushed by political parties and social movements, is, I think, more likely to succeed than McKean’s less complicated vision. I also think such a combination is more likely to accomplish the disorientation from neoliberalism McKean wants. Disenthralling whole societies from the very real illusions of neoliberal freedom will take some long boring on very hard boards. I think it will take a combination of the dislocating experience of social movements and the consistent effort of democratic participation through political parties to attempt it. I should say a few final words about the effort that went into this book. I disagree with McKean about his final recommendations, but this is a substantial intellectual product. Indeed, I found his originality and rigor both stimulating and unsettling. I will have more thinking to do as a result of reading Disorienting Neoliberalism and it will lead me to reassess my initial responses to questions of social activism in the future. My guess is that, whatever our disagreements about strategy, McKean would be satisfied with such a result.","PeriodicalId":46114,"journal":{"name":"New Political Science","volume":"45 1","pages":"193 - 196"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43811844","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-01-02DOI: 10.1080/07393148.2023.2181547
L. K. Olson
{"title":"Disorder: A History of Reform, Reaction, and Money in American Medicine,","authors":"L. K. Olson","doi":"10.1080/07393148.2023.2181547","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/07393148.2023.2181547","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46114,"journal":{"name":"New Political Science","volume":"45 1","pages":"202 - 204"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48579173","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-01-02DOI: 10.1080/07393148.2023.2183578
T. Luke
Abstract This article responds to a recent reengagement with Ecocritique: Contesting The Politics of Nature, Economy, and Culture which was published 25 years ago. The authors who have engaged with this work in this symposium not only address the relevance of ecocritique as a theory and methodology for addressing contemporary environmental issues, but provide new insights into the work through their criticisms. My reply discusses their commentaries and offers response in the form of elaboration and reflection.
{"title":"Reconsidering Power and Eco/Logical Order: Reflections on the Readings of Ecocritique","authors":"T. Luke","doi":"10.1080/07393148.2023.2183578","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/07393148.2023.2183578","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article responds to a recent reengagement with Ecocritique: Contesting The Politics of Nature, Economy, and Culture which was published 25 years ago. The authors who have engaged with this work in this symposium not only address the relevance of ecocritique as a theory and methodology for addressing contemporary environmental issues, but provide new insights into the work through their criticisms. My reply discusses their commentaries and offers response in the form of elaboration and reflection.","PeriodicalId":46114,"journal":{"name":"New Political Science","volume":"45 1","pages":"183 - 189"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43059803","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}