CIAO DATE: 07/2014
Volume: 129, Issue: 2
Summer 2014
Finding Bin Laden: Lessons for a New American Way of Intelligence
Erik J. Dahl
ERIK J. DAHL describes the nearly decade-long search for Osama bin Laden and what it reveals about the capabilities and the limitations of the American intelligence community. He argues that this case suggests that we may be seeing the first signs of a “new American way of intelligence” with a reduced reliance on the expensive, high-technology systems of the Cold War and a greater emphasis on broad-based intelligence fusion and analysis.
Building National Armies after Civil War: Lessons from Bosnia, El Salvador, and Lebanon (PDF)
Zoltan Barany
ZOLTAN BARANY looks at how national armies are built following the conclusion of civil wars and identifies lessons derived from three cases: Bosnia and Herzegovina, El Salvador, and Lebanon. He describes the key components of successful post-civil war building of an army.
The Role of Political Science in China: Intellectuals and Authoritarian Resilience
Stephen Noakes
STEPHEN NOAKES discusses the relationship between political scientists and the state in China. He argues that political scientists do more to strengthen the rule of the Chinese Communist Party than they do to undermine it, and are therefore complicit in preserving the authoritarian status quo.
Papers Please: State-Level Anti-Immigrant Legislation in the Wake of Arizona's SB 1070
Sophia J. Wallace
SOPHIA J. WALLACE examines the factors that influence the introduction of SB 1070–type bills in state legislatures. She finds that Republican control of state legislatures and a rising unemployment rate greatly increase the likelihood of introducing this type of restrictive immigration bill. She asserts that Latino population changes and the percentage of Latino state legislators do not have an impact.
Critical Junctures, Catalysts, and Democratic Consolidation in Turkey
Ramazan Kiling
RAMAZAN KILINÇ argues that at critical junctures, structural factors weaken and actors are enabled to gain strength for future political trajectories. He applies this argument to democratic consolidation in Turkey. He finds that the 1997 military intervention unintentionally led to the eventual outcome of democratic consolidation. In the absence of this catalyst, it might have taken several more years for structural factors to generate democratization.
Serving or Self-Serving? A Review Essay of Robert Gates's Memoir
Robert Jervis
ROBERT JERVIS reviews Robert Gates’s recently published memoir, Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War. The reviewer argues that the memoir is very revealing, but inadvertently so insofar as it shows for example Gates’s failure to focus on the key issues involved in the decisions to send more troops to Afghanistan and his inability to bridge the gap between the perspectives of the generals and of the White House.
An Education in Politics: The Origin and Evolution of No Child Left Behind, Jesse H. Rhodes (PDF)
Terry M. Moe
On substantive grounds, Jesse H. Rhodes’s An Education in Politics is yet another detailed account of the history and politics of No Child Left Behind (NCLB), the watershed federal legislation adopted in 2001 that sought to bring accountability to the nation’sschools.Rhodes’sapproach,however,is explicitly theoretical—a very good thing—and his aim is to contribute to the “institutional theory of change.” Claiming that other scholars of political institutions have tended to focus either on the “agency of political entrepreneurs” or the “institutional constraints” that limit them, he argues for a unified approach that brings the two together into proper balance. His solution is a theory of “institutionally bounded entrepreneurship,” which he formulates early in the book and then employs to structure the historical analysis that follows. - See more at: http://www.psqonline.org/article.cfm?IDArticle=19243#sthash.Yionhkrh.dpuf
Acting White? Rethinking Race in Post-Racial America, Devon W. Carbado and Mitu Gulati (PDF)
Jennifer L. Hochschild
The number of publications arguing that the United States is not post‐racial despite twice electing Barack Obama to the presidency is many orders of magnitude greater than the number of publications claiming that the United States is post‐racial. In fact, it is difficult to find anyone asserting post‐raciality beyond one New York Times Magazine article and a few Fox News commentators around the 2008 election. Nevertheless, attacks on the purportedly common assumption continue. Thus, it is a bit surprising to find, in yet another book challenging the idea of a post‐racial America, a somewhat novel argument. Acting White asserts that everyone seeking a job, college admission, elective office, or safe interactions with police must establish a Working Identity. It is “a set of racial criteria people can employ to ascertain not simply whether a person is black in terms of how she looks but whether that person is black in terms of how she is perceived” (p. 1). A Working Identity includes everything from hair and clothing style to social networks, marital choices, political opinions, accent, “and so on and so forth” (p. 1). That framework already suggests a tension in the book to which I return: it focuses primarily on the difficulties that a Working Identity creates for blacks, but notes that “racial performance is but part of a broader… phenomenon” since “everyone works their identity” (p. 3). - See more at: http://www.psqonline.org/article.cfm?IDArticle=19244#sthash.1FTtAGDE.dpuf
He Runs, She Runs: Why Gender Stereotypes Do Not Harm Women Candidates, Deborah Jordan Brooks (PDF)
Jessica Robinson Preece
The conventional wisdom, as understood by campaign strategists and the media, is that being a woman is a liability in electoral politics. Female candidates face an impossible task—they must convey the toughness, competence, and confidence of a politician, while simultaneously conveying the warmth and modesty of a lady. Consequently, it is much more difficult for women to successfully navigate a political campaign. Anecdotal evidence supporting this conventional wisdom is easy to find. However, systematic evidence is scarce. Is it possible that the conventional wisdom is just plain wrong? Deborah Jordan Brooks contends that it is. In a series of experiments using a representative sample of 3,000 U.S. adults, she finds that voters are remarkably even‐handed in judging male and female candidates and politicians. Brooks randomly assigns respondents to read one of eight scenarios involving either “Karen” or “Kevin Bailey.” These scenarios include an evaluation of Karen/Kevin’s fitness for office when s/he has extensive experience and when s/he has minimal experience. There are no significant differences in how Karen and Kevin are evaluated in the first, and Karen may be slightly advantaged in the second. The next group of scenarios presents fictitious news reports of “Representative Karen/Kevin Bailey” crying, displaying anger, exhibiting toughness, showing a lack of empathy to constituents, and getting caught in a knowledge gaffe. Again, across a wide variety of outcome measures, respondents penalize or reward Karen and Kevin similarly. - See more at: http://www.psqonline.org/article.cfm?IDArticle=19247#sthash.LKGKJBZR.dpuf
Afghanistan from the Cold War through the War on Terror, Barnett R. Rubin (PDF)
Paul D. Miller
If anyone has earned the right to say “I told you so,” it is Barnett Rubin. One of the foremost authorities on Afghanistan, Rubin saw earlier than most the dangers emerging from that blighted land. In his work—as author of The Fragmentation of Afghanistan, an adviser to the United Nations for several years after 2001, a professor at New York University, and an adviser to the U.S. State Department’s Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan from 2009—Rubin worked to warn against, prevent, and mitigate the perennial crises afflicting Afghanistan and South Asia. Rubin recounts as much in the introduction—sadly, the only original writing—in his new volume, Afghanistan from the Cold War through the War on Terror.The chapterisRubin’s short memoir of his involvement in Afghanistan since the 1990s. Like many Afghan tales, it is a sad and frustrating one. After 2001, Rubin “oscillated between protesting against the inadequacy of the resources allocated to Afghanistan and the excessive ambition of the goals enunciated” (p. 21). That is exactly right: in Afghanistan, the United States talked a good game—maybe too good—but rarely put its money where its mouth was. - See more at: http://www.psqonline.org/article.cfm?IDArticle=19248#sthash.5jsMzCMS.dpuf