Suchergebnisse

"Foundations of Rivalry Research" published on by Oxford University Press.

Territorial issues tend to be salient due to tangible factors such as resources and intangible factors such as cultural or historical connections. Yet regime disputes (in which a state is seeking the overthrow of another state's regime) also tend to be salient due to political leaders' desire to retain power. Do rivalries rooted in regime issues consequently tend to be as intractable as rivalries rooted in territorial issues? In this study, I argue that territorial rivalries tend to be enduring due to broad domestic bases of political support for continuing to pursue territorial claims, which reduces the likelihood that territorial rivalries will terminate upon leadership change. Regime rivalries, on the other hand, tend to be relatively short lived due to narrower bases of political support for continuing to engage in rivalry and close associations between regime issues and particular political leaders, increasing the likelihood that leadership turnover will lead to rivalry termination. Expectations concerning the mechanisms that sustain territorial rivalry and facilitate the termination of regime rivalry are supported through a comparative analysis of the Ethiopia–Somalia and Mozambique–Rhodesia rivalries.

This study reconstructs the concept of interstate rivalry in accordance with a min–max strategy in order to determine the necessary characteristics of rivalry, provide a template with which to assess existing conceptualizations, and provide a means by which conceptualizations of rivalry can be formulated and operationalized. I argue that there are two necessary characteristics of a minimal conceptualization of interstate rivalry — temporal dependence and issue competition. Contextual conceptualizations are then formulated by adding dimensions, such as militarization, identification, and psychological hostility, among others, to the minimal definition. By defining interstate rivalry in its most extreme form (when all of the potential dimensions of rivalry are present in the fullest), I also establish a maximal or 'ideal-type' conceptualization. In adopting a min–max approach, this project seeks to unify conceptualizations of interstate rivalry along a common continuum in which the empirical coverage of cases decreases as properties are added to the minimal definition.

There is an often-noted gap between political scientists and policymakers. This article examines the related but less investigated gap between political scientists and the engaged public. Reasons for the gap are explored by making inferences about public preferences through an examination of New York Times non-fiction bestsellers on politics from 1985 to 2009. The analysis suggests that although non-fiction readers have an interest in a wide range of political issues, political scientists often fail to reach the engaged public for several reasons, such as due to the public's increasing consumption of books of a partisan or ideological nature versus the norm of objectivity in academic research. On the basis of an examination of bestsellers on politics, this study explores the nature of the engaged public - political science divide and considers ways of potentially bridging the gap. . Adapted from the source document.

AbstractRivalry is pervasive in politics and beyond. Drawing on unique survey data, this article examines how instructors can draw on students' perceptions of rivalry to explore different aspects of the rivalry concept. The data show that different ways in which students tend to think about rivalry tend to reflect differences in scholarly conceptualizations of interstate rivalry. The data also suggest that referencing sports rivalries may be useful to introduce the concept of rivalry, drawing on parallels between sports rivalries and interstate rivalries and students' greater interest in and familiarity with sports than international affairs. This article provides an understanding of how students tend to think about rival relations to help instructors effectively lead classroom discussions on interstate rivalry.

Rivalries are likely to persist as long as contentious issues remain unresolved. Due to differing issue characteristics, some issues may be more intractable than others and therefore especially likely to prolong rivalry. In this study, I argue that rivalries rooted in territorial issues tend to be enduring due to broad-bases of domestic support for continuing to pursue territorial claims and loose linkages between territorial issues and particular political leaders, resulting in the persistence of territorial conflict over time despite changes of leadership. Alternatively, ideological and regime-related conflicts tend to be relatively fleeting due to narrow societal salience and close connections between such issues and particular political leaders, facilitating rivalry termination through leadership change. The empirical results reveal that territorial rivalries (as well as positional rivalries concerning influence/prestige) tend to be more enduring than rivalries rooted in ideological or regime-related conflict and that unlike territorial rivalries, ideological rivalries tend to terminate upon irregular changes of leadership.

AbstractReality television programming has become a pervasive part of popular culture. Although such programming may seem to be mindless entertainment, it can serve as a tool to introduce political lessons in the classroom. This article examines how the concepts of alliance behavior and strategic voting can be explored by using the television program Survivor. An analysis reveals that contestants often behave strategically when forming alliances and voting, in ways that are similar to the strategic behavior of nation-states and individuals residing in democracies, respectively. This article does not suggest that reading political science texts should be replaced with viewing reality television, but rather that instructors can introduce abstract concepts to undergraduate students through popular culture. Such a technique can spark students' interest in politics and demonstrate the broad relevance of political concepts, leaving students with the desire to delve more deeply into the investigation of political phenomena.