Summer Research Opportunity

If you are interested in pursuing an academic career in International Relations, this is a great summer experience.

This is from Professor Greig at the University of North Texas:

The National Science Foundation Research Experience for Undergraduates in Civil Conflict Management and Peace Science at the University of North Texas is currently accepting applications for its Summer 2013 program. The program seeks to provide research experiences for undergraduate students from all majors with an introduction to research in the broad area of civil conflict management and peace science. Students participating in the program develop their own research project while being mentored by University of North Texas faculty members. The program is open to sophomore, junior, and senior undergraduates from all majors and students are selected for the program on a competitive basis. Students admitted to the program receive a $4000 stipend, room and board, and travel expenses. Additional information on the program is attached to this message and can be found at http://untconflictmgmtreu.wordpress.com. For additional information, please contact Professor Greig (greig@unt.edu) or Professor Ishiyama (john.ishiyama@unt.edu).

America's Greatest Foreign Policy Challenge?

Posted by Visiting Associate Professor and Ambassador Ron McMullen

Nuclear-armed Iran?  Aggressively nationalistic China?  A resurgent al-Qaida?  A malevolent Russia? A stagnating European Union?  These would all be plausibly good guesses, but Secretary of State-Designate John Kerry last week said “the greatest challenge to America’s foreign policy … is whether America at last puts is own fiscal house in order.”  In his January 24 confirmation statement, he went on to say, “More than ever, foreign policy is economic policy,” adding (rather ineloquently) “it is hard to tell the leadership of any number of countries they must get their economic issues resolved if we don't resolve our own.”

This echoes concerns raised by former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Admiral Mike Mullen, who said in September, 2011, “I believe the single biggest threat to our national security is our debt.”

The White House and Congress backed us away from the fiscal cliff on January 2, but didn’t reach a compromise on fundamental differences about the role and scope of government.  Potential battles loom.  The deep budget cuts mandated by the Budget Control Act of 2011 (aka sequestration, which is Latin for liposuction with a hammer) are scheduled to commence March 1.  The government faces a potential shutdown March 27 when the current Continuing Resolution expires.  It seems likely that if Congress doesn’t pass a formal budget resolution by April 15, members of Congress will have their pay suspended.  (Good--but they should forfeit their pay.) The next debt ceiling confrontation is apt to take place May 19.   This is going to be ugly.  Greatest challenge?  Biggest threat? 

America’s current public debt is about $11 trillion (various parts of the government owe each other another $5 trillion).  China and Japan each hold about $1 trillion of our debt.  Last year Uncle Sam spent about $3.5 trillion and took in about $2.5 trillion.  In addition to last year’s outlays on Social Security ($773 billion) and Medicare ($478 billion), the Defense Department spent $553 billion.  Interest on the national debt totaled $359,796,008,919.00.  By contrast, the State Department’s budget last year was only $51 billion, which included USAID and most U.S. foreign assistance programs.   Thus, interest payments on the national debt cost SEVEN TIMES more than our diplomatic and development engagement with the world.  And it will only get worse as our debt grows by a trillion dollars a year.

If sequestration happens and the State Department is cut by 9%, what embassies should be closed?  Which physical security upgrades should be postponed?  How many Foreign Service Officers should be RIFTed? (The Defense Department already has more lawyers than the State Department has diplomats.) 

Last week a group of young Libyan journalists visited Iowa City as part of the State Department’s International Visitors Program, hosted locally by CIVIC.  Would programs like this be cut before embassies are closed?  Yes.  A mindless slashing of America’s diplomatic engagement with the world would reduce our ability to assert hard power (derived from coercion or payment) as well as our soft power (derived from attraction).  Let’s hope that the Libyan journalists here last week won’t be the last group of influential International Visitors who have the opportunity to travel to America’s heartland, exchange views with Iowans on important matters, and go home with a better understanding of and feeling toward the United States.

Are democracies too self-indulgent to rein in spending and pay off debt?  If you were a reform-minded policy maker in China, Russia, Burma, or some other authoritarian state, what would you make of the United States and European Union’s inability (or unwillingness?) to get their fiscal houses in order?

Study International Relations in the City of Light!

Posted by Associate Professor Kelly Kadera

Introduction to International Relations (30:060 or POLI 1500) will be offered as part of the Iowa International Summer Institute from May 20 to June 14 in Paris, France.

Intro to IR counts toward:

· The International Relations major

· The Political Science major

· The International Business Certificate

· General Education credit in Social Sciences or International and Global Issues.

You can find out more information at:

http://intrelatuiowa.blogspot.com/2012/11/study-international-relations-in-city.html

If you are interested, please go to

http://study-abroad.uiowa.edu/programs/details/index.php?crse=925

Applications are due February 6 and space is limited.

Summer 2013 Internship Program

Posted by Professor Lai

This was emailed to me by the Fund for American Studies. Just an FYI if you are interested and looking for an opportunity in DC this summer. The Political Science Department is not affiliated with this organization. There are two listings. One for the Institute on Comparative Political and Economic Systems and one for Institute on Economics and International Affairs

Institute on Comparative Political and Economic Systems
Washington, DC – June 5 – August 3, 2013
www.DCinternships.org/ICPES

*Guaranteed Internships - Courses for Credit - Housing in DC
*Priority Deadline: February 7, 2013
*Scholarship Funding Available

Spend a summer interning in the nation’s capital and gain that competitive edge. Taking advantage of a Washington, DC internship is a valuable investment in your future that will set you apart after college. The comprehensive programs sponsored by The Fund for American Studies include a guaranteed internship placement, courses for transferable credit from George Mason University, and furnished housing conveniently located in downtown Washington. Students also benefit from networking events, exclusive briefings, and guest speakers.

THE INTERNSHIP EXPERIENCE
We’ve been creating academic internship experiences for over 40 years and guarantee all participants an internship placement. Your options are endless – we work with many different federal agencies, policy groups, think tanks, public affairs firms, government relations offices, and nonprofit organizations.

Working in this powerful city will allow you to make professional connections and practice networking skills in a real-world setting. Washington, DC is the perfect place to explore a variety of career paths, and we work with each student’s unique goals and aspirations to match you with the most fitting internship site.

“During my internship I served as a research analyst with Social Compact, an organization that uses cutting-edge methodology and economic indicators to provide detailed analyses of the role of investment in community development. With Social Compact, I was able to collaborate closely with research staff, delve deeper into my interests, and confirm my passion for economics.”

Mercy Ndambuki, Princeton University
Intern, Social Compact

APPLY TODAY
Students will be accepted on a rolling basis until the final deadline of March 7, 2013. Applicants are encouraged to apply for the priority deadline of February 7, 2013 in order to receive preference in admissions and scholarship consideration, as well as internship placement.

For more information and to be begin an online application, please visit www.DCinternships.org/ICPES . Questions may be directed to Jennifer Fantin at admissions@tfas.org or 202.986.0384.

Fund For American Studies
1621 New Hampshire Ave., NW
Washington, DC 20009

Institute on Economics and International Affairs
Washington, DC – June 5 – August 3, 2013
www.DCinternships.org/IEIA

*Guaranteed Internships - Courses for Credit - Housing in DC
*Priority Deadline: February 7, 2013
*Scholarship Funding Available

Spend a summer interning in the nation’s capital and gain that competitive edge. Taking advantage of a Washington, DC internship is a valuable investment in your future that will set you apart after college. The comprehensive programs sponsored by The Fund for American Studies include a guaranteed internship placement in international affairs, courses for transferable credit from George Mason University, and furnished housing conveniently located in downtown Washington. Students also benefit from networking events, exclusive briefings, and guest speakers.

THE INTERNSHIP EXPERIENCE
We’ve been creating academic internship experiences for over 40 years and guarantee all participants an internship placement. Your options are endless – we work with many different federal agencies, international affairs organizations, embassies, and international NGO’s.

Working in this powerful city will allow you to make professional connections in foreign affairs and practice networking skills in a real-world setting. Washington, DC is the perfect place to explore a variety of career paths, and we work with each student’s unique goals and aspirations to match you with the most fitting internship site.

“My internship at the Institute of World Politics has been the most rewarding part of my DC experience. IWP gave me the chance to completely immerse myself in the foreign policy world, and I learned more than I ever thought possible.”

Ramy Kalioby, University of North Carolina
Intern, Institute of World Politics

APPLY TODAY
Students will be accepted on a rolling basis until the final deadline of March 7, 2013. Applicants are encouraged to apply for the priority deadline of February 7, 2013 in order to receive preference in admissions and scholarship consideration, as well as internship placement.

For more information and to be begin an online application, please visit www.DCinternships.org/IEIA . Questions may be directed to Jennifer Fantin at admissions@tfas.org or 202.986.0384.

Fund For American Studies
1621 New Hampshire Ave., NW
Washington, DC 20009

 

Leaky Pipeline

Posted by Professor Sara Mitchell

I want to discuss an important issue in the fields of international relations and political science: the leaky pipeline.  In both academic and government positions related to the field of international relations, we observe a pattern whereby women constitute a smaller percentage of the workforce as we move up the seniority career ladder.  If you take classes from older faculty at the University of Iowa, you will notice that they are much more likely to be men. Yet if we look at the gender distribution in the IR and political science classrooms, we see close to a 50-50 percentage breakdown of male and female students.

A 2009 survey[1] of Political Science PhDs shows the following leaky pipeline patterns for men and women in academic positions (listed from lowest to highest rank).  Among female respondents (N = 342), 3 percent are lecturers, 42 percent are assistant professors, 26 percent are associate professors, and 29 percent are full professors.  This compares to 2 percent lecturers, 26 percent assistant professors, 28 percent associate professors, and 44 percent full professors among male respondents (N = 963). This leaky pipeline is observed in academia even if we control for other factors such as years of experience, research productivity, and race (Toutkoushian 1999; Perna 2001). We see similar patterns in government and business sector jobs where women are underrepresented in foreign policy and executive branch bureaucratic positions (Dolan 2000), especially in the upper management positions. Women also comprise a small percentage (4%) of the CEOs of the largest companies in the world.[2]

Why does this leaky pipeline exist? First, the years in which women can have children often overlap with the years of their career trajectories.[3]  The APSA survey shows that women who obtain PhDs in political science have significantly fewer children than men with PhDs.  Second, male dominated fields like international relations may be less appealing to female scholars due to both a lack of descriptive representation (you don’t seem someone like yourself in the classroom or office) and a negative reaction to male dominated perspectives on the topic (e.g. realism). Third, women may face other barriers to success such as having their work cited by others less frequently than men (Ferber and Brun 2011), being burdened with a much higher service load than their male peers (Mitchell and Hesli, forthcoming), or feeling like their institutional workplace is less supportive of women in their career. Finally, many couples work in the same field and women might find themselves more often on the side making sacrifices for the team.

What can be done to address this important issue? First, it is important for senior women to mentor undergraduate students, graduate students, and young women in their professions.  Many students show positive effects of mentoring on female success rates (Bennion 2004).  Second, we need to expand the ontological scope of international relations to make our topic more appealing to women. Some IR topics have more female scholars working on them (e.g. international law, human rights, non-governmental organizations), thus we would be wise to expand these areas of international relations both in terms of the content and offering of our courses and in the pages of IR journals and books. Third, universities and businesses need to do a better job promoting family friendly policies.[4]  Finally, institutions like the University of Iowa can play a significant role in improving upon the leaky pipeline by recruiting women to all positions and developing policies that will help women employees balance career and family issues more effectively.

References

Bennion, Elizabeth A. 2004. “The Importance of Peer Mentoring for Facilitating Professional

and Personal Development.” PS: Political Science and Politics 37(1): 111-113.

Dolan, Julie. 2000. “The Senior Executive Service: Gender, Attitudes, and Representative

Bureaucracy.” Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory 10(3): 513-530.

Ferber, Marianne A. and Michael Brun. 2011. “The Gender Gap in Citations: Does it Persist?”

Feminist Economics 17(1): 151-158.

Mitchell, Sara McLaughlin and Vicki L. Hesli. “Women Don’t Ask? Women Don’t Say No?

Bargaining and Service in the Political Science Profession.” Forthcoming, PS: Political

Science & Politics.

Perna, Laura W. 2001. “Sex and Race Differences in Faculty Tenure and Promotion.” Research

in Higher Education 42(5): 541-567.

Toutkoushian, Robert K. 1999. “The Status of Academic Women in the 1990s: No Longer

Outsiders, but not yet Equals.” Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance 39(5): 679-

698.

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[1] This survey was funded by the American Political Science Association and designed by Professor Vicki Hesli, Michael Brintnall, and other members of the APSA Committee on the Status of Women in the Profession.

[2] See http://www.forbes.com/sites/carolinehoward/2012/08/22/introducing-the-new-class-of-female-ceos/

[3] See Professor Anne-Marie Slaughter’s recent discussion of these trade-offs at http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/07/why-women-still-cant-have-it-all/309020/

[4] To see variation in family friendly policies in the top fifty political science programs, see data that I compiled at http://www.saramitchell.org/.

Failed States

Posted by Professor Cameron Thies

Why do some rulers use the coercive power of the state to repress their own people? Why do some states experience coups, civil wars and other episodes of violence? Why do some states struggle to provide adequate education, health care, or jobs for their people? Why are some states home to terrorist groups, roving bandits and even pirates?

All of these questions point to the problem of state failure in today’s world.  According to Robert Rotberg (2003: 2) “Nation-states exist to provide a decentralized method of delivering political (public) goods to persons living within designated parameters (borders).”[1]  The mix of public goods that each society expects its state to produce has varied over time, but at a basic minimum we expect that states provide security to their citizens.  This includes protection from external threats (e.g., war, loss of territory, terrorism), domestic threats (e.g., rebel groups, civil war, coups), crime (e.g., police, judicial system), and dispute resolution between citizens (e.g., rule of law, contracts, judicial system, property rights).  Once individuals feel secure, they are then able to engage in economic, cultural and political activities that lead to increases in individual and societal well-being.  The public good of security thus lays the foundation for the provision of higher order goods, such as transportation and communication infrastructure, a functioning economy, a rich associational life, a responsive political system, education, health care, and a healthy natural environment.

Rather than consider state failure to be a problem just for Africa or other developing regions, a focus on public goods provision forces us to confront the fact that all states fail to a certain degree at certain times.  We can think about state failure as a continuum with relatively strong states on one end and relatively weak states on the other.  Strong states perform well in effectively delivering most types of public goods; they tend to have high GDP per capita, good infrastructure, quality of life, and tend to be democratic.  Weak states have an overall tendency to be less effective at producing public goods, with lower GDP per capita, poor infrastructure, poor quality of life, and they tend to have autocratic governments.

At the extreme, a weak state is a failed state when it is “no longer able or willing to perform the fundamental jobs of a nation-state in the modern world” (Rotberg, 2003: 6).  Even worse is the collapsed state, in which there is a complete vacuum of authority.  Somalia is the most well-known example of a collapsed state, which occurred in the aftermath of the fall of President Siad Barre’s regime in 1991.  Americans are familiar with Somalia largely from the horrific images of U.S. soldiers being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu in 1993 when U.S. forces engaged self-proclaimed president Mohamed Farrah Aidid and his militia.  This incident was later dramatized in the movie Black Hawk Down.  In the aftermath of the collapse of the central government, Somalia devolved into a territorial patchwork of “warlords” providing security for themselves and those loyal to them across the former state.  Over time, an official Somali government reemerged to control the capital, but other parts of the former Somali state continued to operate independently, such as Somaliland in the north.  Piracy sprang up off the coast of Puntland and terrorized the Gulf of Aden and the Arabian Sea, requiring a multinational force to begin naval patrols to protect commercial shipping.  Somalia is thus an extreme example of a failed state, but one that shows what happens when states are no longer capable of providing the basic good of security.

A number of organizations have begun to identify indicators and warning signs of state failure.  Most adopt a similar position to the one outlined in this blog post: states exist on a continuum of strength and failure.  For example, the Fund for Peace produces their annual Failed States Index.  You can check out their latest 2012 ranking of all states here: http://www.fundforpeace.org/global/?q=fsi.  You will note that Somalia anchors the failed end of the spectrum, but it is joined by others that the index identifies as those we should be alerted to, such as Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan, South Sudan, Chad, Zimbabwe, Afghanistan, Haiti, Yemen and others.  On the sustainable, strong end of the spectrum are the Nordic states, Canada, and Australia.  It may surprise you that the United States is not in that top group of strong states, but is in the next tier with South Korea and the Czech Republic.  Check out the component parts of the index to see why!

The Country Indicators for Foreign Policy at Carleton University in Canada also has a state fragility index.  You can check out their method for ranking failed and failing states here: http://www4.carleton.ca/cifp/app/ffs_ranking.php.  It produces a similar, though not identical ranking of states on a continuum from fragility to strength.  Both approaches to measuring state failure rely on identifying failures in the provision of public goods.  Security is the most basic good, but there are many others that these approaches identify as critical to the success and health of states.  Ideally, these approaches could be refined to one day produce early warning systems, so that events like the Arab Spring would not be a surprise to policy makers.  Unfortunately, our ability to predict the specific time and form of such state failures is not very advanced at this point in time.

If you are interested in learning more about state failure, I regularly teach a course “State Failure in the Developing World” (030:173).  We explore a variety of theoretical frameworks for understanding the causes and consequences of state failures, as well as approaches to rebuilding states that have failed.  We conduct in-depth analyses of a number of states at different points on the continuum of failure, from a variety of regions in the developing world.  This course will be offered again in the Fall Semester of 2013.

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[1] Rotberg, Robert I., ed. (2003) State Failure and State Weakness in a Time of Terror.  Washington D.C.: Brookings Institution. 

When is High Voter Turnout Bad?

Posted by Professor William Reisinger

"I want to thank every American who participated in this election.  Whether you voted for the very first time or waited in line for a very long time.  . . .  Whether you pounded the pavement or picked up the phone.  Whether you held an Obama sign or a Romney sign, you made your voice heard and you made a difference."
Barack Obama, November 6, 2012

President Obama’s comments reflect a widely held article of faith: we realize the ideals of democracy only when a substantial portion of us votes. A high voter turnout is about the only way for a 21^st-century country to approximate the participatory ideals of Athenian democracy or the New England town hall. Most of us accept that those who neglect this civic duty have done a disservice to their country, at least in a minor way. Correspondingly, it is vital that the act of voting should be relatively easy and equally available to all eligible citizens. For many experts, low turnout poses serious risks for the body politic. The distinguished political scientist and expert on democracy Arend Lijphart used his address as president of the American Political Science Association to argue that “unequal participation spells unequal influence” and that voting, like other forms of political participation, is not randomly distributed but more common among some types of citizens than others. Low voter turnout leaves some social groups poorly represented. 

Thus, voter turnout is often treated as an unalloyed asset.  Indeed, some scholars have even used it to measure the level of democracy in different countries: a country where 90% or more of the eligible citizens vote is, by this measure, more democratic than one in which 60% vote.  (Which of these is the United States?  Find the answer at George Mason University’s United States Election Project.)  One practical objection to this, however, is that turnout levels vary quite a bit even among the world’s full-fledged democracies.  You can see this at the excellent site on voter turnout around the world maintained by the Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance.  Ask yourself this: is Australia (with 93% turnout in its last parliamentary election) more democratic than the U.K. (65%)?  If so, it is probably for reasons other than turnout per se.  
 

We can at least agree, however, that more people voting is never a bad thing, right?  Well . . . not so fast. 
 

Perhaps, in reading the paragraphs above, you were thinking of a potential voter sitting in isolation, weighing her good intentions against the need to get to work on time or put the kids to bed or watch the basketball game or whatever.  Yes, that scenario is one part of the dynamic.  Yet it misses out on the more important social dimension of voting.  Citizens vote because they are mobilized to vote.  Other people and organizations entice, cajole, flatter, badger, threaten and reward them.  (President Obama’s remarks quoted above and similar statements from other politicians can be seen as part of how Americans are mobilized to vote, in the category of flattery.)  Turning potential voters into those who have voted is not easy; it must overcome the many other activities that compete for our time as well as the improbability that one’s vote will play a decisive role in the outcome.  Citizens receive mobilizing messages from friends (especially Facebook friends?), relatives, co-workers and others.  Non-partisan organizations such as the League of Women Voters promote voting.  Political parties and groups supporting a party spend tremendous time and money to encourage and assist their supporters in voting.  Their efforts have spawned a large, increasingly sophisticated industry. 

In considering whether higher turnout is better than lower turnout, what matters is how voters are mobilized.  Some techniques reinforce democracy, while others erode it.  Democratic modes of voter mobilization include spreading information and opinions relevant to voters’ choices (albeit frequently “negative”).  Even the partisan efforts promote the social acceptability of voting among all.  Authoritarian mobilization, however, involves buying or coercing votes from the economically or socially vulnerable while rarely enhancing voters’ knowledge or choices.  In many parts of the world, high turnout is guaranteed because those who run factories and farms let the workers and farmers know that voting is required and will be monitored.  (The workplace may provide a bus to take everyone to the polling station, for example.)  In the world’s most highly repressive places, turnout rates can reach 99-100%.  Moreover, these voters are often also directed how to vote or given pre-filled-in ballots to deposit (returning the blank one they receive to the organizer so it can be filled in and given to someone else).  If you’re interested, Daniel Calingaert reviews some of the many ways that elections can be rigged; it is impressive, in a sad way. 
 

My examination of elections in Russia illustrates how higher voter turnout can signal less democracy.  I have compared turnout levels for Russia’s 83 regions (equivalent of U.S. states) in each of Russia’s presidential and parliamentary elections, from 1991-2012.  In the 1990s, Russian elections had their share of fraud, particularly in the 1996 run-off when President Yeltsin defeated his challenger from the Communist Party.  Nonetheless, the fraud was small enough that the election results do tell us something about voter behavior in the different regions.  During this period, a region’s turnout correlated well with two characteristics that one would expect to promote turnout.  One is the number of elderly in the region’s population.  The elderly in many countries vote at a higher rate than the young.  The other is support in the region for the Communist Party.  Why should this boost turnout?  Because in those regions with a strong presence by the Communist Party, the races were closer, and voting carried more potential impact. 

In the 2000s, however, President Vladimir Putin built a political regime centered around strong election victories for himself, or his temporary surrogate, Dmitrii Medvedev, and the political party United Russia.  Political authorities throughout the country focused on pressuring people to vote in the “right” way.  During the six elections held from 2003-2012, turnout changed in multiple ways.  For a small minority of regions, turnout above 90% became the norm.  In the March 2012 presidential election, for example, the average region had turnout at 67%, while Chechnya reported an official turnout level of 99.6%!  Also in the 2000s, regions having more elderly are no longer the high-turnout regions.  Even more remarkably, the correlation with support for the Communist Party went from strongly positive in the 1990s to strongly negative in the 2000s.  In recent years, the Communist Party’s supporters have not imagined they could win the election if only enough of them voted.  Instead, high support for the Communist Party in a given region is only a signal that Putin and United Russia are not as strong there as elsewhere.  What does correlate with high regional turnout levels?  The percent of a region’s residents who are ethnically non-Russian.  That is, the regions called republics, like Chechnya, have been able to mobilize their residents to vote at rates equal to the super-high Soviet levels.  It would seem, then, that Russia’s hopes for democracy rest on residents in regions where turnout has been substantially lower, such as in Moscow, where 58% voted in March 2012. 
 

Not coincidentally, the regions that reported turnout over 90% also voted for Putin or United Russia at suspiciously high levels.  For example, 99.7% of Chechnya’s voters chose Putin this last March.  Given the high turnout, this means that, supposedly, Putin received votes from 99.4% of all the adults living in the region.  (For comparison: the equivalent figure for the District of Columbia voting for President Obama in 2012 was 47%.  Obama received 94% of the votes cast, but turnout was about half of Chechnya’s; 94/2=47.)  Although not among Russia’s more populous regions, Chechnya and other republics have given Putin and his party significant quantities of votes.  In 2012, Putin would not have won the presidency on the first ballot without their extraordinary efforts. 
 

So it matters quite a bit how turnout is generated.  A democracy in which most people vote is stronger for that.  Focusing on countries’ turnout levels alone, however, is misleading.  Even more misleading is to treat turnout itself as a measure of democracy.  Doing so helps the PR efforts of authoritarian regimes, which find it quite easy to produce high turnout.  Supporters of democracy do not want authoritarian leaders to get bragging rights for activities that actually reduce their citizen's freedom.

Professor Reisinger is teaching a class on Democracy: Global Trends and Struggles(30:196) during the Spring 2013 semester