PSA Workshop: ‘Perspectives on the Changing Global Balance of Power’ - 29 March 2010

The journal POLITICS, with financial support from the Political Studies Association and Wiley-Blackwell, is organising a one-day workshop on ‘Perspectives on the Changing Global Balance of Power.’

Two decades after the end of the Cold War the global balance of power is characterised in a variety of different ways: ‘unipolar,’ ‘multipolar’, ‘nonpolar.’ While the changing nature of the global balance of power is often noted, it is rarely analysed seriously and never from the perspectives of the key protagonists. This will be the first workshop to do so by bringing together leading experts on the key world powers, both established and emerging, to reflect upon how their positions in the global balance of power have changed in the past two decades and how they are likely to develop in the next two. It is particularly appropriate to consider this issue now as the global economic crisis has arguably reinforced the global rebalancing of power.

Leading scholars will present papers on the perspectives of eight established or rising powers -- Brazil, China, the European Union, India, Japan, Russia, South Africa and the United States – and a ‘horizontal’ paper looking at the implications of the changing balance of power for the legitimacy of the institutions of global governance. The confirmed participants include: Shaun Breslin (University of Warwick); Hugo Dobson (University of Sheffield); John Dumbrell (Durham University); Eduard Jordaan (Singapore Management University); Paulo Sotero (Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars); Andrei Tsygankov (San Francisco State University) ; Christian Wagner (SWP – German Institute for International and Security Affairs) Richard Whitman (University of Bath); and Michael Zürn (WZB – Social Science Research Centre Berlin).

The proceedings of the workshop will be published as a special issue of the UK’s Political Studies Association journal POLITICS in December 2010. The workshop is part of the Political Studies Association’s 60th anniversary celebrations.

Space is limited, but if you would be interested in attending the event, please email Alasdair Young regarding space availability and other details.

New book by Mo Hume

Dr Mo Hume's new book, The Politics of Violence: Gender, Conflict and Community in El Salvador,  has been recently published by Wiley-Blackwell. The book develops an interdisciplinary feminist perspective grounded in original ethnographic research on everyday forms of violence in El Salvador. It challenges dominant theories of violence through foregrounding subaltern vocabularies that have been historically ignored in debates on violence.

• Unites a critical analysis of theories of violence with original ethnographic research on its use and broader responses to its different manifestations.
• Makes an important theoretical contribution to debates on violence, through developing in-depth accounts of the violence of everyday life from a feminist perspective.
• Examines the vocabularies of violence of those who live with it on an everyday basis, locating these vocabularies in a critical analysis of the relations of domination that have shaped Salvadoran history.

Dr Tsakatika awarded a research grant by the Carnegie Trust

Myrto Tsakatika has been awarded a Carnegie Trust Research Grant (£1420) to conduct research on the European policies of the parties of the Portuguese radical left. This is part of the project ‘The Greek and Portuguese left on European Integration: organization, strategy, ideology’. The aim of the research is to explore how internal organizational factors, national party-political competition and transnational policy transfer impact on the way parties of the European radical left articulate their policy on European Integration, attempting to explain patterns of policy convergence and divergence. The project will start in April 2010.
 

Symposium on EU-Africa relations

On 11 December 2009, the University of Glasgow hosted an international symposium on ‘EU-Africa relations in the 21st Century’. The aim of the symposium, hosted by the Scottish Jean Monnet Centre of European Excellence and supported by the Office of the European Commission in Scotland, was to analyse the evolution of the relations between the European Union and Africa since the beginning of the 21st century. Papers covered three broad issues: political affairs, economic development, and social issues. Follow this link for draft of the programme

Dr Lundberg advising parliamentarians on electoral systems

Dr Tom Lundberg was invited last Novemeber to be an expert witness before the Joint Committee on the Constitution at the Houses of the Oireachtas (the Irish Parliament) in Dublin. He presented the paper ‘An Alternative to STV? MMP and the Constituency Role of Representatives’ and answered questions before the parliamentary committee charged with investigating aspects of Ireland’s electoral system, the single transferable vote (STV) and possible alternatives, including the mixed-member proportional (MMP) system, which is used to elect the Scottish Parliament. For more information, follow this link. Dr Lundberg was invited by members of the Scottish Parliament (who included the Presiding Officer, Alex Fergusson) in October to compare the Scottish and New Zealand versions of MMP. The Scottish parliamentarians were attending a Commonwealth Parliamentary Association meeting in New Zealand.

Assembly of States Parties of the International Criminal Court

Dr. Kurt Mills was an accredited non-governmental delegate to the Assembly of States Parties of the International Criminal Court in The Hague during November 2009. The Assembly is comprised of all state members of the International Criminal Court (ICC) and meets every year to discuss policy and the functioning of the ICC. As a delegate, Dr. Mills attended a variety of meetings involving states and nongovernmental/civil society organisations from around the world and attended the opening of the second trial conducted by the ICC. This visit was part of a broader research project Dr. Mills is engaged in entitled 'The Responsibility to Protect, To Prosecute and to Feed', which looks at how the international community responds to mass atrocities and associated humanitarian crises in Africa. The project, which is funded by the British Academy, also entails visits to the United Nations in New York and and the African Union in Addis Ababa.

The Greatest Scot

Prof. Chris Berry appeared in the TV programme 'The Greatest Scot' in which he championed the case for Adam Smith to be the recipient of that accolade. The programme was shown on Friday 13 November in Scottish Television (STV) and can be watched again by following this link. 

Prof. Chris Berry invited to China

Prof. Chris Berry was a keynote speaker at a conference being held in Shanghai to mark the Chinese translation of Adam Smith's "Theory of Moral Sentiments". Professor Chris Berry delivered his lecture on the theme of Adam Smith's ‘Moral Economy’ and answered questions ember in the Institute for Advanced Study in Social Science at Fudan University. Earlier, Professor Berry lectured on "Theory of Moral Sentiments" at Fudan University at the launch of the first ever Chinese translation of one of Adam Smith’s key works. Both lectures will be translated and published. As an accompaniment to the lectures, the University of Glasgow has produced a short webclip on the life and work of Adam Smith. Professor Berry describes the making of the man, the global significance of his writing and explains why Smith's work still resonates with us today. ‘Adam Smith in 10 minutes’ can be accessed here: http://www.gla.ac.uk/adamsmith You can also follow this link for more information about the lectures.

"The religious preferences of Members of the European Parliament" (RPMEP)

Martin Steven has been asked to join a European research project: "The religious preferences of Members of the European Parliament" (RPMEP).  The project will focus on whether or not European elites are more secularised than the average citizens, the effects of religion in the political socialisation of MEPs (trans-party structures, religious lobbies), as well as the influence of the European Parliament on religion.  The lead researcher is François Foret (Université libre de Bruxelles) and Martin will be in charge of the British data set.  An international conference is planned to take place in Brussels in 2011, along with a collaborative publication.  The research team involves members of RECON (Reconstituting Democracy in Europe), a European network funded by the important European Commission Sixth Framework Programme which supports the activities of the European Research Area (ERA): http://www.reconproject.eu/projectweb/portalproject/Index.html

Koen Bartels won a prestigious Sage 'Public Policy and Administration' Prize

Koen Bartels, PhD student at the Department, won the prestigious Sage 'Public Policy and Administration' Prize for the best conference paper by an early career researcher. The title of the paper, which was presented at the 40th Annual Conference of the Joint University Council Public Administration Committee, is entitled 'The Practices of Modern Public Encounters. An Analytical Framework for Studying Interactions between Public Professionals and Citizens in Community Participation'. Follow the link to download the paper.

Prof. Girvin has been awarded an AHRC research leave grant

Professor Brian Girvin has been awarded £33, 758.00 by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC)  under its research leave scheme. This provides for a period leave to complete a substantial piece of work. Brian’s intention is to complete a book length manuscript entitled De Valera’s Legacy and the Birth of the Celtic Tiger: Ireland 1945-1989. The aim of the work is to provide a new and revisionist study of Ireland since 1945 which challenges a number of current interpretations in the discipline. Brian’s approach will be to integrate historical and social science methodologies to investigate a series of questions including the nature of change in traditional societies, the impact of European Integration on Ireland and the role of religion in political culture.

The period of leave begins on 1st September 2009 and continues for eight months. Brian will also be an International Visiting Fellow in Dublin City University during September and October. While in Dublin he will complete research work on the project, carry out interviews and write draft chapters for the book.

Prof Berry meets with the Scottish Secretary, Rt. Hon. Jim Murphy MP

Chris Berry, Professor of Political Theory, met with the Scottish Secretary, Rt. Hon. Jim Murphy MP. He was invited to discuss how the ideas and attitudes of the Enlightenment were carried to Europe and beyond by the Scottish Diaspora and how this presents itself in the world today.

Dr Lundberg awarded a research grant by the Carnegie Trust

Tom Lundberg has been awarded a research grant of £1710 from the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland for his project entitled New Zealand, New Politics, and Mixed-Member Proportional Representation: Lessons for Scotland?. The project examines how New Zealand (NZ) politicians have adapted to the new politics facilitated by the Mixed-Member Proportional (MMP) electoral system after about a decade of its use in both NZ and in post-devolution Scotland. Politicians and others involved in the transition to MMP will be interviewed to assess adaptation, in the context of a longstanding Westminster political culture, to the challenges of sharing power, as well as representative roles resulting from a system electing representatives on both a constituency and party list basis. Research will also compare NZ results to those of a Scottish case study.

New ESRC grant awarded to Prof. White

The Putin Succession, ESRC, about £140,000, from 2009 to 2012

Prof. Stephen White writes: ‘This is an award that will allow me to continue the work on the Russian political elite that I have been conducting with my long-term collaborator, Olga Kryshtanovskaya of the Institute of Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Among other things, we will be concerned with the degree of change in the composition of the elite since Dmitri Medvedev’s accession to the presidency, and (for instance) whether the powerful ‘silovik’ defence-security contingent has retained its influence. The grant will fund Olga herself on a part-time basis, and two Moscow-based research assistants, and will also cover an extensive programme of elite interviewing. We hope to present some of our early conclusions in a paper that has been commissioned by the US journal Post-Soviet Affairs, and a panel that has been included in the 8th International Congress of Central and East European Studies in Stockholm next summer.’

Dr Lundberg and the EU Profiler

Not sure which party to vote for in the upcoming European Parliament elections? Then visit the EU Profiler: www.euprofiler.eu

Lecturer Dr Thomas Lundberg was part of the UK team doing party position coding for the EU Profiler, the first Europe-wide voting advice application. It went live recently, in advance of the European Parliament elections that will take place in June, and has already been visited more than a million times. The EU Profiler is an online election aid that enables voters to discover which party most closely reflects their political preferences. It works by asking voters to evaluate a number of political statements that cover a range of issues. On the basis of their answers, voters are positioned in a ‘political space’ and are able to explore which party in their own country is closest to them in that space. Voters can also compare their position to that of parties throughout Europe.

The EU Profiler covers 34 countries and regions across Europe. The UK team was led by Dr Elisabeth Carter (Keele University) and included Dr Lundberg and Dr Gemma Loomes (University of Birmingham). The EU Profiler is directed by colleagues at the European University Institute.

Professor Duckett presented at the University of Oxford at a colloquium organised with the World Bank

Professor Jane Duckett gave a presentation on 16 May at a University of Oxford colloquium on ‘Building and Harmonious Society in China: Reducing Poverty and Improving Public Services’. The colloquium was organised by the University of Oxford China Centre & Contemporary China Studies Programme in conjunction with the World Bank. It examined the current policy challenges that China faces in reducing poverty and inequality and improving rural public service provision and focussed on in-depth analytical work completed for two recent World Bank reports China: Public Services for the New Socialist Countryside (2008) and From Poor Areas to Poor People: China’s Evolving Poverty Reduction Agenda (2009). The colloquium brought together leading scholars internationally who work on poverty, inequality and public services in China, including Vivienne Shue, Christine Wong and Albert Park (all at Oxford), Wang Sanggui (Renmin), Sarah Cook (IDS), and David Dollar (World Bank). Jane’s presentation, on the 2008 report, was titled ‘New Public Services: Context and Motivation’.

Dr Martin Steven wins Prize

Dr Martin Steven has been awarded the POLITICS journal prize for the best article from the 2008 volume of the journal for his "Secessionist Politics and Religious Conservatism: The Scottish National Party and Faith-Based Interests" (POLITICS  28/3, pp. 188-196). The verdict of the judges was that the article “provided a clear, provocative and engaging account of the role of religion in Scotland's devolved politics that linked to wider debates on political opportunity structures and religion in politics”.

The article draws on Dr Steven’s research in the field of comparative political behaviour, and specifically his project analysing the role of religion in electoral and party politics.  He has recently been invited to present his findings at the international conference on ‘Religion and Democratisations’ at London Metropolitan University, 17th-18th April - the proceedings from which will be published in a special issue of the journal, Democratization, while his book, Christianity and Party Politics, will be published by Routledge in 2010.

Dr Steven received the prize at the 59th Political Studies Association Annual Conference held in Manchester (UK).

Smith in Glasgow '09

The conference Smith in Glasgow '09 marked the 250th anniversary of the publication of Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments. The conference, which took place over three days, saw experts examine and discuss the ideas and legacy of Smith, one of Scotland’s most famous sons and the man hailed as the ‘father of modern economics’, across four different themes:

• Smith, Scotland and the Enlightenment
• Smith and Culture, Literature and the Arts
• Smith and Philosophy
• Smith and the Social Sciences

Keynote speakers included Dr Nicholas Phillipson (University of Edinburgh), Professor James Chandler (University of Chicago), Professor Tom Campbell (CAPPE & Charles Sturt University) and nobel-prize winner, Professor Amartya Sen (Harvard University).

Follow the link for detailed information about Smith in Glasgow ‘09.

Professor Jane Duckett awarded a research grant by the Carnegie Trust

Professor Jane Duckett , together with Professor Ian Taylor and Dr Marc Lanteigne from the University of St Andrews, were awarded a Carnegie Trust Research Grant (£27,000, 2009-11) to work on ‘Chinese Special Economic Zones in Africa as Catalysts for Development’. The project will start in September 2009.

Cian O'Driscoll elected to Snell Visitorship at Balliol College, Oxford

We are delighted to announce that Cian O'Driscoll has been elected as the University's visitor to Balliol College, Oxford, in the Trinity Term of 2009-10. The University has close links with Balliol through the Snell awards (at both staff and student levels), and in terms of scholars of Politics in particular, there is a long and distinguished history of sending visitors and students to Balliol, including Adam Smith in the eighteenth century. Cian will conduct research on 'Just War Theory' whilst at Balliol and will be able to draw upon Balliol's (and Oxford's) great resources in this area.

Barry O'Toole elected Academician of the Social Sciences

The Academy of Social Sciences, the representative body of the Learned Societies for the Social Sciences in the United Kingdom, has elected Barry O'Toole to be an Academician of the Social Sciences. Most learned societies belong to the Academy, which itself is a learned society and which promotes the social sciences in a wide variety of ways, for example by publishing a major international journal, organising and funding conferences, representing the interests of the social sciences on national and international bodies, and making representations to government and other public bodies about the social sciences. It also recognises the achievements and contribution of distinguished scholars by conferring the title Academician upon them, and Barry is delighted by this great honour. Details of the Academy can be found at www.acss.org.uk

New ESRC award to Prof. White: 'crafting electoral authoritarianism: the Russian case’

A new award of nearly £260k has been made by the ESRC to Professor Stephen White to enable him to work on ‘crafting electoral authoritarianism: the Russian case’. The focus will be on the changes in Russian electoral legislation that took place between 2005 and 2007, particularly the elimination of single-member districts; the raising of the minimum threshold from 5 to 7 per cent; the elimination of the ‘against all’ ballot option; and the elimination of the minimum turnout requirement. The project will draw heavily on a programme of interviews with deputies, party leaders, officials within the presidential administration and the Central Electoral Commission, and the expert community (particularly the several institutes that study the electoral process), conducted in association with the director of the department of elite studies at the Institute of Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences and Glasgow visiting professor, Olga Kryshtanovskaya. There will also be a quantitative (survey) dimension, in which the project will also draw on the expertise of Professor Ian McAllister of the Australian National University. The project falls within the wider remit of Professor White’s Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship on ‘managed democracy’ and is part of an ongoing programme of work on regime-society relations in postcommunist Europe, including Belarus and Ukraine as well as Russia. The new award is for three years from October 2008.

New book by Myrto Tsakatika

Myrto Tsakatika’s book entitled Political Responsibility and the European Union has just been published by Manchester University Press. The monograph addresses the question of political legitimacy in the European Union from the much neglected angle of political responsibility. It develops an original communitarian approach to legitimacy based on Alasdair MacIntyre’s ethics of virtues and practices, that can be contrasted with prevalent liberal-egalitarian and neo-republican approaches. Tsakatika argues that a ‘responsibility deficit’, quite distinct from the often discussed ‘democratic deficit’, can be diagnosed in the European Union. This is documented in chapters that provide in-depth analysis of accountability, transparency and the difficulties associated with identifying responsibility in European governance. Closing this gap requires going beyond institutional engineering. It calls for gradual convergence towards certain core social and political practices and for the flourishing of the virtues of political responsibility in Europe’s nascent political community. Throughout the book, normative political theory is brought to bear on concrete dilemmas of institutional choice faced by the EU during the recent constitutional debates. Follow this link for more information about Political Responsibility and the European Union

ESRC grant awarded to Dr Alasdair Young

Dr Alasdair Young has been awarded an ESRC grant for three years, starting October 2008, to undertake a large-scale research project on ‘Causes of Compliance: The EU and the WTO’.

International cooperation has become increasingly institutionalised. The significance of this development depends largely on whether governments conform to international rules when it is costly to do so. Although there are rival theoretical explanations for compliance, empirical evaluation of these accounts has been limited and has provided little insight into why a government would comply with a specific rule. This project will develop specific expectations for compliance based on the rival theoretical explanations: neo-realism (emphasising relative power); rational choice institutionalism (emphasising costs associated with others being encouraged to not comply or being unwilling to cooperate in the future) and constructivism (emphasising appropriate behaviour). It will test them with respect to the European Union’s compliance with World Trade Organisation rules. The project will combine a statistical analysis of the EU's compliance with WTO judgements; paired case studies of the politics of EU policy-making before and after EU rules were found incompatible with WTO disciplines; and a survey of EU-level associations to identify environmental or public-health proposals that were not adopted because of concerns about WTO compatibility. This project will thus analyse the political dynamics of compliance with international rules and explore the impact of international rules on EU policy-making.

The total value of the award £142,348.22

JSCM Annual Review, co-edited by Dr Young, has been published

The Annual Review of the European Union 2007, edited by Alasdair Young (Glasgow) and Ulrich Sedelmeier (LSE) has just been published. The Review, produced in association with JCMS (The Journal of Common Market Studies), covers the key developments in the European Union, its member states, and acceding and/or applicant countries in 2007. It contains key analytical articles on political, economic and legal issues in the EU by leading experts, together with a keynote article on Russia-EU relations by Margot Light and a review article on comparative regionalism by Alberta Sbragia.

The Review is the most up-to-date and authoritative source of information for those engaged in teaching and research or who are simply interested in the European Union.

JCER special issue edited by one of our PhD students

Anke Schmidt-Felzmann has guest edited a special issue of the Journal of Contemporary European Research (JCER). Entitled Energy Supply in the 'New Europe': Critical Perspectives on the European Union's External Energy Policy, the issue is made up of a selection of four research articles (including one by Valentina Feklyunina, also PhD student in the Department) and a guest commentary, each of which address a key aspect of the dilemmas EU policy-makers are facing in the development of a common external energy policy. In addition, it also provides reviews of three recent contributions to the literature on energy security.

The special issue is the outcome of a workshop organised by two of our PhD students (Valentina Feklyunina and Anke Schmidt-Felzmann), entitled "Security of Energy Supply in the New Europe - A Challenge for the European Neighbourhood Policy?". The workshop was held at the University of Glasgow in September 2007 and was sponsored by the Department of Politics and the Faculty of Law, Business and Social Sciences as well as UACES, the Scottish Jean Monnet Centre, and the Centre for Russian, Central and East European Studies (CRCEES).

Follow this link to download the editorial. To access the articles readers will have to register with the JCER at its website. Registration is free.

Two new Berlin volumes edited by Prof. White

A whole series of edited volumes have stemmed from the Berlin Congress of the International Council for Central and East European Studies that took place in 2005. Two new volumes have just appeared under the editorship of Stephen White, who is a previous General Editor of the entire proceedings.

The first, Media, Culture and Society in Putin's Russia (Palgrave, 2008), focuses on relations between government and the wider society with particular reference to civil society – if such a term is useful in the Russian context – and the mass media. But there are also contributions on the nature of Russian capitalism, on recent ‘blokbastery’, and the advance of drug abuse and HIV/AIDS. Follow the link for more information about Media, Culture and Society in Putin's Russia.

 The second volume, Politics and the Ruling Group in Putin's Russia (Palgrave, 2008), focuses more directly on the regime itself. How do we label it, for instance? How strong is its presidential system, in comparative perspective? How powerful are the ‘siloviki’ that have their roots in the armed services and state security? How powerful is business, and how is it perceived by ordinary people? Both volumes include other contributors from elsewhere in the University, but for the most part they draw on the research of an international group of scholars including several from the region itself. Entering an era that will evidently continue to be ‘Putinist’, the questions they ask are as topical as when they were originally conceived. Fllow the link for more information about Politics and the Ruling Group in Putin's Russia.

New book by Cian O'Driscoll

 Cian O'Driscoll's new book has just been published by Palgrave (USA). Entitled The Renegotiation of the Just War Tradition and the Right to War in the Twenty-First Century, it examines the manner by which the just war tradition has been invoked, engaged, and developed in the context of the war on terror. It pays particular attention to the questions of anticipatory war, humanitarian intervention, and punitive war, and looks to compare current thinking on these issues to classical ideas about when and how war might be justified.  In doing so, it draws our attention to the renegotiation of the right to war that is taking place in the post-9/11 world, while also illuminating the stories of change, continuity, and contestation that underpin the ongoing development of the just war tradition. Follow the link for more information.  

Prof. White has been awarded a new research grant

Prof. Stephen White, the recipient of a major Leverhulme Trust fellowship to examine the Russian political sphere, has been awarded a joint Economic and Social Research Council/Australian Research Council Grant on ‘Crafting Authoritarian Politics’. Working with Prof. Ian McAllister at the Australian National University, Prof. White will oversee a three-year project that includes a large public opinion survey on governance in Russia, focus groups and interviews of political elites.

Prof. White and colleagues in the department have carried out extensive work on governance, public opinion, elections and campaigns in transitional societies (including Russia, China, Ukraine, Moldova and Belarus). This work has included several grant projects funded by the ESRC and the Leverhulme Trust. The department and university have a long tradition of research strength in this area, including post-graduate taught courses, PhD study, a world-class library collection and editorship of the prestigious journal, Europe-Asia Studies. The Transformation Group in the Politics Department focuses on these questions, and includes Prof. Jane Duckett, Prof. Bill Miller and Dr Sarah Oates as well as the postgraduates who share their research interests.  

Prof. Barry O'Toole elected Fellow of the Royal Historical Society

Barry O'Toole has been elected to a Fellowship of the Royal Historical Society. Founded in 1868, the Society is the foremost society in Great Britain promoting the study of the past. Fellowship is bestowed on those who have made an original contribution to historical scholarship in the form of significant published work. Barry has an established reputation in the study of administrative history, based on his books, Private Gain and Public Service (Routledge 1989) and The Ideal of Public Service (Routledge 2006), and on numerous articles in important international journals.

Prof. White has been awarded a Major Research Fellowship by the Leverhulme Foundation

Stephen White has been awarded a Major Research Fellowship by the Leverhulme Foundation, for three years from October 2008, which has allowed the appointment of a replacement lecturer in order to free him to undertake a large-scale research project on ‘Managed Democracy’.

As is widely recognized, the end of communist rule has not simply seen a ‘transition to democracy’ but in much of the region to a different and distinctive type of regime that has been called ‘managed democracy’. Elections take place, but disproportionately advantage the incumbents; political parties and other countervailing institutions are weak; and power is disproportionately concentrated in a superpresidency. The Fellowship is intended to enable Professor White to undertake an extended analysis of this novel type of regime with particular reference to Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, using qualitative as well as quantitative evidence and emphasizing issues of broader comparative significance such as falling turnout, political disengagement and the ‘quality of democracy’.

The total value of the award (FEC) is £682,919.