Abstract
Our September issue provides a rich array of articles studying topics that range from developments in feminist theory to strategic voting, constitutional review in Turkey, debates about liberal and illiberal democracy, fiscal federalism in China, and a possible way to negotiate agreements aiming to limit climate change. What eloquent testimony to the capacious parameters of international political science! Without further ado, here is the menu for the current issue.
In ‘From State Feminism to Market Feminism?’ Johanna Kantola and Judith Squires claim that the literature on state feminism fails to take account of current forms of feminist practice. They propose the concept of market feminism to capture newer modes of engagement. Some questions worth pondering: what explains the shift from the earlier, predominant form (state feminism) to market feminism? Which of the two approaches is more effective (and ‘effective’ in which respects)? And what is the impact of the shift on particular groups of women and particular aspects of women’s interests?
One of the staples of electoral analysis is that elections held according to mixed compensatory procedures (pioneered by the German Federal Republic) combine the best of both worlds of proportional representation and single-member district plurality systems. In ‘A Quasi-Proportional Electoral System “Only for Honest Men”? The Hidden Potential for Manipulating Mixed Compensatory Electoral Systems’, Daniel Bochsler recommends skepticism, based on his analysis of the way that the mixed form has functioned in four countries that have adopted it. Bochsler finds that large parties can obtain an additional bonus by encouraging their supporters to engage in strategic voting. The reasoning − both by leaders of large parties and by Bochsler − is clever. Bochsler’s article demonstrates the payoff for theories of politics as well as for political practice that can be produced by parsing apparently straightforward procedures.
Are constitutional courts a tool of the minority elite against the elected majority? Not necessarily, Yasushi Hazama suggests, in ‘Hegemonic Preservation or Horizontal Accountability: Constitutional Review in Turkey’. On the basis of a comprehensive analysis of Constitutional Court decisions in the period following Turkey’s democratic transition, Hazama finds that the Court has exercised the power of judicial review regardless of who has occupied the executive, rather than acting as a rubber stamp for the executive. What cannot be ascertained, on the basis of a single case study, is what explains this outcome. Nor is it possible to know, again based on studying a single case, whether the pattern that Hazama observes characterizes the judiciary in other relatively young democracies.
In ‘Liberal Democracy and Beyond: Extending the Sequencing Debate,’ Christopher Hobson questions the conservative solution that Fareed Zakaria provided to the problem identified by Zakaria as illiberal democracy. Hobson suggests that, rather than restricting democracy to protect liberal freedoms, as Zakaria advocated, it would be preferable to embrace a more expansive and positive form of liberalism than the stilted, classical, Whig conception. Hobson favors the richer understanding of liberalism developed by the late nineteenth century British political theorist T.H. Green and his associates; one that inspired the development of the welfare state in the twentieth century. According to Hobson, the major limitation of actually existing democracies is not too much democracy and too little liberalism, as Zakaria claimed, but too much liberalism (of the classical, neoliberal, variety) and too little democracy. Thus, rather than further limiting the democratic content of liberal democracy, a preferable goal would be to deepen liberal democracy, as in social democracy, cosmopolitan (or global) democracy, and deliberative democracy. Hobson’s audacious claim will doubtless elicit rejoinders—and, if so, what better tribute to the importance and complexity of liberal democracy?
In ‘Fiscal Federalism and Soft Budget Constraints’, Lynette Ong also analyzes liberalism − but of a very different kind and in a very different regime than the focus of Hobson’s article. Ong claims that the structure of China’s fiscal federalism has had the perverse effect of freeing subnational governments from fiscal constraints by enabling them to extract resources from local credit institutions. The result has been burgeoning local fiscal debt, a product of unrepaid loans owed by local governments. The substantial debt burden constitutes a time bomb not evident from the vantage point of the national government’s fiscal situation. Ong recommends that the national government should be empowered to harden local budget constraints. So much for the stereotype of the all-powerful, authoritarian Chinese state!
Arid Underdal and his colleagues’ article, ‘Can Conditional Commitments Break the Climate Change Negotiations Deadlock?’ also deals with public policy, this time regarding inter-state agreements. Underdal and colleagues analyze the logjam that has prevented achieving significant international agreements mandating states to pursue policies to limit climate change. Underdal and colleagues ask whether a feasible solution might be for a major actor (such a state or the EU) to conditionally agree to limit emissions − on condition that another actor agreed to follow suit. Their answer: maybe! On the one hand, they suggest, a conditional agreement by one actor may lower another actor’s cost of committing to an agreement. On the other hand, the political cost of agreeing may exceed what might be saved by the agreement. The article thus engages in the complex, inconclusive, yet important form of reasoning that involves counter-factuals − an admittedly imperfect procedure but one that citizens, scholars, and political practitioners engage in all the time.
Last, but not least, an important announcement. For six years, Yvonne Galligan has provided IPSR with splendid editorial guidance. Most recently, she helped launch several important innovations at IPSR, including the Editors Choice theme feature, Online First − the feature that makes articles electronically available before they are published in the print issue of IPSR, and the organization of the Meisel-Laponce Award that honors the author(s) of the best article published in IPSR since IPSA’s XXIst World Congress at Santiago, Chile, in July 2009. Regrettably, Yvonne has decided that 24 hours in a day and 52 weeks in a year do not provide adequate time for her professional commitments to students, colleagues, and readers of IPSR; her responsibility as a member of a government commission; and for safeguarding some quality time for her family and herself! Yvonne informed the Executive Committee of IPSA last year of her intention to step down as an editor of IPSR. IPSA’s Executive Committee appointed a sub-committee of the EC Publications Committee to solicit applications to succeed Yvonne. The many fine applications that were submitted testify to IPSR’s widespread support throughout the world. The search committee nominated Marian Sawer to replace Yvonne, and last April IPSA’s Executive Committee unanimously voted to offer Marian the position as General Editor of IPSR. Marian joined me as General Editor at IPSA’s World Congress in Madrid in July. Yvonne has graciously agreed to work with Marian and me through 2012 to facilitate a smooth editorial transition.
Marian is a distinguished scholar and public intellectual. She has published books and articles on liberal ideology, democratic institutions, women’s political representation, women’s policy machinery and women’s movements. Marian is former head of the Political Science Program and is currently Emeritus Professor at the Australian National University. She is former President of the Australian Political Studies Association. In 2009, the Australian Political Studies Association presented her with its Lifetime Achievement Award. She was elected to the IPSA Executive Committee in 2006. No stranger to the journal, Marian has published most recently, ‘What Makes the Substantive Representation of Women Possible?’ in the June issue. We very much look forward to Marian’s help in maintaining and strengthening IPSR’s position as a leading journal of international political science.