Name: Fatima Abubakar
Section: Political Theory
Professional Email: abtima85@gmail.com
Professional Status: Administrator
Institution: Federal University Lokoja
Scheduling Preference: No Preference
Proposal Type: Paper
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Co-author info: OKOH, Bartholomew, University of Abuja , barthy01@yahoo.co.uk
Co-presenter info: OKOH, Bartholomew, University of Abuja , barthy01@yahoo.co.uk
Paper Title:  Tackling Poverty In Africa through Good Governance: Nigeria in Perspectives.
Abstract:
The objective of this study is to examine how poverty in Africa can be tackled through good governance. Governance is conceptualized as the system of values, policies and institutions by which a society organize collective decision-making and action related to political, economic, socio-cultural and environmental affairs through the interaction of the state , civil society and the private sector. Nigeria being the most populous Black Country with tremendous natural and human resources yet suffers chronic poverty presents an important case scenario in poverty discourse in Africa. Findings revealed that social injustice, inequality, poor policy implementation, weak institutions and corruption are the root causes of poverty in Nigeria. This ugly state of affair has produced many indices of poverty such as low per capita income, low life expectancy, high infant mortality, dilapidated infrastructures etc. The past government efforts at tackling poverty has largely failed due to absence of transparency and accountability in public offices. The paper strongly recommends the need for institutional framework that will respond to the needs and aspirations of the people, coupled with massive investment in physical and social infrastructures across the states in Nigeria. Keywords: Poverty, Governance, Good Governance, Institution, Nigeria.

Name: Abdulaziz Almuslem
Section: Comparative Politics
Professional Email: aalmusle@buffalo.edu
Professional Status: Graduate Student
Institution: State University of New York at Buffalo
Scheduling Preference: No Preference
Proposal Type: Paper
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Paper Title:  How Democracy Improves the Investment Climate in Postcolonial and Other States
Abstract:
This research shows that the distinction between different conceptualizations of democracy is important if democracy aims to create a low-risk image of the postcolonial state that can help attract investment. Specifically, this research shows that the mere election process, without the normative component of protecting civil liberties in the postcolonial states, actually increases risk perception for investors thereby having an adverse effect on FDI and domestic capital. The implication of this research on the chances of civil conflict is important since wealthier states have a reduced chance of experiencing civil conflict, and attracting investment can help promote wealth.

Name: Ikenna Mike Alumona
Section: Comparative Politics
Professional Email: ikennaalumona@yahoo.com
Professional Status: Assistant Professor
Institution: Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu University , Igbariam Campus
Scheduling Preference: No Preference
Proposal Type: Paper
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Co-author info: Prof. Lere Amusan. Professor and Head, Department of Political Science and International Relations, North - West University, South Africa, lereamusan@gmail.com
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Paper Title:  Youth Cultism, Crime and Lethal Violence in Nigerian Cities
Abstract:
In many parts of the world, cult groups create an atmosphere of negative peace as a result of their footprints in the security market which facilitates arms proliferation. Youth cultism is one of the sources of violence in most Nigerian cities. Several studies on cultism have focused on the evolution of cult related activities in Nigeria from non-violence to the proliferation of splinter secret cults in tertiary institutions and communities. This paper examines the socio-economic and security implications of cultism in Nigerian cities. The paper answers the following questions: Why are Nigerian cities prone to cult related activities? How does cultism affect people in cities? Analysis in this paper is anchored on social control theory which offers more insight into the spatial spread and ways of containing the organised criminal behaviour in the country. Recent confrontations between security forces and cult groups explain why the threat is more pronounced in some cities than others. This qualitative study stresses that the abatement of cultism so far has not yielded expected results as some innocent people are murdered by cult groups with dangerous weapons. The assurances of safety, protection, success in the society and influence by members when they join do not always materialise as desired. The paper suggests that informal peace education and security collaboration by all stakeholders remain crucial to the management of cult violence in Nigerian cities. Timely identification of notorious groups/members through early warning system will go a long way to discouraging the spatial spread and recruitment of new members. Keywords: Youth cultism, crime, Nigerian cities, cult groups, weapons.

Name: Annalyn Bachmann
Section: Comparative Politics
Professional Email: annalyn@mit.edu
Professional Status: Practitioner
Institution: MIT Center for Collective Intelligence
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Paper Title:  Overcoming Top-Down Nationalism with Collective Governance
Abstract:
Top-down nationalism was identified by Charles Tilly as a methodology of control instituted by political elites to distract from endemic problems that could destabilize their ability to control a country and threaten their political preponderance. It is the purpose of this paper to argue that nationalism is used by elites to distract from internal crises during transition periods to consolidate power, and thus, collective models of governance will help overcome this trend within political life. To illustrate this point, three case studies will be presented that outline nationalistic tendencies in an area of the world which has undergone significant political transitions: Central Europe. Through an examination of nationalism in Romania, Poland, and Hungary; this paper hopes to identify a potential theoretical model of collective governance that will help overcome some of the challenges presented.

Name: Emmanuelle Bryant
Section: State and Local Politics
Professional Email: emmanuelle.bryant@pgr.reading.ac.uk
Professional Status: Graduate Student
Institution: Ms
Scheduling Preference: No Preference
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Paper Title: Construction of a citizenship in Turkana County, Kenya: From Subsistence to Activism
Abstract:
Construction of a citizenship in Turkana County, Kenya: From Subsistence to Activism. The rural citizens, in the semi-arid and arid Turkana county, have historically been disconnected from the national politics and modern state altogether, forced to cultivate a citizenship produced through everyday struggles and practices. However, since the introduction of oil extraction in the area, protests have raised unprecedentedly to block, on multiple occasions for weeks, the international oil company’s activities. Many times, local citizens were using the company as a scapegoat to make pay the state for the historical debt of isolation and poverty. Claims went above material wants to conquer their well-being through security and a stable livelihood. Yet for the majority little, in terms of outcomes, has come out from most protests leaving the Turkana citizens doubtful of being, one day, the recipients of potential benefits in the future. Through a field work operated in the area, hundred interviews have been conducted to comprehend citizenship in a ‘die-hard’ culture and its shift through the analysis of the processes of protesting in the context of oil extraction. Results found that despite clear necessities, the micro-corruption and manipulative interests have shaped and directed the processes and outcomes of what seemed to be the only power the most vulnerable ones detained to gain satisfaction. Hence, by exploring the determinants of insurrection and its predicaments, this paper re-considers a historically exclusionary subsistence citizenship to a subordinated activist one.

Name: Amobi Peter Chiamogu
Section: Comparative Politics
Professional Email: amobi.chiamogu@federalpolyoko.edu.ng
Professional Status: Graduate Student
Institution: Federal Polytechnic, Oko
Scheduling Preference: Friday Afternoon
Proposal Type: Paper
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Co-author info: Uchechukwu P. Chiamogu, Department of Public Administration, Federal Polytechnic, Oko, uchep.chiamogu@federalpolyoko.edu.ng
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Paper Title:  Ethnicity, Religion and Challenges of Governance in Africa: A Critical Analysis of the Nigerian Nation State
Abstract:
The mix in the politicization of ethnicity and religion with various communities especially among the minority ethnic groups across the country in response to skewed and arbitrary fragmentation and balkanization of the Nigerian state through the creation of regions, states, local government councils, jobs and disbursement of appointment positions largely shape and determine the 'how and what' of governance, character of politics and national integration in Nigeria. The central government became alien to the units where access to the government turned platform for religious and ethnic nationalism thereby occasioning the dawn of ethnicization and religionization of politics as a way of expressing the enticement of politicians and public officers to the ethnic or religious space. This paper thus seeks to trace the nexus between politicization of ethnicity and religion and the challenges to governance in Nigeria. It sees the duo as the major contending parameters for appraising Nigerian national questions. It through the use of secondary sources of data observed after an in-depth review of historical, unification and disintegrative forces literature for Nigeria, observed that the embers of kinship and religious ties have continually paved way for political support thereby forming the major desiderata for political/resources mobilization and allocation in Nigeria. While recommending significant devolution and decentralization of powers to be preceded by a nationwide programme of moral and ethical revival aimed at promoting virtues of honesty, transparency, accountability and justice, the paper makes case for good governance along lines of best practices at all levels of governance in Nigeria.

Name: Elinor Chisholm
Section: Comparative Politics
Professional Email: elinor.chisholm@otago.ac.nz
Professional Status: Associate Professor
Institution: University of Otago, Wellington (New Zealand)
Scheduling Preference: No Preference
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Paper Title: Urban politics and resistance to public housing redevelopment: New Zealand in comparative perspective 
Abstract:
Public housing is undergoing redevelopment in many countries in an effort to improve its quality and provide housing for higher-income people as well as public tenants. This redevelopment is at the forefront of urban political debates. Proponents for redevelopment argue that public housing should be integrated into the wider community, and that public land should be used to help address public and private housing shortages. As public housing estates transform, tenants have struggled for the right to stay put or to have a say in how their communities are developed. Analysing how public tenants understand their rights to their communities is an important and often neglected contribution to the wider literature on how redevelopment shapes urban politics, transforms neighbourhoods, and affects tenants. The aim of this study was to investigate how New Zealand public tenants have framed their right to stay in their communities in opposition to redevelopment. This paper presents the results of a thematic analysis of statements given by public tenants in three communities undergoing renewal. I contrast the narratives put forward by New Zealand public tenants with those of public tenants resisting redevelopment in the United States. Both New Zealand and American public tenants drew attention to the strength of their communities. New Zealand public tenants made additional claims about their right to stay in their communities based on historical policy commitments and on indigenous rights. Some tenants argued for a right to stay based on commitments made to provide returned service-people and their families a “home for life”. Others argued for a right to stay in their communities as Māori – through their ancestral connections to the land, or through the relationship between Māori and the government under the Treaty of Waitangi (1840), New Zealand’s founding document. The connection to the long history of Maori displacement is also reflected in the use by public tenants of methods employed by land rights activists such as hikoi (protest marches), planting gardens and occupying land. The global project of redeveloping public housing communities is resisted in locally specific ways which draw on distinct understandings of the right to the city. Common imperatives across countries to redevelop public housing in order to use land more efficiently and fund housing services, will confront local resistance based on specific history and culture. The case of New Zealand illustrates the importance of historical state commitments and indigenous understandings of the right to the city to the global story of public housing redevelopment and urban politics.

Name: Monday Dickson
Section: Comparative Politics
Professional Email: mondaydickson@aksu.edu.ng
Professional Status: Assistant Professor
Institution: Akwa Ibom State University, P.M.B 1167, Uyo, Akwa Ibom State, Nigeria
Scheduling Preference: No Preference
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Paper Title:  Global Economic Crisis and Recession in Nigeria: The Linkages and Consequences
Abstract:
In 2008, the global economy experienced the most severe crash since the 1930s. The economic downturn took a heavy toll on the economy of both rich and poor countries creating joblessness, wage stagnation and widespread economic insecurity. Soon after the world economy came out of the morass of the decline, recession engulfed the Nigeria State that had for the previous decades experienced sustained growth at unprecedented levels. This article examines the relationship between many of the key issues prevalent during the global economic crisis and recession in Nigeria. The study adopts the descriptive/qualitative research technique and relied essentially on relevant secondary data. Using the Marxian approach to economic crisis as the framework of analysis, the paper probes important questions including: What were the major causes of global economic crisis vis-a-vis recession in Nigeria? What is the relationship between the global economic crisis and recession Nigeria? The study argues that the sharp collapse in global economy left no country on the globe immune to recession owing to deep contradictions inherent in world capitalist system. Findings reveal that recession in Nigeria was a reaction from the global economic crisis which emerged from the basic working of capitalism. Consequently, Nigeria and other developing countries have been increasingly affected by the recession in advanced economies through the consequences of unbalanced trade and financial market channels. While the nation must adjust to the challenges of global capitalism, there is the need to refashion every aspect of the domestic economy towards diversification for self-sufficiency.

Name: Anna Feuer
Section: Comparative Politics
Professional Email: anna.feuer@yale.edu
Professional Status: Graduate Student
Institution: Yale University
Scheduling Preference: Friday Afternoon
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Paper Title: Environmental Warfare Tactics in Asymmetric Conflict 
Abstract:
This paper considers how, and under what conditions, actors in irregular conflicts weaponize nature. When do insurgents and counterinsurgents alike pursue environmental degradation—ranging from limited and short-term damage to ecocidal violence—as a tactic of war? To what extent do we do we see variation in the frequency and form of environmental warfare? And when do conflict actors exercise restraint in their use of violence against the natural environment? There has been little effort by political scientists to identify the conditions under which conflict actors make use of environmental warfare tactics in either conventional or irregular warfare; the limited social science scholarship on this topic typically makes use of single case studies rather than cross-case analysis. While environmental warfare has a long and devastating history—one stretching from Cyrus’ diversion of the Euphrates to the use of Agent Orange in Vietnam—recent acts of environmental sabotage by the Islamic State and al-Shabaab give these questions particular urgency. I describe the use of environmental warfare tactics over a broad range of irregular conflicts and develop a framework to explain its variation. Deliberate attacks on the natural landscape, the frequency with which these tactics they are deployed, and the diverse forms they take are conditioned by context-specific incentives, constraints, and intervening variables; in many cases, the intentional destruction of the natural landscape is difficult to explain by reference to operational strategy alone. I identify six categories of incentives that influence the decision to weaponize the natural environment: strategic, political, tactical, ideological, cultural, and technological. I then develop three case studies—the British use of chemical herbicides in the 1950s, Saddam Hussein’s draining of the Mesopotamian marshes in the 1990s, and Sudanese scorched earth tactics in the 2000s—to demonstrate how these distinct incentives operate for counterinsurgent forces. *Note: I think this paper straddles the Comparative/IR sections; I would appreciate being considered for either.

Name: Gloria Gennaro
Section: Comparative Politics
Professional Email: gloria.gennaro@unibocconi.it
Professional Status: Graduate Student
Institution: Bocconi University, Milano
Scheduling Preference: No Preference
Proposal Type: Paper
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Paper Title: Cosmopolitan Cities? Evidence on Anti-Immigration Politics in Cities from a Natural Experiment in France
Abstract:
Immigration is a salient topic in the political agenda in the United States and Western Europe. However, the attention devoted to immigration seems far from being a temporary phenomenon. Attention has steadily increased since the mid-1970s, across the political spectrum and partly independently from the emergence of extreme right-wing parties (Alonso and Fonseca, 2012; Mudde, 2013; Dancygier and Margalit, 2018). This study aims at understanding the largely neglected effect of immigration on political behavior in urban contexts. Specifically, I aim at understanding if immigration influences the political demand and supply of anti-immigration policy positions in cities: (i) does immigration cause larger anti-immigrant vote? (ii) Does immigration cause a larger supply of anti-immigrant candidates? Most studies investigate the effect of immigration on voting behavior using aggregate municipality data and tend to find a negative correlation between municipality size and anti-immigrant sentiment (e.g. Dustmann et al. 2016). However, two main identification problems persist. First, the location of migrants is endogenous to other characteristics, that per se trigger patterns of political behavior. Second, the lack of fine-grained data does not allow to distinguish aggregate from dis-aggregate effects (Enos, 2016), inducing ecological inference. Both problems are exacerbated when studying cities. I exploit a natural experiment across French municipalities, consisting of a legal population-based discontinuity in the provision of social housing, and study the 2012 French legislative elections. Through a regression discontinuity approach with mediation, I show that municipalities that increased social housing between 2000 and 2012 also experienced an increase in the immigrant population, inducing different political behavior. Mediation analysis allows disentangling the direct effect of social housing from the indirect one that goes through migration. The policy has a number of important features for my research design. First, interested municipalities are located in large urban areas, with no geographic discontinuity from the main city (and are often qualified as the suburbs of large cities). Second, social housing is proportionally more used by immigrant households, who tend to have higher geographical mobility and accede to house ownership later in life. Third, social housing is not exclusively targeted to the poorest part of the population but is designed for extremely poor to middle-income households. The empirical strategy is composed of three steps (combining the methodologies by Dippel et al. 2018 and Calonico et al. 2017): (i) showing the effect of social housing on immigration, (ii) showing the direct effect of social housing on political behavior, (iii) showing the indirect effect of social housing on political behavior, through immigration. The third step is the one that allows establishing a causal effect of immigration on political behavior, where I exploit the exogenous variation in immigration induced by the policy. Preliminary findings suggest that immigration induces anti-immigration political behavior in cities. The effect exists for both political demand and supply. However, the result for political supply is more clearcut: when immigration increases, the supply of anti-immigrant candidates responds positively. Voting behavior seems to follow.

Name: chrysoula gitsoulis
Section: Comparative Politics
Professional Email: cgitsoulis@gradcenter.cuny.edu
Professional Status: Adjunct Professor
Institution: university of maryland, university college
Scheduling Preference: Friday Afternoon
Proposal Type: Paper
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Paper Title:  The anti-democratic nature of EU fiscal policy
Abstract:
In this paper, I argue that there are important flaws in the design of the EU monetary system, in particular with respect to trade relations. The euro was created to make trade across the EU more competitive -- to facilitate the flow of labor and goods across borders to where they are needed, thereby enabling the whole union to work more efficiently. Free trade is, of course, a great thing, so long as all trade partners are benefited. But the European monetary system was designed in such a way that it favors strong economies at the expense of weaker ones, thereby widening the gap between rich and poor member states, with no mechanisms in place to restore competitiveness for weaker members. I will use the case of Greece to illustrate this point. The standard narrative holds that Greece is a country of dependency and corruption; a country that is in need of market reforms and fiscal discipline that, if applied diligently, will yield economic recovery and ultimately a return of confidence in credit markets. There is much that is misleading about this statement, as I will show in the paper. Doing so will help establish the background for the important referendum that took place on July 6, 2015, which will in turn set the stage for my political (not merely economic) critique of the European monetary system, if time permits.

Name: Juan Gonzalez
Section: Identity Politics
Professional Email: juan.roch.gonzalez@fu-berlin.de
Professional Status: Graduate Student
Institution: Freie Universitat Berlin
Scheduling Preference: Saturday Morning
Proposal Type: Paper
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Paper Title: Europe and populist parties: a comparative discourse analysis
Abstract:
The study of populism and populist discourse is on the rise in political science. Commentators and political scientists tend to analyse different and sometimes antagonistic political formations under the conceptual insights provided by the study of populist phenomena. In response to this diversity, exclusionary and inclusionary subtypes of populism have become consolidated categories within the literature on populism (Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser, 2011; Stavrakakis, 2017). However, there are still pending questions in regards to the concrete articulation of populist discourse in its exclusionary and inclusionary variant, and especially about the ways whereby populist discourse is related to other discourses and sub-discourses. In this vein, an intriguing and relevant question, and the one concerning this paper, is how different representations and practical argumentations about Europe are integrated and interrelated with populist discourses. Europe comes about in the discourses of allegedly populist actors by representing alternatively ‘a Europe of the elites’ (generally viewed as the European Union) or a ‘Europe of the people’. However, these representations are not fixed and cannot be confined to harder or softer notions of Euroscepticism (see Taggart’s (1998) and the subsequent critiques: Usherwood, 2013; Startin and Krouwel, 2013; Stavrakakis and Katsambekis, 2014; della Porta et. al., 2017). They are part, indeed, of changing, complex and multifaceted ‘interpretative repertoires’ (Keller, 2012: p. 67) that are worth to be explored. This study takes a corpus-assisted approach to discourse analysis (Baker, 2006) that is based on manifestos and party leaders’ speeches of Podemos in Spain and Alternative für Deutschland in Germany between 2013 and 2017. The analysis primarily aims at (1) exploring the main collocates, discursive prosodies (Stubbs, 2001) and forms of representation (Fairclough, 2003; Van Leeuwen, 2008) of ‘the people’ and Europe (2) and comparing the different discursive articulations (and their virtual impact on social action). These parties function as equivalents to the leftist and rightist poles of the populist spectrum but in any case exhaust the wide variety of populist parties. That said, this comparison may serve as a reference to more general accounts of EU critique and populism. The findings confirm the articulatory power of ‘the people’ in bringing about Europe. Furthermore, this study reveals distinct ways of meaning attributions and patterns of word co-selection in leftist and rightist populist variants as well as diverging representations of Europe. The paper concludes evaluating the implications of these findings to populism and Euroscepticism studies.

Name: Christopher Graham
Section: Comparative Politics
Professional Email: christopher.graha001@umb.edu
Professional Status: Graduate Student
Institution: University of Massachusetts, Boston
Scheduling Preference: Friday Afternoon
Proposal Type: Paper
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Paper Title: Capacity-Building and Emigrant Management in Sending Countries: Global Trends and Administrative Gaps
Abstract:
In response to the growing centrality of migration in politics, governments have incorporated and diversified, to varying degrees, migration management strategies into domestic and foreign policy (Ionescu, 2006; Liu & van Dongen, 2016; Varadarajan, 2010). Significant resources have been mobilized to build-up the institutional capacity of countries to manage these predominantly transnational relations with migrants, either toward the outcome of reducing perceived security threats, or for national socio-economic advancement (Erlingsson, 2014; Gamlen, Cummings, Vaaler, & Rossouw, 2013). Many of the emerging migration management strategies and organizational arrangements within sending countries are products of the perceived socio-economic benefits of migration, and often do not fit neatly into immigration policy and border security categorizations. The current discourse on migration is however predominantly skewed towards immigration and border security in receiving countries. To address this monistic predisposition in the current migration management discourse, this paper focuses on the capacity-building and emigrant management strategies of sending countries to foster greater transnational interaction with their emigrants. In this study, a binary-scaled thematic analysis is used to compare thirty countries across twelve capacity-building indicators associated with emigrant management. The findings of the study indicate that capacity-building and emigrant management strategies vary across countries and regions. Emigrant strategies in those countries also tend to be managed more at national or federal levels and less from provincial or sub-national levels, which have limiting effects on transnationalism. The findings also indicate that capacity-building is heightened in Europe and Asia-Pacific compared to Africa and the Middle East and Latin America – which are currently facing serious migration-security dilemmas. Understanding the arrangement of these strategies within sending countries and globally, may provide insights for governments, scholars, and migration-security and migration-development practitioners to make better decisions about how they design and approach emigrant management in order to achieve desired outcomes.

Name: Selin Bengi Gumrukcu
Section: Comparative Politics
Professional Email: bengigumrukcu@gmail.com
Professional Status:
Institution: Rutgers University
Scheduling Preference: No Preference
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Paper Title:  Populist Discourse: the Case of AKP in Turkey
Abstract:
Defined as “a thin-centered ideology that considers society to be ultimately separated into two homogenous camps, ‘the pure people’ and ‘the corrupt elite’, and which argues that politics should be an expression of general will of the people” (Mudde), populism became the keyword to explain the recent developments all over the world from Brazil to Hungary. Turkey is not an exception in this regard. While populism is not a new phenomenon in Turkish politics (Aytac and Ezgi 2018), it is obvious that it gained more ground recently, especially after the election victory of the then newly established Justice and Development Party (JDP) in 2002. The aim of this paper is to track and reveal ‘populism’ in Turkey, based on the rhetoric of Erdogan, from the very establishment of his party in 2001, on two axis: us (the people) versus them (the elite), and (imagined/claimed) internal and external enemies of the nation. By doing so, the paper will contribute to the current debate in Turkey by claiming that the party has been a populist one in Mudde’s terms; it aims to contribute to the literature on by revealing the populist rhetoric in an illiberal democracy that was once on a path to consolidate its democracy. In order to do so, the speeches of Erdogan before (during meetings in major cities, i.e. Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir) and after (what are known to be his ‘balcony’ speeches) the general elections of 2002, 2007, 2011, 2015 (both in June and November) and 2018 will be analyzed. A quick analysis reveals that Erdogan has been a populist politician from the very beginning of his political career in the JDP. Right before the 2002 elections he said: “My story is the story of this people. Either the people will win and come to power, or the pretentious and oppressive minority estranged from the reality of Anatolia ad looking over it with disdain will remain in power. The authority to decide on this belongs to people. Enough is enough, sovereignty belongs to the people!”. Even only these sentences clearly reveal his populist ideology. How then the populist discourse changed over time, especially under democratic and undemocratic settings? This is among the main questions to be answered in the paper.

Name: Esra Issever-Ekinci
Section: Comparative Politics
Professional Email: eissever@syr.edu
Professional Status: Graduate Student
Institution: Syracuse University
Scheduling Preference: No Preference
Proposal Type: Paper
Panel Title:  Responsiveness of Turkish Governments
Panel Description:
Co-author info: Berk Esen, Bilkent University, berk.esen@bilkent.edu.tr Eda Bektas, Bilken University, eda.bektas@bilkent.edu.tr
Co-presenter info: Berk Esen, Bilkent University, berk.esen@bilkent.edu.tr Eda Bektas, Bilken University, eda.bektas@bilkent.edu.tr
Paper Title:  Electoral Reform Initiations in Parliamentary Democracies
Abstract:
In democratic systems, parties are expected to respond to the policy preferences of the electorate and fulfill their electoral promises should they come to power. This principle of responsiveness lies at the root of representative democracies. This paper examines to what extent this assumption holds true and what factors affect government responsiveness. This question has been studied in consolidated democracies, yet we have a limited understanding of government responsiveness in cases with weak democratic institutions. Since the level of public accountability is low in hybrid regimes, we may expect voters to not have strong tools at their disposal to monitor and punish political parties that do not deliver on their campaign promises. To address this general question, this paper examines the responsiveness of Turkish governments between 1983 and 2015. The longitudinal analysis of the Turkish case also provides a considerable variation in potential explanatory factors such as government type and ideology, number of parties in parliament, and economic conditions. Conceptualizing government responsiveness as the fit between ruling parties’ campaign promises and government policy outcomes, the paper estimates government’s responsiveness by analyzing the congruence between elections promises and (i) executive program, (ii) acts, (iii) statutory decrees and (iv) public expenditure of 18 Turkish governments.

Name: Wisdom Iyekekpolo
Section: Comparative Politics
Professional Email: w.iyekekpolo@auckland.ac.nz
Professional Status: Graduate Student
Institution: University of Auckland
Scheduling Preference: No Preference
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Paper Title:  Insurgency Onset in Nigeria’s Fourth Republic: A Political Relevance Model
Abstract:
Over the past 15 years, Nigeria has experienced two insurgencies of extremely violent proportion. In the north-east zone, Boko Haram has waged a guerrilla war along primarily religious lines while in the south-south zone, the Niger Delta militants have waged a violent campaign driven by resource and class-based concerns. However, such insurgency did not erupt with the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) in the south-east zone. What explains the eruption of these insurgencies in some regions and not others in Nigeria’s fourth republic? The theoretical literature on insurgency has not sufficiently accounted for the emergence of these insurgencies because of its focus on either motivation or opportunity for insurgency onset at the expense of a more holistic approach. Building on the political process approach to collective movements, this paper presents the ‘Political Relevance’ model which incorporates the roles of motivation, opportunity, and the relationship among political agents in the emergence an insurgency. I contend that these insurgencies emerged in the north-east and south-south regions after mutually beneficial relationships between local political elites and politically relevant groups turned sour. The absence of such a process in the south-east explains why a violent insurgency failed to emerge with IPOB.

Name: Amir Khaghani
Section: Comparative Politics
Professional Email: akhag001@fiu.edu
Professional Status: Graduate Student
Institution: Florida International University
Scheduling Preference: No Preference
Proposal Type: Paper
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Co-author info: Muhammad Qudsi, mr.ghodsi@yahoo.com, (University of Tehran)
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Paper Title: Iranian development strategies after 1979 revolution: An Amartya Sen viewpoint
Abstract:
Development projects have been the center of Iranian governments’ attention since the 1950s, with different degrees of accomplishment. After the revolution of 1979 such strategies were halted and Iran- Iraq war further delayed any development project. After the end of the war and sensing a demand for development in the country in 1989, up until today six development plans have been ratified by the respective governments and parliaments. Various political groups that have succeeded to control presidency have tried to mirror their social and economic ideas in these five year long projects, But their level of efficiency is still being discussed. Amartya Sen, with his idea of development as freedom, provides us with an approach to assess Iranian development plans and their material outcomes. having his method in mind, this paper, compares each cabinet’s development schemes, their goals, and their measurable outcomes and then critiques their flaws. The primary element that is factored in the process is different modes of freedom and how they are influencing each plan and then in the bigger picture of how freedom is affecting the general pattern of development in Iran.The paper uses Sen’s understanding of freedom’s importance for development in the context of post-revolutionary Iran utilizing original archives of Iranian “Organization for Development and Planning”.

Name: Mehmet Arif Kosk
Section: Comparative Politics
Professional Email: mehmet.kosk@pepi.ie.ufrj.br
Professional Status: Graduate Student
Institution: Federal University of Rio de Janeiro
Scheduling Preference: No Preference
Proposal Type: Paper
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Paper Title:  Challenging the International Order: an unusual approach between Turkey and Iran
Abstract:
During the administration of the Justice and Development Party (AKP), between the years 2010 and 2018, Turkey established a somewhat unusual rapprochement with the Iranian government, building a more expressive relationship than the previous approaches. This paper proposes an analysis of the reasons of this recent process of approximation in Turkish-Iranian relation after 2010, which coincides with the Tehran Declaration. In addition, this paper will seek to understand the perception of both countries on the International System, as well as their self-perceptions evaluating them as middle powers. Given this, how can such a process of approximation be defined in respect of bilateral relations? Is it a paradigmatic change in the relations between these two States or is it actually a conjunctural approximation? The dynamics of approximation of middle powers can be considered as demonstrations that there are sensible changes in the International Order or can be read as maintenance of the status quo by the inclusion of power. In this respect, we will understand this approximation between Turkey and Iran in its context and insertion in the International System, and not in an isolated environment and immune to external forces, because the anarchy in the International System is perceived by the excess of forces in its maximum variety of vectors , and not as the absence of forces. By considering the fact that there is little publication in english in this respect, it will be utilized the literature in Turkish by making sure that everything is translated into English in the scope of the research, in order to facilitate the reading of the text.

Name: Vladimir Marquez
Section: Comparative Politics
Professional Email: vladimirmr@comunidad.unam.mx
Professional Status: Graduate Student
Institution: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
Scheduling Preference: Saturday Morning
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Paper Title:  Changing the political board: new successful political parties
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The distrut of political parties is not a recent phenomenon in Latin America. Democratic transition was an historic moment that provoked very high expectation among the citizenship in order to improve their quality of life. Nonetheless, some Latin American democratic regimes hace faced a lot of hindrances the last two decades: economic crisis, corruption scandals and party system breakdown due to the bad performance of some goverments. In this context, this paper examines the success of new political parties in Latin America and discusses why in some countries these new parties won national elections whereas others did not.

Name: Augustine Ogbaji Ogoh
Section: Comparative Politics
Professional Email: aogoh@fudutsinma.edu.ng
Professional Status: Graduate Student
Institution: FEDERAL UNIVERSITY, DUTSINMA, KATSINA STATE, NIGERIA
Scheduling Preference: Friday Afternoon
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Paper Title:  CLIMATE CHANGE AND THE DYNAMICS OF PERENNIAL FARMER-HERDER CONFLICTS IN PLATEAU STATE OF NORTH CENTRAL NIGERIA, 1999 – 2016
Abstract:
CLIMATE CHANGE AND THE DYNAMICS OF PERENNIAL FARMER-HERDER CONFLICTS IN PLATEAU STATE OF NORTH CENTRAL NIGERIA, 1999 – 2016By Augustine Ogbaji OGOHDepartment of Political ScienceFederal University, DutsinmaKatsina State, Nigeriaaogoh@fudutsinma.edu.ng ABSTRACT______________________________________________________________________________Climate change today represents the greatest global human development challenge and one of such challenges is the farmer-herder conflicts. Consequently, the main objective of the study is to explore the dynamics of the perennial farmer-herder conflicts in Plateau State of north central Nigeria resulting from climate change. Climate change and farmer-herder conflicts concept in this study comprise of various interrelated components that include among others month in which farming activities of the year normally starts; uncertainty in the rainfall pattern in the last 17 years; effects of uncertainty of rainfall on farming activities; level of migration of herders; month of the year that migration normally takes place for grazing of livestock; effects of desertification and causes of farmer-herder conflicts. Data for this study were obtained from 384 respondents sampled through a multi-stage sampling procedure. A structured questionnaire was used to collect data. Three (3) Focus Group Discussions (FGDs) and interviews were conducted to enhance the reliability of the findings. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and frequency distribution. Findings show among others a significant relationship between climate change and farmer-herder conflicts in Plateau state of north central Nigeria. From these findings, the study inferred that farmer-herder conflicts have been exacerbated by the phenomenon of climate change, whose dynamics tend to have been aggravating natural resource conflicts across the world and submitted that these conflicts situation have far reaching implications. It recommends the creation of grazing corridors and ranches rather than creating grazing reserves in order to solve the issue of herders encroachment on farmlands and vice versa.Keywords: Climate change, Conflict, Farmer, Herder, Migration______________________________________________________________________________

Name: Mike Omilusi
Section: Comparative Politics
Professional Email: opeyemi.omilusi@eksu.edu.ng
Professional Status: Assistant Professor
Institution: Ekiti State University, Nigeria
Scheduling Preference: No Preference
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Paper Title:  Electoral Integrity in Peril? Commodification of Secret Balloting and the Emerging Democratic Culture in Ekiti State, Nigeria
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Within the broader electoral democracy context, some pertinent questions demand further interrogation when it comes to political behaviour: Why do voters and vote-seeking politicians engage in economic exchange during electioneering? If holding formally participatory and contested elections is a necessary condition for sustainable democracy, can its integrity be ascertained amidst vote buying and selling by the major actors? Are existing administrative, technological and legal frameworks in Nigeria irredeemably susceptible to fraud and vote buying? What amalgam of domestic conditions and external factors are most likely to stem the vote buying phenomenon in a federating unit like Ekiti? Despite extensive literature on democratization and electoral integrity, less attention has been paid to the political economy of electoral democracy in Nigeria, particularly in the context of secret balloting and vote buying. While vote buying can increase political participation in many poverty-stricken African countries, the phenomenon can endanger government accountability and democracy, not only because it is an unlawful activity under a well-specified electoral regulation; rather, it has metamorphosed from secrecy to open market dealings. Because political power is perceived as a sure means to gaining state resources for personal enrichment, traumatised citizens anticipate election period as their era of electoral-financial boom. This study provides useful insights into how democratic systems can innovatively address such threats. Employing participant-observer and desk research methods of data gathering in relation to the last two governorship elections in Ekiti state (2014 and 2018), this study affirms that having flawed democratic processes, such as cash-for-vote during elections, may perilously entrench commodification norm in the polity. While this phenomenon may have been partly treated in literature, what Ekiti scenario presents is an interesting research study of contradistinctions of a people with long history of dignity, high political education, resilience, contentment and communal living.Key Words: Democracy, Electoral Integrity, Vote Buying, Commodification, Secret BallotingMethodology/Preliminary ResearchThe research will be based on semi-structured interviews and participant observation. The study will employ qualitative method of inquiry with a focus on the “electoral model” of democratization. My data will be primarily sourced from different stakeholders including voters, politicians, media correspondents, partisan academics, security agencies, civil society practitioners and election observers. Information from secondary sources will include library and archival documents, official gazettes, monographs, journals, Internet materials, government publications, newspapers, magazines and periodicals. Preliminary field work has been done in respect of this research. In a separate research with other colleagues, I participated in the party primary elections of three selected political parties in Ekiti state, gathering data from party delegates. I had already conducted interviews with some voters, security and election observers on election day.

Name: Vincent Onwughalu
Section: Comparative Politics
Professional Email: vincent.onwughalu@federalpolyoko.edu.ng
Professional Status: Assistant Professor
Institution: Federal Polytechnic, Oko. Anambra State. Nigeria
Scheduling Preference: No Preference
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Paper Title:  Election observation and democratization in Nigeria: Implications for future elections
Abstract:
Observation of election has gained global currency that it is regarded as an integral part of the electoral process in countries that recently embraced democracy. How election observation impact democratization and shapes future elections in Nigeria is the focus of this paper. The study was qualitative in approach. Based on critical analysis of data gathered mainly through secondary sources, it found out that election observation is done on election days only, where accredited Observers observe polling, sorting, counting of ballots, collation, announcement and declaration of results. These it further noted are done at few Polling Units which in some instances were selected or pre-arranged, especially, for Foreign Observers upon which fallouts they based their Reports. Electoral process is characterized by pre-election, election and post-election activities; therefore, the study argues election observation should be total, comprehensive and span through voters’ registration to election petitions arising from election. In conclusion, when election observation is mainstreamed into every stage of the electoral process, lessons from conducted elections could improve future elections in the country. It recommends election observation to begin with voters’ registration, each Polling Unit/Collation Centre on election days should be manned by accredited Election Observers from when materials are received, through votes recording, collation and declaration of results, etc. Keywords: Election, election observation, electoral process, democratization, polling unit

Name: Shiw Balak Prasad
Section: Comparative Politics
Professional Email: shivbalak85@gmail.com
Professional Status: Full Professor
Institution: Deptt.of Pol.Sc,B.N.Mandal University,Madhepura,Bihar (INDIA ) Pin code-852113
Scheduling Preference: Saturday Afternoon
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Paper Title:  Importance of local Politics in Bihar Politics in India
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Bihar is the very politicaly concious state in India from the very begnning.People of the state depend on agriculture for their livelihood,but they play a vital role at the time of Assembly & Lok Sabha elections.Due to caste based politics,Biharis cast their votes in favour of their own caste candidates.So all the facts in this concerned will be presented that occassion

Name: Nayma Qayum
Section: Comparative Politics
Professional Email: nayma.qayum@mville.edu
Professional Status: Assistant Professor
Institution: Manhattanville College
Scheduling Preference: No Preference
Proposal Type: Paper
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Paper Title: Making Laws Work: Women, NGOs, and village courts in rural Bangladesh
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Can women’s development programs change how judicial institutions operate in weak institutional settings? In many societies of the global South, particularly where formal institutions are weak, the rules of the game in society are often informal and deviate from written rules. In such instances, informal norms and practices may push back against weak formal institutions; they do what formal institutions fail to do. In this paper, I explore how a women’s civil society program called Polli Shomaj (PS) seeks to hold the state and local elite accountable in local judiciary matters as they unfold in Bangladesh’s village courts. In rural Bangladesh, many local cases are tried in informal village courts as formal courts are overburdened and cases can drag out for decades. These village courts are run by the local elite, local government officials, schoolteachers, and NGO workers. Because decision-making is often informal, there is no guarantee that legal codes, particularly those protecting women, are followed. In this paper, I argue that PS groups push back against informal practices that deviate legal codes and violate human rights. I draw on over 2,600 semi-structured interviews with PS members and a control group, and use quasi experimental analysis within a mixed-methods design to illustrate that more laws are being followed in PS areas. Findings suggest that institutional practices in the global South may encompass multiple and overlapping dimensions, particularly as countries undergo regime and institutional changes.

Name: Samah Rafiq
Section: Identity Politics
Professional Email: samah29_isk@jnu.ac.in
Professional Status: Graduate Student
Institution: Jawaharlal Nehru University
Scheduling Preference: No Preference
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Paper Title:  Private Actors in Mobility Management: Impact on Creation of Categories of Citizens and Non-Citizens
Abstract:
Neoliberalism has aided the rising outsourcing of migration control management to private actors. These private actors involve a range of entities like transportation companies (such as airline carriers), private security companies (that may be hired to manage detention centres for asylum seekers), employer associations (that seek to include their private interests in the state’s migration policy) and visa processing companies (that are fast becoming the first point of contact between an applicant and the state to which she is applying for a visa). Private visa processing companies, like VFS Global, WorldBridge Sevices, Computer Science Corporation, Arke BLS Center, TLScontact, Gerry’s International etc., collect and store biometric data and biographical information on a potential traveller, and thus aid the state in categorizing each of these potential travellers along a spectrum of risk. This paper analyzes these private visa processing companies, and asks the following questions: (1) Does the entry of private actors in human mobility management alter the states’ monopoly on border control decision-making, and in the process affect the process of creation of categories of citizens and non-citizens? (2) Do states resort to privatization of mobility management to circumvent their obligation within the framework of international humanitarian law by shifting responsibility to these private actors? The paper takes VFS Global as its case study and looks at its operations worldwide, along with reports on visa processing and openness published by various international organizations in its attempt to answer these two questions.

Name: Iraj Rahimpourasl
Section: Comparative Politics
Professional Email: i.rahimpourasl@stu.yazd.ac.ir
Professional Status: Graduate Student
Institution: Yazd University
Scheduling Preference: No Preference
Proposal Type: Paper
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Co-author info: Fatheme Ghayemi Beshno, Master of Science student in Regional Studies, Faculty of Law and Political Science, Yazd University
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Paper Title:  Iran and Georgia: common ground Concerns and Conflicts of Interest
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The South Caucasus is a region at the nexus of various economic, political, and energy interests. It is currently witnessing some of the most complex and dangerous events in the world today, it features weak states, direct and proxy wars, and a confluence of great power interests. In approximately three decades since regaining its independence, Georgia, a small state, faced domestic and international crises which imperil Georgia’s national security and its territorial integration, hence, Georgia developed close relations with regional and trans-regional powers in order to compensate for its weakness. While considered to be a “West honey bunch” in the post-Soviet era and enjoying significant Western support, Georgia’s recent move to establish closer political and economic links with the Islamic Republic of Iran caused some bewilderment in Western states. As Georgia is perceived as a close partner of the United States in the Caucasus and the recipient of Western aids over the past years, these developments attracted the intense attention of policy makers and regional analyst alike. The study aims to examine Georgian foreign policy towards Islamic Republic of Iran and attempts to identify the common ground Concerns and Conflicts of Interests of both countries and motivations for Tbilisi to embrace Tehran. It also examines Georgia’s international position related to acute issues of regional security and the risks arising there from. And findings indicate that; Tbilisi’s economic and political dependence on the West prohibits it from crossing certain red lines in its dealings with Tehran and it is unlikely to endanger its strategic relations with the United States or its prospects of Euro-Atlantic integration for the sake of improving relations with Iran.

Name: Mishella Romo R
Section: Comparative Politics
Professional Email: mrr538@nyu.edu
Professional Status: Graduate Student
Institution: New York University (NYU)
Scheduling Preference: No Preference
Proposal Type: Paper
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Panel Description: Decentralization and Reform Panel chaired by Dr. Tony Spanakos
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Paper Title: The Puzzle of Public Trust and Judicial Power in Latin American Democracies: Evidence from Brazil and Mexico
Abstract:
Since Vallinder wrote his seminal article almost twenty-five years ago on the unyielding spread of judicial review, many post-authoritarian constitutional courts, particularly in Latin America have entrenched their protagonistic role in the political arena at the national level (Taylor and Kapiszewski 2008). In stable democracies of the region, courts have asserted their ability to rule independently and autonomously from the government. And yet, since the mid-nineties (which is when most judicial power was initially promulgated) public confidence in judicial power has declined (LatinoBarometro, 1995-2018). Many might consider this as one of the conditions that may later enable a crisis of democracy particularly because public confidence is crucial for the survival of judicial independence. The literature has described it as one of the sources of de facto power or strong “diffuse” institutional “support” for constitutional courts. First discussed by Easton (1965) and later by Gibson and Caldeira (1998), public or diffuse support is what creates incentives for executives and other institutions in regimes (particularly with historical legacies of hyper-presidencialism) to engage in compliance of judicial decisions (Staton 2010). This paper will unpack the recent role of supreme courts in the two largest democracies in Latin America: Brazil and Mexico. Though both have had similar “institutional determinants” leading to judicial independence (Rios-Figueroa and Taylor 2006) and have engaged in legal reform to capacitate its judicial system more broadly, they have had a different ability to constrain the power of elected officials. In the case of Brazil, the judiciary has disrupted the legal status quo and passed on rulings directly tailored to hold its political class accountable for their entanglements with corruption. Particularly this became evident after the Obredecht scandal (one of the biggest corruption scandals) to hit Latin America was unearthed. In the case of Mexico post-Obredecht, what we have seen however a selective form of judicial activism that has only sought to hold non-party members accountable for their involvement with the corruption scandal. What accounts for his variation? These inquiries lead us to wonder, to what extent the institutional choices of political-legal actors affect the public confidence of courts and institutions more broadly.

Name: Emmanuel Shebbs
Section: Comparative Politics
Professional Email: emmanuel.shebbs@abiastateuniversity.edu.ng
Professional Status: Adjunct Professor
Institution: Campus Light
Scheduling Preference: No Preference
Proposal Type: Paper
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Co-author info: Dick Uduma, Department of Political Science, Abia State University, dick.uduma@abiastateuniversity.edu.ng
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Paper Title:  Nigeria’s Unity on the Precipice of Contemporal Complexity: Examining the Conflicting Paradigms of Continuity and Change in Nigeria’s Government and Politics
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Most integral in the development of every state are peace and security. Leaders try to as much as possible protect the interests of the citizens in whom lie the power of collective unity, security and peace. This study is a comparative analysis of the prevailing views of the two divides – continuity and change- in the great debate of Nigeria's Unity. Proponents of change argue in favor of a reconstructed and restructured government cum state machinery. Dominant views in this line of proposition come from Nigeria's Southern hemisphere. The proponents of continuity are predominantly found in the Northern hemisphere. These argue for a stay on Nigeria's statuesque. What does the future hold for Nigeria's unity? With who’s proposition (among the opposing views) shall the country's unity be configured? Either of the two must determine the future of Nigeria. Intrastate conflicts have been experienced each, taking bearing from either of the two conflicting hypotheses. The study finds out that change is first a permanent exercise and the longevity of states is subsisted on the strategy of creative renewal of the internal machinery which the leadership occasions in order to drive development. The findings and recommendations lean towards the change paradigm on which Nigeria’s unity ought to be predicated.

Name: Anthony Spanakos
Section: Comparative Politics
Professional Email: spanakos@gmail.com
Professional Status: Full Professor
Institution: Montclair State University
Scheduling Preference: Friday Morning
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Paper Title: Democracy or its Purported Enabling Conditions: An Investigation into the Crisis of Democracy
Abstract:
For many, the US, UK, Poland, Hungary, and Brazil, among other countries are experiencing deep and worrying crises of democracy. Seasoned democracy watchers, such as Larry Diamond, warned that as early as some 13 years ago, the current wave of democratization was being rolled back. An entire sub-literature has emerged about democratic backsliding and erosion. This literature emerges out a specific conception of democracy which includes enabling conditions for democracy within the definition of democracy itself. Comparing the mainstream definition of democracy problematizes this definition and offers insight into different ways of reading the crisis of democracy. This paper will fill out these conceptual concerns with analysis of politics in Brazil and Venezuela.

Name: Catherine Spangenberg
Section: Comparative Politics
Professional Email: crs618@nyu.edu
Professional Status: Graduate Student
Institution: New York University
Scheduling Preference: Saturday Afternoon
Proposal Type: Paper
Panel Title: Economic Voting in Western Europe and South Asia
Panel Description: Economic voting behavior discussed using several cases including Germany, Austria, India and Pakistan. Chair/Discussant: Tony Spanakos
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Co-presenter info: Deepika Padmanabhan dp2662@nyu.edu (New York University, Graduate Student) Shanze Fatima Rauf sfr275@nyu.edu (New York University, Graduate Student)
Paper Title:  Vulnerability of Mainstream Right-Wing Parties to Populist Opposition in Eastern Europe
Abstract:
Effectiveness of European right-wing populism is examined in this paper through explanations of populist strategies, the pervasiveness of their ideologies, and the economic and social impacts that radical right-wing populists can have on the individual and aggregate levels of an electorate. It explores how populists may encourage or persuade other parties to move along the left-right spectrum. A quantitative analysis of populist support is conducted in this study which relies on data from the European Manifesto Project. Eleven East European countries’ populist parties that won more than one or more seats in state parliament since 1990, up till 2014 are included where regressions comparing the vote share, the strength of populist ideology, preference for international cooperation, and level of democratic rights as measured at the time of each country’s election, are tested to determine whether these variables may indicate that populist support encourages rightward shifts in mainstream conservative parties. High vote share, thorough populist ideology, and availability of democracy, are expected to have a positive impact in favor of populism whereas membership in international organizations and cooperation may have a negative impact and deter populism. If this hypothesis is correct, this study may provide evidence that social preferences eclipse concerns of economic ones and that populism may have impacts beyond direct representation in correlation with their vote share. Keywords: right-wing populism, opposition, vote share, political ideology