Name: Rana Ahmad
Section: International Relations and American Foreign Policy
Professional Email: ranaeijaz.polsc@pu.edu.pk
Professional Status: Full Professor
Institution: Department of Political Science University of the Punjab Lahore Pakistan
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Paper Title:  Islamophobia: Challenges and opportunities for Pakistan
Abstract:
This paper is going to explain about the conceptual and operational framework of Islamophobia along with consolidation at the end. With the birth of Adam, the Iblees warned the Omnipotent that the human would become inhuman when went to earth and denied prostration to a creature composed of dust. Iblees showed pride upon his composition of fire that could burnt out anything. Allah scolds Iblees forever and left for lurking in the world till the day of judgement. He started disarraying the human beings from the straight path and put them in embarrassment before Allah. Started with Adam, alluring him for eating what Allah prohibited for him. Iblees successfully with the will of Allah disarrayed Adam. The world is created on the earth for the supremacy of Allah everywhere. The second victim was Qabeel who killed his brother Habeel while pursuing his ego and bowing his Nafs before Iblees. The people who are from the lineage of Kabeel may be the people who are creating aggravation in the world. The people who may be the off spring from other couples are fighting against the evil. All human beings are by nature Muslims and free as they all are created by Allah. Allah says in Quran that it is you who makes them Christian, Jews or anyone else. Otherwise we all are Adam’s off spring. There is no human being who can deny his creator, although having different understanding about that yet creator’s existence can never be denied. Thus, we all are human beings and need to sustain humanity through the canons of the Omnipotent. We resist to indulge in war or conflict while pursuing the pride of Iblees in heavens or pride of Kabeel on the earth. The Pride lies only with Allah and not the attribute of us. Today’s world, the twenty first century is an age of complexities since media creates convolutions through different set agendas in the global politics. The global North and global south have serious implications on the world ahead. The inequality is increasing day by day at global level and obliging the have-nots to rise against the monopolists. The monopolists need to sustain monopoly through grabbing the economic resources at the global level. The colonial age starts in the beginning of seventeenth century and ended with the American Revolution in 1776, that is third quarter of the eighteenth century. We may call it 1607-1775. However, the implications of the colonial age still exist in their colonies. This is how colonial powers did the divide and rule successfully. To date the colonial powers are dictating the terms to their colonies one way or the other. The colonies which become economically interdependent or autonomous started making their decisions at their own. Like the U.S.A has resolved its horizontal and vertical cleavages with the passage of time and started establishing itself as an independent country after the civil war in the US in 1863. It was the time when Jews from different parts of the world were wandering around and started settling down in the US. It is a group of people who has the fear of losing something. Islamophobia is a direct outcome of that fear. We may define Islamophobia, “it is an Agoraphobia in the hearts and on the nerves of the human beings who differentiate themselves as non-Muslim ruling and influential elite, the anxiety they have in their minds is, if the Muslims revert to their source of knowledge that is Quran, they will rule over the world again.” it is in fact an Agoraphobia, that pertains to an anxiety or fear may make any one helpless, embarrassed while reacting in panic. Therefore, the West knows that Muslims ruled over the world from fifth to thirteenth century and titled that time as dark ages to avoid the Muslim knowledge that enlighten that era with peace and harmony in the society. The Muslim knowledge took over the state as an institution to serve human beings instead of being served as a piece of land. Pakistan is facing different challenges of Islamophobia but also has opportunities to make the world aware of facts. This paper is based on qualitative analysis and triangulation method to make the analysis more interesting.

Name: Saladdin Ahmed
Section: History and Politics
Professional Email: ahmeds2@union.edu
Professional Status: Assistant Professor
Institution: Union College
Scheduling Preference: Friday Afternoon
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Panel Title: PT 5
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Paper Title: The Ideological Crisis of Unsuccessful Revolutions
Abstract:
This presentation will begin with a rejection of the commonly held assumption – advanced by both postmodernism and neoliberalism – that we no longer live in the age of ideologies. Against this post-ideologicalism, I will argue that we live in a more ideological age than ever, insofar as capitalism has achieved virtually unrivalled global dominance since the demise of Leninism and Maoism. Drawing from Terry Eagleton’s work, I will first demonstrate how the internalization of capitalism is so severe that it has become easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. From there, I will demonstrate the degree to which today’s social and political movements of dissent lack a revolutionary ideology. Indeed, the failure of progressive movements that have arisen over the last decade to deliver lasting change is ultimately due to this ideological dearth. They have not coalesced around a revolutionary ideology capable of offering an alternative vision or at least basic critical propositions necessary to inspire a popular climate of opinion that could negate the existing order and de-normalize its retroactive ideologies. I will argue that it was the lack of a comprehensive anti-capitalist ideology that doomed the Occupy Movement from the start. Granted, there was an anti-1% sentiment that resonated widely, but the moral discourse to which it gave rise only exposed the ideological void of the movement. This enabled the media and civil society at large to dismiss Occupy’s potential capacity to threaten the existing order, despite its relative success in creating a temporary public sphere for debating the question of alternative. The same ideological crisis manifest in the absence of an emancipatory ideology has plagued Iran’s 2009 Green Revolution and 2019 Gas Revolution as well as the Arab Spring uprisings. In the absence of an alternative to Marxian revolutionary ideologies, and because liberalism is not a revolutionary ideology, the liberal forces in the Middle East and North Africa region were unable to achieve a lasting social and political rupture. In failing to form a strong political front capable of sustaining the momentum of the movements of resistance against totalitarian forces, popular uprisings across the region have given way to fundamentalism or military regimes headed by dictators. In short, liberalism can neither replace capitalism nor survive any decisive confrontation with a relatively popular ultra-nationalist or fundamentalist religious front. Even more importantly, and contrary to the neoliberal promise of capitalism’s deliverance of the ultimate triumph of liberal democracy, it is now clearer than ever that capitalism’s global dominance fosters the rise of illiberal forces across the world. We can see this in the Chinese, Russian, Turkish, and Chilean models, which are among the clearest examples of combining capitalism with political despotism. However, one could also argue that the rise of populist right wing movements in the US and various parts of Europe reinforces the same conclusion: capitalism empowers retroactive and profascist regimes. Therefore, contrary to the Fukuyaman “end of history” projection, in the foreseeable future, the ideological conflicts will only become profounder.

Name: Maxwell Burkey
Section: Political Theory
Professional Email: MBurkey@gradcenter.cuny.edu
Professional Status: Assistant Professor
Institution: Stockton University
Scheduling Preference: Friday Afternoon
Proposal Type: Paper
Panel Title: PT 2
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Paper Title: Civility and Resistance in American Political Discourse
Abstract:
Contemporary American political discourse is structured to a significant degree around the notions of civility and resistance. With the rise of exclusionary, right-wing nationalist movements across the western world, and the election of Donald Trump in the United States, scholars and activists have a renewed interest in combatting racially tinged popular movements and the uptick in white nationalism in America. The terms civility and resistance have gained their current currency largely as the two dominant frameworks for containing white nationalism and other iterations of right-wing populism. The first, civility, points to a tradition of what has been called “civic religion” or patriotism that combines the best of American institutional liberalism (the rule of law, civic equality, etc.) with an inclusive and progressive sense of American identity (America as a land of immigrants, etc.). The second, resistance, is more amorphous, but it places emphasis on an extra institutional response to populism and locates itself in a tradition of disruptive social movements. In this paper, I examine the imbrication of these two strands of political discourse and suggest that contemporary resistance discourse participates, to a significant extent, in the civility framework, limiting its critical potential and eschewing its more radical historical antecedents.

Name: Abby Dobson
Section: Political Theory
Professional Email: Adobson@gradcenter.cuny.edu
Professional Status: Graduate Student
Institution: The Graduate Center - CUNY
Scheduling Preference: Friday Afternoon
Proposal Type: Paper
Panel Title: PT 2
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Paper Title:  The Intersection of Race, Gender and Class in Homelessness Discourse: What’s Black Feminist Political Thought Got To Do With It?
Abstract:
This paper will explore and interrogate the Intersection of race, class, gender and homelessness policy and discourse. It will examine the invisibility of Black Women in the definition of the crisis of homelessness and development of political interventions for this intersectional crisis of public policy and the social-political implications of this invisibility. The examination will draw on Intersectionality Theory and Black Feminist Political Thought. The examination will call for a politics of dignity in intervention and policy prescriptions.

Name: Eylem Dogan
Section: Political Theory
Professional Email: doganib@mef.edu.tr
Professional Status: Adjunct Professor
Institution: MEF University - Istanbul/TURKEY
Scheduling Preference: Saturday Afternoon
Proposal Type: Paper
Panel Title: PT 3
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Paper Title:  Marx’s Critiques of Political Economy and Speculative Philosophy: A Comparative Analysis
Abstract:
In his eleventh thesis on Feuerbach, Marx declares that his primary concern is not to interpret the world but to change it. However, he himself builds an interpretation of the world as well. Marx’s revolutionary theory is founded on that interpretation the starting point of which is the “the material production of the immediate life”. In that respect, Marx considers his interpretation as having epistemological superiority over the two disciplines that he criticizes most frequently, speculative philosophy and political economy. A comprehensive method to grasp Marx’s interpretation of the human and of human history therefore requires examining the details of his criticisms of how political economy and speculative philosophy, as two alienated sciences, misinterpret human reality. In this paper, I first present a comparative analysis of the propositions of the two disciplines in question through which the distinctive points of Marx’s perspective and interpretation could be recognized exhaustively, and I show that both disciplines involve similar reductions in their conception of the human being. I conclude by arguing that, due to the different implications of these reductions, the perspective of political economy is a more pressing problem for Marx.Although Marx’s criticisms of the two disciplines differ in their context, the methods and conceptualizations of political economy and speculative philosophy point to a common problem: the inadequate categorization of human. This problem results in inappropriate or incomplete claims about human reality. From the perspective of Marx, private property designates for political economy what gravitation signifies for physics: it is a universal law. Political economy defines the human in relation to private property, assuming it as an integral aspect of human “essence”. As such, it ignores the degradation of labor in the capitalist mode of production. Therefore, political economy, reducing human being into an “economic category” fails to recognize the alienation of labor which dehumanizes human beings. Speculative philosophy, on the other hand, reduces human being into a “philosophical category”. It re-presents the human through categories such as “essence” or “existence”. Real individuals, their actions and conditions are not taken into account when describing the content of those categories.Although the categorizations of the human by both disciplines are inadequate, I argue that there is a crucial difference between the two: Speculative philosophy presents a fictional illusion as the reality itself whereas political economy presents an incomplete image of the “concrete reality” from its own perspective. Political economy, although incompletely, represents the reality: human beings are practically treated as economical categories. However this representation remains incomplete because it both ignores the inhuman aspects of the concrete reality and normalizes the consequences of the capitalist mode of production. The perspective of political economy is therefore a primary problem for Marx compared to speculative philosophy which involves merely a problematic reduction of the human at the level of consciousness.

Name: Taylor Doherty
Section: Political Theory
Professional Email: taylordohert@umass.edu
Professional Status: Graduate Student
Institution: University of Massachusetts - Amherst
Scheduling Preference: No Preference
Proposal Type: Paper
Panel Title: PT 3
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Paper Title:  Queer Theory and Discourses on Normality in Trumpian Times: Towards a Queer Epistemic Disobedience
Abstract:
“This is not normal.” Actually, it is. My contention is that this is indeed normal. Anti-blackness, white supremacy, and patriarchy are inextricably embedded into our society. Trump is simply an emboldened iteration of the foundations of capitalist modernity. Discourses of normalcy offer a rather thin conceptualization of the realities of our Trumpian times and fail to acknowledge the structural issues at hand. To argue that this is not normal is to commit an act of epistemic violence and erasure and practice a specifically American form of hubris and exceptionalism. This paper draws on queer theory, decolonial theory, and Marxist feminist frameworks to explore the normalcy of the racist, white supremacist, xenophobic, misogynistic, patriarchal, and homophobic underpinnings of the Trump administration. The paper transcends theoretical abstracts to explore how concepts of queerness can help us envision and create a space of resistance. A multifaceted approach, an explicitly queer and decolonial approach, to dismantling structures of power is necessary – we must decolonize, deheterosexualize, and subsequently destruct the status quo. In short, we need a queer epistemic disobedience and a resistance to regimes of the normal (Warner 1993).

Name: Claudia Favarato
Section: Political Theory
Professional Email: cfavarato@iscsp.ulisboa.pt
Professional Status: Graduate Student
Institution: University of Lisbon
Scheduling Preference: No Preference
Proposal Type: Paper
Panel Title: PT 5
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Paper Title:  The origin of the state, the origin of the tribe. Navigating endogenous ideas on the political system
Abstract:
Keeping in mind the interplay between political science and studies on Africa, I aim to address the approaches herein adopted to analyse the concept of the political, taking into account configurations beyond the mere state. To do so, I firstly recall the canons of political science, underpinned in eminently western epistemology, and then look at the contribution of African and Africanist scholars on the same topic. The explanatory epistemological approach guides my critique, grounded in analytical analysis of the available literature, corroborated by fieldwork data gathered through non-participant observation and interviews with local informants.According to the canons of political science as a discipline, as well as for the international order, the state is assumed as the normative model. It shapes daily politics, and how studies and analysis are structured. Beyond the surge to universality in theoretical and practical terms, in the African continent the state is not the outcome of native political structures’ development, but it is a foreign importation or the inheritance of colonial occupation. Scholarship of the latest 20th century pinpointed the character of alienness of the state and the inappropriateness of the related models of analysis. The problem thus lays not on the veracity of the canons’ underlying assumptions, but on their comprehensiveness.African and Africanist scholars counter-responded the canons with the elaboration of normative models of forms of organization for the sovereign power, articulated within the theoretical frame of communitarianism, African socialism and moral-oriented Ubuntu. Although, critics extensively pointed that such theorizations rely on anachronistic and nostalgic ideas of traditional societies that long ago existed, thus intertwining logical analysis with imagined notions of a cherished past. Moreover, the African socialism experiments of the national leaders going “back to the roots” too often served the aims of one-party, authoritarian regimes in their run for power.During fieldwork, I researched on the state and indigenous polities in Guinea-Bissau. The former is a formal and institutionalized configuration of power, largely modelled upon the western majoritarian democracy model (although it is a weak entity and overall dysfunctional in its implementation). Contrary-wise, the local-traditional power is an unrecognized system laying in the twilight of informality yet strongly legitimated by the people. it deeply differs from the state, since foundations of endogenous power provide for a relational model that discards the assumptions of western individualism. They conceive the relationship between individual and community/state onto peculiar - pluralistic and semi-physical - patterns instead. To unriddle these foundations is an essential step to understand configuration of power in Guinea-Bissau, as in other African realities.In light of the exposed, I intend to discuss the production of political science knowledge and research on the Africa continent. Departing from the case of the state and indigenous power in Guinea-Bissau, I will unfold my argument avoiding, on the one hand, culturally dependent western-centric premises and, on the other hand, an analysis grounded on cherished societies devoid of underpinnings in my considerations.

Name: Michael Gamkrelidze
Section: Political Theory
Professional Email: gam1938@gmail.com
Professional Status:
Institution: Independent researcher
Scheduling Preference: Saturday Afternoon
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Panel Title: PT 4
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Paper Title: On the Science of Social Boundaries or on Social Ammoriology 
Abstract:
This paper is a continuation of “Democracy as a State of Social Boundaries”, presented at last year's NYSPSA 73-rd Annual Conference. The idea then was to consider social systems of various sizes and types, from a family of two members to the world community, as dynamic steady state systems, seeing the advantage of this approach in the possibility of describing social systems in non-anthropomorphic terms, free of value judgment and common to physical and biological systems. We proceeded from the fact that the state (condition, order) of the system is a mathematical concept, as well as the boundary, also common to physical and biological systems. We hope that it will gradually relieve us of the need to operate with such controversial and ambiguous terms as capitalism, socialism, democracy, exploitation, and many others. In this article an attempt has been made to outline the taxonomy of social boundaries, their nature, their interdependence, their significance, their variability, their impact on the stability of social systems, on their development, survival in competition, etc. Keywords are: sovereignty, discrete and continuous states of the social system, social boundary.

Name: Flavia Lucenti
Section: International Relations and American Foreign Policy
Professional Email: flavia.lucenti@uniroma3.it
Professional Status: Graduate Student
Institution: Roma Tre University
Scheduling Preference: Friday Morning
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Paper Title: Explaining Dissatisfaction. China’s participation in the international society during the 2000s
Abstract:
The topic of this paper concerns the narrative elaborated by the Chinese Communist Party, regarding the China’s participation in the international society. It discusses the period between the beginning of the 2000s and the present day, which is crucial for observing how China sought to partake in global governance but the West hindered its efforts in fear of losing a leading role in world affairs. This encouraged the disappointment of China which, conversely, selectively undermined current international institutions and practices, stimulating a diverging interpretation of these that put at stake the stability of global order.The theoretical framework intertwines Constructivism with the English School’s approach. From the Constructivism, it focuses on states’ self-representation; when it exploits the English School’s design, this allows for unpacking the definition of great power and giving to it the meaning of full-fledged member of international society. Narrative indeed, represents the way through which I analize leaders’ frustrations regarding the failed expectations on China’s participation, which led them to contest the Western universal assumption of what constitutes an international "good" governance. Hence, when a sense of no-belonging with the rest of the international society has developed out, China chose to no longer sympathise with the promotion of liberal values, denouncing their use as a pretext for the West of expanding its influence in domestic business of states of strategic relevance. This idea corroborated Chinese leaders’ narrative with post-Western stances,  which are nowadays preventing international cooperation.

Name: Sean McKeever
Section: Political Theory
Professional Email: smckeever@albany.edu
Professional Status: Adjunct Professor
Institution: SUNY Albany
Scheduling Preference: Friday Afternoon
Proposal Type: Paper
Panel Title: PT 1
Panel Description: Topics in Political Thought
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Paper Title: Humility: Adorno and the Forgotten Political Virtue 
Abstract:
Early democratic theorists understood the importance of humility as a political virtue; it was, they argued, impossible for democracy to realize its potential without humility. In today’s political climate, a renewed analysis and discussion of humility as a political virtue is necessary. Adorno, especially his conception of the good, gives us a theoretical grounding for why humility is a reasonable—and perhaps the only reasonable—starting point for political thought and action. His is a negative dialectical conception of the good that seeks to keep identity and nonidentity in constant, peaceful tension. This is a necessary conception of the good, he contends, because any positive definition of identity is always incomplete and, therefore, false. This means that we cannot fully know even our own identity let alone the identity of others. Any attempt to define identity suppresses some part of identity expression and is, therefore, oppressive. This loss of understanding of our identity is, at first, destabilizing and disorienting, causing vertigo. This only occurs, though, because we are used to the system’s oppressive stabilization. As continual criticism puts into practice correct living, we can overcome vertigo. This constant reevaluation and destabilization is not to say that there is no identity. The good for Adorno is “beyond identity” but it is not just a life of difference, which would itself become an identity. There is still an identity that must constantly be posed in tension with difference, which means Adorno does not make the move to eliminate identity that some theorists after him do. Instead, identity and difference must be in constant, peaceful tension with each other. Since we never fully know our identity and since every attempt at getting identity and difference to peacefully coexist will fail, we should adapt an attitude of humility. When each of us do this, each of us will realize, “I am oppressive and continue to be so with every thought or action.” This knowledge alone allows for political actions that can begin to move against my own and other people’s oppression. Adorno’s critical theory, and in particular his conception of the good, then, help us to recover humility as a political virtue. This humility, far from suppressing political movement, will spur us to proper political action. Indeed, without this humility, we are stuck with hubris and will not be able to move in ways that fundamentally shift our political society.

Name: Melisse Pinto
Section: Political Theory
Professional Email: melisse.pinto@castleton.edu
Professional Status: Full Professor
Institution: Castleton University
Scheduling Preference:
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Panel Title: PT 2
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Paper Title: Perspectives on the General Will, Sovereignty and the Environment
Abstract:
This paper analyzes the growing impact of environmentalism on the theoretical basis of leftist populism. Traditionally leftist population has shared with capitalism the producerist perspective that in order for humanity to flourish, it must dominate the earth through labor and technology. Currently, there are new perspectives emerging that recognize that the interests of the people are not dependent on extracting the most value from the earth but by finding a way to control and balance human needs within the context of a harmonious ecosystem. Populism, both left and right, has generally been associated with a type of economic sovereigntism. Each state seeks to maximize the amount of value its people can extract through labor by controlling resources, technologies and markets. This creates a highly competitive world system based on states protecting a territory controlling resources, and a “mode of production”. By protecting access to territory, the state fulfills its defining function of protecting the survival of its citizens. Emerging versions of leftist populism such as that of Jean-Luc Melenchon in France appear to be moving toward a new definition of sovereignty, not based on domination, but a new consensus concerning the relationship between man and nature, and man and man derived from an alternative perspective on the place of labor in human life. I argue that this perspective is related to Rousseau’s understanding of the General Will as the source of a kind of natural sovereignty that is profoundly egalitarian and rejects domination and mastery in all its forms.This paper analyzes the growing impact of environmentalism on the theoretical basis of leftist populism. Traditionally leftist population has shared with capitalism a producerist perspective that in order for humanity to flourish, it must dominate the earth through labor and technology. Currently, there are new perspectives emerging that recognize that the interests of the people are not dependent on extracting the most value from the earth but by finding a way to control and balance human needs within the context of a harmonious ecosystem. Populism, both left and right, has generally been associated with a type of economic sovereigntism. Each state seeks to maximize the amount of value its people can extract through labor by controlling resources, technologies and markets. This creates a highly competitive world system based on states protecting a territory controlling resources, and a “ mode of production”. By protecting access to territory, the state fulfills its defining function of protecting the survival of its citizens. Emerging versions of leftist populism such as that of Jean-Luc Melenchon in France appear to be moving toward a new definition of sovereignty, not based on domination, but a new consensus concerning the relationship between man and nature, and man and man derived from an alternative perspective on the place of labor in human life. I argue that this perspective is related to Rousseau’s understanding of the General Will as the source of a kind of natural sovereignty that is profoundly egalitarian and rejects domination and mastery in all its forms.This paper analyzes the growing impact of environmentalism on the theoretical basis of leftist populism. Traditionally leftist population has shared with capitalism a producerist perspective that in order for humanity to flourish, it must dominate the earth through labor and technology. Currently, there are new perspectives emerging that recognize that the interests of the people are not dependent on extracting the most value from the earth but by finding a way to control and balance human needs within the context of a harmonious ecosystem. Populism, both left and right, has generally been associated with a type of economic sovereigntism. Each state seeks to maximize the amount of value its people can extract through labor by controlling resources, technologies and markets. This creates a highly competitive world system based on states protecting a territory controlling resources, and a “ mode of production”. By protecting access to territory, the state fulfills its defining function of protecting the survival of its citizens. Emerging versions of leftist populism such as that of Jean-Luc Melenchon in France appear to be moving toward a new definition of sovereignty, not based on domination, but a new consensus concerning the relationship between man and nature, and man and man derived from an alternative perspective on the place of labor in human life. I argue that this perspective is related to Rousseau’s understanding of the General Will as the source of a kind of natural sovereignty that is profoundly egalitarian and rejects domination and mastery in all its forms.

Name: Samah Rafiq
Section: Political Theory
Professional Email: samah.rafiq@yale.edu
Professional Status: Graduate Student
Institution: Yale University
Scheduling Preference: Saturday Afternoon
Proposal Type: Paper
Panel Title: PT 4
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Paper Title:  Privatization of Border Control: The Case of Visa Processing Companies
Abstract:
While border control is still justified via the concepts of states’ sovereign decision-making, it nonetheless involves various kinds of private actors to which parts of the process have been delegated. I focus in this paper on private visa application processing companies like VFS Global. These companies are the first, and mostly the only, point of contact between an individual visa applicant and the destination state. They gather and store vast volumes of personal data on applicants ranging from biographical information, fingerprints, retina scans to bank statements. This privatization of border control is a fairly recent phenomenon and has been linked to the rise of neoliberalism across the globe. It impacts the individuals who cross international borders, the states who enter into contracts with these private actors, as well as the infrastructure of border control writ large. The impact therefore can be located at various levels – individual, state, international. Two key questions emerge therefore: 1. does privatization in any way or measure impact the state’s monopoly on sovereign-decision making in matters of border control? 2. How does this privatization interact with issues concerning data gathering and privacy? This paper is my attempt to engage these contemporary yet complex questions.

Name: Gergely Rajnai
Section: Comparative Politics
Professional Email: rajnai@ualberta.ca
Professional Status: Graduate Student
Institution: University of Alberta; Corvinus University of Budapest
Scheduling Preference: No Preference
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Paper Title:  Consolidating Power through Electoral Reform
Abstract:
Electoral reforms have long been a central topic in political science. These reforms are usually assessed by comparing the new system to certain previously established criteria. The effect these reforms have on the performance of political parties is also generally assessed by using a priori standards and expectations. However, how the actual results are affected by electoral reform is very rarely analyzed. This paper examines electoral results from dozens of countries over the past decades, focusing on the issue of whether those who have initiated electoral reform benefited from it or not using large databases and statistical methods. Results demonstrate that electoral reform generally does not benefit the reforming actors significantly, however, certain factors (such as the magnitude of the reform or the political environment in which the reforms are enacted) increase the probability of these reforms yielding electoral dividends to those initiating it.

Name: david ricci
Section: History and Politics
Professional Email: msricci@mscc.huji.ac.il
Professional Status: Full Professor
Institution: hebrewuniversity
Scheduling Preference: No Preference
Proposal Type: Paper
Panel Title: PT 3
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Paper Title: Political Science for the Age of Trump 
Abstract:
NYSPSA Abstract “Political Science for the Age of Populism” by David Ricci Donald Trump epitomizes recent changes in the way Americans communicate and work together. That being so, some political scientists should investigate and teach about the ecology of capitalism -- that is, creative destruction -- which (1) produced this president and which (2) is straining democratic principles and practices, individuals and communities. Economists promote economic (a) creativity, presuming that it leads to growth which generates social welfare. However, no academic discipline focuses on economic (b) destruction. Yet such destruction imposes great costs on individuals and society, from government by social media to downsizing and outsourcing, from environmental deterioration to climate change, from personal anxiety to international trade wars. Consequently, some political scientists (but not all) should adopt a special mission of highlighting instances of damage as they arise and publicizing what we learn so as to help government officials and citizens mitigate the damage caused by creative destruction in our times. Unmitigated, those damages cause (i) resentment, which fuels (ii) populism, and therefore endangers (iii) democracy. Using terms fashioned by Judith Shklar (opposing tyranny) and Ian Shapiro (favoring problem-oriented research), such a project should especially target neoliberalism, which since the Reagan presidency has promoted and fostered indiscriminate economic growth and its consequences. Additional arguments along these lines will appear in David Ricci, A Political Manifesto for the Age of Populism: Challenging Growth, Markets, Inequality, and Resentment (Cambridge University Press, 2020).

Name: Nader Sadre
Section: Political Theory
Professional Email: nadersadre@gmail.com
Professional Status: Graduate Student
Institution: CUNY Graduate Center
Scheduling Preference: Friday Morning
Proposal Type: Paper
Panel Title: PT 1
Panel Description: Topics in Political Theory
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Paper Title:  Plato’s Spartan Puzzle: Law and Travel in the Republic and the Laws
Abstract:
My paper is about the relationship between law and travel in Plato's political thought. I use the story of Lycurgus, the Spartan lawgiver, as a pretext to interpret Plato’s efforts to reconcile the tension between political stability and free movement. In Plutarch’s account, Lycurgus is the traveling legislator who legislates against travel. Plato, an admirer of Sparta, reconciles this contradiction in two ways. First, in the Republic, he does so by devaluing travel as a source of knowledge. Later, in the Laws, he reconciles it by devaluing the knowledge that Lycurgus gains in transit–and, by extension, the Spartan legal code. This change in Plato’s attitude towards Sparta–or, at least, in the arguments expressed through the characters in his dialogues–reflects pessimism about the possibility of a state governed by laws rooted in universally-valid knowledge, as well as the cultivation of an elite class capable of governing in accordance with that knowledge. I argue that this pessimism is accompanied by a corresponding optimism about the possibility of crafting laws capable of cultivating sufficient virtue among the ruling class to perpetuate the state and its institutions.

Name: Andrea Antonino Silipigni
Section: Political Theory
Professional Email: silipigni.a@gmail.com
Professional Status: Graduate Student
Institution: University of Lisbon
Scheduling Preference: No Preference
Proposal Type: Paper
Panel Title: PT 4
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Paper Title:  The EU’s Neoliberal Political and Legal Framework and the Enforcement of Monetary and Financial Measures: Critical Perspective over a Long Story of (Un)Successes Before the 2009 Eurozone Crisis
Abstract:
For the most part, critical political and legal accounts agree that supranational organisations have mostly relied on neoliberal international treaties, regulations, and directives to enforce first, and to bind later nation states to specific criteria. More specifically, they argue that the European Union – via the Maastricht Treaty, as well as the Stability and Growth Pact – has been able to ensure compliance of its member states with both the debt-to-GDP ratio (not exceeding the 60%), as well as the deficit-to-GDP one (not exceeding the 3%).This paper proposes a rather different understanding of the European Union’s neoliberal political and legal framework and its monetary and financial outcomes. More specifically, it hypothesises that the Maastricht Treaty, and the Stability and Growth Pact have failed in binding most of EU member states until the major reform process that took place between 2011-2013. To this purpose, this paper analyses the weaknesses of the complex neoliberal political and legal framework before the just mentioned reform. In addition to this, it analyses its macroeconomic monetary and financial outcomes within the same period of time.In order to address the above-mentioned hypotheses, this study draws upon several political, legal, and economic sources, among many others: the Maastricht Treaty, the Stability and Growth Pact, and the Eurostat’s reports.The analysis shows that for almost twenty years the EU has failed in binding most of its member states in meeting monetary and financial criteria stemming from the Maastricht Treaty, as well as the Stability and Growth Pact. For this reason, it suggests that the EU has decided to resort to national neoliberal political and legal structures to address its weak enforcement, as well as binding mechanisms in the aftermath of the 2009 Eurozone crisis.

Name: Yunus Sozen
Section: Political Theory
Professional Email: sozenmy@lemoyne.edu
Professional Status: Assistant Professor
Institution: Le Moyne college
Scheduling Preference: Friday Afternoon
Proposal Type: Paper
Panel Title: PT 5
Panel Description:
Co-author info: Eylem Dogan, MEF University, Istanbul. doganib@mef.edu.tr
Co-presenter info: Eylem Dogan, MEF University, Istanbul. doganib@mef.edu.tr
Paper Title: Populism, Resentment, and Ressentiment 
Abstract:
In this paper, we focus on the relationship of two polemical concepts, resentment and populism, as well their connections with democracy and authoritarianism. To inquire upon this relationship, we first overview the populism literature and the uses of the concept of resentment in that literature, covering the debates on populism’s definition, origins, and relationship with democracy and authoritarianism. We observe that, in the literature on populism, resentment is mainly utilized to describe the negative emotion that leads to the rise of the so-called ‘noxious’ political phenomenon of populism, while there is a lacuna in the study of the relationship between populism-in-power and resentment. We then make two arguments concerning the interrelations of these two concepts, utilizing the Argentinean and Turkish cases of populism-in-power as illustrations. First, we argue that populism defined as a socio-cultural phenomenon, relates better with the concept of resentment and its theoretical background than other political strategic or ideological definitions of the concept. Our second argument connects resentment with populism-in-power in a modern democratic institutional framework. Building on Tocqueville’s insight that in modern democracies, the combination of political equality with persistent inequalities of social and economic power provide a fertile ground for envy-resentment, we argue that populism-in-power exacerbates already existing resentment-generating conditions of democracy. This occurs because of the tendency for populists-in-power to hyperpoliticize socio-cultural differences, their promise of redemption in this world through politics without delivering equality of power, and their rhetoric of victimhood while in power. Finally, utilizing Ure’s conceptual framework that distinguishes among different forms of resentment, we argue that populism-in-power (especially its right-wing forms) is the vehicle that potentially transforms (or degenerates) ‘socio-political resentment’ to ‘ontological ressentiment’.

Name: Anthony Tresca
Section: Political Theory
Professional Email: atresca@trinity.edu
Professional Status: Undergraduate Student
Institution: Trinity University
Scheduling Preference: No Preference
Proposal Type: Paper
Panel Title: PT 2
Panel Description:
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Paper Title:  Getting Deep About Deep Ecology
Abstract:
In November 2019, the United Nations released a striking report over the devastating state of the climate crisis; their report found that because we failed to reduce our global emission rates “deeper and faster cuts are now required.” The United Nations’ recommendation for deeper changes seems to open the door for a movement that has ‘deep’ in the name: Deep Ecology. Despite existing since the late 60s/early 70s, Deep Ecology has failed to produce the type of change necessary to effectively combat the current climate crisis. This paper examines Deep Ecology’s more spiritual and philosophical approach to the issue of climate change, including: their history, their advocacy for biocentric equality, and their focus on changing an individual’s mindset in order to cultivate an ecological consciousness within them. The paper then examines major criticisms with the movement and finds that all critics come to a unifying and damning conclusion about the movement: Deep Ecology does not offer a realistic solution to the fast approaching climate crisis. Yet, Deep Ecology’s inability to solve the climate crisis does not mean the philosophical movement is a failure and bad; instead, it just shows that Deep Ecology in combination with other more tangible steps should be taken to effectively combat the current climate crisis.

Name: Michael Villanova
Section: Political Theory
Professional Email: mvillanova@gradcenter.cuny.edu
Professional Status: Graduate Student
Institution: The Graduate Center, CUNY
Scheduling Preference:
Proposal Type: Paper
Panel Title: PT 3
Panel Description:
Co-author info:
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Paper Title:  The Lumpen: Understanding the Concept in Marx’s Works and its Relevance for Contemporary Political Struggle
Abstract:
The role of class struggle in historical materialism and Marx’s works is central in explaining political, economic, and historical phenomena. While the two main classes, the proletariat and bourgeoisie drive the progress of capitalist society, Marx also includes references to other classes such as the lumpen that are historically relevant in class struggle. For the early Marx, his conception of the lumpen has often been noted as lacking a serious material analysis of the class’s position in capitalist history as he often resorts to pejoratives, such as “social scum” in The Communist Manifesto, to determine their political viability. The prevailing literature concludes that Marx’s writings on the lumpen are either reflections of moral ideologies about the underclass during the time he was writing, useless for contemporary class struggle, or lacking serious class analysis all together. This presentation will put forward that Marx’s understanding of the lumpen continually changes throughout his works and is integral, not just peripheral, to class struggle and that Marx can offer a material explanation for the lumpen’s role and function in a capitalist society. By tracking how Marx changes his understanding of the lumpen throughout his works, I argue that Marx’s “mature” economic works break from his earlier indictments of the lumpen as counterrevolutionary when he concludes in Capital that the lumpen are an exploited class due to their relation to productive labor as constructed by industrial capitalism. This approach to understanding the lumpen in Marx’s works leads me to argue that the lumpen can be a possible revolutionary force in class struggle. Connecting Marx’s works to contemporary times, I will show that traditional lumpen ways of production and life are becoming more ubiquitous, due to recent political and economic trends, and therefore more important to incorporate into political movements. I will contend that current political discourse has worked to discount the political actions of the lumpen in countries such as the United States and the United Kingdom, while at the same time the lumpen class has considerably grown in such countries. I conclude that the political left must incorporate an understanding of the lumpen and how the lumpen function in capitalism into its struggles if it is serious to create a radical class based politics in the near future.

Name: Robert Patrick Whelan
Section: Political Theory
Professional Email: rwhelan1@binghamton.edu
Professional Status: Graduate Student
Institution: SUNY Binghamton
Scheduling Preference: Friday Afternoon
Proposal Type: Paper
Panel Title: PT 1
Panel Description:
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Paper Title: Policy Design and Incommensurability: A Contractualist Response to ‘Sacred Values’.
Abstract:
Political commentators such as Cass Sunstein argue that policies are optimal when constrained by the regulatory principle first enshrined in Reagan’s Executive Order 12291. Appealing to a form of welfare consequentialism, this principle claims that economically significant regulations are justified only if they secure an expected net-benefit. However, the justificatory role afforded to cost-benefit analysis can be criticized for its failure to adequately address the claims of society’s most vulnerable members. Ex ante contractualism offers an appealing alternative as it affords the aggregation of costs and benefits no role in justifying governmental policies. On this view, principles of action and the policies they licence can be justified only if no individual could reasonably reject them in favour of any alternative. Often, justifying social and economic practices requires redistributing expected costs and benefits so that no individual can reject the associated principle as overly burdensome. However, in detailing how the redistribution of benefits can mitigate individual objections, contractualism appears implicitly ‘monist’ in its understanding of value; all accounts suggest that individual complaints and the benefits provided to offset them are reducible to, and measurable in terms of, a singular value, typically individual welfare. Critics argue that presupposing incommensurability precludes the rational comparison and substitution of values required to mitigate ex ante objections. Drawing on contemporary research in social and moral psychology I argue that rational comparisons and substitutions between incommensurable values is possible. However, this empirical literature raises distinct challenges which suggest further modifications to the contractualist account. Importantly, the psychological commitment to ‘sacred values’ suggests that certain trade-offs are morally forbidden. As such, the contours of permissible substitutions must be delineated with respect to the ‘taboo’ and ‘tragic’ trade-offs generated by ‘sacred values’. The import of this analysis is that regulatory bodies must contend with the possibility that even non-aggregative trade-offs necessarily involve moral wrongdoing.

Name: Daniel Zimmer
Section: Political Theory
Professional Email: dpz24@cornell.edu
Professional Status: Graduate Student
Institution: Cornell University
Scheduling Preference: No Preference
Proposal Type: Paper
Panel Title: PT 1
Panel Description: Topics in Political Theory
Co-author info:
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Paper Title:  The Family of Man's Peril: Total Precarity and the Limits of Political Solidarity
Abstract:
In January of 1954 The Family of Man opened at the MOMA. The most famous photography exhibition ever assembled, The Family of Man contained over five hundred images of human beings from all continents and walks of life hung without commentary and clustered loosely by activity. My essay argues that, despite its fame and enduring status as an object of critique, subsequent analyses of The Family of Man have continually failed to grasp the full novelty of what the exhibition attempted to illustrate, and in so doing reveal a larger blind spot in Western political and critical theory. Although a great deal of attention has been paid to the composition and content of the five hundred black and white portraits the exhibition contained, nearly all critics have either neglected to mention or only glossed in passing the presence of another image, this one rendered in color and physically impeding one’s path to the exit: an eight foot tall illuminated transparency of the glowing fireball from the Ivy Mike hydrogen bomb test. Inscribed next to it were words excerpted from the grim Christmas Eve address delivered by philosopher Bertrand Russell three weeks prior under the tile “Man’s Peril” (soon to be condensed as the “Russell-Einstein Manifesto”), which warned that if in a coming war “enough H-bombs are used there will be universal death—sudden only for a fortunate minority, but for the majority the slow torture of disease and disintegration. My essay reconsiders the depiction of undifferentiated human totality illustrated in The Family of Man as a direct response to the hydrogen bomb and an attempt to rethink human universality when confronted by the unprecedented prospect of “universal death.” If find that, despite the literally unavoidable placement of the eight foot wide image of the hydrogen bomb, this defining feature somehow passes without comment in the early critiques of the exhibition developed by both Roland Barthes and Max Horkheimer. I attempt to illustrate that by criticizing the exhibition for downplaying the importance of cultural difference in favor of the commonality of the human species, both of these famous critical theorists miss the radical novelty announced by both The Family of Man and “Man’s Peril”, which is that now that hydrogen weapons have placed human survival in human hands, the species itself has become the potential subject of a new form of political universality. Drawing several important parallels between this early confrontation with the planetary impact of hydrogen weapons and contemporary discussions of global warming, I conclude by arguing that the image of unqualified human universality conjured by the total precarity of “universal death” offers an initially appealing but ultimately pernicious approach to developing novel forms of solidarity in the face of planetary challenges. By beginning with negative solidarity of undifferentiated vulnerability, the approach to human universality advocated by Russell and depicted by The Family of Man proves unable to generate a positive political project and ultimately terminates in political quietism.