The Politics of Deliberation: Qat Chews as Public Spheres in Yemen

The University Archives has determined that this item is of continuing value to OSU's history.isa Wedeen is Professor and Chair of the Department of Political Science, as well as an associate member of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Chicago. Her research interests include comparative politics, the Middle East, political theory, and feminist theory. In addition to teaching on the Middle East, Wedeen teaches courses on nationalism, comparative identity formation, power and resistance, and citizenship. She is author of numerous articles and two books, Ambiguities of Domination: Politics, Rhetoric, and Symbols in Contemporary Syria (University of Chicago Press, 1999) and Peripheral Visions: Publics, Power and Performance in Yemen (University of Chicago Press, 2008). In Peripheral Visions, Wedeen draws on 18 months of field experience in Yemen. She analyzes the development of national attachments in an environment with weak state institutions. Through her fieldwork, Wedeen has found that much of public life in Yemen revolves around qat, a leafy stimulant typically chewed during afternoon socializing. Qat chews foster a wide range of discussions and interactions among community members, as well as strangers, including intense debates of primarily political issues. By analyzing these informal gatherings, Wedeen reveals how the study of public discussions, existing outside of official electoral or governmental institutions, provides insight into the development of participatory politics.Ohio State University. Mershon Center for International Security StudiesEvent webpage, event photo

Lying or Believing? Measuring Preference Falsification from a Political Purge in China 1

Abstract Despite its wide usage in explaining some nontrivial regime dynamics in nondemocracies, preference falsification remains an empirical myth for students of authoritarian politics. We offer the first quantitative study of this phenomenon in an authoritarian setting using a rare coincidence between a major political purge in Shanghai, China, and the administration of a nationwide survey in 2006. We construct two synthetic measures for expressed and actual political support from a set of survey questions and track their changes over time. We find that after the purge there was a dramatic increase in expressed support among Shanghai respondents, yet the increase was paralleled by an equally evident decline in actual support. We interpret this divergence as evidence for the presence of preference falsification. We further show that falsification was most intense among groups that have access to alternative information but are vulnerable to state sanctions, and use two additional surveys to explore the intertemporal dynamics of falsifying behaviors

9. Savoir scientifique, libéralisme et empire

Note portant sur l’auteur Cette contribution répond à l’invitation lancée par Michel Foucault à nous interroger sur nos aspirations au type de pouvoir qui est supposé accompagner... la science (Foucault 1980 : 84). Elle examine la fascination contemporaine pour la science en science politique et montre comment des hypothèses basiques et des termes maintes fois répétés ont servi à incarner des valeurs libérales en les faisant apparaître comme évidentes. Une communauté épistémologique a été pro..

Discerning Yemen's political future

Lisa Wedeen ..