International Organizations as Normative Agenda Setters: Social Influence and Reputational Costs in the effects of the International Human Rights Regime

This paper focuses on the question of how International Organizations (IOs) influence states. In particular, we assess the role of the mechanism of social influence in shaping states’ normative (discursive) behavior, by looking at the “reporting procedure” of the Human Rights Committee (HRC) of the United Nations (UN). Our study finds that in the definition of the substantive content of their “periodic reports,” states follow the human rights agenda set by the HRC in its “concluding observations.” In this sense, we provide systematic evidence that shows that, through social influence, even poorly “legalized” IOs can have an influence over state (discursive) practices

What Do Parties Do in Congress? Explaining the Allocation of Legislative Specialization

This article studies the determinants of the concentration of legislative specialization of parties across policy jurisdictions. Greater concentration of legislative specialization leads parties to concentrate their legislative efforts on a smaller set of policy jurisdictions. Through enhancing their concentration of legislative specialization in certain policy areas, parties can more clearly signal their policy concerns and interests to voters. This study argues and shows that relatively low electoral volatility and a low number of political parties (institutional traits) boost the concentration of legislative specialization. Greater electoral stability increases the incentives for parties to specialize further on certain policy jurisdictions. I also argue and verify that lower legislative fragmentation, producing larger parties, reduces the opportunity costs of legislative specialization. As I explain below, understanding the configuration of legislative specialization might help illuminate the evolution of key characteristics of party systems such as its degree of programmaticness and its degree of institutionalization, and to which extent parties are able to construct issue ownership

The Behavioralist Empire and its Enemies: a Comparative Study of Successes and Dissatisfactions in American Political Science

This paper sheds light on the reasons that explain the dissatisfactions because of the behavioralist dominance within American political science academia. I show how and why the flaws and failures of the behavioralist analysis have created more room for the emergence of alternative approaches or new ideological movements in the study of politics. These competing paradigms or approaches are mainly post-behavioralism, postmodernism, and the Perestroika movement. Moreover, under a comparative framework, I explain why behavioralism is still the dominant paradigm within American political science academia despite all the efforts of the alternative paradigms to displace it

What Do Parties Do in Congress? Explaining the Allocation of Legislative Specialization

This article studies the determinants of the concentration of legislative specialization of parties across policy jurisdictions. Greater concentration of legislative specialization leads parties to concentrate their legislative efforts on a smaller set of policy jurisdictions. Through enhancing their concentration of legislative specialization in certain policy areas, parties can more clearly signal their policy concerns and interests to voters. This study argues and shows that relatively low electoral volatility and a low number of political parties (institutional traits) boost the concentration of legislative specialization. Greater electoral stability increases the incentives for parties to specialize further on certain policy jurisdictions. I also argue and verify that lower legislative fragmentation, producing larger parties, reduces the opportunity costs of legislative specialization. As I explain below, understanding the configuration of legislative specialization might help illuminate the evolution of key characteristics of party systems such as its degree of programmaticness and its degree of institutionalization, and to which extent parties are able to construct issue ownership

The Behavioralist Empire and its Enemies: a Comparative Study of Successes and Dissatisfactions in American Political Science

This paper sheds light on the reasons that explain the dissatisfactions because of the behavioralist dominance within American political science academia. I show how and why the flaws and failures of the behavioralist analysis have created more room for the emergence of alternative approaches or new ideological movements in the study of politics. These competing paradigms or approaches are mainly post-behavioralism, postmodernism, and the Perestroika movement. Moreover, under a comparative framework, I explain why behavioralism is still the dominant paradigm within American political science academia despite all the efforts of the alternative paradigms to displace it

What can political parties do to involve more women in party politics?

In most political parties the majority of members are men, which has implications for achieving equal representation at all levels of politics. Aldo F. Ponce, Susan E. Scarrow and Susan Achury find that this gender gap varies considerably between parties, and that having more women MPs helps to increase women’s participation at the grassroots level

Modelling human choices: MADeM and decision‑making

Research supported by FAPESP 2015/50122-0 and DFG-GRTK 1740/2. RP and AR are also part of the Research, Innovation and Dissemination Center for Neuromathematics FAPESP grant (2013/07699-0). RP is supported by a FAPESP scholarship (2013/25667-8). ACR is partially supported by a CNPq fellowship (grant 306251/2014-0)