Proceedings of the Georgia Political Science Association 
Annual Meeting

2008 Edition

Table of Contents

Proceedings Abstracts & Access to Papers

Electoral Violence in Africa:  A Continent’s Soft Political Underbelly

Napoleon Bamfo

Valdosta State University

This study examines electoral violence as a problem that persists in African politics. With the recent election debacle in Zimbabwe and Kenya as a backdrop, this study examines the underlying causes of this problem, which include political parties drawing support from ethnic and regional bases and party leaders doubting one another’s honesty. This study infers, however, the underlying cause of electoral violence is the tendency among leaders to hang on to power at all costs, even if that means winning elections under dubious circumstances. So long as leaders believe that it is their unalienable right to rule once they win political office, they will invent deceptive ways of winning elections. No political system, no matter how stable it appears to be, however, is immune from electoral violence. To root out violence, leaders must show solidarity in condemning and alienating any government that cheats in elections or abuses human rights to stay in power. African leaders must also back economic and diplomatic sanctions against officials of a government that uses ignominious means to stay in power.
 

Citizenship and Responsibility to the Community: 

Understanding How the American Founders Expected American Government to Work

Kris Aaron Beck

Gordon College

The American founders constructed the American political system with a simple idea in mind: ordinary citizens would take responsibility not only for their own selves but also for their own community.  The founders expected that these citizens would view their community to be just as important as their own private lives, contributing time and effort to help the community improve and thus create better government.  Yet recently American citizens more and more have lost sight of this critical responsibility to the community and have become more selfish in their approach to life, embracing an excessive classical liberal individualism over civic fellowship.  Many rarely view the community or government as important; they often forgo most, if not all, forms of public participation.  As a result, the political system does not work well at many levels of government.  This study argues that the political system needs to recover the founders’ meaning of civic responsibility so that ordinary citizens once again can value the community and their place within it, thereby allowing the government to work as the founders intended.  The article starts with the founders’ views on responsibility and community, then discusses how classical liberalism had helped create many of the failings by citizens to live up to their responsibilities, and concludes with some ways to recover how to behave responsibility as citizens and humans.

Down in a Valley, Up on a Ridge:

Advanced Telecommunications and Rural Development

Phyllis I. Behrens

Midwestern State University

Opportunities for growth and development are important to both individuals and geographic areas.  Advanced telecommunications are expected to facilitate opportunities by increasing capabilities, enhancing productivity, and improving labor.  Rural and remote areas typically lag prime urban areas in diffusion of innovation and deployment of advanced telecommunications and thus find development efforts a greater struggle than do those prime urban areas.  A case study is made of Parkersburg, IA, and Harlem, GA, both places of less than 2,000 residents near to but separate from larger metropolitan areas.  Descriptive statistics and location quotients are examined.  Information sector in the smaller place is found to be about half that of the larger place in IA when compared to either the state or the nation as a base.  In GA the smaller place is about 28-29 percent of the larger place on either scale.  This finding leads to perspectives on inequities of access and their role in the issues of marginalization and uneven development that can increase digital divisions.

Alternative Paths to the Bench: Recruitment of Women to Become Judges in Georgia

Charles S. Bullock III

University of Georgia

Karen Padgett Owen

University of Georgia

At the end of 2008, women constituted 39 of Georgia’s 202 superior court judges. The path taken by women to the bench differs little from the path taken by men. Most of the female and male judges originally came to the bench via gubernatorial appointment rather than election with the percentages of men and women initially appointed being almost equal. While most women initially received appointments, there is no evidence that women face greater challenges than men in the electoral sphere. In contested elections, women have enjoyed success similar to that of men. Sitting women judges who attract opposition win reelection at higher rates than male judges. The number of women serving as judges in a circuit increases with the number of judicial seats in a circuit.

Unlikely Bedfellows:

Business and the Political Power Structure on Health-Care Reform

Joseph Corrado

Clayton State University

This article traces the preferences of business organizations for health-care reform during the policymaking process of President Clinton’s Health Security Act from 1990-1994. It argues that ideology and the politics of inevitability clearly shaped the preference of the National Association of Manufacturers. The Corporate Healthcare Coalition and the National Federation of Independent Businesses (NFIB) are not clearly depicted by either rational theories or by institutional process theories. Ideology seems to have cognitively clouded the preference of the NFIB in the later stages of this reform episode, while the Corporate Healthcare coalition’s preference for reform was clearly shaped by political factors. These findings add to our understanding of how business preferences are formed for ideologically charged issues.

When the Bullet Leaves the Barrel:

Use of Force Reporting in American Law Enforcement

Peter W. Fenton

Kennesaw State University

Statutes and official policies notwithstanding, American law enforcement officers exercise substantial, virtually unbridled discretion in the use of force during any police-civilian encounter. Therefore, in order to monitor and control the use of force by officers in the field, it is imperative that law enforcement agencies at all levels of government create and enforce effective policies and procedures for the documentation and subsequent evaluation of all use-of-force incidents. The purpose of this study is to examine the various considerations for law enforcement agencies in the development and implementation of effective use-of-force reporting policies and procedures. The study will also address the utility of capturing and evaluating information gleaned from use-of-force reports.

American Strategic Culture and its Role in the 2002 and 2006 Versions of the National Security Strategy

Craig B. Greathouse

North Georgia College and State University

Jonathan S. Miner

North Georgia College and State University

This study looks at the role of strategic culture and how it influenced the Bush Administration’s 2002 and 2006 versions of the National Security Strategy. It examines core documents in American foreign and defense policy and, using a content analysis, defines what American strategic culture is. It then looks at the 2002 and 2006 versions of NSS to determine how much influence strategic culture actually played in the underlying themes of these strategic statements. The analysis reveals four fundamental precepts of American identity: the use of democracy to spread freedom, a responsibility for world leadership, an essentially defensive stance toward protection of the homeland, and the use of annihilation and overwhelming force when conducting war, will reemerge as defining factors to which future US administrations will adhere. The actions of the Bush Administration ultimately conflict with this American strategic culture and its fundamental precepts have the effect of changing the Bush administration’s policy from 2002 to 2006.

Safe Haven Laws:

Triggering Mechanisms and Public Policy Diffusion

Otilia Iancu

University of Arkansas

In 1999, Texas was the first state to pass what is commonly called safe haven legislation (SHL).  This legislation was passed after a number of unsafe child abandonments and infanticides occurred in the state within a short period of time.  The following year, 14 states passed SHL and within nine years all fifty states had a safe haven law in place.  In this study I argue that the instances of unsafe child abandonment and/or infanticides in Texas served as triggering mechanisms which brought the issues to the forefront of the policymaking process.  I posit that the speed of SHL’s diffusion precluded many of the traditional reasons for policy diffusion—that is, perceived policy success, geographic proximity, shared demographic characteristics, and national government intervention, and that, as in Texas, the interrelated issues of unsafe child abandonment and/or infanticide in early-adopting states served as triggering mechanisms for the diffusion of SHL.  The question this study seeks to answer is what, if any, relationship exists between the triggering mechanism, an instance or instances of unsafe child abandonment and/or infanticide, and the diffusion of safe haven laws across early-adopting states?  To answer that question I examine four states enacting SHL in 2000, the year following Texas:  Colorado, Connecticut, Louisiana, and Michigan.  Newspapers with statewide circulation in the four selected states are analyzed.  The results indicate that triggering mechanisms within each state played a primary role in the diffusion of SHL, with geographic proximity playing a secondary role.

Tax Increment Financing in Georgia:

The Potential Impact of Woodham v. City of Atlanta, et al.

Julian L. Jackson

Valdosta State University

Dr. Nolan J. Argyle

Valdosta State University

This study analyzes the potential impact of the case of Woodham v. City of Atlanta, et al. on the use of tax increment financing in the State of Georgia.  It provides a brief history and overview of the use of tax increment financing nationally and in Georgia.  A comparison between the State of Wisconsin and the State of Georgia is then provided.  The Atlanta Beltline Redevelopment Project is discussed in some detail, as it is the effort that prompted the aforementioned court case, as well as the participation of school districts in tax increment financing in general.

The Determinants of a Difference Between Conflict and Non-Conflict Countries in the Developing World

Hae S. Kim

Troy University

The determinants of a difference between the conflict and non-conflict-stricken countries in the developing world are ethnic, demographic, or military. There are also different types of internal conflict within the conflict-stricken countries- “economically vulnerable,” “political-militarily vulnerable,” and “heterogeneous-parochial.” No pattern of religious conflict was identified. Many countries actually classified as non-conflict, peaceful countries are predicted to become conflict-stricken countries. Population growth in those countries increases ethnic-racial heterogeneity, thus diminishing the predominance by one ethnic group, while national governments are more likely to be militaristic by increasing the defense spending. In the conflict-stricken countries, national governments need to identify a correct pattern of conflict as well as interrelations among diverse variables that build up each pattern. When and if international or regional organizations—for example, the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, the Organization of American States, and African Union, among others—address their respective economic and/or political (including military) assistance to a developing country to prevent or solve internal conflict, such organizations should follow suit.

A Comparative Study of Corporatism in Jamaica and Venezuela

Shelliann Powell

University of Georgia

This study demonstrates that corporatism is a versatile system of structuring state-society relations in countries with weak to non-existent civil societies. The case studies of Jamaica and Venezuela refute Stepan's (1978) hypotheses of the conditions that are necessary for inclusionary and exclusionary corporatism to flourish. Case study research of Jamaica (1945 – 1989) shows that resource and coercive capabilities are not necessary for the development of inclusionary corporatist regimes and Venezuela (1958 – 1999) demonstrates that political polarization is not a prerequisite for exclusionary corporatism.

Representing Women? The Family Leave Policies of U.S. Cities

Corina Schulze

University of South Alabama

This study addresses whether or not women’s descriptive representation in city councils can lead to substantive representation, specifically representation in the form of comprehensive family leave policy. Cities are given considerable discretion in crafting family leave policies and, arguably, the composition of city councils will have an impact on leave comprehensiveness. This study departs from much of the research on women and representation by including a measure of motherhood along with biological sex. After analyzing information collected for a sample of the largest cities in the United States, statistical analyses provide some evidence that the being a woman and being a mother has an impact on policy comprehensiveness.

U.S. Foreign Policy as an Agent of Change: 

A Case Study of the Alliance for Progress and its Implementation in

Pre-Revolutionary Nicaragua

John-Paul Wilson

St. John’s University

Queens, New York

The Monroe Doctrine was established to protect emerging democratic republics in Latin America in order to guard U.S. political, economic, and strategic interests within the Western Hemisphere. The implementation required periodic military interventions on the part of U.S. marines, wherein the United States attempted to protect U.S. business interests and sponsor democratic elections in the region in the hopes of achieving a certain degree of political and economic stability. This effort to promote legitimate government and regional stability culminated in the creation of the Alliance for Progress, a multilateral development program aimed at assisting Latin America’s economic growth in the belief that the subsequent prosperity would further facilitate the adoption of democratic practices. The case of Nicaragua perhaps best exemplifies how an unvaried and ill-conceived program of regional development can adversely affect the rest of Latin America. In this study, I illustrate how the Alliance for Progress failed in its efforts to bring both economic prosperity and democratic reform to the majority of Nicaraguans. Moreover, I demonstrate how the Alliance became a mechanism for the state and national elites to expand their own economic enterprises to the detriment of those less privileged.