2007 Conference Program - Midwest Political Science Association

Paper Saving Downtown Fargo and Moorhead: The Urban Regimes
of Midwestern Cities
Nicholas G. Bauroth, North Dakota State University
Overview: The downtowns of Fargo, ND and Moorhead, MN face
similar issues. While Fargo encouraged development with
subsidies, Moorhead tried historical preservation. Fargo’s plans
were rejected by its voters. These results are studied using regime
theory.
Paper Urban Redevelopment: Cooperation and Conflict in
Brownfield Redevelopment
Dorothy M. Daley, University of Kansas
Overview: The paper examines the structure and density of
cooperative and conflict laden networks among local level
decision makers who work in Brownfield redevelopment.
Paper Regimes, Agendas, and Strategic Rhetoric in Seattle’s Sports
Stadium Debate
Joshua Sapotichne, University of Washington
Overview: Through content analysis of elite communications in
editorial and op-ed articles and interviews, this paper looks at two
Seattle sports stadium initiative campaigns to analyze specific
rhetorical strategies employed by pro- and antistadium interests.
Disc. Moon-Gi Jeong, University of Texas, San Antonio
50-16 DETERMINANTS OF POLICY IMPLEMENTATION
Room PDR 7, 3 rd Floor, Sun at 8:00 am
Chair Susan W. Yackee, University of Southern California
Paper Election Administration Bodies and Implementation Tools
Vassia Gueorguieva, American University
Overview: Policy implementation tools available to the Election
Assistance Commission and the Federal Election Commission and
their compatibility with agency structure and target population as
well as effectiveness for achieving statutory goals.
Paper Street-Level Bureaucrats’ Professional Norms: Testing
Competing Hypotheses
Amy E. Lerman, University of California, Berkeley
Overview: Using original data on 6,000 Correctional Officers, I
test competing hypotheses about street-level bureaucrats’
professional norms: Do individual (e.g. tenure) or institutional
(e.g. resources) characteristics determine support for
rehabilitation?
Paper Creating Jobs, Creating Wealth: How Did the Experts
Overlook the Obvious?
Rose Makano, University of Missouri, St. Louis
Overview: This paper explores the nexus between public
administration and policy implementation on natural resource
management in a developing nation. It discusses how and why
government policy initiatives failed to alleviate poverty through
forestry.
Paper Discretion Revisited: Explaining the Influences on Perceptions
of Rules and Judgment at the Street-Level
Zachary Oberfield, University of Wisconsin, Madison
Overview: What influences perceptions of discretion at
government’s frontlines? Contrary to work in the street-level
bureaucracy literature, this paper finds that two state-level factors
appear to be more substantively influential than management
factors.
Paper Corruption and Policy Implementation in the Philippine
Department of Education
Vicente C. Reyes, Centre for Research in Pedagogy and
Practice-National Institute of Education
Overview: In the pursuit of the Philippines to achieve
development, corruption has been a perennial obstacle. This paper
addresses political scientists and area studies specialists interested
in comprehending implementation within a setting of widespread
corruption.
Disc. Susan Yackee, University of Southern California
Page | 270
53-10 ISLAM AND DEMOCRACY
Room PDR 6, 3 rd Floor, Sun at 8:00 am
Chair Marcie Patton, Fairfield University
Paper Liberal Democracy and Islam: An Analysis of a Conflicting
Cultural Reality
Aluko S. Folorunso, Adekunle Ajasin University
Overview: This paper analyses the crises attendant on the clash
between liberal democracy and Islam and how the contradictions
generated have fueled the growth of Islam an its petulance and
resistance in the last two decades.
Paper Does Civil Society Create Democracy: the State, CSOs, and
Villagers in Rural Indonesia
Takeshi Ito, Yale University
Overview: This paper explains the manifestation of local
strongmen in post-Suharto Indonesia. It shows that local
strongmen have emerged in the local process of democratization
owing to their close links to the state rather than complete
separation from it.
Paper Religious Extremism and De-secularization of State: Role of
Urban Civil Society in Bangladesh
Shantanu Majumder, University of London
Overview: Despite the limitations in understanding modernity and
secularism, the Urban Civil Society (UCS) in Bangladesh with its
intellectual quality and organizational ability is the only visible
force that can fight the growth of religious orthodoxy.
Disc. Marcie Patton, Fairfield University
58-2 POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY AND PHILOSOPHIC
HISTORIANS
Room PDR 8, 3 rd Floor, Sun at 8:00 am
Chair Robert Phillips, Wheeling Jesuit University
Paper Socratic Political History: Xenophon’s Response to
Thucydides
Bernard J. Dobski, Assumption College
Overview: Xenophon’s Hellenika shows how a student of Socrates
responds to Thucydides’ study of political life in the wake of his
own Socratic education. Xenophon’s work allows us to see more
clearly the History’s relevance for philosophy.
Paper Friendship Among Men and Nations in Xenophon’s
Memorabilia and Hellenica
Matthew S. Brunner, Northern Illinois University
Overview: This essay uses both Memorabilia and Hellenica to
further our understanding of Xenophontic friendship as a whole,
and attempts to show that one must consider Xenophon’s
“Socratic” writings in order to fully understand his “non-Socratic”
writings.
Paper Was Socrates a Cosmian?: Plutarch's Socratic
Cosmopolitanism
Fonna Forman-Barzilai, University of California, San Diego
Overview: Here I reflect on Plutarch's claim in "On Exile" that
Socrates is the finest example of a "Cosmian", a citizen of the
world, and consider the implications of this Plutarchian
understanding of cosmopolitanism for contemporary thought.
Disc. Robert Phillips, Wheeling Jesuit University
Susan Collins, University of Houston