2007 Conference Program - Midwest Political Science Association

31-3 LEGAL ARGUMENTATION IN MEDIEVAL AND
EARLY MODERN THOUGHT
Room Sandburg 1, 7 th Floor, Fri at 12:45 pm
Chair Alexandra E. Hoerl, Rutgers University
Paper Natural Law and Law of Nations: From Aquinas to Suarez
Yoshihisa Yamamoto, Catholic University of America
Overview: In this paper, I will analyze the theories of natural law
by Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) and Francisco Suarez (1548-
1617). I will analyze natural law in contrast with the law of
nations.
Paper Private Law Models for Public Law Concepts
Daniel Lee, Princeton University
Overview: This paper investigates the contributions of
Renaissance civil law in the development of early modern
doctrines of popular sovereignty.
Paper Don't Believe What You've Heard: Reconsidering Grotius's
Skepticism
Loren C. Goldman, University of Chicago
Overview: This paper reinterprets Grotius as a probabilistic, not
Pyrrhonic, skeptic, thereby solving problems in the traditional
literature about his belief in human sociability.
Paper Covenant, Caring, and Conquest: The Logic of Contract in
States by Acquisition and Generation
Brookes C. Brown, Princeton University
Overview: This paper uses Hobbes’ theory of knowledge and the
three potential mechanisms of state formation Hobbes describes,
states by institution, acquisition and generation, to interrogate
Hobbes’ general views of sovereignty and the commonwealth.
Disc. Phillip Gray, Texas A&M University
32-7 HOBBES
Room Clark 3, 7 th Floor, Fri at 12:45 pm
Chair Ronda L. Roberts, Michigan State University, East Lansing
Paper Hobbes and the War on Terror
Yishaiya Abosch, California State University, Fresno
Overview: A textual analysis of Hobbes's Behemoth will inform a
critical examination of parallels between the current War on
Terror and the Weimar period.
Paper Hobbes' Pedagogy: A Portrait of the Potential Hobbesean
Graham R. Howell, Carleton University
Overview: The paper examines several of major works to argue
that Hobbes shaped the presentation of his thought to a specific
kind of student, which in turn shapes how his thought must be
read.
Paper Political Anthropomorphism
Alice Ristroph, University of Utah
Overview: Political anthropomorphism describes accounts of state
power that analogize the state to an embodied human being. I
critically evaluate this anthropomorphic approach to power,
especially as it is invoked in the name of national self-defense.
Paper Who Is the Hobbes's Sovereign? Analysis of Hobbes's
Theories of Leadership
Michael T. Rogers, Lindsey Wilson College
Overview: First, I argue there are 3 plausible and competing
theories of leadership in Hobbes. After exploring Hobbes's
democratic, aristocratic and Platonic theories of leadership, I
construct a clearer picture of who the Hobbesian sovereign is.
Paper The States of Nature in Hobbes’ Leviathan
Gregory B. Sadler, Ball State University
Overview: 5 diferent conditions of the state of nature are
distinguishible in Hobbes' Leviathan. Hobbes' main focus is on
preventing the state of nature as civil war within a previously
existing civil society.
Disc. Wynne Walker Moskop, St. Louis University
32-20 POLITICS, MEMORY, AND NARRATIVITY
Room LaSalle 1,7 th Floor, Fri at 12:45 pm
Chair Onur Bakiner, Yale University
Paper Political Obligation, Public Memory, and Recognition
Controversies
Steven M. DeLue, Miami University
Overview: Paper discusses the basis of political obligation in a
liberal democratic state replete with recognition controversies. I
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survey some basic arguments, critique them as inadequate to
address recognition controversies, and provide a solution.
Paper An Outline of a Theory of Political Storytelling
David J. Lorenzo, Virginia Wesleyan College
Overview: I outline a theory of storytelling that locates stories in
relationship to understandings of the world by connecting the
functions of stories to a group of variables that describe their
temporal, intellectual, and metaphorical characteristics.
Paper The American Stain: Virtue, Memory, and Corruption in
Philip Roth
Robb A. McDaniel, Middle Tennessee State University
Overview: An examination of the recent political fiction of Philip
Roth in light of debates over "liberalism" and "republicanism" in
the American political tradition.
Paper The Politics of Memory: Algeria, South Africa and Rwanda
Smita A. Rahman, University of Illinois, Chicago
Overview: This paper examines the complex negotiations
involved in the politics of memory. How do societies with
grievously injured pasts come to terms with their continued
presence? Viewed through the prism of Nietzsche's Untimely
Meditations.
Paper Adorno's Emancipatory Politics and the Idea of Philosophy
After Auschwitz
Alireza Shomali, Harvard University
Overview: Adorno’s critique of the Enlightenment, it is said, blurs
the possibility of emancipatory praxis. My paper questions the
validity of this position and investigates the possibility of
emancipatory praxis in Adorno’s idea of philosophy after
Auschwitz.
Disc. Christian D. Dean, Dominican University of California
33-5 POLITICAL THEORY AND THE ECONOMY
Room Dearborn 2, 7 th Floor, Fri at 12:45 pm
Chair Robert Mayer, Loyola University, Chicago
Paper Human Economics: The Intrinsic Failure Of Markets For The
Poor
Eamon Aloyo, University of Colorado, Boulder
Overview: We should reevaluate economists' fundamental
assumptions concerning the human consequences of money
demand driven markets, and instead reconsider how human
demand might assist in ethical analysis and reform.
Paper Dewey’s Democracy and Hayek’s Liberalism
Colin Koopman, University of California, Santa Cruz
Overview: Both Dewey and Hayek understand politics through a
pragmatic-praxeological critique of subject-centered rationalism.
Recognizing their convergence here opens up new options for
both theories and also illuminates previously unexplained
differences.
Paper Deliberation, Property, and Economic Justice
Peter M. Lindsay, Georgia State University
Overview: This paper explores the following potential paradox:
are the property relations necessary for the functioning of a
deliberative democracy the relations that would be chosen by
deliberative democrats?
Paper Challenging the Privatization of Consumption
Steve Vanderheiden, University of Minnesota, Duluth
Overview: I examine the emerging anti-consumerist critique in
light of its implications for liberal theory as well as in the
normative claims that it makes in its own right, considering its
implications for how individual consumer decisions are regarded.
Disc. Robert Mayer, Loyola University, Chicago
35-7 EMPIRICAL IMPLICATIONS OF THEORETICAL
MODELS (EITM)
Room Montrose 2, 7 th Floor, Fri at 12:45 pm
Chair John Patty, Harvard University
Paper Dynamics of 2 Party Competition: Empirical Estimation of a
Theoretical Model
Tasos Kalandrakis, University of Rochester
Arthur Spirling, University of Rochester
Overview: We estimate the parameters of a stochastic game of
two-party competition using the sequence electoral outcomes in
four countries with two-party parliamentary systems.