Global Politics

You may use books, notes, and the internet for reference, but all answers must be written by you during the exam period. Use quotation marks for any pasted material and list the source.

This exam assesses your ability to analyze and synthesize theories from the course. Rather than defining concepts in isolation, you are expected to apply theoretical perspectives to empirical patterns and social phenomena discussed in the readings and lectures.

Part I: Analytical Identifications (40%)

Answer THREE of the following FIVE questions. Please include the full text of the question you are addressing. Full credit requires explaining how at least one theoretical framework from the course helps make sense of the situation described.

1. Participation Without Membership

In many U.S. cities, voter turnout is low, union membership has declined, and traditional civic associations are weaker than in previous decades. At the same time, protest mobilizations, online activism, and issue-based movements periodically surge.

How would you explain this pattern using theories from the course? What does this suggest about the relationship between participation, organization, and democracy?

2. Inequality with Opportunity

The United States combines high levels of economic inequality with a widespread belief that society is fundamentally fair and merit-based.

Which theoretical perspectives from the course help explain this combination? What mechanisms link cultural values to policy outcomes?

3. Religion and Modernity

Modernization theories often predict declining religiosity as societies become wealthier and more educated.

How can this apparent contradiction be explained using course readings?

4. Global Cities, Local Consequences

Global cities concentrate wealth, high-skilled employment, and cultural capital, while also producing rising housing costs and social polarization.

How would you explain this variation using theories discussed in the course?

5. Moral Conflict in Politics

Public debates in the United States often take on moral absolutist tones.

Which theories from the course help explain this style of politics?

Part II: Essay (60%)

Choose ONE essay.

Essay Option 1 Does Culture Still Matter?

Using at least three theoretical perspectives from the course, analyze how culture shapes political life. Apply each perspective to concrete political or social patterns discussed in the course.

Essay Option 2 Informal Participation and Democratic Governance

Analyze how formal organizations, informal networks, and scenes shape political inclusion, inequality, and governance.

Essay Option 3 One Society, Multiple Trajectories

Using the United States as a central case, analyze how different theories explain its divergence from other advanced democracies.

Hierarchy.

*John Friedmann, The World Cities Hypothesis, in Paul L. Knox and Peter J. Taylor, eds., World Cities in a World System. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995, pp. 317-331 strong statement of largely Marxist ideas stressing hierarchy and inequality. Global capitalism is the driver. How much of this continues in Sassen? Are the hypotheses as deterministic as he suggests? What propositions from other theories could lead to the same results?

Michael Comiskey and Pawan Madhogarhia. 2009. Unraveling the Financial Crisis of 2008. PS: Political Science & Politics, Volume 42, Issue 02, April 2009, pp 271-275.

Week 3 – Globalization: The Emergence and Diffusion of Distinct Democratic Cultures and Institutions.

**Daniel J. Elazar, World History Curriculum, MS, 130 pp. double-space. Draft 1999. Ambitious and facile, yet remarkably coherent overview of the rise of Western Civilization from the small, volatile societies of the ancient Greeks and Jews to the present, including Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Stresses the interpenetrations among the cultures and civilizations of the world. Illustrates key concepts that recur: migration, frontier, claiming a new territory, covenants creating mutual obligations, democratic participation. How explain the lack of diffusion of these ideas across most of the globe, until very recently, and then more recent efforts toward rapid change? Elazars ideas are elaborated in far more detail and with scholarly specifics in his 70 plus books. See esp. The Great Frontier and the Matrix of Federal Democracies, Transaction Press, 1998. Vol. 3 of four volume series.

*Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations, Foreign Affairs, 1993. A forceful but overly deterministic statement of global transformation since the end of the Cold War. Uses a strong military/strategic thrust. Elaborated in his book with the same title if you want more detail.

*Lawrence E. Harrison and Samuel P. Huntington, eds., Culture Matters. New York: Basic Books. Pp. xxiii xxxiv and passim. Note the multicausal perspective of most participants; a distinct shift from the Clash of Civilizations position. But Huntington himself does not explicitly support this more balanced view.

Week 4

*Francis Fukuyama, Trust, New York: The Free Press, 1995, Part V, pp. 325362. Critique of state expansion as leading to dependency and undermining individual initiative. Social capital is important for economic development, but can come from diverse sources. In the US, from Protestant asceticism; in Germany, from the guilds; in Italy and France where guilds were destroyed, there was less social capital. Generally: those counties that had strong national states destroyed intermediary organizations, and in the process, destroyed the civic basis of trust among citizens, as in Italy, France, former Soviet areas.

*Lipset, American Exceptionalism, ch.8 pp. 267-292 on civic participation, declining trust, and public morality, an on-going debate with Robert Putnam. Appendix pp. 293-297 very short but powerful results on who joins groups and obligations felt (contrast to Putnam, etc.)

Extra. Scenes Project – Terry Nichols Clark, Univ of Chicago / Daniel Silver, Univ of Toronto / Clemente Navarro, Seville / Stephen Sawyer, Paris / Wonho Jang, Seoul and others Recent monographs on Dropbox:

These should open in your browser when you click the address, or paste it into your browser. OR you can choose “Download” in top right of screen and save the file to your hard drive.

Seoul/Tokyo/Chicago

Scenes Dynamics in Global Cities: Seoul, Tokyo, and Chicago. Wonho Jang, Terry Clark, Miree Byun. Seoul: Seoul Development Institute, 2011. 196 Pages. English text quite different from Seoul Scenes (#570) which is only on Seoul.https://dl.dropbox.com/u/5559963/Seoul%20Dev%20Inst.%20July%202012.2011-PR-60.pdf

Seoul

Seoul Scenes and Its Use for Space Characterization. Miree Byun Wonho Jang Terry Clark Jong Youl Lee. (Seoul: Seoul Development Institute, 2011), 198 pages

Spain

Step by step explanations of scenes construction and results of the Spanish project on scenes website in English and Spanish:

Clemente J. Navarro, ed., Las dimensiones culturales de la ciudad. Madrid: Los libros de la catarata, 2012. 206 pp.

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/5559963/Navarro.Spanish%20Scenes%20Bk.17243_Las_dimensiones_%283%29.pdf

Paris

Stephen Sawyer, ed. Une cartographie culturelle de Paris-Mtropole. Paris: Rapport a la Mairie de Paris, 2011. 149pp.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5559963/Paris.May%2019.2011.Rapport%20Final%20CARTOGRAPHIE%20CULTURELLE%20FINALE%202011.pdf.zip

Video on Paris Scenes, 25 min:

http://joelukawski.wordpress.com/2010/12/17/paris-underground-exploring-urban-scenes/

China

On Dropbox: paper in English, Di WU, Jefferson MAO, Terry N. CLARK. The Influence of Regional Culture and Value in Sustainable Development of Chinese Urban Residential Choice [C]. 2011 International Conference on Management and Sustainable Development. 10.1109/ APPEEC. 2011. 5749091. (EI Index).

US and Canada are in Silver and Clark, Sceneson main syllabus. Chicago in Scenes chapter of Clark, Trees and Real Violins.

Extra: Carl Grodach and Daniel Silver, eds., The Politics Of Urban Cultural Policy: Global Perspectives. Routledge, 2012. Full book free at . Read Introduction by Grodach and Silver and one chapter that fits your interests.

Extra: Olson, Mancur. The rise and decline of nations: economic growth, stagflation, and social rigidities. New Haven: Yale University Press, c1982. Regenstein HD82.O5650 1982. Ch 1, 3. Classic counterargument to Putnam’s thesis. Argues that closely knit social, economic, and political organizations are prone to inefficient cartelization and social rigidity. A powerful state that destroys older forms of associations creates space for individual mobility, entrepreneurship and new forms of associations, which promote economic growth.

Week 5 Entrepreneurial Urban Politics.

Extra: Terry Nichols Clark, Old and New Paradigms for Urban Research, Urban Affairs Review. September 2000. Shows how globalization weakens some paradigms about cities, but strengthens others. Uses results from the Fiscal Austerity and Urban Innovation Project in 35 countries.

Extra: Terry Nichols Clark, Transforming Political Systems and Political Culture: What Works? Lessons from Bogot and Cities Around the Globe.

Extra: Eleonora Pasotti, Political Branding in Cities. Cambridge UP, 2010. For more on Mockus/Bogota compared to Naples and Chicago arts, culture, entertainment as city rebranding strategies.Choose sections for cities that fit your interests.

Extra: Alan Harding et. al. European cities towards 2000: profiles, policies, and prospects.Manchester ; New York : Manchester University Press; New York : St Martin’s Press, 1994. Regenstein Stacks HT131.E920 1994 A generally strong statement of global markets limiting local initiative. Contrast this with his paper on reserve, which looks into some concrete decisions more deeply and shows far more local initiative and variation in responding to global forces.

Extra: Norman Walzer, ed., Local Economic Development. Boulder: Westview, 1995. The first book on local development policies in countries around the world, esp. W. Europe, Russia, and the US. Contrasts traditional incentives by government that aid individual firms with public goods/amenities that seek to improve the overall climate of the locale (in chapters by Miranda, Rosdil, and Green).

Week 6 Ethnicity and Race.

* Lipset, American Exceptionalism, Ch 4. Two Americas, Two Value Systems: Blacks and Whites, pp. 113-150. Stresses the often conflictual value frameworks for interpreting similar events. Ch 6, Intellectuals and Political Correctness. How major programs for social change, like affirmative action, are struggled over by intellectuals in particular.

**Clark, Terry Nichols (Ed). Urban Innovation. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1994. Class vs. Race vs. The New Political Culture, pp. 21-78. Post-redistributive politics in American cities. Uses Hierarchy Leveling Principle (p. 29ff.) to interpret ethnic conflict. Note that this subsumes the concept of political opportunity structure in the social movement literature.

*W. Lance Bennett, “The Uncivic Culture: Communications, Identity, and the Rise of Lifestyle Politics,” PS December 1998, p. 741-758/761. Among the causes of the new local, issue politics is the public reluctance to endorse substantial class or race-based redistributive programs.

*Bobo, Larry & Howard Schumann. Racial attitudes in America : trends and interpretations.Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 1988. Regenstein Stacks E185.615.S293 Comprehensive overview of survey results on race in America.

Extra: Jesse Jackson, Mary Gotschall (Contributor), Jesse Jackson Sr, Jesse Jackson Jr It’s About the Money : How You Can Get Out of Debt, Build Wealth, and Achieve Your Financial Dreams 256 pages (January 2000). Dramatic change of tone from past civil rights activism. How widespread is this change of view?

Extra: Handouts on FAUI results on changing impacts of race in US cities (Wong, Jain, Clark); results from Clarence Stone surveys, L. Quillian? Other recent data.