What implications does a dirty-handed politician‟s assertion that dirty hands are necessary for certain political achievements have on our understanding of the relationship between political actors and the political community? The problem of dirty hands, as described in Michael Walzer‟s “Political Action: The Problem of Dirty Hands,” occurs when a political actor finds that he must transgress o...

There can be little doubt that Rational Choice Theory (RCT) with its emphasis on the 'instrumentally rational' individual as the foundation of the political process has significantly enhanced the scope of political science. This paper details many of the areas of political science in which our understanding of events has been significantly enhanced by the application of RCT. But, in the end, RC...

[The Klein/Gronicki/Kosaka contributions dig deeply into the impact of revolutionary political change in Eastern European countries upon their economies and indirectly through trade upon Western European economies, focussing particularly on the repercussions of anticipated arms cutbacks. However, when we examine trade, a critical issue to most national and regional economies, and a phenomena th...

While we know that emotional reactions are important influences on political behavior, we know far less about the sources of these emotions. This paper studies the causes of fear and anger in reaction to a negative stimulus: the financial crisis. Anger should have been experienced among individuals who believed a specific actor was to blame for the crisis. Moreover, individuals should have been...

Principal-agent theory encapsulates a tradition of rational choice modeling, in which some actor(s) (the principal(s)) uses whatever actions are available, to provide incentives for some other actor(s) (the agent(s)) to make decisions that the principal most prefers. Because principal-agent theory focuses on the responsiveness of the agents decisions to the principal’s goals, and how this respo...

Does the presence of an armed actor change the nature of political participation? Democratic states that experience internal conflict continue to hold elections and debates over policy, as well as effect peaceful transfers of power among successive governments. A reified distinction between “violence” and “politics” in the study of political violence and civil war has prevented scholars from co...

Plan formulation and plan comprehension in adversary situations constitute integral components of human reasoning. A process model based on heuristic strategies is presented for decision making in obstructive and constructive counterplanning situations. The former situation is characterized by an actor striving to thwart the goals and plans of a second actor. The latter is the dual situation; i...

Previous literature on the study of identity representation in political discourse has been mainly concerned with the spoken discourse and the representation of self. However, the way different groups of political agents represent others’ identities across languages has not attracted much attention. Using Wodak’s (2007) Discourse Historical approach to CDA, the present study investigates the wa...