Handbook of political science

This handbook breaks new grounds in political science by providing distinct but connected global voices in cutting edge political science research. It will be an indispensable resource for the study of politics well into mid-century but especially in an era of unprecedented transformations and disruptions. The range of contributors, including excellent colleagues from Latin American, Asian, Australasian and African universities, reflects the truly global character of contemporary political science.

Moreover, this is not the only turning point of this Handbook. A second distinguishing feature relates to a particularly striking erosion of the thus far dominant political science terminology. The scope of the topics covered, the concepts and the terminology similarly show this innovative and pluralist perspective. This includes some of the major challenges of political science in the 21 st Century and, indeed, of humankind.

The platform allows researchers to cross-search and seamlessly access a wide breadth of must-have SAGE book and reference content from one source. Skip to main content. Due to global supply chain disruptions, we recommend ordering print titles early.

This chapter was inspired by reading a number of contributions to The Oxford Handbook of Global LGBT and Sexual Diversity Politics and asks three interconnected questions: How can one best understand the range of experiences of and the attitudes toward people whose sexual orientation or gender expression is regarded as diverging from socially prescribed norms?

Is the language of sexual rights the most appropriate in defending sexual and gender diversity when there appears to be growing global polarization around issues of sexuality? And how do we reconcile the growing gap between academic and activist understandings of sexual diversity and rights? In this chapter, writing as a retired intelligence officer who worked for much of my career on terrorist issues, I consider how attitudes to academic work on terrorism have developed, from the perspective of a counterterrorism practitioner.

Not only terrorism studies but also complementary disciplines such as behavioral science and technology have been recognized as relevant to counterterrorism. While the possibility exists that academic independence might be compromised through closer dialogue between academics and practitioners, in practice both sides have found that the benefits outweigh the risks. This article focuses on the access objective of urban planning. It aims to articulate a clear role for measures of metropolitan accessibility, and to demonstrate the utility of these measures in informing and influencing policy.

The article describes the use and measurement of accessibility for metropolitan areas, evaluates the current state of knowledge and literature, and identifies important issues about measurement. It suggests that problem definitions should be reformed to bring them in line with current transportation goals and argues that the concept of accessibility may offer a compelling, attractive, and alternative basis for policies related to the built environment when operationalized using cumulative-opportunities measures.

The formal organization of court systems and jurisdictional rules established by legislatures often determine which litigants will have their cases reviewed by an appellate court.

Even if there are no jurisdictional constraints, some losing litigants weigh the costs and benefits of pursuing an appeal. Still, filing an appeal does not guarantee full consideration of the issues raised by an appellant. Caseload pressures have contributed to screening procedures that result in only a minority of cases being closely scrutinized by an appellate panel.

This chapter examines research on this winnowing process that characterizes litigant access to intermediate appellate courts. Ambiguity is intrinsic to life. Yet, mainstream accountability theory reduces its area of application by not taking ambiguity seriously. The literature treats too many aspects as exogenous to politics and is unlikely to capture accountability dynamics in contemporary representative democracies in transformation, including the European Union.

Theorizing accountability requires going beyond predetermined principals and agents, detecting deviance from authoritative orders and rules, and disciplining unruly agents. An institutional perspective is offered, relaxing assumptions regarding what accountability means and implies; what is involved in demanding, rendering, assessing and responding to accounts; what factors foster effective accountability; and how accountability regimes emerge and change.

The fluidity and unresolved conflicts of political life make it difficult to correctly assign causal responsibility and to learn from experience.

Accountability processes, nevertheless, provide occasions for searching for and testing collective purpose, intelligence, meaning and political equality, as part of institutionalization and de-institutionalization processes. This chapter advances three claims. Second, it argues that there are different ways of conceiving and defining both concepts in their respective analytic literatures, and the mirror-image relationship tends to disappear once we move to those alternatives, particularly of accountability conceived as answerability and blame-avoidance conceived as activity rather than outcome.

Third, it argues that cultural theory analysis can identify variants of both accountability and blame-avoidance which can deepen understanding of both the mirror-image aspects of the two phenomena and of relationships between them that go beyond a mirror-image. This chapter provides an analytical framework aimed at measuring citizen participation in public accountability processes beyond the fundamental mechanism of parliamentary elections.

Some dilemmas and tensions arising from incorporating citizens into accountability measures at different levels are discussed. This chapter argues that, although accountability is a term well understood in constitutional law, it is not a central term of art within the discipline. It explores the public law origins of the term first in the limited sense of financial accountability to parliamentary bodies and, more generally, as machinery for holding public actors responsible for their actions, such as the doctrine of ministerial responsibility in common law constitutions.

The chapter explores concepts that parallel or provide for accountability within constitutional law, notably the rule of law principle; separation of powers; judicial independence and constitutionalism. It looks at the spread of these ideas in the modern world, from Europe, where they are culturally embedded, to societies unfamiliar with them.

Finally, the implications for accountability of the arrival of transnational courts and human rights regimes are briefly considered.

Democracy, rule of the people, is comprised of complex webs of accountabilities between people and those who use power to govern on their behalf. Democratic accountability is comprised of justifications for these uses of power, combined with distributions of empowerments in such a way that those affected can sanction its use. Key problems for democracies include forming principals and agents among whom accountability relations might hold, designing institutions that limit costs of accountability mechanisms so they can be used by citizens, and developing forms of accountability that match the increasing scale and complexity of political issues and organizations.

This chapter first presents the major characteristics of multi-level governance and gives examples thereof from the European and the transnational level. The chapter concludes that, in multi-level governance, there is a risk of the exercise of political power being divorced from democratic accountability and that accountable multi-level governance should not be equated with democratic government.

It argues that the relationship between increased managerial accountability and performance is contested and it is becoming increasingly clear that we have to operate with a multi-dimensional accountability concept going beyond hierarchical accountability.

The chapter discusses tensions and dilemmas in the relationship between NPM and accountability, the volatile relationship between accountability and performance, and the ambiguities and appropriateness of accountability under NPM.

It also addresses accountability in relation to post-NPM reforms and challenges for future research. Contents Go to page:. View: no detail some detail full detail.

Part I The Discipline. Part II Political Institutions. Guy Peters. Carmines Robert Huckfeldt. Part IV Comparative Politics. Part V International Relations.

Ann Tickner. Part VI Political Theory. Hofferbert David Louis Cingranelli. Guy Peters Vincent Wright.