POLITICAL SCIENCEALUMNI NEWSLETTERWINTER 2011

LETTER FROM THE HEADEDITING POLITICAL BEHAVIORWILLIAM BERNHARD ON THE EU’S DEBT CRISISMILAN SVOLIK ON THE ARAB SPRINGPS GRADUATE WINS SOROS AWARD2011 BEST SENIOR THESIS WINNER

LETTER FROMTHE HEAD

dear friends,As part of our research mission, the Depart-ment’s faculty are expected to publish scholarly works on politics. While some faculty write books, most faculty publish their research in the format of journal articles. These articles are anonymously reviewed by peers from other universities before they are accepted. Just as we grade student papers, our papers are “graded” too! Thus, we spend much of our time preparing and revising these articles for publication. It is how we contribute to the scholarly dialogue.

Each journal has an editor, a distinguished faculty member in the discipline, who makes the ultimate decision about what papers are pub-lished and which are rejected. Editors, therefore, have a big influence on the direction of the discipline. Their choices help define the state of knowledge in political science.

At Illinois, we are proud to be the home of three leading journals in political science. International Interactions is an excellent general interest journal for international relations schol-arship and is edited by Professor Paul Diehl. Professors Jeff Mondak and Tom Rudolph edit Political Behavior, the top journal for articles about voting and mass political participation. And most recently, Professor Brian Gaines has assumed the editorship of American Politics Review, one of the best journals for articles on American politics. It is a remarkable testa-ment to the quality of our faculty to have these journals reside here at Illinois. In turn, Illinois

is positioned to play a large role in defining the agenda for political science research over the coming years.

To provide you with some insight into the world of academic publishing, we asked Profes-sors Mondak and Rudolph to provide some reflections on their experience as editors of Political Behavior.

In Department news, we have finally arrived in our new home, David Kinley Hall! The facili-ties are top-rate. Faculty are enjoying their new offices and teaching in renovated classrooms. It is a joy to have students wandering the halls and visiting office hours more regularly. We are fortunate to have this space and look forward to many happy years there. Please do come by for a visit when you are in town!

The Department also hosted its second annual Board of Visitors meeting last month. We are grateful to the dedicated alums who participated. Board members are engaged in plans for alums to provide career counseling to our current majors. We also discussed ways in which we can facilitate more connections between alums, faculty, and students. As faculty stewards of this great institution, it is inspira-tional to meet and interact with such thoughtful and committed alums. Indeed, the collective success of our alums and their enthusiasm for Illinois provide continual motivation for us to do our best to educate the next generations of Illini.

We wish you all a happy and wonderful holi-day season!

Best, Bill Bernhard

William Bernhard

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EDITINGPOLITICALBEHAVIOR

Jeffrey Mondak & Thomas Rudolph

when political scientists conduct research, they typically seek to pub-lish it either in books or in academic journals. This past January, we be-came the editors of the journal Political Behavior. This experience

has provided us with a new view of academic publishing.Political Behavior is an important subfield journal in

political science. We call it a “subfield journal” because it does not publish research on all aspects of political science, but instead focuses on matters such as public opinion, news media, and elections and voting. Political Behavior is the official journal of the American Political Science Association’s section on Elections, Public Opin-ion and Voting Behavior. This status makes it a highly visible outlet.

The journal is published four times per year, and each issue includes seven or eight articles. The typical article is about 7,500 words in length. We will edit Political Behavior for four years. Each year, our job is to select which 30 or so ar-ticles to publish from among the approximately 240 papers submitted to the journal by political scientists from around the world, and to help improve the quality of those articles.

We reject about seven out of every eight manuscripts we receive. Rejecting manuscripts is not a fun task. Authors invest a great deal of effort in preparing their papers, only for us to tell most of them that their work did not make the cut. Why would we agree to this job, one for which the bulk of our duties involves rejecting other political scientists’ research? And how do we choose which 30 to accept?

Our first reason for becoming editors of Political Behavior is that we view the editing of academic journals as an important form of disciplinary service. Journal editors make deci-sions that help shape the public face of scholar-ship. It matters greatly for both the journal and the subfield that we identify and publish the very best research that we can. Fortunately, because the Department of Political Science at Illinois

excels in the area of political behavior, we are well positioned to house the journal. Many of our colleagues are renowned scholars in politi-cal behavior, and many of our current and recent graduate students are conducting cutting-edge research in the area. Knowing that we could turn to these colleagues, students and graduates for advice made our decision to become editors of Political Behavior much easier. Additionally, our Department head, Bill Bernhard, provided us with several important forms of support, such as office space for the journal and a graduate student who serves as our editorial assistant.

The second reason we agreed to become editors is that it benefits the Department of Political Science. Because of the journal’s prominence, editing it here at Illinois furthers the Department’s stature as one of the nation’s leading political behavior programs. This helps us to recruit top graduate students and place them at top universities. Also, at least four or five graduate students will serve as editorial as-sistants during our four-year editorial stint. It is hard work, but it gives them an inside view of the research being produced by the best scholars in the subfield. Our editorial assistants learn about emerging trends in political behavior, and about what it takes to produce and publish high-quality research.

Before being published in Political Behavior, articles go through several steps. When a new paper is submitted, one of us is assigned as the editor in charge. We review the papers ourselves to make sure that they are appropriate for the journal; if a paper does not fit within the broad parameters of the subfield, it is rejected. Once a paper passes this initial screen, it is sent to three scholars for peer review. Reviewers are profes-sors or advanced graduate students at universi-ties around the world. Identifying reviewers who

are willing and able to comment on a paper is one of our most difficult tasks. Our editorial as-sistants recommend five or six individuals to us per paper, and we then decide which ones to ask to review the paper.

Once reviewers agree to comment on a paper, they are sent the paper and given thirty days to submit their reports. The reviewers do not know who the author is, and the author does not know who the reviewers are; this is a system of “double-blind peer review.” Based on the reviewers’ reports and on our own reading of a paper, we decide whether to accept it for publication, to reject it, or to invite the author to revise the paper and resubmit it for further consideration.

Almost all of the papers we eventually accept first receive a “revise-and-resubmit” decision. Thus, the review process serves two functions: it helps identify which papers we should publish, and it also helps the authors to improve their pa-pers. From when an author first submits a study to Political Behavior to when we officially accept it for publication, it often takes close to one year. After acceptance, the article appears within a few weeks on the Political Behavior website, but it is roughly another year before it comes out in a print copy of the journal.

Before becoming editors of Political Behav-ior, we both had published several of our own studies there. Thus, we were honored to be asked to take charge of the journal. Our first year editing the journal is coming to an end. As our editorial term proceeds, we will continue to seek to publish the most interesting and innovative research we can. Doing so will help to advance our understanding of citizens and government, and also will help to solidify the reputation of the University of Illinois as a leader in the field.

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every day seems to bring new headlines in the European Union’s sover-eign debt crisis. A potential default by Greece had put that country at center stage, but the spotlight recently shifted quickly to Italy. Both countries’ lead-ers are in the process of stepping down as a result. EU leaders have devel-oped plans for a financial “firewall” to contain the problem, but details and funding have remained uncertain. William Bernhard is an expert on central banking and the link between politics and markets in the European Union.

Of the 27 EU countries, 17 use the euro as com-mon currency and so are tied together in the eurozone. News reports suggest that a default by Greece—and even more so Italy—could bring down the entire eurozone system. Why and how would this happen? How does a relatively small nation like Greece pose such a threat?

Global financial markets are so integrated that a Greek default would spill over to other countries—what financial economists call “con-tagion.” Banks from across Europe hold Greek debt. That debt represents part of the banks’ assets—returns that the banks have been count-ing on. In the most recent bailout agreement, the banks accepted that they would have to take a significant loss on those assets, a “haircut” in financial jargon. That leaves the banks in a precarious position, making it more difficult for them to lend to the private sector or to purchase government debt from other countries.

As a result, other countries will be affected. Less lending will prolong the economic slump in Europe and the world. Governments in high-deficit countries, such as Italy, which count on borrowing to pay their bills, will have a more dif-ficult time finding banks to purchase their debt. In a worst-case scenario, some of these large banks may go under, which could precipitate a significant banking crisis and even the collapse of the single currency.Austerity measures in Greece, required for it to obtain bailout funds, have produced massive street protests, along with complaints these

measures are destroying the Greek economy. Just how severe are these measures? And is there no alternative?

The austerity measures require cutting social spending, chopping public employment and raising taxes. These are significant policy changes that require Greeks to rethink their re-lationship between the market, government and citizens. For a long time, the Greek government has provided for many citizens, insulating them from the risk and volatility of global markets. The government will no longer be able to do that.

The response of the Greek people is not sur-prising—they had been counting on those poli-cies for their quality of life. Here at home, think about the controversies generated by proposals to change social security or the pension system in Illinois—the beneficiaries of those policies have made plans assuming certain policies would be in place. It would be traumatic to pull the rug out from them.

Interestingly, polls suggest that Greek citizens detest the austerity requirements of the recent bailout agreement, but want to remain within the eurozone—a very difficult circle to square. These conflicting attitudes create credibility issues with markets, which question whether the Greek government will actually have the will to follow through on their commitments. In turn, Greek politicians have been searching for ways to convince markets and other EU lead-ers that they are serious.Comparing the U.S. and the EU, what makes the

A MINUTE WITH ...

William Bernhard, expert on EU politics, banking, & markets

situation in Europe so difficult?In the U.S., we have a strong federal govern-

ment with relatively clear political accountability. It doesn’t seem like it sometimes, but we know who’s in charge. We’ve got a nationally elected president, who’s presumably concerned with the welfare of the country as a whole. We’ve got two parties that span all 50 states. Between the president and the parties, there are incentives for politicians to think about the economy as a whole. Moreover, the federal government has an authority and an ability to act.

In the EU, the policymaking process is more diffuse. It’s not entirely clear who’s in charge, who’s accountable for the economic perfor-mance of Europe as a whole. The Council of Ministers, which includes representatives from each of the member states, is the main policy body. But think about if the 50 state governors in the U.S. got together to negotiate over national

policy. What would that be like? It would be a mess, because each one would be concerned about what’s going on in their state rather than what’s going on with the whole.

In the EU, there’s more of a collective-action problem when it comes to thinking about the crisis. You see this in Germany. It’s going to have to come through in some way financially as part of the solution to this crisis, and a lot of German politicians say, ‘not our problem, it’s not good for us, we’ve taken care of ourselves.’ The EU doesn’t have the institutional accountability or ability to think about the whole—that’s a big difference.Are there other factors at work?

In the U.S. there are some adjustment mechanisms that kick in that help level out some of the differences in economic performance between different regions. One of those involves the transfer of funds through the federal govern-ment. If Texas is booming, it’s going to send more tax receipts to Washington (D.C.). Then Washington, almost automatically—through unemployment insurance, welfare spending and a variety of different things—is going to spend that money in Michigan, where the economy is struggling.

In the EU, there is no equivalent mechanism. When the EU countries need to think about how to pick up Greece, they have to come up with an explicit agreement to make these transfers. Because it happens automatically here in the U.S., it eases the adjustment.

A second means of adjustment that we have in the U.S. is labor migration. When the economy is bad in California, for instance, you can pick up and move to North Dakota, where the economy is going pretty well. There are minimal barriers to doing that. It’s very easy to move. In Europe, they don’t have that same sort of labor mobility. Someone in Greece cannot pick up and easily go work in Finland, because they don’t speak the language, and the cultural differences are larger as well.Some have talked over the years about the EU moving toward becoming more of a “United States of Europe,” with greater integration of financial and tax policies. Could that happen as a result of this crisis?

With the establishment of the euro, people talked about the very scenario that we’re seeing. Member states with more balanced fiscal posi-tions, such as Germany and the Netherlands,

were concerned that they would get stuck pay-ing the bills of the high-debt countries. Things had gone smoothly, however, until the global financial crisis brought it to the fore.

How could this crisis result in a stronger Europe? Member states may agree that the EU needs more authority over national-level fiscal policies—that is, taxing and spending—to prevent this sort of crisis from ever happening again. That would be a big step toward political integration, as decisions about taxation, govern-ment spending, and representation are at the heart of any democratic government.

On the other hand, this crisis could still end with some countries leaving the eurozone and returning to a national-level currency. That scenario would mean a very different future for European integration, perhaps one involving different levels of membership in the European Union.

William Bernhard was interviewed by UIUC News Bureau social sciences editor Craig Chamberlain. This interview appeared on the News Bureau’s website on November 9.

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2011 has seen one long-time arab dictator after another dropping from power, beginning in Tunisia, then Egypt, and recently Libya. In Syria, an eight-month uprising continues despite a violent crackdown and rising death toll. Were the deposed autocrats just paper tigers all along? And how does a rul-er like Bashar al-Assad in Syria continue to survive in power, yet is unable to quash protest? Authoritarian rule may seem simple compared to democracy, but the power dynamics are in fact quite complicated, and unique to each sit-uation, says Milan Svolik, whose book on the subject, The Politics of Authori-tarian Rule, will be published next year by Cambridge University Press.

Milan Svolik,expert on authoritarian regimes

These uprisings appeared to come out of nowhere, similar to when the Iron Curtain fell two decades ago in Eastern Europe. Why is that?

Popular uprisings in dictatorships are inherently unpre-dictable. Because of severe repression, ordinary citizens in dictatorships cannot publicly express their political attitudes and are often afraid to reveal the intensity of their opposition to the regime even to their relatives or colleagues. This is a serious obstacle to any opposition movement: Opposition leaders or potential defectors from the regime’s leadership cannot gauge the extent of public support they would enjoy if they called for an overthrow of the regime. This is why when

A MINUTE WITH ...

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we do observe successful uprisings against autocrats, they are often triggered by focal events – such as the self-immolation by the Tunisian street vendor last December – and thus unexpected.Authoritarian regimes have internal security forces to repress any opposition, and they obviously had been effective in these countries for many years. Why have they been unable to prevent or put down these uprisings?

All dictatorships repress to some extent, but none has the capacity to defeat a mass opposition movement that involves a significant fraction of a country’s population. The intuition behind this is not too distant from the one be-hind bankruptcies of many financial institutions during the recent financial crisis. Banks carry enough cash reserves to service everyday cash withdrawals, but they will go bankrupt when a large number of their depositors suddenly decide to withdraw their savings.

In a similar fashion, any dictatorship main-tains enough repressive capacity to counter isolated challenges to its stability. But it is simply infeasible for any dictatorship to main-tain enough repressive personnel to defeat a widespread uprising of several tens of thou-sands. And of course, there is no federal deposit insurance for dictators – that is, unless you are the Bahraini monarchy and can count on Saudi tanks to come to your rescue.Why did the army play no part in either Tunisia or Egypt in restraining the protests? And why has the opposite been true in Syria?

A complete answer to this question will not be possible until we learn more of the inside story about the role of militaries in these events. But one clue about why militaries sometimes fail to intervene on behalf of a dictatorship is in their role, or lack of it, in internal repression. Dic-tators are wary of relying on their militaries for repression – they fear that a politically engaged military might exploit its political leverage and turn against them.

This is why the Tunisian regime, for in-stance, deliberately kept its military small, underequipped, and out of politics. The ousted Tunisian president Ben Ali, like his predeces-sor Habib Bourguiba, relied for repression on internal security forces rather than the military. But when mass protests erupted in December 2010, the police and internal security services were overwhelmed. And the army – seeing the magnitude of the protests and lacking a vested interest in the regime’s survival – refused to intervene.

In Syria, by contrast, the military has been closely incorporated into the regime’s govern-ment, the ruling Baath party, and the repres-sive apparatus. After all, the current president

Bashar Assad’s father came to power in 1970 in precisely the kind of military coup that the Tunisian leadership feared. To ensure its loyalty, the Syrian officer corps is recruited on sectar-ian grounds, from a minority Shia sect. Thus the Syrian military knows that if the regime falls, they will fall with it. They therefore have an incentive to fight tooth and nail for the regime’s survival.You note that these have not been representa-tive dictatorships, so we should be cautious about what lessons we learn from this year’s events. How so?

The authoritarian regimes in North Africa and the Middle East have been some of the most entrenched and repressive authoritarian regimes of our times. Many rely on oil for their survival, many are monarchies, and many have been governed by long-serving, aging leaders. It is in part the notoriousness of their leaders that makes then unrepresentative: The average dictator is not a household name because he stays in power for only a few years and is most often replaced not in a popular uprising but by another member of the elite in a palace coup.

Thus when we generalize from the Arab Spring to other authoritarian regimes – China, Russia, or Iran – we need to carefully distinguish between the unique and the representative fea-tures of many North African and Middle Eastern dictatorships.All of these autocrats have maintained their power in different ways. But are there common aspects to their rule that make any hoped-for transition to democracy more difficult?

A striking feature of these uprisings is the lack of an existing opposition or charismatic revolutionary leaders.

These have been truly popular revolutions, which adds legitimacy to their aspirations. But it may also prove a weakness on the path to democracy. As a result of decades of severe oppression, the opposition forces in almost every transforming country in the region lack recognized leadership, partisan organization and coherent political ideology.

In fact, the only organized political force in most countries in this region are conservative, Islamist groups. Meanwhile, the emergent tran-sitional governments in Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya are being formed under the tutelage of defect-ing, formerly authoritarian elites or militaries. The populations in these countries may quickly grow disillusioned with democracy if the first truly competitive elections bring to power reli-gious extremists or former authoritarian elites.

Milan Svolik was interviewed by UIUC News Bu-reau social sciences editor Craig Chamberlain. This interview appeared on the News Bureau’s website on November 16.

PS GRAD WINS SOROSSCHOLARSHIP

The scholarship provides tution and living expenses for two academic years of graduate study. Only 30 students are chosen annually for the award.

From the Soros Foundation’s website: “Diana was born in south central Mexico and moved with her family to Chicago on a tourist visa when she was five. A decade later, her dreams of a college career seemed doomed because her tourist visa had long since expired and most colleges and scholarship programs would not consider her application. Diana went public with her story, was drafted into leadership roles of groups advocating for undocumented students, and was featured in a seven-minute segment of the News Hour with Jim Lehrer. A private citizen

who saw the show covered Diana’s tuition and expenses at the University of Illinois, where she majored in economics and political science and won numerous prizes. She also founded and led an organization devoted to promoting educa-tional opportunities for the undocumented. Fol-lowing graduation she worked as a community organizer for the Washington [State] Commu-nity Action Network and the East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy. Her immigration status was recently normalized and Diana is now a first-year JD candidate at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law. She will use her Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowship to support continuing studies toward her law degree there.”

diana mora rashid (’06), a double major in political science and economics, is one of the winners of the 2011 Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans.

2011BEST SENIORTHESIS AWARD

my interest in the study of alliances had begun while taking a seminar on interstate dis-putes taught by Professor John Vasquez. I had been struck by the contradictory findings in the empirical literature on whether alliances were a source of conflict onset or deterrence. After enrolling in the department’s senior thesis semi-nar, taught by Professor Paul Diehl, I pursued this interest further and became increasingly convinced that these disparate findings were strongly influenced by how scholars organized their data. In an attempt to produce a more robust test on the relationship between alliance formation and dispute initiation, I organized my data in such way as to more closely analyze the impact of alliance formation within a single pair of states over time. I had also employed a series of case studies to determine whether my

data accurately reflected the historical reality of each case. Ultimately, I found that prior findings on deterrence were, in fact, influenced by how the existing data were gathered an organized, and that this did not necessarily coincide with the historical narratives they were intended to represent.

Working with Professors Vasquez and Diehl in creating a piece of original research proved to be both the most challenging and reward-ing endeavor of my academic career. It had confirmed my desire to enroll in a ph.d. program in political science, which I have since done at the Pennsylvania State University. Here, I am currently concentrating in international relations and continuing my research on the causes of interstate conflict.

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Department of Political Science / University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 420 David Kinley Hall / 1407 W Gregory Drive / Urbana, IL 61801217.333.3881 / pol@illinois.edu / pol.illinois.edu

Cover: Occupy LA demonstrators cheer on the lawn in front of Los Angeles City Hall on October 8, 2011. (Reuters / Jonathan Alcorn)