Political Science Alumni Newsletter | Summer 2011

8/6/2019 Political Science Alumni Newsletter | Summer 2011

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2011

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PS Alumni Newsletter SU11

2

Dear Alumni and Friends,

I hope you are having a great summer!

While the faculty and students represent the

public face of our department, we could not

achieve our research and teaching excel-

lence without a strong support sta. As in

many large organizations, the role of the sta

has changed dramatically over the past two

decades. Long ago (before I became a profes-

sor), sta provided support to individual

faculty members by answering phones, typing

syllabi and manuscripts, and scheduling ap-

pointments.

With changes in information and communica-

tion technology, however, sta responsibili-

ties have evolved dramatically. No longer

do they perform tasks for individual faculty.

Instead, they are responsible for an ever-

wider and more complex array of organiza-

tional duties, including budget management,

course scheduling, human resources, and

compliance with the niversity, state, and

federal regulations. These functions are vital

to the department’s missions. Handling these

responsibilities is even more challenging in

an era of sta reductions—during my twelve

years in the department, we have gone from

eight full-time sta members to only three.

The sta members remaining need to be

knowledgeable, diligent, exible, and proac-

tive.

The department has been fortunate to have

such a sta, and they’ve been a large part of

our overall success. Their eorts make it pos-

sible for faculty and advisors to concentrate

on their primary responsibilities of teaching

classes, mentoring students, and conduct-

ing research. We are extremely grateful foreverything they do to make the department a

better place.

This summer, the sta is in transition. We

sadly say good-bye to argarita Ham, who is

retiring from the position of assistant to the

head aer a decade of service to our depart-

ment. The assistant to the head is the lead

sta person in the department, charged with

overseeing all aspects of the department’s

budget and human resources. argarita

fullled those responsibilities admirably.

ver cheerful and gracious, she was resp

sive and skillful in her management of the

department’s aairs. As department hea

relied on her judgment and advice. arga

is retiring to the Philadelphia area, wher

she will live with her husband, a psycholo

professor, who has accepted a position a

niversity of Delaware. We will certainly

her, and we wish her well.

We are pleased to welcome Carol Hartma

as the new assistant to the head. s. Har

man holds an A in French Literature and

BA from Indiana niversity. he has ser

in a variety of positions on our campus, m

recently working in a similar capacity in t

Department of conomics. An avid swimm

Carol has swum the nglish Channel and

participated in other long-distance swim

competitions. We look forward to workin

with her over the coming years.

In any discussion of the sta, I would be

remiss in failing to mention Brenda tam

who has been with the department for al

15 years. Brenda wears many hats in the

department: she is the secretary to the h

the graduate secretary, the secretary for

Civic Leadership Program, and the secre

for the Illinois-in-Washington program. W

all those responsibilities, it is obvious tha

Brenda is invaluable to our department’s

operation. An unparalleled professional,

was recently recognized with a College t

Award as one of the best on our campus i

position.

Over the coming weeks, Carol and Brend

the department will be working to coordi

our move to David Kinley Hall. The con-

struction crews are preparing the nishitouches to our new space. We look forwa

settling in and hope that you will pay us a

there the next time you are on campus.

Best,

Bill Bernhard

Letter from

the head




3

Crg Cmrn: Where do you see

progress in Afghanistan, in terms of its own

stability and self-interest?

P D: The .. government has most

recently used a series of benchmarks to

assess progress, including changes in the

levels of violence, the stability of individual

districts, the development of Afghan security

forces, and the Afghan government’s respon-

sibility for key functions. easured against

the situation last year, there have been a

number of incremental improvements on all

dimensions. For example, violent incidents in

Kandahar province have declined and the size

of the Afghan national army has increased.

CC: What gives you pause?

PD: The major concern is the slow pace

of progress despite the increase in ..

troops and the signicant development aid

granted to the country. It is also not clear that

improvements will necessarily continue in

the future, suggesting that we might be ap-

proaching limits beyond which little progress

is possible in the near future. Government

corruption and poor quality local security

forces remain sticking points.

CC: You note that a variety of factors—among

them the country’s size, its rugged terrain,

lack of infrastructure, poverty and tribalism—

make Afghanistan a poor candidate for stabil-

ity, much less democracy. What’s the best you

think we should hope for, assuming we don’t

want to stay indenitely?

PD: I think that .. and NATO goals have

become much less ambitious. British Prime

inister (David) Cameron has said that we

cannot expect “a perfect democracy” in

Afghanistan. The next .. ambassador toAfghanistan, yan Crocker, is even more cir-

cumspect, striving for “sustainable stability.”

That might be the best outcome, character-

ized by a relatively weak central government,

some accommodation with the Talban in

which it controls certain areas of the country,

a less porous border with Pakistan, and more

limited and sporadic violence. It seems that

recently begun negotiations with the Taliban

are dedicated to achieving such an outcome.

CC: The killing of Osama bin Laden, combined

with growing federal decit concerns and

declining support from the public, has some

in both parties arguing for a rapid exit. But

based on past experience, including that in

Iraq, what’s a realistic timeline?

PD: The key factors you note are essentially

.. domestic political considerations and

not reective of the .. government’s own

benchmarks for success. If the former drive

.. decisions with respect to troop with-

drawal and Afghan policy in general, then

the timeline will likely be determined by the

electoral calendar and President Obama’s

approval ratings in 2012. One might expect

that some signicant decisions will be made

in the coming months, but oen deadlines

on troop withdrawal and the like are set well

into the future. Circumstances change and

implementation of many provisions will likely

be scheduled aer the 2012 elections. Thus,

it would be premature to accept that what

is planned or promised in the near term will

come to fruition.

CC: Does history hold any lessons for how

long such eorts can be maintained, espe-

cially by a democracy?

PD: cholarly studies indicate that 70 per-

cent of attempts to impose democracies by

external powers fail within two generations.

Among those that do succeed, key ingredi-

ents are the willingness of the occupying

power to sustain its troop presence and sup-

port. There is no simple answer to how long a

state can maintain such support, and indeed

the length of commitment required varies

by context. Yet even a sustained commit-

ment is not enough, as imposed democracies

best take root in societies that are ethnicallyhomogeneous and are surrounded by other

democratic states in their regional neighbor-

hood. Neither of these conditions character-

izes Afghanistan.

: This is an edited version of an interview

originally published by the University of Illinois

News Bureau on July 5, 2011, online at illinois.

edu/lb/article/72/52553.

Next steps

N afghaNistaN

On Wednesday, June 22, President Obama in-

ormed the country of his decision to withdraw

U.S. forces in Afghanistan, promised when

e announced a “surge” of 30,000 additional

roops into the country 18 months ago. How

eady is Afghanistan for such a transition,

whether fast or slow? Are the pieces in place for

ong-term stability? paul diehl , the Henning

arsen Professor of Political Science, is the

uthor of books on both war and peacekeep-

ng, and directs the Correlates of War Project,

he world’s largest data collection eort on

nternational conict. Diehl was interviewed

y News Bureau social sciences editor Craig

Chamberlain.




4

able to bargain for a disproportionate sh

of the budget,” he said. Or as the authors

write in their paper: “Our analysis indicat

that the rules of representation are indee

highly consequential. Controlling for a va

of country- and province-level factors an

using a variety of estimation techniques,

we show that overrepresented provinces

political unions around the world are rat

dramatically favored in the distribution o

resources.”

The study focused on established federa

tions because they almost always involve

some form of unequal representation, o

resulting from the political bargain struc

the nation’s founding, Dragu said. The im

ance therefore is accepted by the citizen

“shrugged o as a quirky and perhaps inc

sequential legacy of a proud history,” he s

The study’s results, however, “might have

important implications in a wide range of

settings where the foundational bargain

neither old nor widely revered,” Dragu sa

They also could challenge assumptions t

such unequal representation is necessar

a “pathway to peace and stability,” such a

Afghanistan and Iraq, or the uropean n

he said.

“An important open question is whether

stability of such federations is threatene

citizens of under-represented regions – o

ethnic groups, or countries – must provid

large, permanent subsidies to those with

greater representation.”

“One person, one vote” is oen the rallying

cry for democratic reform, suggesting every-

one should get an equal say in their govern-

ment. Yet in some of the oldest and largest

democracies, some votes are worth far more

than others by design. A Wyoming voter, for

instance, is signicantly over-represented

compared with a California voter. ach state

has two .. senators, but California has 66

times more people. How much does it mat-

ter? According to a recent study of decades of

data, from the .. and eight other countries,

it matters a lot when it comes to money.

“Other things being equal, the most over-rep-

resented states or provinces can expect to

receive more than twice the federal funding

per capita as the most under-represented

states or provinces,” according to Tiberiu

Dragu, co-author of the study with Jona-

than odden. In some examples from outh

America, they found a funding dierence of

ve to one.

Dragu is a professor of political science at the

niversity of Illinois; odden is a professor of

political science at tanford niversity. Their

study, “epresentation and edistribution in

Federations,” one of the few to examine the

issue over multiple countries, was published

online this month in the Proceedings of the

National Academy of ciences. The authors

made use of three decades of data from Ar-

gentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Germany,

exico, pain, witzerland and the .. All are

democracies structured as federations, in

which partially self-governing states or prov-

inces are united under a central government.

In coming to their conclusions, they account

for numerous other factors that have beensuggested as contributing to the imbalances

in federal funding – among them population

density, poverty, economic development,

location and past political power (such as a

state might derive from being part of the na-

tion’s founding).

The relationship between representation

and per-capita funding, however, “cannot be

explained away,” Dragu said. In all nine coun-

tries, “the story remains the same: epre-

sentatives of over-represented provinces are

moNey aNd

democratic

represeNtatioN

Craig Chamberlain

University of Illinois News Bureau

Tiberiu Dragu is an assistant professor of

political science. His research interests in-

clude American political institutions, law, and

judicial politics.

: This is an edited version of an article


News Bureau on May 25, 2011, online at news.

illinois.edu/news/11/0525representation_Ti-

beriuDragu.html.




5

In brief, these maps were plainly designed to

harm epublican incumbents and to reduce

the number of expected epublican seats.

CC: Assuming Gov. Quinn signs the new maps

into law, and there’s no successful challenge

in the courts, who are the biggest losers in

the .. House?

BG: There are 11 epublicans and eight

Democrats in the Illinois delegation at pres-

ent. The 18 new districts (down from 19) were

ruthlessly drawn to confront at least ve

epublicans with hugely dierent districts

and unappetizing options: move, face o in a

primary against a fellow GOP incumbent, or

run in a very tough seat, wooing unfamiliar

voters. Adam Kinzinger, Bob Dold, Judy Big-

gert, andy Hultgren and Joe Walsh are all

aected. Tim Johnson was not “paired” with

another downstate epublican, but he was

drawn into a district that little resembles the

old 15th.

CC: How does this dier from the last con-

gressional redistricting, in 2002?

BG: Last time, with divided government,

the two maps diered dramatically. The

.. House map was a bipartisan construc-

tion and was, in political science parlance,

an “incumbent protection act.” The General

Assembly map was a Democratic creation

and was designed to inate small advantages

in Democratic vote shares into much larger

advantages in seat shares.

CC: If redistricting is so important, why do

you think it gets so little attention?

BG: Drawing legally valid districts is a fairly

technical matter, and the entire process

is shrouded in jargon and legalese. It suits

politicians in power to pretend that it isimpossible to get serious, broad input on

maps because of the technical diculty of

constructing legally valid districts. edia

accounts too rarely distinguish between

dierent kinds of “gerrymander” and leave

voters confused.

CC: You co-directed a rare survey of voters

last year on the issue of redistricting. Do they

care as little as we’ve been led to believe?

BG: We found that very few registered voters

knew how the last maps were drawn, but that

Crg Cmrn: Just in political terms,

ow would you say these maps stack up in

erms of fairness?

Brn Gns: If you equate fairness with a

ipartisan or non-partisan process, these

maps certainly fail. They were craed by

artisan insiders operating mostly in secret,

nd they passed by straight party votes inoth chambers. Democrats control the state

overnment, and they’ve used their power

o the full, especially in the redrawing of

ongressional districts. In terms of fairness

f outcomes, in the short-term, people focus

n incumbents, and how much their districts

hange. In the longer term, the question is

ow the new districts, which will be in use

ntil 2020, stack up in terms of their normal

oting tendencies. How many districts ap-

ear to be safe, and how many competitive?

redistrictiNg

N iLLiNois

t comes just once a decade, but strongly shapes

he politics and policymaking in the decade

hat follows, says University of Illinois political

cientist bia aie. Call it redistricting,

r call it gerrymandering, it’s the oen-con-

entious process of redrawing state legislative

nd U.S. congressional districts following each

U.S. Census. The new maps for Illinois are now

eaded for the governor’s desk following ap-

roval Tuesday by the state senate. Are the new

maps fair? And how much do voters care about

istrict boundaries? Gaines was interviewed

y News Bureau social sciences editor Craig

Chamberlain.

More about fairness in redistricting and Il-

nois voters’ views on the issue can be found in

Gaines’ contributions to “Rethinking Redis-

ricting,” a report produced by the university’s

nstitute of Government and Public Aairs. You

an nd the report online at igpa.uillinois.edu/

ystem/les/ethinking-edistricting-IGPA-

eport_0.pdf.

they had strong preferences for a non-par-

tisan process and for simple shapes. Voters

are not well informed about redistricting, but

they know that it is important and they know

what they’d like to see in maps.

CC: Based on that survey, how do voters

judge the fairness of redrawn districts?

BG: Among their top priorities is compact-

ness, or the simplicity of the district shapes.

It is very popular with ordinary voters

because they rightly suspect that twisty, elon

gated districts arise because they were con-

structed to serve some political purpose – to

help or harm a given party or particular politi

cian, or to achieve some desired level of racia

segregation of voters. The latter is unpopular

with voters, but is also more or less under-

stood to be required by the Voting ights Act

at present. ven strong partisans say they like

simple shapes and do not like gerrymanders

designed to help their own party.

The least compact district on the new map

is the 4th congressional in Chicago, and it

strongly resembles its immediate predeces-

sor: It is a claw-shaped district constructed

to be majority-Hispanic. Given where panish

speakers live in Chicago, the only way to

construct such a district in Illinois is to throw

compactness standards out the window. But

elsewhere, the map is also full of suspicious

jots and zags. The mapmakers clearly did not

prioritize simple shapes.

: This is an edited version of an interview


News Bureau on June 1, 2011, online at illinois.

edu/lb/article/72/51950.




6

oN the greek

debt crisis

Protesters clashed with police in the streets of

Athens during the last week of June as the Greek

Parliament debated and then passed a set of

deeply unpopular austerity measures required

for the nation to receive aid and avoid default-

ing on its debt. What brought on the crises,

and how much does it threaten the 27-nation

European Union and the world economy? Politi-

cal scientist a uiai , a native of

Greece and visiting lecturer at the University of

Illinois, is an expert on the EU and its institu-

tions, as well as on the politics of Greece and

the region. Kourtikakis was interviewed by News

Bureau social sciences editor Craig Chamber-

lain.

Crg Cmrn: How did Greece get in

this economic mess?

Kosts Kortkks: Aer Greece adopted

the euro in 2002, successive governments

were unable – many say unwilling – to imple-

ment economic reforms, which were nec-

essary for the Greek economy to become

competitive. At the same time, their member-

ship in the eurozone (the 17 nations using

the euro currency) allowed Greece to borrow

money with a super low interest rate. The

result was a budget with too many expenses

and not enough revenue. Then, aer markets

took notice of the Greek debt problem in Oc-

tober 2009 and the fear of default emerged,

other eurozone members, especially France

and Germany, did not act swily enough to

contain the crisis.CC: Why have Greek citizens reacted so an-

grily to the austerity program now approved

by their government?

KK: When the rst austerity measures were

introduced in 2010, Greeks accepted them as

necessary for avoiding default. In my opinion,

two things have happened since then that

have caused anger. First, there is a wide-

spread perception in the middle and working

classes that they are disproportionately bur-

dened with austerity, because they are easier

targets for tax hikes and benet cuts. At the

same time, rich elites, which for many years

have engaged in rampant tax evasion, remain

untouched by the measures.

The second and more serious reason is that

trust between citizens and political elites

– the foundation of representative democ-

racy – seems to have seriously eroded. Greek

citizens have always suspected that some of

their elected representatives were corrupt

and untrustworthy, but the crisis has led to

a blanket assessment that all politicians are

basically liars. Despite all this, most demon-

strators were in fact peaceful. ome of the

most severe incidents we saw on TV were

caused by a minority of extremist youths, a

long-time tradition in Greek demonstrations.

CC: The recent measures taken by the Greek

government are only the latest news in an

ongoing series of debt troubles in various

countries. Are they all in trouble for the same

reasons?

KK: Currently only three eurozone countries

have received bailouts: Greece, Ireland and

Portugal. ach one got into trouble for a dif-

ferent reason. In Greece the main problem

was excessive government borrowing, while

in Ireland the problem was originally caused

by overexposure of the banking sector.

egardless of the reason these countries got

into trouble, however, they all face the same

problem: Investors are very reluctant to lend

them money because they don’t think they

will get it back. We could say that these coun-

tries have a credibility problem. The purpose

of the austerity measures is to restore cred-

ibility, so that Greece, Ireland and Portugal

can borrow money in the open market again.any experts however have doubts that the

measures will produce the desired outcome

and prevent default.

CC: Can the aord to give other nations

the same monetary support, or is there a

breaking point?

KK: any analysts agree that pain is the

breaking point. pain is the fourth largest

economy in the eurozone and, many fear, the

next in line for a bailout. It will be extremely

dicult but still possible to secure funds and

even political support for a panish resc

The next domino to fall aer pain would

Italy, and there is an emerging consensus

the funds for a bailout of the eurozone’s t

largest economy can’t be secured.

CC: Who would be the ultimate losers if

Greece defaults on its debt?

KK: The potential losers from a default,

which many experts see as inevitable, wo

depend on how it plays out. In the worst-

case scenario, the crisis would spread to

entire eurozone and beyond. This could h

catastrophic eects for the global econo

including the .. In the ensuing panic, le

ers would consider all government debt a

“toxic” and would refuse to nance it. As

result, many governments – prudent and

proigate alike – would start defaulting o

their debt. In this case, a Greek default w

resemble the collapse of Lehman Brothe

2008, which had a knock-on eect for the

ternational banking system. Optimists, h

ever, expect that the eects of a Greek de

can be limited to Greece. Whether one of

two scenarios, or something in between,

materialize in the future depends on how

eurozone governments handle the crisis

CC: You’ve found that Americans have tro

understanding the importance of the

how it works. What can we learn from the

ongoing crises?

KK: What Americans, and indeed anybod

can understand from the uropean sove

debt crisis is that aer 60 years of integra

uropean economies are so tightly inter-

twined that they may rise and fall togethe

urope remains a continent of nation-sta

but the common institutions and policiesthe is a very important variable that w

need to keep in mind when we try to unde

stand political and economic developme

in urope.

: This is an edited version of an intervi

originally published by the University of Illin

News Bureau on July 7, 2011, online at illin

edu/lb/article/72/52657/.




7

coNVocatioN

2011

Around 2000 guests watched students march

across the stage at the Political cience and

International Interdisciplinary tudies con-

vocation on ay 14 at Hu Hall. We congratu-

late them all, and wish them the best of luck.



Department of Poltal sene / unverty of illno at uranacampan240 Computing Applications Building / 605 pringeld Ave / Champaign, IL 61821217.333.3881 / [email protected]

: Pete ouza / Associated Press

Political Science Alumni Newsletter | Summer 2011

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