APSA Annual Meeting 2017
Some of the ICSID researchers took part in the 113th American Political Science Association Annual Meeting 2017 that was held in San Francisco on August 31-September 3, 2017.
The APSA 2017 theme was The Quest for Legitimacy: Actors, Audiences and Aspirations.
Today the concept of legitimacy is fundamental to many classic debates in political science. At the same time, legitimacy is core to numerous contemporary political issues. Across the world and discipline questions about political legitimacy ensue. Salient debates — whether about representation, equality, voice, accountability, institutionalization, protest, revolutions, international norms, disputes, war — can all contain questions of legitimacy at their core. Moments of social and political change often center on contestation about what is considered legitimate, including some of the more prominent movements in the last several years, such as the Black Lives Matter movement, Arab Spring protests, the global refugee crises, increasing nationalism and xenophobia in established democracies, debates about universal health care and other social policies, environmental regulations, the rights of minority groups, and the apparent widespread increases in inequality. Legitimacy is also closely tied to numerous core concepts, including the creation of order, the exercise of power, and the nature and role of political authority. Yet the concept of legitimacy is contested, and within political science there is wide variation in what scholars mean when they reference the term.
Papers presented by ICSID researchers at the APSA Annual Meeting 2017 included:
Israel Marques «Public-Private Partnerships, Vocational Education, and Weak Institutions»
Noah Buckley «Using Internet Searches in Russia for Measurement and Prediction»
David Szakonyi «The Determinants of Businessperson Political Candidacy»
Ora John Reuter «Political Participation and the Survival of Electoral Authoritarianism»
Besides, ICSID academic supervisor Timothy Frye was a moderator of the roundtable «New Approaches to the Rule of Law & Property Rights: Integrating the Demand-Side» that offered a forum to discuss emerging trends in the study of law and property rights in transition and developing countries, drawing on three recent books: Timothy Frye’s Property Rights and Property Wrongs: How Power, Institutions, and Norms Shape Economic Conflict in Russia; Jordan Gans-Morse’s Property Rights in Post-Soviet Russia: Violence, Corruption, and the Demand for Law; and Yuhua Wang’s Tying the Autocrat’s Hands: The Rise of The Rule of Law in China.