Results from the 2020 ASA Political Sociology Section Election

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We are pleased to announce the 2020 ASA Political Sociology Section Election Results.

Fabio Rojas, Indiana University  was elected chair. He will serve as chair-elect from August 2020 to August 2021 and then as chair the following year.
Kiyoteru Tsutsui, University of Michigan and Irene Bloemraad, University of California, Berkeley were elected to the section council. They both will serve three-year terms beginning August 2020.
The proposed change to the by-laws passed, so the section will also add two student members to the section council, starting with the next election. They will serve two-year terms with one of those seats being vacated each year.

Q&A with Frances Fox Piven

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Frances Fox Piven, Winner of the 2019 Distinguished Career Award

Photo source: https://www.asanet.org/frances-fox-piven

What major political events have influenced your research agenda over the years?

As an undergraduate, I was attracted to the ideals of the planned community associated with the New Deal, although as I explored the practices associated with those ideals, I became skeptical, influenced at first by conservative critics like von Hayek who argued that the rationally planned community was impossible, and later, when I worked as a junior planner on the rezoning of New York City, for the more grounded reason that these ideals were corrupted in practice by the pervasive influence of the real estate industry, especially in New York City. However, it was the 1960s! And very soon the spectacular eruption, first of the anti-war movement, and then of the Black Freedom Movement, overshadowed for me at least these preoccupations. Indeed, I think it is not an exaggeration to say that the anti-poverty wing of the Black Freedom Movement has been the most important influence on my work.

How has political sociology changed throughout the course of your career, and where do you see it heading in the future?

It has become bolder and broader. I began my work as an academic in the 1960s, and political sociology was still crippled by the constraints of cold war fears. The movement of the 1960s changed that, people began to read Marx and Gramsci and the English social historians. But it took a while for these influences to transform the field.

How would you describe your research process? How has it changed over the years?

I study politics, especially the politics of the lower strata in American society, and the politics that affects lower strata groups. When I want to understand a political development, I try to find out as much as I can about the historical events in which that development was embedded. I also search for historical parallels that might cast light on those events. And although I am not a quantitative methodologist, I eagerly use quantitative data produced by others in this process of searching. I don’t think my approach has changed much over the years, but the data available has improved!

What is your favorite obscure sociological work?

My favorite obscure work is a public administration tract by Chester Barnard entitled The Functions of the Executive. Very informative, especially for organizers!

If you had one piece of advice for graduate students/early junior faculty what would it be?

Shorten your time horizons, not only because we don’t any of us know the future, but because life is better if you worry less and do more!

Back in 2011 Glen Beck went after you. Do you have any further thoughts on the experience or Beck in general?

It was bracing, and interesting. And I learned I had lots of friends!

Frances Fox Piven is Distinguished Professor Emerita at The Graduate Center, City University of New York. She is an internationally renowned social scientist, scholar, and activist.

 

Conservative Innovators: How States are Challenging Federal Power

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Merriman, Ben. 2019. Conservative : How States are Challenging Federal Power. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Conservative InnovatorsConservative Innovators describes how conservative state-level officeholders, including governors, attorneys general, and secretaries of state, mounted a major challenge to the Obama Administration and federal power more generally. The opportunity for this challenge to federal power arose from the conjunction of several processes: marked growth in executive power at both the national and state level; shifts in administrative law doctrine friendly to state litigation; and high party polarization that yielded regularly divided national government but single party dominance of state governments. Conservative executive officials cooperated across states in litigation and through various administrative practices; they also adopted a notably uncooperative, conflictual stance in their relations with the Obama Administration. Through chapters examining multistate litigation, new uses of interstate compacts, and new elections administration practices, this book shows that state executive officeholders have used an innovative combination of means to successfully pursue a familiar set of conservative policy goals. A chapter on the small government experiment in Kansas shows that this activity is not a crudely anti-government stance, but rather a particular program of reform grounded in a sophisticated understanding of law and modern administrative institutions. The concluding chapter shows that the domestic agenda of the Trump Administration is substantially a continuation of this earlier state-level activity, and that liberal state officeholders have been quick to emulate new conservative strategies. The likely result is a rearranged, conflictual American federalism in which the states are more important and powerful than they have been since the Progressive Era.

Trade Battles: Activism and the Politicization of International Trade Policy

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Kay, Tamara and R.L. Evans. 2019. Trade Battles: Activism and the Politicization of International Trade Policy. New York: Oxford University Press.

Trade BattlesTrade was once an esoteric economic issue with little domestic policy resonance. Activists did not prioritize it, and grassroots political mobilization seemed unlikely to free trade advocates. The passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement in the early 1990s was therefore expected to be a fait accompli. Yet, as Trade Battles shows, activists pushed back: they increased the public consciousness on trade, mobilized new constituencies against it, and demanded that the rules of the global economy protect the collective rights and common good of citizens. Activists also forged a sustained challenge to U.S. trade policies after NAFTA, setting the stage for future trade battles.

Using data from extensive archival materials and over 215 interviews with Mexican, Canadian, and U.S. trade negotiators; labor and environmental activists; and government officials, Tamara Kay and R.L. Evans assess how activists politicized trade policy by leveraging broad divisions across state and non-state arenas. Further, they demonstrate how activists were not only able to politicize trade policy, but also to pressure negotiators to include labor and environmental protections in NAFTA’s side agreements. A timely contribution, Trade Battles seeks to understand the role of civil society in shaping state policy. Order online at www.global.oup.com with promotion code ASFLYQ6 to save 30%

Refuge Beyond Reach: How Rich Democracies Repel Asylum Seekers

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FitzGerald, David Scott. 2019. Refuge Beyond Reach: How Rich Democracies Repel Asylum Seekers. Oxford University Press.

Refuge Beyond ReachIn Refuge beyond Reach, David Scott FitzGerald traces how rich democracies have deliberately and systematically shut down most legal paths to safety. Drawing on official government documents, information obtained via WikiLeaks, and interviews with asylum seekers, he finds that for ninety-nine percent of refugees, the only way to find safety in one of the prosperous democracies of the Global North is to reach its territory and then ask for asylum. FitzGerald shows how the US, Canada, Europe, and Australia comply with the letter of the law while violating the spirit of those laws through a range of deterrence methods – first designed to keep out Jews fleeing the Nazis – that have now evolved into a pervasive global system of “remote control.” While some of the most draconian remote control practices continue in secret, FitzGerald identifies some pressure points and finds that a diffuse humanitarian obligation to help those in need is more difficult for governments to evade than the law alone.