The Poligon Our mission: the many-sided study of politics Newsletter of the Carleton College Department of Political Science, August 2002

Maastricht students explore European Union

by Jessica Yarnall ‘02

Twenty three Carleton students traded Willis classrooms for cobblestone streets, traveling to Maastricht, The Netherlands, this spring to learn more about European political economy and the politics of the European Union.

Led by Professor Al Montero, Maastricht students were only in the city for about five weeks of the semester. A unique departure from the typical off-campus studies format, Maastricht participants completed small group field research in the Europe of Regions seminar, traveling to four regions in France and Spain as a group, and then conducting independent research over break in Germany, Ireland, and Italy.

Sarah Croake ‘03 noted the importance of this "on the road" experience, "Professor Montero did a great job of combining the traditional academic learning setting with a far more experiential one." Colleen Miller ’04 also concurred, "I feel like an actual political science scholar now—I’ve gotten out of the classroom and into the field!"

Highlights of the 2002 Maastricht seminar include visits to the European Parliament, the European Court of Justice, and Committee of Regions; observing the Milosevic trials in The Hague; touring the Airbus Factory in Toulouse, France; toy testing at the Toy Technology Institute in Valencia, Spain; seeing the LePen election protests in Strasbourg, France; tasting wine at the La Perelada Winery in Spain; and attending lectures at the Institute for International Affairs in Prague.

Part of the success of this year’s seminar relied on the participants, "The 2002 Maastricht Program students were an exceptional bunch," according to Professor Montero, "In terms of substantive interests, language skills, methodological training, and just their raw abilities, they achieved everything the program was designed to accomplish. They will be extremely difficult to replicate in 2005, but Carleton is a great place to mine for talent!"

While in Maastricht, students took one class through the Center for European Studies and were housed with other international students at the University of Maastricht. The housing situation provided for many cultural exchanges with students from Scotland, Spain, Mexico, and a host of other countries.

New faculty members appointed

The Political Science Department is pleased to announce the appointment of Kelly Kollman and Greg Marfleet.

Prof. Kollman has held a number of prestigious fellowships, including a Fulbright for Germany and a fellowship from the Social Science Research Council. She is fluent in German.

As a new tenure-track faculty member in the Political Science Department, Prof. Kollman will teach Comparative Political Regimes, West European Politics, International Environmental Politics & Policy, and Comparative Social Movements.

She has been living in Germany for the past year, and is moving to Northfield this summer. "I was born in Iowa where both of my parents were brought up," Prof. Kollman said, "so although we moved before my first birthday, I’ve always felt like a cultural Midwesterner." Her family subsequently lived in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Nairobi, Kenya, before settling in Libertyville, Illinois, where she went to high school. Her hobbies include hiking and biking, travelling and trying to learn acoustic guitar. After the "concrete jungle" of Washington, DC, she looks forward to being on Carleton’s attractive campus with its sense of community.

Prof. Marfleet’s article "The Operational Code of John F. Kennedy During the Cuban Missile Crisis: A Comparison of Public and Private Rhetoric" was published in Political Psychology (Fall 2000).

Born and raised in Canada, he earned his B.A. and M.A. in international relations and comparative politics at McMaster University. As a new tenure-track faculty member at Carleton, Prof. Marfleet will teach International Relations & World Politics, Methods of Political Research, and American Foreign Policy.

He and his wife Natalie have recently moved to Northfield with their two sons. Prof. Marfleet has been active in playing several recreational sports and coaching youth t-ball and soccer. "I’m a baseball fan and have been fortunate that in both cities that I’ve lived in (Toronto and Phoenix) my local team has won the World Series while I was there," he said. "With Steve Schier’s help I’m learning to be a Twins fan." Two things he is looking forward to in Minnesota are teaching his boys to skate and also planning a canoe trip in the Boundary Waters area. He also enjoys building and programming computers.

Model UN team wins world title

The delegation brought home the bacon at the Harvard World Model United Nations Conference in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. They earned first-place honors over Yale University, which took second place. The conference is an annual event organized by Harvard University, and is structured like the United Nations, with students participating on various committees representing different countries as they try to solve real-world problems. Fifty delegations from 35 countries took part in the conference.

All six members of the team also received individual awards. The following are Political Science/IR majors:

Luke Peterson ‘02 - Diplomacy Award for work on the World Bank Committee.
Jason Richardson ‘02 – Diplomacy Award while on the Organizations of American States Committee.
Jessica Yarnall ‘02 - Verbal mention award for her service to the United Nations Development Program.

Banner year for Schier

by Boram Han ‘04

It was the best of times… and it was the best of times for Professor Steven Schier. Year 2001-2002 has been filled with numerous highlights and accomplishments. "I won’t have another year like it," states Schier.

Schier describes the last few years as his "fruition period," during which he was working towards several things. He completed many of these projects this year.

Prof. Schier also has been named to the Board of Directors of the Dirksen Center for Congressional Studies. During this six-year term, which started this year, he will review research grants and hold workshops for high school teachers. He also served as an external evaluator of the political science departments at Davidson College and Drake University. He was nominated and selected for Who’s Who in American Colleges in the Teaching Awards category. Schier continued as a political analyst for KSTP television and received over 150 national and state media contacts.

For the summer, Schier expects things to quiet down, which he claims is a good thing. "I plan to return to the obscurity I so richly deserve," explained Schier. This "obscurity" will consist of working as an editor on a book, Political Strategy of George W. Bush, scheduled to be published in early 2004.

Prof. Schier will, in the meantime, take several short trips with his wife Mary Lahr Schier, to whom he has been married for 15 years. She is a freelance writer and writes for many Twin Cities magazines. She recently published Strong-Minded Woman, a book about Lavinia Goodell, Wisconsin’s first female lawyer. She is working on her Master’s in English from St. Thomas University in St. Paul. They have two daughters: Anna (14) and Theresa (10). Schier explains his career goal is to be able to "write as well as my wife already does."

Schier shared the spotlight with his colleagues in the Political Science Department, stating that a lot always goes on within the department due to its excellent faculty. He says that he stood out only because his accomplishments seem to be concentrated within one time period.

Schier will be on leave to teach for the Fulbright Lectureship at York University this fall. He will return in winter and spring terms to serve as the chair of the department.

2002 graduates pursue varied goals

This year’s 45 graduating seniors in Political Science and Political Science/International Relations are moving on to a variety of career and educational plans. Here’s a sampling:

Law degrees are the next goal for Chad Bayse, Devin Smith and David Steffes. They will be attending William Mitchell College of Law in St. Paul starting this fall. Chad has been working as Communications Assistant for the Small Business Survival Committee, a non-profit/lobby group in Washington, DC, this spring and summer.

Sarah Doire will be working toward a Master of Public Policy degree at the Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota.

Several grads plan to jump directly into the political fray: David Pristin is off to New York City to be the NYC Field Director for Andrew Cuomo’s campaign for Governor. Renee Willette will be working with the Paul Wellstone for US Senate campaign in St Paul. Joshua Anderson will also be here in Minnesota, working on Congressman Bill Luther’s reelection campaign. Aisha Bierma will work in US Representative Martin Olav Sabo’s office in Minneapolis this summer. She then hopes to work in a Representative’s office in Washington, DC, for two years before attending law school.

Bethany Koehler begins work this summer as an investigator for the Duluth City Attorney in the newly created Human Rights Division, looking into issues of adequate housing, police/community relations, and equal employment.

Chris Heurlin is now a research associate at UpFront Products, a Minneapolis advertising firm. Luke Peterson is traveling this summer (Duluth, Montana, and Europe) before starting work in Towers Perrin’s Executive Compensation consultancy in New York August 1. Grad school is in his long-term plans. Leah Kutcher will also be relocating to New York. Emily Yueh is working for A.C. Nielsen BASES, an international market consulting firm based in Chicago. She begins with training in Brussels.

Akiko Nakano is joining the Peace Corps and teaching English in China for two years. Caleb Bartley will also be heading off to the Peace Corps at the end of January (somewhere in the Pacific) through June 2005. He is thinking of grad school in international relations and/or the Foreign Service in the long term.

James Nichols will be teaching English in Japan, and Brant Beyer will teach English in a private high school in Vsetin, Czech Republic, a town of about 40,000 located in the mountains close to the Slovak border. Nathan Gin plans to teach English in Hong Kong for a year, then on to law school. Katie Hausenbauer will be participating in the New York City Teaching Fellows program (two years working as a NYC public school teacher while pursuing a Masters of Education degree).

Lindsay Mayka will be working in the population division of the United States Agency for International Development in Washington, DC. She will work with NGOs and Congress, write policy briefs, and conduct research on existing USAID programs.

Honors for the Class of 2002

The Political Science Department hosted a dinner May 28 to honor and bid farewell to the senior majors in Political Science and International Relations. Professor Allen recognized the many members of the Class of 2002 who received awards, and a group of seniors presented "Celebrity Jeopardy." Portraying amazingly recognizable faculty members, they fielded questions in such categories as "Schier Madness," "Political Philosophers Whose Names Rhyme with Oakville," and "War—What Is It Good For?" No one managed to win Final Jeopardy, but, judging from all the laughter, it didn’t matter.

Nine seniors were awarded Distinction for their Political Science and IR comprehensive integrative exercises this spring. The following students chose the exam option, which required writing essays in response to questions in two subfields of their choice, plus a discipline question required for Distinction.

Aisha Bierma was awarded Distinction for her comps exam. She wrote on American politics and political theory. Her discipline essay was in response to the question, "Social theorists criticize political science for imagining that all significant political power is wielded through laws and formal institutions. This view, they argue, leads us to overlook the hidden power relations that pervade modern society and control its citizens. In light of your studies in the discipline, do you think that this criticism has merit today?"

Bryan Nelson received Distinction for his comps exam. He wrote on international relations and comparative politics. His discipline essay answered the question, "The assumption of rational choice is at the core of most contemporary theories of political science. Evaluate the costs and benefits of maintaining this assumption at the center of our discipline. Discuss at least one possible alternative to rational choice theory to support your answer."

Joshua Anderson received Distinction for his comps paper, "Nietzsche contra Social Science," advised by Laurence Cooper. It explores elements of Nietzsche’s thought including his commentaries on reason, objectivity, conventional understandings of human behavior, and scholarship, as well as his commentary on science, and analyzes their meaning for the social sciences.

Julia Fisher was honored for her paper, "Wage Politics: A Study of Redistributive Policymaking in a Federal System" advised by Richard Keiser. The paper asks why efforts in the last decade to increase wage levels "have been successful most prominently in the form of local living wage policies and not federal minimum wage legislation?" Using a controlled case comparison, Fisher argues that "the level of government leads to different amounts of power and interest between the groups opposing and supporting the redistributive legislation."

Chris Heurlin was awarded Distinction for his paper, "Institutional Structure and Bargaining Incentives in East German Industrial Relations," advised by Al Montero. In this paper, he challenges the assumption that the system of industrial relations has been transferred successfully from West Germany to the former East Germany. Examining the bargaining behavior of works councils and firm managers in the 1993 metal workers conflict in East Germany, he argues that "the institutional transfer has been most successful in the legalistic elements of the social partnership: The Works Council Act, codetermination, and bargaining decentralization."

Stephen Nelson received Distinction for "Standing in the Way? Bureaucrats, Organized Labor, and the Politics of Welfare State Retrenchment in Norway and Sweden," advised by Norm Vig and Al Montero. He argues that that the countries’ different outcomes in welfare retrenchment can be explained largely by the institutional structure of welfare policymaking in the two countries.

James Nichols’ comps paper, "From Hate Crimes to Healing: Expressive Incentives in Collective Action," was awarded Distinction. He was advised by Barbara Allen. Nichols challenges the dominant theories of collective action. He uses Bloomington United, an organization committed to fighting hate and intolerance, to demonstrate that collective action can succeed without an appeal to narrow self-interest.

Jason Richardson received Distinction for his paper, "Political Determinants of Successful Fiscal Decentralization: The Role of Party Strength in the Creation of Hard Budget Constraints," advised by Al Montero. The paper seeks to answer the question, "What enables states to undergo fiscal decentralization while preventing subnational fiscal profligacy?" Richardson argues that "significant party strength is necessary in order to create hard budget constraints via intergovernmental bargaining" (based on a longitudinal study of Argentina).

Jessica Yarnall received Distinction for "Making Development Policies that Work: Discovering the Political Causalities for State-Societal Synergy," advised by Al Montero. Her paper looks at a political explanation for state-societal synergy in successful development policies, arguing that "decentralization, political forces, and societal interests constrain executive support or abandonment of programs that foster synergy." Three case studies of Brazilian development programs attempting to incorporate public participation are used.

The following senior majors were named to Mortarboard, a national honor society recognizing students who have combined distinguished scholarship, leadership, and service to their colleagues and the college community:

Aisha Bierma
Kathleen Hausenbauer
Akiko Nakano
Jessica Yarnall

The Carleton Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa elects its membership from students who rank in the highest 15 percent of their graduating class and meet other prescribed criteria. These department majors were selected:

Aisha Bierma
Sarah Doire
Jessica Yarnall

Honors in Independent Study was awarded to Lindsay Rose Mayka, for "Divided Interests: The Relationship Between Urban Popular Movements and Political Parties in Chile."

The Pat Lamb Award is given annually to two outstanding senior female athletes who have achieved athletic excellence and also a high level of academic achievement, one excelling in team sports and the other in individual sports. Renee Willette was honored for team sports.

The Second Century Student Award was established to honor a student who has made an outstanding contribution to the College through significant service to others, on or off campus, which enriches and strengthens the institution and the lives of its members. Kathleen Hausenbauer was honored this year.

The Stimson Prize is awarded to the student who contributes most to the quality of debate or public speaking at Carleton College. This year’s award was presented to Jessica Yarnall.

Faculty activities

She taught at the Fulbright American Studies Summer Institute on the U.S. Constitution in July. The institute was held at the Center for the Study of Federalism at Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania. She also conducted a Liberty Fund conference on Vincent Ostrom’s The Meaning of Democracy and the Vulnerabilities of Democracies in October in St. Paul, Minnesota.

He is working on a research project at the invitation of the Foreign Ministry in Vietnam, comparing technology transfers to Vietnam and China. He presented a paper on "New Perspectives on Chinese Foreign Policy" at the University of Arizona, and is coordinating a research team from the USA, Europe, Hong Kong and China that will study the impact of the WTO on Chinese firms.

Prof. Navarro has accepted a tenure-track faculty position at the University of Texas, Austin.

We are asking his former students to share their memories of him as teacher, advisor, and mentor. Please send information about his impact on the teaching of Environmental Studies and Political Science, your memories and favorite stories, tributes, photos or notes for Norm. These will be included in a tribute in the next newsletter, to prepare a scrapbook for a retirement dinner, and as testimonials to support his nomination for a teaching award. Thank you! Please respond by December 15, 2002. Information may be e-mailed to tpeterso@carleton.edu or mailed to: Tricia Peterson, Political Science Department, Carleton College, One North College St,. Northfield, MN 55057

Visiting faculty will bring unique expertise in 2002-2003

Bryan Daves is completing his Ph.D. at Columbia University in political science with concentrations in comparative politics and international relations. His dissertation is entitled, "Ties that Bind: Asset Specificity of Political Institutions and the Limits and Opportunities for Economic Reform: Morocco and Jordan." As a visiting assistant professor at Carleton during Spring 2003, he will teach Politics of Global Economic Relations and Globalization & Its Critics.

He has published articles in several journals and edited volumes, including Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs and The Encyclopedia of the Modern Middle East. He has been a visiting senior member of St. Antony’s College at Oxford University and visiting lecturer at Princeton University. His research interests include the political economy of development, north-south economic relations, new institutional economics, and politics of the Middle East and North Africa.

Paul Dosh graduated from Carleton in 1996 and is completing his Ph.D. at the University of California, Berkeley. He spent the past year in Peru and Ecuador working on his dissertation, "Urban Movements, Local Politics, and Decentralization in Metropolitan Latin America." As a visiting instructor during Winter and Spring 2003, he will teach Latin American Politics, Global Resurgence of Democracy and Urban Politics in Latin America.

His most recent publications are "Peace After Terror: Reconciling Justice and the Rule of Law in Argentina, El Salvador, and Guatemala," (Latin American Perspectives, July 2002) and "Expecting More while Pressuring Less: Standards without Stratification, Deep Assessment, and Classroom Egalitarianism" (The Political Science Educator, July 2002).

Students visiting the Twin Cities may find him performing at the Minneapolis Poetry Slam, dancing salsa at the Quest, or rollerblading around Lake Harriet.

Karen Wright holds an M.Sc. in political theory from the London School of Economics and is completing her Ph.D. in social policy, also at LSE, where she has taught classes in feminist theory and the history of political thought. Her Ph.D. research investigates the practice of philanthropy as a social tradition, and her current research includes work on comparative giving cultures, social capital, and capabilities based policy frameworks.

As a visiting assistant professor at Carleton during 2002-03, she will teach Social Capital: Critical and Cross-Cultural Perspectives, the Political Philosophy of Martha Nussbaum, Feminist Political Theory, and US & UK Philanthropy: Politics, Policy and Practice.

For the past two years she has been a research associate of the Centre for Civil Society at LSE, and prior to that served as a lecturer for the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota.

Alumni News from Far and Wide

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Tricia Peterson, Editor

Department of Political Science

Carleton College

One North College Street

Northfield, MN 55057-4025

Email: tpeterso@carleton.edu

Phone: 507-646-4117

Fax: 507-646-5615

 

Posted 8/2/02 by Tricia Peterson, tpeterso@carleton.edu