Institutional theory in political science has made great advances in recent years, but also has a number of significant theoretical and methodological problems. The most important of these problems is the generally static nature of institutional explanations. Also, there is a nagging problem of the difficulties in measuring institutional variables in other than simplistic, nominal categories. A...

This article investigates the relationship between the invention of new media technologies and scholarship concerning protest and political engagement. Building on an innovative approach that moves beyond a systematic literature review, this article contributes to our understanding of scholarship concerning digital communication technologies and how they may have been adopted and shaped protest...

This article calls for a re-conceptualization of the social sciences by asking for a cosmopolitan turn. The intellectual undertaking of redefining cosmopolitanism is a trans-disciplinary one, which includes geography, anthropology, ethnology, international relations, international law, political philosophy and political theory, and now sociology and social theory. Methodological nationalism, wh...

Emotions affect politics. So does strategic behavior. But studies of how emotions affect politics tend not to account for strategic behavior -and vice versa. Such practices limit our understanding of emotions’ political relevance. We pursue a constructive integration. Using a formal model, we identify conditions under which a strategic political leader will use fear to induce citizens to suppor...

Until recently, empirical analyses of spatial interdependence in the social sciences remained largely confined to specialized areas of applied economics (e.g., environmental, urban/regional, and real-estate economics) and sociology (i.e., network analysis). However, social-scientific interest in and applications of spatial modeling have burgeoned lately, due partly to advances in theory that im...

Economist Anthony Brewer throws down the gauntlet to those who esteem the economic contributions of Karl Marx, arguing in a 1995 article in History of Political Economy that the mainstream’s evident neglect of these contributions is amply justified by the fact that there was nothing of lasting value in Marx’s political economic writing, or at least in the portion thereof that was widely availab...

Territorial subdivisions and geographic borders are essential for understanding phenomena in sociology, political science, history, and economics. They influence the interregional flow of information and cross-border trade and affect the diffusion of innovation and technology. However, it is unclear if existing administrative subdivisions that typically evolved decades ago still reflect the mos...

Public Administration has reluctantly been accepted as a science by some of its sister disciplines in the Social Sciences. This may be ascribed to the eclectic nature of the Discipline and its reliance on related disciplines to explain, direct and inform study and practice. Public Administration studies human beings engaged in administrative and managerial duties in organs of state. Therefore, ...

This article examines whether the American cultural phenomena of the practice of Buddhism or the Buddhism-derived technique of mindfulness are likely to be helpful to the political left. It summarizes the central teachings of the ancient Buddhist texts, with particular focus on the issues of mindfulness and politics. It also reviews the political history of Buddhist countries. The author argues...

Since sociology is seeking mechanisms for explaining social phenomena, we discuss in this paper, whether and how the metaphor of a chemical reaction network can be employed as a formal mechanism to describe social and political systems. A reaction network is a quite general concept, which allows to model a variety of dynamical systems. Further more, a set of powerful tools can infer potential d...