In the Current Issue

Volume 129 - Number 1 - Spring 2014

Articles

Pakistani Opposition to American Drone Strikes
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C. CHRISTINE FAIR, KARL KALTENTHALER, and WILLIAM MILLER seek to explain why some Pakistanis oppose the American drone program while others support it. They find that the principal grounds of opposition to the drone strikes in Pakistan are not religious in nature. Instead, most Pakistanis oppose the strikes because their only knowledge of them comes from highly negative coverage in the elite media.

Did History End? Assessing the Fukuyama Thesis
John Mueller reflects on Francis Fukuyama’s 1989 essay that advanced the notion that history had come to an end in the sense that “liberalism, democracy and market capitalism” had triumphed as an ideology and that effective future challenges were unlikely to prevail. He concludes that Fukuyama seems to have had it fundamentally right and that his celebration of the “autonomous power of ideas” is justified. 

Contesting the U.S. Constitution through State Amendments: The 2011 and 2012 Elections
SEAN BEIENBURG examines attempts at amending state constitutions in the 2011 and 2012 elections and finds that they were efforts to influence the interpretation of the U.S. Constitution. He argues that some elected state officials see themselves as legitimate challengers of Supreme Court decisions. In addition, he finds that national interest groups use state constitutions as platforms for federal constitutional politics, and that such efforts were predominantly, though not exclusively, conservative in the last two election cycles.

Democracy beyond the State: Insights from the European Union
Achim Hurrelmann looks at lessons that could be drawn from the European Union about the democratization of other non-state entities. He argues that the EU’s non-state character is no insurmountable obstacle to democratization. The “democratic deficit” of the European Union is rooted in the institutional design of its multilevel system and is further influenced by limited and uninformed citizen participation in EU politics.

Managing Group Interests in China
YONGSHUN CAI discusses why both powerful and weak interest groups in China have been able to pursue their interests successfully. He finds that both groups have access to sources of power and that their success depends partly on the state’s policy priorities. By assisting weak groups to pursue their interests, the state enhances its legitimacy and resilience.

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