The Congressional Debate on Partial-Birth Abortion: Constitutional Gravitas and Moral Passion

Schonhardt-Bailey, Cheryl

doi:10.1017/s0007123408000203

Cited by 34 publications

(32 citation statements)

References 10 publications

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“…Here, we apply a computerassisted method, implemented with the Alceste software, 7 drawing on its applications by (Brugidou 2003). The Alceste method is suited for identifying themes in political debates and their association with specific variables of interest for the analysis (Weale et al 2012, 647;Schonhardt-Bailey 2008). In this study variables of interest are the level at which the consultations were held: regional, national and local; and the type of speaker: moderator or discussant.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Norm contestation and reconciliation: evidence from a regional transitional justice process in the Balkans

Kostovicova¹,

Bicquelet²

2020

Rethinking Reconciliation and Transitional Justice After Conflict

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We have limited understanding of how ethnic groups can achieve an agreement on tackling the legacy of war crimes, because transitional justice scholars have been focused primarily on challenges to post-conflict reconciliation. Addressing this gap, we investigate whether contestation over the norm of transitional justice prevents inter-ethnic reconciliation, operationalized by us as reconciliatory discourse. Empirical evidence is drawn from the study of debates conducted by a transnational advocacy network (RECOM), which proposes a regional fact-finding commission in the Balkans. Applying text analysis to identify key themes in these debates, we find reconciliatory discourse in those debates where there is norm contestation. Also, the spatial scale of a transitional justice process matters. We identify different patterns of discourse at different levels of debates. Debates containing 2 norm contestation are associated with ethnically-centered arguments at the national level, but with sustained scrutiny of proposed solutions at the regional level despite ethnic divisions.CONTACT Denisa Kostovicova d.kostovicova@lse.ac.uk @DenisaKost Reconciliation is broadly understood as societal transformation in the aftermath of conflict (Chapman, 2009), yet there remains a lack of scholarly consensus on the concept's precise meaning, on the different levels of reconciliation, or how to achieve it (Pankhurst 1999). As Kriesberg (2001, 60) notes, "[r]econciliation is never total, never including all members of antagonistic parties, not including every dimension of reconciliation completely, nor being fully reciprocal between parties." While recognizing the ambiguity of the concept in theory and practice, we approach reconciliation as a discursive process, rather than an outcome.More precisely, we define reconciliation as a steady process of overcoming "obstacles presented by -among other things -culture, race, religion and politics" through communication (Komesaroff 2008, 5). Cohen (2001, 238) specifies that "[w]hen rhetoric of reconciliation is genuine, it looks for tolerance, forgiveness, social reconstruction and solution of social conflicts in ways other than punishment." Although reconciliation may not ever be total, it still represents "a radical way of confronting the past (Ibid., 239)." In this article, we investigate whether contestation of the norm of transitional justice is at odds with reconciliation understood as reconciliatory discourse.We explore the effects of norm contestation by examining the process of norm adoption in transnational activist networks (TANs). Empirical evidence is drawn from a regional civil society network in the Balkans, known by its acronym RECOM, which advocates the establishment of a regional fact-finding commission. Norm adoption is an understudied aspect of network activity (Carpenter 2011), in contrast to later stages in a norm "life cycle" (Finnemore and Sikkink 1998), such as diffusion of norms (Carpenter 2007, 101). We are guided by the 'local turn' in the scholarship on transitional...

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Norm contestation and reconciliation: evidence from a regional transitional justice process in the Balkans

Kostovicova¹,

Bicquelet²

2020

Rethinking Reconciliation and Transitional Justice After Conflict

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“…Speeches have been used to estimate ideology of members of parliaments (Diermeier et al 2012; Laver and Benoit 2002; Monroe and Maeda 2004), governments (Giannetti and Laver 2005), and parties (Proksch and Slapin 2010). Others have used legislative speeches to assess congressional support for bills (Thomas, Pang, and Lee 2006), the dimensionality and the nature of rhetorical conflict in Congress (Monroe, Colaresi, and Quinn 2008; Quinn et al 2010; Schonhardt‐Bailey 2008), and the nature of ideology surrounding specific policies such as national security (Schonhardt‐Bailey 2005). However, if legislative speech is subject to selection effects, these data may not accurately reflect the true distribution of preferences.…”

Section: Party Politics and Legislative Speechmentioning

confidence: 99%

Institutional Foundations of Legislative Speech

Proksch

Slapin

2012

American J Political Sci

210

222

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(MPs) dedicate a significant amount of their time to preparing speeches and participating in legislative debates. Yet, political scientists know surprisingly little about the role of political parties in debate, the institutions that govern access to the floor, and the strategic nature of the messages legislators try to convey. We put forward a comparative institutional theory of legislative debate in which we view speeches as the result of strategic choices made by party leaders and backbenchers. As a consequence of this strategic interaction, observed floor speeches may not reflect the true distribution of preferences within a party group. Party leaders must decide whether and to whom to delegate floor time. They have an incentive to present voters with a coherent party message, but some MPs may prefer to give a speech at odds with their party leadership, especially if doing so might help their own reelection bid. These strategic cal- The authors are listed alphabetically. Both authors have contributed equally to all work. We thank Kira Killermann, Linh Nguyen, and Sander Ensink for excellent research assistance and Serra Boranbay, Thomas Bräuninger, Thomas Gschwend, Christopher Kam, Thomas König, Elisabeth Schulte, Georg Vanberg, Jonathan Woon, and seminar participants at the University of Mannheim, Rice University, EITM Europe, and the DVPW Working Group on Behavioral Decision Making for helpful comments and suggestions. We especially thank Thomas Gschwend, Hermann Schmitt, Andreas Wüst, and Thomas Zittel for sharing the German candidate survey data. Sven-Oliver Proksch acknowledges that the research leading to these results has received funding from the European Community's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007(FP7/ -2013 under grant agreement number 239268 (Marie Curie International Reintegration Grant).culations can lead to substantial selection effects in the choice of speaker and the content of the speech.This study proceeds by introducing our comparative theory of legislative debate and by discussing the empirical implications of our model for a variety of political systems. In scenarios where party unity matters for running successful election campaigns, party leaders should be reluctant to delegate speaking time to ideologically extreme members. Instead, as a party becomes ideologically more polarized, party leaders are likely to give more speeches representing the party line and delegate less often to members. In political systems where party unity matters less, but developing a personal reputation in parliament is essential for reelection, parties develop rules that make it easier for members of parliament with dissident views to take the floor. As a result, partisan rules governing legislative debate are endogenous to electoral considerations.We test the most important implications of the model using newly collected legislative speech data from two

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“…Based on a bisecting K-means clustering algorithm, T-LAB identifies clusters of documents that use a similar vocabulary (for further information, see Steinbach et al [2000]). Given that interest groups need to rely on similar words to make the same argument, for instance using words such as 'warming', 'climate' and 'pollution' to highlight the impact of a legislative initiative on climate change, these clusters can be interpreted as frames Schonhardt-Bailey 2008).…”

Section: Measuring Interest Group Framesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Framing in context: how interest groups employ framing to lobby the European Commission

Klüver¹,

Mahoney²,

Opper³

2015

Journal of European Public Policy

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Framing plays an important role in public policy. Interest groups strategically highlight some aspects of a policy proposal while ignoring others in order to gain an advantage in the policy debate. However, we know remarkably little about how interest groups choose their frames. This contribution therefore studies the determinants of frame choice during the policy formulation stage in the European Union. We argue that frame choice is a complex process which is simultaneously affected by interest groups as well as contextual characteristics. With regard to interest group characteristics, we expect that frame choice varies systematically across actor type. With regard to contextual characteristics, we hypothesize that the frames that interest groups employ are specifically tailored towards the DGs in charge of drafting the proposal. Our theoretical expectations are tested based on a new and innovative dataset on frame choice of more than 3,000 interest groups in 44 policy debates.

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The Congressional Debate on Partial-Birth Abortion: Constitutional Gravitas and Moral Passion

Cited by 34 publications

References 10 publications

Norm contestation and reconciliation: evidence from a regional transitional justice process in the Balkans

Norm contestation and reconciliation: evidence from a regional transitional justice process in the Balkans

Institutional Foundations of Legislative Speech

Framing in context: how interest groups employ framing to lobby the European Commission

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