Teaching Documents by Tony Spanakos
Students often believe that they should be judged solely on the basis of what they write and not ... more Students often believe that they should be judged solely on the basis of what they write and not how they write. While it is true that styles differ, clear and precise writing is necessary in order to articulate sophisticated arguments. Good writing clarifies, while poor writing obscures. Essays are designed to not only demonstrate how well a student understands material, but that he or she has the ability to filter out less relevant information and present a strong thesis that can be defended by analytical proof.
Papers by Tony Spanakos
Oxford University Press eBooks, May 22, 2023
Routledge eBooks, May 26, 2023
Conceptualising Comparative Politics, 2015
New Humanism and Global Governance, 2018
International Integration of the Brazilian Economy, 2019
This chapter addresses a specific question: why has China grown so rapidly and Brazil not? To ans... more This chapter addresses a specific question: why has China grown so rapidly and Brazil not? To answer this question, it (1) establishes the basis for comparison between China and Brazil by contextualizing these countries within the BRICS concept and (2) presents a comparative analysis of Brazilian and Chinese economies focusing only on the issue of macroeconomic policy, especially the monetary and exchange rate regimes, and its effect on growth.
Polity, 2018
This essay introduces a collection of critical reflections on the legacy of Howard J. Wiarda, who... more This essay introduces a collection of critical reflections on the legacy of Howard J. Wiarda, whose research spanned comparative politics and international relations, with special attention to his work on Latin America and the role of think tanks and political practitioners. Wiarda offered a consistent critique of deterministic and universal paradigms in comparative politics and in U.S. foreign policy and insisted on the importance of understanding local political culture and historic traditions. His criticisms of U.S. academic theories, and later of U.S. foreign policy makers, resulted from his position as a perpetual outsider and observer within both scholarly and policy-making communities. The essays introduced here critically engage with areas where Wiarda’s provocative critiques contributed to important discussions and insights. Specifically, the symposium includes accounts of his visions of grand theory, corporatism, think tanks, informality, U.S. politics, developmentalism, human rights, and U.S. foreign policy towards the Caribbean. The authors agree that his work was characterized by a striking vitality and ability to foment discussion, although they differ on how well his insights or approaches have held up over time.
Latin American Perspectives, 2018
In 1998, a former police officer in Rio de Janeiro asked one of us what a police officer should d... more In 1998, a former police officer in Rio de Janeiro asked one of us what a police officer should do if his two obligations, to enforce the law and to ensure order, came into conflict—if enforcing the law threatened the order. Legal norms and law enforcement never quite overlap perfectly with a prevailing order. The response from mainstream political scientists studying Latin America has been to see the gaps between law and its enforcement as spaces for the expansion of a universalistic notion of the rule of law (O’Donnell, 1999; 2004). Doing so has been considered necessary for democratization, particularly in that it universalizes the protection of citizen rights, constrains the potential for arbitrary government activity, and empowers institutions to hold government accountable (Diamond, 1996; Linz and Stepan, 1996: 7; O’Donnell, 1999: 39; Rios-Figueroa and Staton, 2009: 7; Weingast, 1997). Scholars normally consider “the rule of law” normatively good, though the term remains broad and disputed (Fukuyama, 2010; Rios-Figueroa and Staton, 2009; Waldron, 2002). For political scientists and economists, the rule of law offers a benefit in channeling conflicts into bounded spaces and increasing the predictability of outcomes of such conflicts (Munck, 2009: 124; Touchton, 2016: 196). Such studies generally approach the rule of law in terms of “well-defined and enforced property, rights, broad access to those rights, and predictable rules for resolving property rights disputes” (Hoff and Stiglitz, 2002: 4) as well as a consistent regime of constraint of government power and protection of legally recognized rights. It may be worthwhile to set this notion against a broader and deeper concept, legality: what is lawful, enforceable, permissible, and punishable for people in a given territory. Legality gives a sense of who performs this enforcement, what traditions inform the reading of the law, what conditions shape decision making, and who is more entitled to be protected or to resist. It is the place where politics and society converge and
Journal of Social History
NACLA Report on the Americas, 2016
Polity, 2018
This essay concludes the symposium by considering Howard J. Wiarda’s topical scholarship on grand... more This essay concludes the symposium by considering Howard J. Wiarda’s topical scholarship on grand theory, corporatism, democratization, and development, in addition to his regional scholarship, which focused on Latin American, Caribbean, and Iberian politics but also touched on every other major region of the world, including U.S. politics and foreign policy making. We seek to makes sense of the tensions in Wiarda’s work, especially between his critiques of theoretical determinism and ethnocentrism on the one hand and his continual emphasis on cultural and corporatist explanations of comparative politics, on the other. We argue that he made significant contributions to the field through his service as a public intellectual, mobilization of multiple theoretical perspectives, use of inductive methods, provocative interpretations of comparative politics throughout the world, and accessibility to students and policy makers.
Latin American Perspectives, 2016
The Bolivarian process in Venezuela provides scholars two immediate and ongoing challenges. First... more The Bolivarian process in Venezuela provides scholars two immediate and ongoing challenges. First, unlike many other efforts to democratize, it is a case that is deliberately nonliberal. Second, its emphasis on the popular will has often been in tension with the outsized role of the leadership of Hugo Chávez and the use of state resources to advance interests shared unevenly in a heterogeneous coalition. In other words, scholarly explanations find support for both bottom-up and top-down explanations. These challenges are especially important given the decline of oil prices, the shift from Chávez to Maduro, and the intensification of political conflict in the past three years. The four books reviewed here offer valuable contributions to these questions and provide insight into the current political crisis in Venezuela.
China, The United States, and the Future of Latin America, 2017
US-Venezuelan relations display both confrontation and cooperation. Chinese relations with Venezu... more US-Venezuelan relations display both confrontation and cooperation. Chinese relations with Venezuela are a most likely case for rebellion against the global governance system over which the US presides. This chapter makes a structuralist argument, arguing that the way that the three countries are positioned within global and regional governance structures conditions the underlying character of their relations with each other. Simply put, the US, China, and Venezuela have very different interests and capabilities and their structural positions in South America explain why the increased Chinese presence in Venezuela is neither a threat to the US nor does it substantially aid Venezuelan intentions toward multi-polarizing the region or world. To make this argument, the chapter assumes that US foreign policy toward Venezuela is informed by its position as regional hegemon, Chinese foreign policy toward Venezuela is informed by its position as an extra-regional commercial state, and Venez...
Latin American Politics and Society, 2018
Democracy is the default means of organizing government in Latin America, and since the beginning... more Democracy is the default means of organizing government in Latin America, and since the beginning of the twenty-first century, though especially during the commodity boom of 2003-2011, the region saw considerable poverty and inequality reduction. Joe Foweraker, in his introduction to this excellent volume, identifies the above as on the good side of the balance sheet. Prominent on the other side are the concentration of power in the executive branch and the persistence or increase in corruption and citizen insecurity. Each defect, for Foweraker, represents a concern for democracy's core: accountability (in his introduction and chapter 2). The book explores this by examining how "much" democracy, what "kind" of democracy, and how the formation of the state impacts current democratic performance in Latin America. Never far in the background is the Guillermo O'Donnell corpus, particularly his work in the 1990s (e.g., Counterpoints: Selected Essays on Authoritarianism and Democratization, 1999), on delegative democracy, horizontal accountability, and brown spots. Indeed, Democracy and Its Discontents in Latin America echoes O'Donnell's mission to make sense of the puzzle of democracy's uneven success. The most explicit response to O'Donnell's work comes from Foweraker's chapter 2, which focuses on accountability, because it corresponds to the "lived experiences" of citizens (15). David Doyle follows this with a long-term perspective on the relationship between institutions, state capacity, and rule of law (chap. 3). He focuses on state capacity-such as between the citizen and policy effectiveness (34)-in an institutional analysis that highlights how institutions lengthen time horizons and produce more efficiency, fewer incentives for predation, and more credibility. But Latin American institutions often miss the mark. Will Barndt's analysis of political parties offers an innovative and severe explanation (chap. 12). Barndt disentangles the resources available to political parties (core capacity and abilities to recruit, self-finance, produce, and divulge publicity and to network, 205) and considers these in relation to changing demands in contemporary electoral politics. Demands outstrip inherent capacity, which leads to a structural transformation toward "corporation-based parties," parties that cohere to corporations and favor large, organized special interests to resolve resource shortcomings (such as running expensive campaigns). Political parties may enhance governability, and indeed, when Mexico's PRI signed a pact with its rivals (PAN and PRD), it improved governability, a persistent problem in that country since its democratization in the late 1990s. Yet Roderic Ai Camp (chap. 13) finds that as governability increased, public support for democracy
Politics in Gotham, 2019
Gotham is a fallen city. The city is not only violent but criminality is so entrenched that Gotha... more Gotham is a fallen city. The city is not only violent but criminality is so entrenched that Gotham’s problems are political, not simply criminal. In the 80 years since Bob Kane’s creation of Batman, Gotham has not improved. No matter how many times Batman upends a criminal enterprise, interrupts a one-off act of violence, or defeats super-villains bent on world domination, Gotham does not change. So how effective is Batman, really? Why does Batman limit himself to stopping crime, rather than seizing the state and running it properly (a la Lenin)? Curiously enough, Niccolo Machiavelli, often caricatured as a theorist of the unethical use of violence, can help explain this.
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Teaching Documents by Tony Spanakos
Papers by Tony Spanakos