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Legislative action was historically the means by which U.S. states abolished capital punishment, but such action ceased for decades following the Supreme Court's 1976 Gregg decision that reaffirmed the constitutionality of the death penalty. Despite the fact that several legislatures have considered abolition bills in the modern era, only three states successfully enacted such legislation. It is my purpose in this study to analyze why states are currently struggling to pass abolition legislation and to determine which factors contribute to success. I conduct a comparative, qualitative case study of New Jersey, the first state to legislatively abolish since 1976, and Maryland, a similar state whose abolition effort recently failed. I analyze the content of legislators’ debates about the abolition bills in committee and on the legislature floor, as well as news coverage of the abolition efforts in each state's largest newspapers. I reach two primary conclusions. First, an abolition bill is more likely to be passed by Democrats than Republicans, but unified Democratic control of the government is not a sufficient condition for abolition. Second, arguments about the risk of wrongful executions and the deleterious collateral consequences of the death penalty process on the family members of murder victims are powerful sources of political support for abolition, especially where doubts about the deterrent effect of the death penalty are widespread. This study reaffirms the central importance of the innocence frame in the modern death penalty debate, and it presents the first scholarly analysis of the collateral consequences frame. These findings may help activists in the abolition movement more effectively frame their arguments to appeal to legislators.

The growth in popularity of new media has led some television networks in the United States to experiment with alternative forms of political debate by encouraging viewers of all ages to submit video questions to political candidates. Surprisingly, however, experimentation with this new type of debate format in the 2008 U.S. presidential election cycle did not lead to the adoption of new debate formats in the subsequent 2012 election cycle, despite its success with viewing audiences. This study examines various debate formats to understand the value of participatory, user-generated debate question formats versus more traditional debate question formats whereby moderators or live audience members ask presidential candidates scripted questions.

Using a between-subjects experiment, this study examines four types of televised debate formats to assess young adult viewers’ impressions of each format as well as image perceptions of a political candidate and the individual posing the debate question.

The findings suggest debate formats impact perceptions of a political candidate’s image differently for young men and young women. In addition, varying the debate format impacts young voters’ perceptions of debate questioners as well as their overall perceptions of the debate. Implications for viewing audiences are discussed.

U.S. presidential candidates should embrace presidential debate formats that encourage citizens to participate in the political process via new media technologies.

This study shows implementing more engaging and interactive presidential debate formats can positively impact young voters’ perceptions.

In his interview as part of the project to mark the 50th anniversary of the Comparative and International Education Society, Steve Klees offered sound advice to young scholars entering the field of comparative education, “Understand our debates, understand there are no right positions in our debates, and understand your own position in our debates and engage in the debates.”

In this chapter, the author argues that in recent years those theoretical debates that are central to comparative education have been ignored, or at least played down, resulting in a lot of work that is “atheoretical.” In this context, “atheoretical” does not mean that the work is not based on theoretical assumptions but that those assumptions are not thoroughly examined. Consequently, certain positions are adopted by default, seen as “natural.” This has not only affected comparative education but also is endemic to the field of educational research more generally, where methodological debate has been simplified to a choice between quantitative or qualitative methods.

This chapter will examine the epistemological, ontological, and sociological decisions that must be the foundation of any educational research, illustrating the points with key debates in the field of comparative and international education.

Social problems researchers have documented the role of science in identifying, typifying and shaping policy responses with respect to a variety of new social problems. Researchers have given less attention, however, to the role of science in ongoing debates over problems that are well established and contentious. This paper examines the influence of mainstream scientific knowledge concerning the deterrent effects of the death penalty on a death penalty debate in the Massachusetts House of Representatives. Mainstream scientific opposition to the deterrence hypothesis is found to influence the claims-making strategies of death-penalty proponents, leading them to draw heavily on common sense, to scale-back and qualify their claims concerning deterrence, and to reframe the debate in terms of just retribution. These effects are attributed to the cultural rules that structure debate in a legislative decision-making body.

Political communication is not first and foremost about truth; it is a struggle for power and influence between different interests. In this struggle, it is critical for politicians to persuade voters, and not just by the power of their argument, but also, and increasingly, through creating trust by means of their personality. In this study we will focus on how politicians attend to these concerns in televised election campaign debates in the Nordic countries. Ideally, political debates provide politicians with equal opportunities for airing their positions. This linguistic ideal of fairness has more elaborate equivalents in established theories of discourse, such as the theory of the ideal speech situation proposed by Habermas (1975a, b), Paul Grice’s maxims for efficient and logical communication (Grice, 1975), and the face-saving traffic rules of social interaction analyzed by Goffman (1967). However, this rudimentary standard of fairness is rarely satisfied in practice (Gastil, 1992). Rather than granting all participants equality, debates often become events in which prior inequalities, such as gender, age, class and status, are re-enacted (Edelsky & Adams, 1990). The question we are pursuing in this article is whether and how such “brought along” features are made relevant, or “brought about” in actual debate situations.

Western liberal states are considered to be secular in nature, with a presumed neutrality of state laws from religious values and norms. However, this claim overlooks the inherent influence that religious groups (namely, dominant Christian churches and groups) have as informal institutions. According to neo-institutionalists, informal institutions, like these religious norms and values, interact with and influence formal state institutions. As such, it could be argued that the norms and values of dominant religious groups within the state have a role in shaping governmental policies and the law. This is evident when examining the debates around multiculturalism and religious freedom that arise in liberal democratic states such as Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom (UK). In particular, the recent Sharia debates that have arisen in each of these jurisdictions illustrate that the secular state legal system is often positioned as “neutral” and free from religious influence – and thus incompatible with, and unable to, accommodate the religious orders of minority groups. However, this idea that the state is entirely free from religious values is a fallacy that ignores the historical role and influence of Christian churches in each state. In opposing the accommodation of Sharia in private dispute resolution, common arguments include the inherent patriarchal nature of the religion leading to further oppression and disadvantage of Muslim women when seeking resolution of personal law matters (i.e. divorce and property settlements). The secular state law is positioned against this (and religion more broadly) as the “fair” and “just” alternative for minority women – protector of individual rights. Though this ignores the inherent gender hierarchies embedded within formal state institutions, including the legal system that has been implicitly shaped by religious moral values to varying degrees – where minority women are also faced with a set of gender biases. When combined with the internal pressures from their communities and families this can often place them in a double-bind of disadvantage. In this paper, I draw on feminist institutionalism to examine the informal institutional norms that arise from dominant Christian churches in Australia, Canada, and the UK. In particular, the ways in which these informal norms have influenced the development of state laws, and continue to operate alongside the legal system to shape and influence governmental policies, laws, and ultimately the outcomes for Muslim women.

Austrian economist Ludwig Mises’s central role in the socialist calculation debates has been consensually acknowledged since the early 1920s. Yet, only recently Nemeth, O’Neill, Uebel, and others have drawn particular attention to Mises’s encounter with logical empiricist Otto Neurath. Despite several surprising agreements, Neurath and Mises certainly provide different answers to the questions “what is meant by rational economic theory” (Neurath) and whether “socialism is the abolition of rational economy” (Mises). Previous accounts and evaluations of the exchange between Neurath and Mises suffer from attaching little regard to their idiosyncratic uses of the term “rational.” The paper at hand reconstructs and critically compares the different conceptions of rationality defended by Neurath and Mises. The author presents two different resolutions to a detected tension in Mises’s deliberations on rationality: the first is implicit in Neurath’s, O’Neill’s, and Salerno’s reading of Mises and faces several interpretational problems; the author proposes a divergent interpretation. Based on the reconstructions of Neurath’s and Mises’s conceptions of rationality, the author suggests some implications with respect to Viennese Late Enlightenment and the socialist calculation debates.

Finding answers to questions raised in a given debate presents scholars with the opportunity to not only provide a firmer path toward a resolution to the debate at hand, but also the opportunity to employ somewhat atypical methodological approaches. Specifically, when investigating different facets of a given debate, the opportunity presents itself to (1) employ competing hypotheses, (2) integrate theoretical frameworks, and (3) identify boundary conditions.

Purpose – Inspired by “old” institutional arguments, this chapter presents the ideas of both the “old” and “new” institutional perspective as their arguments appear in the economic anthropology literature following the substantivist–formalist debate of the 1960s.

Design/methodology/approach – During the 1960s the substantivist–formalist debate, otherwise known as the “Great Debate,” thrust institutional thought to the forefront of economic anthropology. By the close of the 1960s, the substantivist–formalist debate passed unresolved. Institutional economic anthropology reached a crossroad – it could continue the legacy of the substantivism as represented by “old” institutionalism or follow the path of “new” institutional economics. Against the long shadow of the “Great Debate,” this chapter identifies key epistemological ideas that are present within the recent history of the institutional economic anthropology literature.

Findings – On the basis of epistemological arguments, the chapter suggests that if the substantivist–formalist debate, often times referred to as the “Great Debate,” is ever to achieve closure, then practitioners of institutional economic anthropology would benefit by moving beyond “new” institutional thought.

Originality/value – This chapter provides a unique evaluation of the institutional perspective within the history of economic anthropology. Residing within this history are clear and poignant distinctions between the “old” and “new” institutional perspectives. As a result, this chapter seeks to bring to social scientists interested in institutional economists, important insights from economic anthropology that may have otherwise gone unnoticed.

The aim of this chapter is to propose a critical analysis of socially responsible investing (SRI) through debate and reconstruction. Our goal is therefore to try to understand how the definition of ethics in finance has steered SRI towards a financial approach where ethics is guided by finance.

This chapter proposes a two-point approach consisting of a meta-debate and development perspectives. Each approach is divided into three debates (ideological and philosophical, scientific and practical), which are interconnected.

The chapter concludes that the debate on mainstream SRI is necessary but should be re-discussed, as it is preventing in its current form the concept from developing and being grounded in real ethical values, sacrificing the individual ethics that should be driving investing decisions.

The chapter proposes to rethink the paradigm around SRI through a conceptual framework that re-inserts finance within ethics, where non-financial performance and impact investment should be at the centre of the scientific debates, leading to an SRI based on exclusion, the consideration of controversies and social impact measurement.