Faculty News (2002-2003)

Department of Political Science prides itself on having remarkable faculty members who have devoted to teaching, scholarly work and community services. Our faculty has a long tradition of dedicated teaching, and every day our students experience the depth and breadth of our faculty’s knowledge when they attend classes. However, our faculty’s professional and scholarly pursuits outside the classroom enhance each student’s learning process in the classroom and influence the academic community and the larger world. The following is a synopsis of some of the most recent contributions our department faculty has made to scholarship, teaching and community.

Professor Cook is currently completing another article discerning how certain political and institutional variables impact the California budget process. Professor Cook is one of the major speakers in brown bag discussions on campus dealing with the historic California recall election, and he has outlined several potential recall-related research topics, including a study of the gubernatorial transition.

Richard DeLeon, Ph.D
Professor
Professor Richard DeLeon contributed an important chapter "San Francisco: The Politics of Race, Land Use and Ideology," in Rufus P. Browning, Dale Rogers Marshall, and David H. Tabb, Eds., Racial Politics in American Cities, 3d Ed. (New York: Longman, 2003). 

He is currently working on his sequel to Left Coast City, tentatively entitled The San Francisco democrats, which he hopes to see published by August 2004. Main focus of the study will be the Willie Brown years, with key chapters devoted to the local impacts of the dot-com boom & bust, the local culture wars vis-à-vis the state, the feds, and the Catholic Church around gay rights & medical marijuana, the electoral reform movement, and the "perfect political storm" that smashed the Willie Brown machine & ushered in a new progressive supermajority in the 2000 board of supervisors election. 

He has finished a chapter on "Identity Politics and Urban Regimes: Some Theoretical Bridges" for a book-in-progress on urban regime theory edited by Karen Mossberger. He co-authored with his SFSU colleague Kathy Naff a paper "Identity Politics and Local Political Culture" which we just presented at the 2003 APSA meeting in Philadelphia. 

Over the last two years or so, Professor DeLeon has posted a number of detailed studies of San Francisco politics & elections (including maps and data) on Alex Clemens' Usual Suspects website. Those interested can check these out by clicking on http://www.sfusualsuspects.com, then click on the "Prof. DeLeon" button at the top.

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Sujian Guo, Ph.D
Associate Professor
Professor Sujian Guo is a recipient of Professor of the Year Award (2002-2003), bestowed by Political Science Student Association, San Francisco State University for excellence in teaching and mentorship.

Professor Guo is the author of Post-Mao China: from Totalitarianism to Authoritarianism? (2000) His another book manuscript entitled The Political Economy of Asian Transitions from Communism is under contract with Ashgate and forthcoming in 2006. He has published more than two dozens of articles both in English and Chinese journals. His most recent articles include “Designing Market Socialism,” Journal of Policy Reform, vol. 8, no. 3, 2005, pp. 207-228;  “Economic Transition in China and Vietnam: A Comparative Perspective,” in Asian Profile, vol. 32, no. 5, October 2004, pp. 393-410;  “Political Economy of FDI and Economic Growth in China: A Longitudinal Test at Provincial Level” (with Han Gyu Lheem), Journal of Chinese Political Science, vol. 9, no. 1, Spring 2004, pp. 43-62; “The Ownership Reform in China: What Direction and How Far?” in Journal of Contemporary China, vol. 12, no. 36, 2003, pp. 553-573; and “Post-Mao China: Regime Change or Political Change?” in Guoli Liu and Weixing Chen, eds., New Directions in Chinese Politics (New York: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2002). In the past years, he made numerous presentations at the annual meetings of American Political Science Association, Association of Chinese Political Studies, Southwest Conference on Asian Studies, and other international symposiums.

Professor Guo is the editor of Journal of Chinese Political Science, a refereed academic journal published by the Association of Chinese Political Studies. The journal publishes theoretical, policy, and empirical research articles, research notes, and review articles on Chinese political studies across the whole spectrum of political science. He has been often invited to talk on the local media over the issues in US-China relations, Cross Taiwan Strait relations, East Asian security, political succession, elite politics, human rights, economic reforms in China , minority rights in the United States , etc.    

 Professor Guo is the current undergraduate Advisor.  He has created the following website, which will help you with many of the questions frequently asked by undergraduate students: http://bss.sfsu.edu/sguo/Advising.htm 

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Joel J. Kassiola, Ph.D
Professor
Dean Joel J. Kassiola has been a distinguished member of Department of Political Science and Dean of the College of Behavioral and Social Sciences at San Francisco State University since 1995. His book The Death of Industrial Civilization: The Limits to Economic Growth and the Repoliticization of Advanced Industrial Society (Albany: The State University of New York Press, 1990) was selected by a group of environmental political scientists with the American Political Science Association as a “leading book in the area of environmental public policy” in 1991. Since then he has been both academically and politically active in promotion of social justice and environmental policy for sustainable economic growth in the United States and around the globe, and recognized as a leading environmental political theorist in the nation. Most recently, he has edited a book dedicated to bringing the new academic field that Kassiola has worked to create, Environmental Political Theory, to the attention of undergraduate and graduate students of the environment by bringing together the works of an international group of political theorists of the environment in a volume entitled Explorations in Environmental Political Theory: Thinking About What We Value, which was published in February, 2003 by M. E. Sharpe. This path-breaking work contains an introduction to the nature of political theory, 8 essays by the contributors—including his major contributions on the tragic nature of modernity and the role it plays as a normative cause of the environmental and social crises. This important book is expected to be widely adopted in classroom use and as a valuable reference book for university professors, policy makers, environmental organizations and activists, and journalists.

His most recent scholarly work include “Can Environmental Ethics ‘Solve’ Environmental Problems and Save the World? Yes, But First We Must Recognize the Essential Normative Nature of Environmental Problems.” Environmental Values. Forthcoming;  “Introduction and Overview: The Nature of Environmental Political Theory,” in Kassiola, 2003, 3-13; “The ‘Tragedy’ of Modernity: How Environmental Limits and the Environmental Crisis Produce the Need for Postmodern Values and Institutions,” in Kassiola, 2003, 14-36; “Questions to Ponder in Understanding the Modern Predicament,” in Kassiola, 2003, 178-188; “Afterword: The Surprising Value of Despair and the Aftermath of September 11,” in Kassiola, 2003, 189-197; “Recommended Additional Reading,” [a thematic reading list on the environmental crisis, modernity and political theory], in Kassiola, 2003, 217-237; “Why Environmental Thought and Action Must Include Considerations of Social Justice,” in John Martin Gilroy and Joe Bowersox, eds. The Moral Austerity of Environmental Decision Making: Sustainability, Democracy, and Normative Argument in Policy and Law (Durham: Duke University Press, 2002), 37-43; “Why Environmental Public Policy Analysis Must Include Explicit Normative Considerations: Reflections on Seven Illustrations,” in Gilroy and Bowersox, 2002, 236-246.

Dean Kassiola has started his three-year, elected term as an Executive Council member of the Western Political Science Association. Faculty members who want to know more information about the WPSA and its Annual Meeting in March 2004, please contact Dean Kassiola or visit the WPSA website: http://www.csus.edu/ORG/WPSA/

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James Martel, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Professor James Martel is a political theorist with areas of expertise in continental philosophy and questions of political subjectivity. He is the author of Love is a Sweet Chain: Desire, Friendship and Autonomy in Liberal Political Theory  (Routledge, 2001). This book explores the connections between love and democracy. It examines how various liberal thinkers have been frustrated and compromised by their attempts to reconcile the social visions of unity inherent in Greek and early Christians notion of love (in both its public and private forms), along with a more radical and egalitarian vision of democracy.

Professor Martel is currently working on a new book project tentatively entitled Ghost Messiah: Thomas Hobbes on God, Rhetoric and Sovereignty. This book argues that Hobbes’ religious writings, and his understanding of rhetoric more generally, subvert and complicate his arguments about sovereignty and absolutism. Looking at Hobbes’ critique of idolatry in a religious context, Professor Martel argues that the sovereign, rather than being depicted as something that we must submit to, is exposed as an idol, part of what Hobbes refers to as “the kingdom of darkness.”

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Francis Neely, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Professor Francis Neely studies American Politics, Political Psychology, and Methodology. His substantive areas of interest include partisanship, group representation, and media effects. He is currently researching political partisanship and political identity in a project titled, "The Nature of Independent Political Party Dispositions." While some political
scientist have claimed that people calling themselves politically independent are essentially closet partisans, Neely pursues the question of how these citizens differ from partisans. The project combines qualitative and quantitative data in an effort to improve the measurement of partisanship and independence.

He has developed two new upper division courses in American Politics. One is titled, "PLSI 465: Political Attitudes and Behavior" and examines the psychological bases of how U.S. citizens understand politics. The other is called, "PLSI 460: Representation and Elections." It explores the theoretical and practical challenges of representing varied interests in a republican system.

Plans for future research focus on how citizens use various media to learn about politics and the possible influences in different reporting styles. Also, Professor Neely plans to look at measurement issues in political science survey instruments, especially as they relate to gender, minority populations, and citizens who are politically disaffected.

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Amita Shastri, Ph.D.
Professor
Professor Shastri was away on sabbatical in the Spring 2003 semester doing research on the impact of economic liberalization and globalization on a developing society like Sri Lanka which is also in the throes of an ethnic conflict. Her findings are due to be published as a chapter "The Economy in Conditions of Intense Civil War: Sri Lanka 1994-2000" in Economy and Ethnic Conflict in Sri Lanka, edited by Deborah Winslow and Mike Woost (Indiana University Press, forthcoming).

She also contributed a chapter titled “Reproducing Hegemony: The United National Party of Sri Lanka” to the volume Political Parties in South Asia, edited by Subrata K. Mitra, Mike Enskat and Clemens Spiess (Westport, CT; London: Praeger, forthcoming). In it she examines the means and mechanisms through which a center-right party has maintained political hegemony in a volatile and participatory third world context for over half a century. She was invited to write an article analyzing political developments in Sri Lanka which came out as "Sri Lanka 2002: Turning the Corner?" in Asian Survey (Berkeley) 43(1), February 2003, 215-221. In addition, she reviewed the book Active Social Capital: Tracing the Roots of Development and Democracy (2002), by Anirudh Krishna for Journal of Asian Studies (Berkeley) (forthcoming).

Professor Shastri went to Sri Lanka for the summer as Overseas Director for the American Institute of Sri Lanka Studies between May and August 2003. She organized a workshop in Colombo on "Changing Ethnic Identities in Sri Lanka" with Chandra R. de Silva, which was attended by an international group of scholars and analysts based in the US, Canada and Sri Lanka. She has organized another panel on the same theme for the annual South Asia conference at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, in October 2003. A selection of papers from those presented at both these events will be coming out in an edited volume tentatively titled, The Home and the World: Changing Ethnic Identities in Sri Lanka. Together they will focus on the impact over the last two decades or so that the forces of liberalization/ globalization, war and migration have had on the identities of different peoples living on the island and as its diaspora abroad. She also researched and wrote a paper on "Channelling Ethnicity: Impact of Electoral Reform in Sri Lanka in the 1990s" this year which was presented at the workshop in Colombo, and will be presented in revised form at Madison. This paper assesses the degree to which state action in the form of changes to the electoral rules has helped create incentives for cross-ethnic co-operation and moderation of ethnic conflict. She was also involved in the development of a directory of research centers in Sri Lanka to serve as a resource for scholars.

Following her stay in Sri Lanka, she visited Thailand and Cambodia for ten days. The Buddhist temples of Bangkok and the Hindu temple ruins of Angkor Wat are truly astounding. She completed her travels with a stay in Delhi to gather research materials and meet family.

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Robert C. Smith, Ph.D.
Professor
Professor Robert C. Smith in 2003 published the first Encyclopedia of African American Politics. This A-Z volume, published by Facts on File, the oldest and largest publisher of reference works in the United States, includes more than 400 entries. It provides scholars, professors, students, researchers, journalists and policy makers with information about key concepts, events, individuals, organizations and policies that have played a part in African American politics. The San Francisco Chronicle published a profile of Professor Smith and his work on the encyclopedia. See Rona Morech “S.F. State Scholar Writes Book on Black Politics”, August 19, 2003, p. E3.

Professor Smith also contributed chapters to edited volumes on African American politics, including “The Disappearance of Urban Policy as a Legacy of the Clinton Administration” in Curtis Stokes and Theresa Melendez (eds.) Racial Liberalism and the Politics of Urban American, (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2003). This paper argues that the neo-liberal Clinton approach to governance contributed to the virtual disappearance of programs and policies dealing with the problems of the cities. The second paper is “The NAACP in 21^st Century Perspective” in Ollie Johnson and Karin Stanford (eds.) Black Political Organizations in the Post Civil Rights Era, (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers State University Press, 2003). This paper argues that because of the dominance of conservatism at the national level the NAACP should draw on the resources of its 2000 local chapters and emphasize grassroots activism around issues of education and crime. Continuing his assessment of the Clinton administration and the impact of the current conservative climate on black politics, next year his “Presidential Leadership, Black Political Power, the Clinton Administration and the Quest for Racial Equality” will appear in Darlene Clark Hine and Pero Dagbovie (eds.) African Americans and the Clinton Presidency: The Need for a Third Reconstruction, (Urbana: University of Illinois Press). This paper is a comprehensive assessment of the Clinton Presidency in terms of appointments, policies and symbolism, set in the historical context of the presidency and race. The last contribution is “Immigration and African Americans” in John Whitehead and Cecilia Conrad (eds.) Globalization and African Americans, (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2004). This paper, co-authored with Professor Steven Shulman, an economist at Colorado State University, contends that illegal immigration has had a negative impact on black communities and urges black leaders to support policies to restrict it.

Professor Smith prepared essays on Congressmen Charles Rangel and John Lewis and the Rev. Jesse Jackson for the African American National Biography edited by Henry Louis Gates and Evelyn Higginbotham to be published next year by Oxford University Press. He also wrote a review essay on the book Problem of the Century: Racial Stratification in America edited by Elijah Anderson and Douglass Massey. Another work entitled “The Sociological Legacy of W.E.B. DuBois” will appear later this year in Patterns of Prejudice, the British journal of race relations.

Finally, he has just completed Families, Groups, and Governments: A New Introduction to Political Science. This is a genuine new introduction to political science; unlike any other text. It systematically introduces students to liberal and Marxist theories on the origins and purposes of families and states; analyzes the exercise of power in families, states and between nations; and discusses the strengths and weaknesses of the use of the scientific method in the study of politics. It is scheduled for publication in 2004 by Longman, which also published his introductory American government text, American Politics and the African American Quest for Universal Freedom.

Professor Smith will be on sabbatical in Spring 2004, working on the project “African Americans in Presidential Policymaking: The Secretaries of Housing and Urban Development”. He will use archival material from the Kennedy, Johnson, Carter and Reagan libraries to study the tenure of the three blacks that have served as secretaries of the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Although he dislikes traveling (especially flying), he is looking forward to doing original research in the presidential libraries in Boston, Austin, Atlanta and Simi Valley as well as the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. 

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David Tabb, Ph.D
Professor 
Professor David Tabb contributed to three articles and co-edited Racial Politics in American Cities, 3d Ed. Rufus P. Browning, Dale Rogers Marshall, and David H. Tabb, Eds. (New York: Longman, 2003).  

He currently is working on an article tentatively titled “The Politics of American Jews: Still Liberal or has Liberalism Changed?”

He dabbles in East Bay politics by serving on the Berkeley Planning Commission and is Vice-President of the Berkeley Democratic Club.

Last, but not least, Tabb plays a lot of golf—not well.

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Andrei Tsygankov, Ph.D
Assistant Professor
Professor Andrei Tsygankov is a recipient of Professor of the Year Award (2002-2003), bestowed by International Relations Student Association, San Francisco State University for excellence in teaching and mentorship; summer stipend from San Francisco State University to lead a project on Russian foreign policy in 2003. 

Professor Tsygankov has been very productive in publishing his scholarly work. His second book Whose World Order? Russia’s Perception of American Ideas after the Cold War  will be published by University of Notre Dame Press in 2004. This book examines how Russian elites engage with American ideas of world order and why Russia tends to perceive these ideas as unlikely to promote a just and stable international system. It argues that Western ethnocentric or culturally exclusive ideas generate nationalist reaction in non-Western contexts. Fukuyama's and Huntington's visions of post-Cold War world order are taken as examples of such ideas. 

His most recent publications include “The Return to Eurasia: Russia’s Identity and Geoeconomic Choices in the Post-Soviet World,” “The Irony of Western Ideas in a Multicultural World: Russia’s Intellectual Engagements with the ‘End of History’ and ‘Clash of Civilizations,” “Mastering Space in Eurasia: Russian Geopolitical Thinking after the Soviet Break-Up,” and two articles in Russian academic journals. Professor Tsygankov made numerous presentations or lectures at professional conferences or universities between 2002 and 2003, such as Annual International Studies Association Convention, German Society for East European Studies, San Francisco State University, University of Southern California in Los Angeles, and Trent IPE Center at Trent University in Canada. He also contributed two articles (“Was the Bolshevik Revolution a popular revolution?” and “Was there a distinction between Leninism and Stalinism?”) to Twentieth Century European Social and Political Movements in the History in Dispute Series. Vol. 16, edited by Paul du Quenoy, Manly, Inc., 2004 (forthcoming). He is currently authoring with Pavel Tsygankov a research paper on “The New Russian IR: Pluralization, Westernization, and Isolation.” His current research focuses on development of Russian political science and foreign policy. He is leading a collaborative project with Russian scholars on “New Directions in Russian International Relations Theory” and “Faces of National Interest.”  

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Angelika von Wahl, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Professor von Wahl has published two books and co-edited volume. Her research and teaching interests focus on Western Europe and the US, the European Union, welfare state politics, labor markets, public policy, and gender politics. She is currently working on a comparative research project on human rights abuse and reparations in Germany, Japan and the US trying to understand why and when governments get involved in the reparations debates and when and why victims are successful in their demands for symbolic and material “Wiedergutmachung.” 

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