Department of Political Science

Memorial notice for G.A. Cohen '61

The McGill University Department of Political Science carries on a long and pioneering tradition in the study of politics in North America. Founded in 1901, the Department's distinguished faculty is actively involved in a wide variety of ongoing research projects, and is committed to achieving a high level of academic excellence in research, graduate, and undergraduate education.

Department News

Richard Schultz, James McGill Professor of Political Science and department chair has been awarded the 2008-2009 Arts Undergraduate Society Excellence in Teaching Award. Congratulations also to Imad Mansour, who holds a Ph.D. from the department and teaches International Relations (IR), who received an honourable mention.

At the September 2009 meeting of the American Political Science Association, R.B. Angus Professor of Political Science Michael Brecher was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award from APSA's Conflict Processes Section.

The award presentation from John Vasquez, Harvey Picker Professor of International Relations at Colgate University and a past president of the International Studies Association, reads as follows:

"Michael Brecher is a towering figure in international relations research. He is read throughout the world, and he is one of the most influential scholars in the post-World War II era. He goes down with the great social science thinkers and researchers of our time, like Morgenthau, Waltz, Singer, and Russett. If they gave the Nobel Peace prize to scholars, like they do for Economics, the above would have received it, and so too would have Michael Brecher.

"Why is this the case? Brecher has created a body of work over a lifetime that has not only transformed the way we study international crises, but also has provided a body of scientific research findings on the dynamic of international crises and why they escalate to war. We just know so much more now than before he wrote and that knowledge is based on firm carefully collected data that meets the highest scientific standards.

"The heart of this contribution lies in the International Crisis Behavior (lCB) project. Brecher founded the project in 1975, and he has been the director ever since. This project was unique for what it did and continues to do in studying international crises. The early seventies was a period when the scientific approach was beginning to find its way to the study of international relations. Brecher was among the first to apply this approach to the study of crises, but what distinguished his effort were two main features: 1) he and his project were the only ones to collect systematic data on all international crises from the end of the First World War and 2) the resulting data analyses were supplemented by in-depth comparative case studies on crisis decision making using a common theoretical framework. The end result has been highly successful. We have a body of work over the years that provide numerous statistical findings that help us figure out the dynamics of crisis behavior and the factors related to war breaking out and a set of books about the nature of decision making in actual crises. Within the project, Brecher has written at least 8 of these books, but there are a number of other books, both statistical analyses and case studies written by younger colleagues, his students, and now students of his students. By my count there are at least 29 case studies! It should come as no surprise that the ICB project has been one of the major research programs within the international relations (IR) scholarly community.

"Throughout this process, Brecher has been the intellectual leader of the project both in trying to develop a theory that would guide research and then be reformulated in light of the research, as well as conducting and writing both statistical analyses and case studies. The most important theoretical work is probably his Crises in World Politics: Theory and Reality (Pergamon 1993). The most influential case study is his Decisions in Israel's Foreign policy (Oxford, 1974). The statistical findings appear in the best peer-reviewed journals in the field, but there are so many that they need to be integrated.

"Brecher, often working with Jonathan Wilkenfeld, did this in two major books: Crisis, Conflict, and Instability (Pergamon 1989) and A Study of Crisis (Michigan, 1997). The latter also contains a handbook that has an historical description of each crisis that appears in the data along with documentation, something all the other major data projects, especially the Correlates of War project, need to do. The effort to expand theory and integrate findings continues with Brecher's International Political Earthquakes (Michigan, 2008).

"These books reflect a life-long study and analysis of crisis behavior that will not be equaled for a long time to come. The five books are not only to be read, but studied carefully. They fulfill many of the expectations laid out by the comparative study of foreign policy movement over 40 years ago (see Rosenau, 1966, in his The Scientific Study of Foreign Policy). They have guided research for an entire generation and the forthcoming book will do the same for a new generation.

"One of the things Brecher's work has done is not only to contribute to our knowledge, but to show us how to study crises properly, so that we will gain knowledge. He does this not only in terms of outlining a proper strategy of inquiry, but also theoretically, telling us where to look, what are the key clues, and what are dead ends and confusions. All of this is appreciated by senior scholars who came to age in the last twenty years. He was a pioneer, and we all owe him a great intellectual debt.

"While I have emphasized his contributions to the field from the ICB project, there is actually more to his career. His early work was widely recognized. In particular, his political biography of Nehru (Oxford 1959) remains a key book and at the time won the Watumull Prize of the American Historical Association. His 1972 book on The Foreign Policy System of Israel (Oxford) won the highly prestigious Woodrow Wilson Book Award of the American Political Science Association.

"These works and numerous of his other books and articles continue to be read, cited, and used in graduate courses throughout the world. His works have been translated into several languages including-German, Italian, Japanese, Hindi, Hebrew, Parsi, and, of course, French. He has lectured throughout the world as you can see from his c.v. and he has, as one would expect, received the most important fellowships-such as a Guggenheim and a Rockefeller. Of his many honors and awards, I would underline his being selected as President of the International Studies Association. Normally a post of great honor, Michael gave one of the most scholarly Presidential address ever, and he used the opportunity to co-edit with his program chair the multi-volume Millennial Reflections on International Studies bringing together what we know about international relations theory and research in a readable format. I can think of no worthier candidate for this award."

Vincent Pouliot was awarded the 2009 Vincent Lemieux Prize by the Canadian Political Science Association for the best dissertation in political science. The award citation read:

Dietlind Stolle won the Political Science Student Association Undergraduate Teaching Award for 2008-2009.

Stuart Soroka has been appointed Programme Committee Chair for the next annual meeting of the Canadian Political Science Association, to be held in Montreal June 2-4, 2010.

Krzysztof Pelc has been hired at the rank of Assistant Professor. Pelc, a specialist in international political economy, expects to receive his Ph.D. in Government from Georgetown University in August 2009, and will spend 2009-10 as a GLobalization and Governance Fellow at Princeton University. His research considers how specific aspects of international economic rules advantage some actors over others, and how such distributional effects determine the evolution of these rules, and the resulting prospects for international cooperation. This has led him to examine, among other topics, escape clauses in economic agreements, unilateralism in international trade, and labor and environmental standards at the GATT/WTO. His work appears in International Organization, International Studies Quarterly, Transition Studies Review, and Democracy and Society,

Juliet Johnson and Christina Tarnopolsky have been named to the inaugural class of Resident Faculty Fellows at McGill's new Institute for the Public Life of Arts and Ideas.

Members of the department published two important new books on international relations recently.

Stephen Saideman and R. William Ayres' For Kin or Country: Xenophobia, Nationalism, and War (Columbia University Press, 2008) explores the phenomenon of ethnic irredentism, investigating why the collapse of communism prompted more violence in some instances and less violence in others. Despite the tremendous political and economic difficulties facing all former communist states during their transition to a market democracy, only Armenia, Croatia, and Serbia tried to upset existing boundaries. Hungary, Romania, and Russia practiced much more restraint. The authors examine various explanations for the causes of irredentism and for the pursuit of less antagonistic policies, including the efforts by Western Europe to tame Eastern Europe. Ultimately, the authors find that internal forces drive irredentist policy even at the risk of a country's self-destruction and that xenophobia may have actually worked to stabilize many postcommunist states in Eastern Europe.

T.V. Paul's The Tradition of Non-Use of Nuclear Weapons begins with the observation that, since the Hiroshima and Nagasaki attacks, no state has unleashed nuclear weapons. What explains this? According to the author, the answer lies in a prohibition inherent in the tradition of non-use, a time-honored obligation that has been adhered to by all nuclear states—thanks to a consensus view that use would have a catastrophic impact on humankind, the environment, and the reputation of the user. The book offers an in-depth analysis of the nuclear policies of the U.S., Russia, China, the UK, France, India, Israel, and Pakistan and assesses the contributions of these states to the rise and persistence of the tradition of nuclear non-use. It examines the influence of the tradition on the behavior of nuclear and non-nuclear states in crises and wars, and explores the tradition's implications for nuclear non-proliferation regimes, deterrence theory, and policy. And it concludes by discussing the future of the tradition in the current global security environment.

Three important new institutions with ties to the Political Science department were launched in 2008-09, all with fellowship programs and active speaker and workshop series.

The Institute for the Study of International Development was inaugurated with a major conference in March, "The Challenges of Development Today: Practitioners’ Perspectives on Where to Move Forward," and an April lecture by Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University. ISID is directed by Philip Oxhorn.

The McGill Centre for the Study of Democratic Citizenship, directed by Elisabeth Gidengil, includes scholars and students from both Communications and Political Science departments, and brings a cross-disciplinary perspective to bear on the challenges facing democratic citizenship in a rapidly changing world.

The Groupe de Recherche Interuniversitaire en Philosophie Politique, encompassing faculty and postdoctoral and graduate fellows in political theory and political philosophy from Montreal's four universities, was inaugurated in September with an address by longtime department member Charles Taylor '52.

The Horowitz Foundation has awarded doctoral student Aisha S. Ahmad a grant in support of research for her dissertation "Holy Warlords: The Rise of Islamist Movements in Afghanistan and Somalia," and has further recognized her research with the Harold D. Lasswell Award.

Doctoral student Blake Andrew has won the award for best paper in the Political Communications section at the 2009 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association. His paper was "Making Broadcast News Headlines: Heuristic Signals in Campaign Coverage."

G.A. ("Gerry") Cohen, 1941-2009, McGill BA '61 (Philosophy and Political Science), one of the world's leading political philosophers, died of a sudden stroke on August 5 in Oxford. Cohen was a Montreal native who, after his time at McGill, received a BPhil from Oxford University, taught at University College London (UCL) for 22 years, and in 1985 was appointed to the Chichele Chair in Social and Political Theory at All Souls College, Oxford-- perhaps the most prestigious post in that field, and one in which he succeeded fellow Montrealer and McGill alumnus Charles Taylor, Professor Emeritus. He returned to McGill as a visiting professor in Philosophy and Political Science three times, most recently in 2000-2001. He retired from the Chichele Chair in 2008, whereupon he was appointed to the Visiting Quain Chair in Jurisprudence at UCL.

Cohen wrote of his "Montreal Communist Jewish childhood" in If You're An Egalitarian, How Come You're So Rich?, a partly-autobiographical work from 2006 that explores the roots of his own egalitarian commitments. In it he noted the complex place of McGill in the social world of his childhood: an object of "widespread hope and expectation," but also one to which Jewish children were taught "we would gain admission[...] only if we scored rather better than the minimum required for non-Jews," even years after McGill's "delicate discrimination" against Jews had ceased.

Cohen's major works include Karl Marx's Theory of History: A Defense (1978); History, Labour, and Freedom (1988); Self-Ownership, Freedom, and Equality (1995); and Rescuing Justice and Equality (2008). He was a founder of the school that came to be known as "Analytical Marxism," which attempted to reconstruct Marxist social theory with the tools of modern analytic philosophy and social science, incorporating the critique from economics and methodological individualism of traditional Marxist theories of social classes as actors. He later shifted away from a concern with Marxist social science toward one with the ethical egalitarianism he took to be Marxism's enduring core; much of his work in the 1990s and 2000s was devoted to moral defenses of that position against the libertarianism of Robert Nozick and the liberalism of John Rawls. In January of this year, a major international conference was held in Oxford to celebrate his career: http://social-justice.politics.ox.ac.uk/events/Cohen/index.asp

The Department deeply mourns his loss. Obituaries are available in the Montreal Gazette, The Guardian, and The Times of London