Jonathan Leader Maynard
Biographic Data
| ID | 1417880 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Jonathan Leader Maynard |
| GIVEN NAMES | Jonathan Leader |
| FAMILY NAME | Maynard |
| SIGNATURE | MAYNARD J L |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Oxford |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-7817-8130 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 15 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 106 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 15 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2013 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Manifestations of xenophobia in AI systems
Xenophobia is one of the key drivers of marginalisation, discrimination, and conflict, yet many prominent machine learning fairness frameworks fail to comprehensively measure or mitigate the resulting xenophobic harms. Here we aim to bridge this conceptual gap and help facilitate safe and ethical design of artificial intelligence (AI) solutions. We ground our analysis of the impact of xenophobia by first identifying distinct types of xenophobic h…
The Triadic Concept of Genocide: Reconciling Law, Science, and Politics after Ukraine and Gaza
The logic of idealization in political theory
The role of ideals and idealizations is among the most vigorously debated methodological questions in political theory. Yet, the debate seems at an impasse. This paper argues that this reflects a fundamental ambiguity over idealization's intended inferential logic : the precise way in which idealizations might yield normative knowledge. I identify two tacit understandings of idealization—a dominant “telic” understanding and a less overt “heuristi…
Comparative Historical Analysis in Political Theory
Two important methodological debates in political theory concern (i) the place of historical research and interpretation in normative inquiry; and (ii) the importance of comparing different cultural traditions of political thought. The first question animates a long-standing controversy over the relative importance of ‘history of political thought’ versus ‘philosophy’ in political theory, while the second has been central to the recent growth of …
Political Realism as Methods not Metaethics
This paper makes the case for a revision of contemporary forms of political realism in political theory. I argue that contemporary realists have gone awry in increasingly centring their approach around a metaethical claim: that political theory should be rooted in a political form of normativity that is distinct from moral normativity. Several critics of realism have argued that this claim is unconvincing. But I suggest that it is also a counteri…
Ideology and Mass Killing: The Radicalized Security Politics of Genocides and Deadly Atrocities
In research on ‘mass killings’ such as genocides and campaigns of state terror, the role of ideology is hotly debated. For some scholars, ideologies are crucial in providing the extremist goals and hatreds that motivate ideologically committed killers. But other scholars are sceptical, contending that perpetrators of mass killing rarely seem ideologically committed, and that rational self-interest or powerful social pressures are more important d…
Routledge Handbook of Ideology and International Relations
Ideology and armed conflict
A growing wave of scholarship suggests that ideology has demonstrable effects on various forms of armed conflict. But ideology remains a relative theoretical newcomer in conflict research, and scholars lack developed microfoundations for analyzing ideologies and their effects. Typically, existing research has primarily presented ideology as either an instrumental tool for conflict actors or a source of sincere political and normative commitments.…
Is There a Distinctively Political Normativity?
A slew of recent political theorists—many taking their cue from the political writings of Bernard Williams—have recently contended that political normativity is its own kind of normativity, distinct from moral normativity. In this article, we first attempt to clarify what this claim amounts to and then reconstruct and interrogate five major arguments for it. We contend that all these arguments are unconvincing and fail to establish a sense in whi…
Convergence and Divergence in the Study of Ideology: A Critical Review
Dedicated research on ideology has proliferated over the last few decades. Many different disciplines and methodologies have sought to make a contribution, with the welcome consequence that specialist thinking about ideology is at a high-water mark of richness, diversity and theoretical sophistication. Yet this proliferation of research has fragmented the study of ideology by producing independent communities of scholars differentiated by geograp…
Dangerous Speech and Dangerous Ideology: An Integrated Model for Monitoring and Prevention
There is considerable agreement amongst scholars and international actors that ideologies and speech play a critical role in the path of escalation towards mass atrocity crimes. Speech features prominently in the jurisprudence of the U.N. war crimes tribunal for Rwanda, for example, and in historical accounts of the months and years preceding many other genocides. Nonetheless, this is one of the most underdeveloped components of genocide and atro…
Preventing Mass Atrocities: Ideological Strategies and Interventions
Both scholars and international actors frequently stress the important role played by anti-civilian ideologies in escalating risks of mass atrocities against civilians. Yet strategies to combat and counter anti-civilian ideologies remain an uncertain and understudied component of atrocity prevention, and scepticism about their efficacy is to be expected. This paper provides a preliminary framework for thinking about strategies and interventions d…
Rethinking the Role of Ideology in Mass Atrocities
There is a widespread sense amongst theorists of genocide and other violent atrocities that ideology matters. But in spite of this agreement all is not well with actual efforts to theorise ideology's role. Theoretical and empirical coverage has been uneven, and there has been little if any effort to incorporate theories and research from the actual specialist field of contemporary ideology studies. As a result, overarching theoretical accounts of…
A Complex Systems Approach to the Study of Ideology: Cognitive-Affective Structures and the Dynamics of Belief Systems
We propose a complex systems approach to the study of political belief systems, to overcome some of the fragmentation in the current scholarship on ideology. We review relevant work in psychology, sociology, and political science and identify major cleavages in the literature: the spatial vs. non-spatial divide (ideologies as reducible to a spatially organized set of dimensions vs. as complex conceptual structures) and the person-group problem (i…
A map of the field of ideological analysis
Over the past two decades, research on ideology has grown considerably. This should be welcomed, but it comes with problems. Recent advances have been made in several fairly isolated academic communities from different disciplines that frequently appear unaware of each other. Research has therefore become fragmented, rather than productively integrated. This paper suggests that the fundamental cause of this fragmentation is the lack of a 'map of …
Ideology and armed conflict
A growing wave of scholarship suggests that ideology has demonstrable effects on various forms of armed conflict. But ideology remains a relative theoretical newcomer in conflict research, and scholars lack developed microfoundations for analyzing ideologies and their effects. Typically, existing research has primarily presented ideology as either an instrumental tool for conflict actors or a source of sincere political and normative commitments.…
A map of the field of ideological analysis
Over the past two decades, research on ideology has grown considerably. This should be welcomed, but it comes with problems. Recent advances have been made in several fairly isolated academic communities from different disciplines that frequently appear unaware of each other. Research has therefore become fragmented, rather than productively integrated. This paper suggests that the fundamental cause of this fragmentation is the lack of a 'map of …
A Complex Systems Approach to the Study of Ideology: Cognitive-Affective Structures and the Dynamics of Belief Systems
We propose a complex systems approach to the study of political belief systems, to overcome some of the fragmentation in the current scholarship on ideology. We review relevant work in psychology, sociology, and political science and identify major cleavages in the literature: the spatial vs. non-spatial divide (ideologies as reducible to a spatially organized set of dimensions vs. as complex conceptual structures) and the person-group problem (i…
Dangerous Speech and Dangerous Ideology: An Integrated Model for Monitoring and Prevention
There is considerable agreement amongst scholars and international actors that ideologies and speech play a critical role in the path of escalation towards mass atrocity crimes. Speech features prominently in the jurisprudence of the U.N. war crimes tribunal for Rwanda, for example, and in historical accounts of the months and years preceding many other genocides. Nonetheless, this is one of the most underdeveloped components of genocide and atro…
Rethinking the Role of Ideology in Mass Atrocities
There is a widespread sense amongst theorists of genocide and other violent atrocities that ideology matters. But in spite of this agreement all is not well with actual efforts to theorise ideology's role. Theoretical and empirical coverage has been uneven, and there has been little if any effort to incorporate theories and research from the actual specialist field of contemporary ideology studies. As a result, overarching theoretical accounts of…
Preventing Mass Atrocities: Ideological Strategies and Interventions
Both scholars and international actors frequently stress the important role played by anti-civilian ideologies in escalating risks of mass atrocities against civilians. Yet strategies to combat and counter anti-civilian ideologies remain an uncertain and understudied component of atrocity prevention, and scepticism about their efficacy is to be expected. This paper provides a preliminary framework for thinking about strategies and interventions d…
A Complex Systems Approach to the Study of Ideology: Cognitive-Affective Structures and the Dynamics of Belief Systems
We propose a complex systems approach to the study of political belief systems, to overcome some of the fragmentation in the current scholarship on ideology. We review relevant work in psychology, sociology, and political science and identify major cleavages in the literature: the spatial vs. non-spatial divide (ideologies as reducible to a spatially organized set of dimensions vs. as complex conceptual structures) and the person-group problem (i…
A map of the field of ideological analysis
Over the past two decades, research on ideology has grown considerably. This should be welcomed, but it comes with problems. Recent advances have been made in several fairly isolated academic communities from different disciplines that frequently appear unaware of each other. Research has therefore become fragmented, rather than productively integrated. This paper suggests that the fundamental cause of this fragmentation is the lack of a 'map of …
Rethinking the Role of Ideology in Mass Atrocities
There is a widespread sense amongst theorists of genocide and other violent atrocities that ideology matters. But in spite of this agreement all is not well with actual efforts to theorise ideology's role. Theoretical and empirical coverage has been uneven, and there has been little if any effort to incorporate theories and research from the actual specialist field of contemporary ideology studies. As a result, overarching theoretical accounts of…
Preventing Mass Atrocities: Ideological Strategies and Interventions
Both scholars and international actors frequently stress the important role played by anti-civilian ideologies in escalating risks of mass atrocities against civilians. Yet strategies to combat and counter anti-civilian ideologies remain an uncertain and understudied component of atrocity prevention, and scepticism about their efficacy is to be expected. This paper provides a preliminary framework for thinking about strategies and interventions d…
Dangerous Speech and Dangerous Ideology: An Integrated Model for Monitoring and Prevention
There is considerable agreement amongst scholars and international actors that ideologies and speech play a critical role in the path of escalation towards mass atrocity crimes. Speech features prominently in the jurisprudence of the U.N. war crimes tribunal for Rwanda, for example, and in historical accounts of the months and years preceding many other genocides. Nonetheless, this is one of the most underdeveloped components of genocide and atro…
Is There a Distinctively Political Normativity?
A slew of recent political theorists—many taking their cue from the political writings of Bernard Williams—have recently contended that political normativity is its own kind of normativity, distinct from moral normativity. In this article, we first attempt to clarify what this claim amounts to and then reconstruct and interrogate five major arguments for it. We contend that all these arguments are unconvincing and fail to establish a sense in whi…
Convergence and Divergence in the Study of Ideology: A Critical Review
Dedicated research on ideology has proliferated over the last few decades. Many different disciplines and methodologies have sought to make a contribution, with the welcome consequence that specialist thinking about ideology is at a high-water mark of richness, diversity and theoretical sophistication. Yet this proliferation of research has fragmented the study of ideology by producing independent communities of scholars differentiated by geograp…
Ideology and armed conflict
A growing wave of scholarship suggests that ideology has demonstrable effects on various forms of armed conflict. But ideology remains a relative theoretical newcomer in conflict research, and scholars lack developed microfoundations for analyzing ideologies and their effects. Typically, existing research has primarily presented ideology as either an instrumental tool for conflict actors or a source of sincere political and normative commitments.…
Political Realism as Methods not Metaethics
This paper makes the case for a revision of contemporary forms of political realism in political theory. I argue that contemporary realists have gone awry in increasingly centring their approach around a metaethical claim: that political theory should be rooted in a political form of normativity that is distinct from moral normativity. Several critics of realism have argued that this claim is unconvincing. But I suggest that it is also a counteri…
Ideology and Mass Killing: The Radicalized Security Politics of Genocides and Deadly Atrocities
In research on ‘mass killings’ such as genocides and campaigns of state terror, the role of ideology is hotly debated. For some scholars, ideologies are crucial in providing the extremist goals and hatreds that motivate ideologically committed killers. But other scholars are sceptical, contending that perpetrators of mass killing rarely seem ideologically committed, and that rational self-interest or powerful social pressures are more important d…
Routledge Handbook of Ideology and International Relations
Comparative Historical Analysis in Political Theory
Two important methodological debates in political theory concern (i) the place of historical research and interpretation in normative inquiry; and (ii) the importance of comparing different cultural traditions of political thought. The first question animates a long-standing controversy over the relative importance of ‘history of political thought’ versus ‘philosophy’ in political theory, while the second has been central to the recent growth of …
Manifestations of xenophobia in AI systems
Xenophobia is one of the key drivers of marginalisation, discrimination, and conflict, yet many prominent machine learning fairness frameworks fail to comprehensively measure or mitigate the resulting xenophobic harms. Here we aim to bridge this conceptual gap and help facilitate safe and ethical design of artificial intelligence (AI) solutions. We ground our analysis of the impact of xenophobia by first identifying distinct types of xenophobic h…
The Triadic Concept of Genocide: Reconciling Law, Science, and Politics after Ukraine and Gaza
The logic of idealization in political theory
The role of ideals and idealizations is among the most vigorously debated methodological questions in political theory. Yet, the debate seems at an impasse. This paper argues that this reflects a fundamental ambiguity over idealization's intended inferential logic : the precise way in which idealizations might yield normative knowledge. I identify two tacit understandings of idealization—a dominant “telic” understanding and a less overt “heuristi…
Political science (12 works) · Politics (12 works) · Law (11 works) · Sociology (11 works) · Epistemology (10 works) · Ideology (7 works) · Philosophy (6 works) · Political Conflict and Governance (5 works) · Law (4 works) · Psychology (4 works)