John W Schiemann
Biographic Data
| ID | 2406068 |
|---|---|
| NAME | John W Schiemann |
| GIVEN NAMES | John W |
| FAMILY NAME | Schiemann |
| SIGNATURE | SCHIEMANN J W |
| AFFILIATIONS | Fairleigh Dickinson University, Madison, NJ, USA |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 11 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 85 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 11 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2000 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2021 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Interpreting Celebrity Biography
How should we regard the characters and accomplishments of celebrities? We examine this question by drawing upon virtue ethics in political philosophy as a set of analytical tools and a framework for thinking about life writing about celebrities. We apply our virtue ethics framework, informed especially by Aristotle's views about human excellence and honor and Alasdair MacIntyre's concept of narrative unity and self-reflection, to the life storie…
Torturing science
Contrary to the claims of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) that its torture program was scientific, the program was not based on biology or any other science. Instead, the George W. Bush administration veneered the program's justification with a patina of pseudoscience, ignoring the actual biology of torturing human brains. We reconstruct the Bush administration's decision-making process to establish that the policy decision to use torture t…
Does Torture Work
This book examines whether interrogational torture is effective in obtaining valuable information and at what cost in terms of torture’s brutality and frequency. Interrogational torture’s effectiveness is a necessary condition for its justification by utilitarian proponents. This book tackles this age-old question head on in a new way, employing mathematical game theory – but reserving the math for the appendices. The book draws on historical acc…
Political Theory Is Not a Game
According to Howes, my article is wildly inappropriate application of game and so constitutes a project that is dubious at best and dangerous at worst because it invites policy makers and social scientists to use formal models to improve or perfect making it conducive to bureaucratic violence (Howes 2012, 21, 20, 23). I respond to each set of claims, starting with former, before reflecting very briefly on what these considerations have to say abo…
Interrogational Torture
Debate about the sources of intelligence leading to bin Laden’s location has revived the question as to whether interrogational torture is effective. Answering this question is a necessary—if not sufficient—condition for any justification of interrogational torture. Given the impossibility of approaching the question empirically, I address it theoretically, asking whether the use of torture to extract information satisfies reasonable expectations…
Bizarre Beliefs and Rational Choices
Rational choice analytic narratives claim to take seriously the way real actors form their beliefs. I argue that a commonly applied formal technique—perfect Bayesian equilibrium—inadequately accounts for realistic beliefs, unnecessarily impoverishing analytic narratives. I propose an equilibrium concept drawn from cognitive psychology—support theory equilibrium—that provides an accurate account of beliefs within a formal analytic narrative approa…
Hungary
Hungary's decade and a half of parliamentary democracy has witnessed the gradual strengthening of executive leadership and executive power vis-à-vis the National Assembly, or parliament. Institutional features such as the disproportional electoral system, the constructive vote of no confidence and the wide scope of the Prime Minister's Office have combined with increasing party discipline, a consolidation of the party system and international pol…
Hedging Against Uncertainty
This examines why Hungary adopted a mixed‐member (MM) electoral system by analyzing the bargaining process that produced it. The discussion of Hungary's negotiated transition to democracy from communism in 1989 shows that the country's MM system emerged as the result of a patchwork grafting of different components rather than a systematically conceived and coherently designed grand plan to meet broad societal needs. The coalition of opposition pa…
Institutional Choice in New Democracies
Institutions shape political outcomes, yet institutions themselves are endogenously shaped outcomes of political choices. Such choices are especially significant during transitions to democracy, when initial institutional designs fundamentally structure the path of democratic development. Most theories of institutional emergence, however, focus on stable contexts rather than on the conditions of acute uncertainty identified in the standard transi…
Explaining Hungary's powerful Constitutional Court
Chosen during its negotiated transition to democracy in 1989, Hungary's Constitutional Court has emerged as one of the most powerful institutions of its kind. Drawing on round table transcripts and interviews with key participants, this paper presents a bargaining model of institutional choice that demonstrates how the greater patience of the opposition parties forced the ruling party to make significant concessions that increased the authority a…
Meeting Halfway between Rochester and Frankfurt
Rational choice theory and the critical theory of Jurgen Habermas exclude important social categories from their analyses of strategic interaction. Successful strategic action in many contexts, however, depends upon the irreducibly intersubjective categories of the lifeworld. I defend this claim by analyzing the use of focal points to solve the multiple equilibria problem in coordination games, reconstructing both the generation of the salience b…
Institutional Choice in New Democracies
Institutions shape political outcomes, yet institutions themselves are endogenously shaped outcomes of political choices. Such choices are especially significant during transitions to democracy, when initial institutional designs fundamentally structure the path of democratic development. Most theories of institutional emergence, however, focus on stable contexts rather than on the conditions of acute uncertainty identified in the standard transi…
Meeting Halfway between Rochester and Frankfurt
Rational choice theory and the critical theory of Jurgen Habermas exclude important social categories from their analyses of strategic interaction. Successful strategic action in many contexts, however, depends upon the irreducibly intersubjective categories of the lifeworld. I defend this claim by analyzing the use of focal points to solve the multiple equilibria problem in coordination games, reconstructing both the generation of the salience b…
Interrogational Torture
Debate about the sources of intelligence leading to bin Laden’s location has revived the question as to whether interrogational torture is effective. Answering this question is a necessary—if not sufficient—condition for any justification of interrogational torture. Given the impossibility of approaching the question empirically, I address it theoretically, asking whether the use of torture to extract information satisfies reasonable expectations…
Bizarre Beliefs and Rational Choices
Rational choice analytic narratives claim to take seriously the way real actors form their beliefs. I argue that a commonly applied formal technique—perfect Bayesian equilibrium—inadequately accounts for realistic beliefs, unnecessarily impoverishing analytic narratives. I propose an equilibrium concept drawn from cognitive psychology—support theory equilibrium—that provides an accurate account of beliefs within a formal analytic narrative approa…
Hungary
Hungary's decade and a half of parliamentary democracy has witnessed the gradual strengthening of executive leadership and executive power vis-à-vis the National Assembly, or parliament. Institutional features such as the disproportional electoral system, the constructive vote of no confidence and the wide scope of the Prime Minister's Office have combined with increasing party discipline, a consolidation of the party system and international pol…
Torturing science
Contrary to the claims of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) that its torture program was scientific, the program was not based on biology or any other science. Instead, the George W. Bush administration veneered the program's justification with a patina of pseudoscience, ignoring the actual biology of torturing human brains. We reconstruct the Bush administration's decision-making process to establish that the policy decision to use torture t…
Explaining Hungary's powerful Constitutional Court
Chosen during its negotiated transition to democracy in 1989, Hungary's Constitutional Court has emerged as one of the most powerful institutions of its kind. Drawing on round table transcripts and interviews with key participants, this paper presents a bargaining model of institutional choice that demonstrates how the greater patience of the opposition parties forced the ruling party to make significant concessions that increased the authority a…
Meeting Halfway between Rochester and Frankfurt
Rational choice theory and the critical theory of Jurgen Habermas exclude important social categories from their analyses of strategic interaction. Successful strategic action in many contexts, however, depends upon the irreducibly intersubjective categories of the lifeworld. I defend this claim by analyzing the use of focal points to solve the multiple equilibria problem in coordination games, reconstructing both the generation of the salience b…
Institutional Choice in New Democracies
Institutions shape political outcomes, yet institutions themselves are endogenously shaped outcomes of political choices. Such choices are especially significant during transitions to democracy, when initial institutional designs fundamentally structure the path of democratic development. Most theories of institutional emergence, however, focus on stable contexts rather than on the conditions of acute uncertainty identified in the standard transi…
Explaining Hungary's powerful Constitutional Court
Chosen during its negotiated transition to democracy in 1989, Hungary's Constitutional Court has emerged as one of the most powerful institutions of its kind. Drawing on round table transcripts and interviews with key participants, this paper presents a bargaining model of institutional choice that demonstrates how the greater patience of the opposition parties forced the ruling party to make significant concessions that increased the authority a…
Hedging Against Uncertainty
This examines why Hungary adopted a mixed‐member (MM) electoral system by analyzing the bargaining process that produced it. The discussion of Hungary's negotiated transition to democracy from communism in 1989 shows that the country's MM system emerged as the result of a patchwork grafting of different components rather than a systematically conceived and coherently designed grand plan to meet broad societal needs. The coalition of opposition pa…
Hungary
Hungary's decade and a half of parliamentary democracy has witnessed the gradual strengthening of executive leadership and executive power vis-à-vis the National Assembly, or parliament. Institutional features such as the disproportional electoral system, the constructive vote of no confidence and the wide scope of the Prime Minister's Office have combined with increasing party discipline, a consolidation of the party system and international pol…
Bizarre Beliefs and Rational Choices
Rational choice analytic narratives claim to take seriously the way real actors form their beliefs. I argue that a commonly applied formal technique—perfect Bayesian equilibrium—inadequately accounts for realistic beliefs, unnecessarily impoverishing analytic narratives. I propose an equilibrium concept drawn from cognitive psychology—support theory equilibrium—that provides an accurate account of beliefs within a formal analytic narrative approa…
Political Theory Is Not a Game
According to Howes, my article is wildly inappropriate application of game and so constitutes a project that is dubious at best and dangerous at worst because it invites policy makers and social scientists to use formal models to improve or perfect making it conducive to bureaucratic violence (Howes 2012, 21, 20, 23). I respond to each set of claims, starting with former, before reflecting very briefly on what these considerations have to say abo…
Interrogational Torture
Debate about the sources of intelligence leading to bin Laden’s location has revived the question as to whether interrogational torture is effective. Answering this question is a necessary—if not sufficient—condition for any justification of interrogational torture. Given the impossibility of approaching the question empirically, I address it theoretically, asking whether the use of torture to extract information satisfies reasonable expectations…
Does Torture Work
This book examines whether interrogational torture is effective in obtaining valuable information and at what cost in terms of torture’s brutality and frequency. Interrogational torture’s effectiveness is a necessary condition for its justification by utilitarian proponents. This book tackles this age-old question head on in a new way, employing mathematical game theory – but reserving the math for the appendices. The book draws on historical acc…
Torturing science
Contrary to the claims of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) that its torture program was scientific, the program was not based on biology or any other science. Instead, the George W. Bush administration veneered the program's justification with a patina of pseudoscience, ignoring the actual biology of torturing human brains. We reconstruct the Bush administration's decision-making process to establish that the policy decision to use torture t…
Interpreting Celebrity Biography
How should we regard the characters and accomplishments of celebrities? We examine this question by drawing upon virtue ethics in political philosophy as a set of analytical tools and a framework for thinking about life writing about celebrities. We apply our virtue ethics framework, informed especially by Aristotle's views about human excellence and honor and Alasdair MacIntyre's concept of narrative unity and self-reflection, to the life storie…
Law (8 works) · Political science (8 works) · Psychology (6 works) · Sociology (6 works) · Law (5 works) · Law and economics (5 works) · Politics (5 works) · Democracy (4 works) · Economics (4 works) · Epistemology (4 works)