Daniel A. Bell, co-author of The Spirit of Cities: Why the Identity of a City Matters in a Global Age with Avner de-Shalit, visited Hub’s Davos Pavilion and spoke with Hub Culture’s Executive Editor Edie Lush during his recent trip to the World Economic Forum. Professor Bell uses “I Heart NY” as the best known example of “civicism,” the term for urban pride he and de-Shalit coined in their recent PUP book, but from the looks of it, perhaps “I Heart Davos” is next:

Philip Feeman, the translator of our timely new book HOW TO WIN AN ELECTION: An Ancient Guide for Modern Politicans, had his recent op-ed published in the Los Angeles Times yesterday. Take a look to see which Republican candidate(s) would have done right by Quintus Cicero’s (Marcus’s lesser-known brother) advice. The “advice” was originally from a letter sent to Marcus when he was in the running for the biggest job in Rome.

Margot Canaday’s brilliant book The Straight State: Sexuality and Citizenship in Twentieth-Century America has won the 2012 Order of the Coif Biennial Book Award.

“The Order of the Coif is an honorary scholastic society the purpose of which is to encourage excellence in legal education by fostering a spirit of careful study, recognizing those who as law students attained a high grade of scholarship, and honoring those who as lawyers, judges and teachers attained high distinction for their scholarly or professional accomplishments.”

This is Margot Canaday’s SEVENTH award for The Straight State. Some of the other accolades include the 2011 John Boswell Prize, the 2010 Cromwell Book Prize, the Lora Romero First Book Publication Prize, the Gladys M. Kammerer Award, and the Lambda Literary Award for LGBT Studies.

In Europe, the increasing presence of Islam has often provoked concerns about a threat to security and liberal democracy. Jonathan Laurence’s The Emancipation of Europe’s Muslims challenges these ideas and shows how the transformation of a new generation into European Muslims has consisted of a complex mix of achievements and tensions. The book recently received a terrific review in The Economist. Jonathan was kind enough to answer a few questions about his unique look at European Islam, the debates surrounding it, and the connection to the Arab awakening:

Q: Anders Breivik was recently declared insane by the court. His act of violence is widely condemned, but aren’t his anti-multiculturalist views fairly widespread?

For Breivik, the year is 1683 and an Islamic empire is storming the Gates of Vienna. Some of the views in his Internet-age manifesto are popular, although what he did in Oslo and Utoya is of course condemned. An Italian politician from a party in government spoke approvingly of the Norwegian’s belief that Europe had “given up on its cultural identity without a fight.” In December, a poll showed 76% of the French public thinks Islam is “progressing too much.” So the vocal concern over Islam’s growth and Muslims’ integration is no longer the exclusive domain of the far right. It has become ritual for heads of government to declare the failure of multiculturalism, a catchall description increasingly taken to mean the arrival of Muslims in Europe. Breivik may be legally insane, but he is not alone in thinking that Europe is at a turning point vis-à-vis its growing Islamic minorities.

Ruth Grant, author of Strings Attached: Untangling the Ethics of Incentives, sat down with our co-publishers The Russell Sage Foundation for a brief Q&A in which she offers her take on what happens when you dig beneath the surface of incentives and view them as a form of power. Here are a few questions to whet your appetite, but head over to the Russell Sage Foundation site to read the complete interview: http://www.russellsage.org/blog/interview-ruth-grant-ethics-incentives

Q: While incentives are largely viewed now as an alternative to social control, you look at the history of their use at the turn of the 20th century and find a much more controversial and worrying story. How were incentives perceived back then, and in what context were they discussed?

A: The term “incentives” was introduced in America in the early 20th century in several different contexts, including Frederick Taylor’s scientific management in industry and the new field of behaviorism in psychology. (Surprisingly, the term is not found in 18th century writers like Adam Smith). Incentives were introduced in industry as a tool of social engineering, while in psychology, behaviorists believed that they could gain social control by using incentives to induce desired behaviors. Incentives were quite controversial at the time. They were often criticized as dehumanizing, and in the form of piece-rate wages, they were a source of conflict between unionized labor and management.

Q: Someone defending incentives could say they merely offer a choice to the public. So, for example, states didn’t have to compete in the Race to the Top education program if they didn’t want the strings attached to the federal funds. But you suggest this focus on voluntariness relies on a rather narrow definition of freedom and rationality. Could you elaborate?

A: When incentives are viewed as a type of bargain or trade, the ethical focus is exclusively on whether or not the transaction is voluntary. So, for example, people argue over whether offering large sums of money to a poor person to participate in research is “coercive.” But this is not the only question. When incentives are viewed as a form of power – one way I can get you to do something you otherwise wouldn’t – additional ethical questions arise of the sort that always arise about the use and abuse of power. To return to the example — if the research is filling out a questionnaire, nobody would really worry about coercion. If the research involves invasive and painful procedures, then the first question is whether the researcher ought to be conducting this study on human subjects at all. (Of course, often the answer will be “yes”).

Incentives do offer a choice – but that is not sufficient. Mice in a maze also have choices: left or right? Studies have shown that incentives with human beings often backfire in situations where people find the incentives insulting. Incentives imply that you wouldn’t do the thing you are being asked to do for intrinsic reasons. Studies show that people tend to feel insulted by incentives when they take the place of persuasion; when they micromanage; or when they fly in the face of people’s generous impulses – for example, paying for blood “donations” can decrease the number willing to give. In other words, while incentives offer choices, they are based on a psychology that assumes people are reactive and malleable, like the mouse. They do not treat people as fully autonomous rational agents.

You can also read a sample from Ruth’s book here: http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/s9546.pdf

Daniel A. Bell, co-author with Avner de-Shalit of The Spirit of Cities: Why the Identity of a City Matters in a Global Age, was sent this fantastic iPad drawing of a recent book talk he gave at the Beijing Bookworm store:

Artist Wu Peng was in the audience at the talk–how cool is that!

If that wasn’t enough, Debra Bruno recently wrote a blog article featuring Daniel A. Bell and the book at The Atlantic Cities blog, which Chicago magazine’s staff blog The 312 picked up earlier today, with a Windy City twist.

Foreign Policy has just released a list of the “Top 100 Global Thinkers” for 2011, and four PUP authors have made the cut!

#25 Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff, authors of This Time is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly.

“They told us so. For years before the crash, economists Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff presciently sketched out just how bad the global credit crunch could become based on their groundbreaking study of eight centuries of financial crises — the work that culminated in the publication of their bestselling 2009 book, This Time Is Different. In their study, the two found that in all the crises, “excessive debt accumulation … often poses greater systemic risks than it seems during a boom.”

#43 Saskia Sassen, author of The Global City: New York, London, Tokyo.

“This year’s political upheavals have been as much about cities as countries. From Cairo’s Tahrir Square to London’s Tottenham, we’ve seen vivid illustrations of how urban spaces can shape social movements. Saskia Sassen, an academic guru who famously coined the term “global city,” has been very much part of the conversation, arguing that the same melting-pot factors that make cities drivers of capitalism can also make them highly unstable. “The poor in Britain, living next to enclaves of wealth and privilege, chose street riots to deliver their message,” she wrote.”

#44 David Scheffer, author of All the Missing Souls: A Personal History of the War Crimes Tribunals. Foreign Policy applauds Scheffer for demanding that war criminals be held accountable.

Congratulations to these four authors, alongside the other great thinkers and writers on this list!

“Death and Redemption: The Gulag and the Shaping of Soviet Society” by PUP author Steven A. Barnes is the winner of the 2011 Baker-Burton Award: “The Award is given by the European History Section of the Southern Historical Association for the best first book in European history by a member of the Section or a [...]

Congratulations to Michael C. Horowitz, whose book The Diffusion of Military Power: Causes and Consequences for International Politics has won the 2011 Best Book prize in the International Security Studies Section of the International Studies Association (ISS) competition. The ISSS Annual Best Book Award is awarded annually to a text “on any aspect of security [...]

Congratulations to Professor John M. Owen IV, whose book The Clash of Ideas in World Politics: Transnational Networks, States, and Regime Change, 1510-2010 has been awarded the 2011 Lepgold Prize from the Mortara Center for International Studies at Georgetown University.

The Lepgold Prize honors “exceptional contributions to the study of international relations” in memory of Professor Joseph S. Lepgold, a Georgetown University Government and School of Foreign Service professor who passed away in 2001. The award announcement praises The Clash of Ideas in World Politics for its wide scope in addressing the ideological struggles related to forcible regime promotion:

John Owen examines more than two hundred cases of forcible regime promotion over the past five centuries, offering the first systematic study of this common state practice. He looks at conflicts between Catholicism and Protestantism between 1520 and the 1680s; republicanism and monarchy between 1770 and 1850; and communism, fascism, and liberal democracy from 1917 until the late 1980s. He shows how regime promotion can follow regime unrest in the eventual target state or a war involving a great power, and how this can provoke elites across states to polarize according to ideology. Owen traces how conflicts arise and ultimately fade as one ideology wins favor with more elites in more countries, and he demonstrates how the struggle between secularism and Islamism in Muslim countries today reflects broader transnational trends in world history.

We invite you to check out new and forthcoming books in our political science & law catalog at:
http://press.princeton.edu/catalogs/politics11.pdf

Race and politics, immigration, public opinion, Tea Party, global rulers, ethics and zombies – just a few of the hot topics you will find in the catalog.
Yes, zombies!

If you’re at the APSA meeting in Seattle, stop by our booth no. 508 to say hello and browse new books. We hope to see you there.

Philip Tetlock, author of Expert Political Judgment, is running a massive research project to see if the rank and file can make better predictions than the so-called experts. In the book he identifies two main types of expert — foxes and hedgehogs — each with their own style of gathering information and making predictions. He discovered that many political pundits are actually less accurate at predicting outcomes than a monkey might be (ie than if you randomly chose the outcome). His new project, which he describes in this article at The Frontal Cortex, is an extension of the earlier research. In the article, Jonah Lehrer speaks with Tetlock about the project and what he’s looking for in participants (no crystal balls needed!).

Tetlock: The current project is supported by the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Agency of the US government — and it is the most systematic effort, to date, at testing the effectiveness of competing approaches to improving forecasting accuracy in the domain of politics and national security. Multiple teams are participating — and we are recruiting people who, ideally, have three characteristics: a deep interest in thinking about how they think (and correcting blind spots and errors); a deep interest in world affairs; a willingness to translate those deep interests into hard work (it will take time and energy to master some of the tools that we will be giving various subgroups of forecasters).

Think you have what it takes? Register here: http://www.goodjudgment.info.