Tyler Dickovick and Jon Eastwood
Short Interview
I know Tyler Dickovick and Jon Eastwood from their textbook Comparative Politics: Integrating Theories, Methods, and Cases (Oxford University Press, 2012) that we use for our class about comparative politics at Chaffey Community College. Their book helps students thoroughly understand the comparative political landscape by summarizing major theoretical approaches, works in the field, and country-by-country case studies to compare and contrast.
However, Dickovick and Eastwood are also professors at Washington and Lee University and authors of published research in addition to Comparative Politics. Dickovick is the Grigsby Term Associate Professor of Politics, and Eastwood is the Laurent Boetsch Term Associate Professor of Sociology.
Dickovick focuses his research on African politics, Latin American politics, decentralization, federalism, local governance, and international development. He is the author of Decentralization and Recentralization in the Developing World: Comparative Studies from Africa and Latin America (Penn State University Press, 2011), co-editor of the Decentralization in Africa: The Paradox of State Strength (Lynne Rienner Publications, 2014), and has been published in multiple academic publications. He is currently doing research about the comparative causes and effects of decentralization in Sub-Saharan Africa. In addition, Dickovick has authored multiple reports for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the Inter-American Development Bank, World Bank, and United Nations University. His research has taken him to Brazil, Peru, and numerous African countries, including Benin, Ghana, Kenya, Mali, Senegal, and South Africa, and,, preceding his graduate studies, he was a Peace Corps volunteer in Togo from 1995 to 1997.
Eastwood is also a published researcher. He focuses his research on comparative social science and sociological theory that focuses on relationships between collective identities. He has been published in academic publications, such as the Sociological Forum, Journal of Institutional Economics, and he has written two books in addition to Comparative Politics — Current Debates in Comparative Politics (Oxford University Press, 2014) and The Revolution in Venezuela: Social and Political Change Under Chávez (Harvard/DRCLAS, 2011).
Dickovick and Eastwood were also generous enough to answer nine short-interview questions of my own about their field of research, comparative politics and international relations:
1) What do you think is currently the most dangerous country in the world? Why?
It might be better to think in terms of the dangerousness of regimes rather than countries, but we would lean toward North Korea. There are many other regimes that pose strategic challenges to the United States and other countries in the “West”, but many of those (including Iran and Russia) seem to be operating in ways that are more or less predictable, even if not in ways that the United States might favor. North Korea’s is a regime that seems to be fundamentally testing the limits of what is rational and comprehensible. It used to be said that prizefighters would fear not the physically strongest opponent, but the “craziest” one. We worry about conflicts between powerful adversaries, as well as failed states where there are vacuums of power, but we probably worry more about a regime with nuclear technology where the leadership is unpredictable in its provocations.
2) Are you optimistic for the future of international cooperation? Why or why not?
This depends very much on the topic at hand, the countries in question, and the degree to which an issue has already reached a crisis point. There are some areas where we might expect a reasonable amount of cooperation, but nothing concentrates the minds of decision-makers like an imminent crisis. Unfortunately, the degree of cooperation on such major global issues as climate change and nuclear proliferation is likely to correspond to how much leaders feel that they are experiencing the threat currently, as opposed to it being something the effects of which will be felt in 10 or 20 years’ time. Then again, there are some positive signs on some of these issues and occasionally cascades of cooperation can emerge quite rapidly, especially when some key players move in that direction or when the larger group figures out how to make it harder for others to free ride.
3) In what ways are liberal democracy and social democracy opposites? In what ways, is there potential for overlap?
Both advocate for forms of government that recognize basic individual rights and freedoms, as shown by the fact that both have the word democracy in them. Most liberals and social democrats (lower case d) will agree that individuals should have a substantial degree of freedom to make choices about their governments and their economic lives. The differences are in the degree to which these two types of democrats see government having a more or less significant role in economic life. But in general, most liberal democrats (in the classic sense of the term) would advocate for a meaningful degree of social spending, and most social democrats would start from the premise that societies are well served when individuals have basic rights. So if you constructed a Venn diagram of the two you would likely see substantial shared space. Indeed, when dealing with ideological differences like this, it can sometimes be hard to fully separate differences in policy preferences from differences in image or style. Moreover, a person whose policy preferences might identify them as a liberal democrat in one country might identify them as a social democrat in another.
4) What are ways we can address the current Syrian Refugee Crisis as a country? How can other countries in the international community help?
There is a “moral” answer to this question and a “political” answer. To consider the moral answer first, it seems clear that the United States could collaborate with many other democracies to accommodate, resettle, and help to integrate those who have fled Syria; this would include welcoming a nontrivial number of refugees to the United States. When you think about the scale of human suffering we are witnessing, our failure so far to do that is pretty striking. In political terms, however, we might not expect that the United States or many European countries will respond in this way in the near future. Then again, a number of other countries (such as Canada and Germany, despite some controversy and debate) have so far shown themselves more willing to welcome Syrian refugees.
5) Is there any plausible sense in which progress has taken place in international relations, and if so, is this progress due to intellectual or moral advances in human thinking?
It is hard to argue with the idea that there has in a certain sense been progress in international relations (which is not to say that things are as they should be), and that intellectual and moral advances may even be two sides of the same coin. The easiest way to see this is to look back a half-century or more, when colonialism dominated entire continents (with powerful countries sometimes asserting racial superiority as a justification for oppression), and World Wars were fought over territorial expansion and totalitarian ideologies. War and oppression have not disappeared, but individuals and countries now at least tend to speak in terms of basic human dignity and rights when trying to justify their aims. Except in the most extremist of circles, it is no longer acceptable to suggest that some people might not be deserving of basic dignity. To put it plainly, despite some recent setbacks, the world is a great deal more democratic than it used to be, and despite some huge ongoing atrocities, on balance it’s probably more peaceful. An optimist might say, with Martin Luther King, that the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice. It can be hard to see progress on a day-to-day basis, but on a century-to-century basis may become clearer. At the same time, we want to be very careful to not see our own historical moment as somehow the pinnacle of any such progress. And we shouldn’t assume that things just move in one direction. Democracies collapse, new wars break out, cooperation breaks down, so imagining that there is some kind of linear progress may require a leap of faith.
6) What are the implications of electronic technologies, especially of the internet, for world politics?
Technology has been shaping world politics for centuries — whether it’s gunpowder, the telegraph, railroads, or modern telecommunications. One can think of the Internet as an accelerant for ideas, both good and bad. There are certainly circumstances where the Internet and social media seems to have facilitated collective action by groups that were previously dispossessed (as might have been the case in the so-called Arab Spring of 2011) but scholars like Zeynep Tufecki have argued that sometimes online communication makes the first stages of collective action easier to achieve, but later stages more challenging (she has a great, and short, Ted Talk on this that we highly recommend).
Moreover, online communication is capable of disseminating hate and misinformation. On the whole, technology is to be welcomed in so far as it makes human lives better, but it also needs to be managed with thought and care. We have understood this since we tested the first atomic bomb, or learned how human activity contributes to climate change; we need to think about the Internet (whether it is issues of privacy, cyber security, its implications for collective action, or anything else) just as carefully.
7) What modes of action can effectively cope with the unprecedented stress that human beings are imposing on the global environment?
Action for a sustainable environmental future will have to come at many levels. Personally, solutions probably cannot be exclusively found in government regulations, nor only in free-market approaches, nor only in activist and nongovernmental organizations. The action that will be needed must come as a network or alliance of like-minded actors across the public, private, and non-profit sectors.
8) How has world politics been affected by changes in capitalism?
One argument is that much of world political history has been driven by changes in capitalism! This would require many volumes to answer. But in recent years since the “Great Recession”, one especially noteworthy change has been the sense that many of the world’s leading countries are witnessing slower economic growth. This puts stresses and strains on many different forms of government that rely partly on delivering economic growth in order to retain legitimacy with the citizenry — this is true from China’s Communist Party, to Vladimir Putin’s nationalist government in Russia, to Americans and their views on Washington. In these circumstances, domestic politics is strained, and world politics follows in a sense: countries may find themselves likelier to ramp up pressure on foreign countries (and foreigners generally, it is sad to say).
9) If you could give one piece of advice to the upcoming generation, what would it be? Why?
Active engagement in civic life is indispensable, even if it is bound to lead to some disappointments and discouragement. An active citizenry is what makes positive change possible. That change often feels like it comes too slowly, but even the process of participating in the effort can itself be fulfilling. At the same time, recognize that we do need institutions. Many public goods cannot be sustained just through spontaneous actions of groups. Indeed, political societies that successfully combine rule of law, economic prosperity, and democracy have been historically quite rare, and once the institutions that sustain them have been put in place, we should probably be careful not to take them for granted. Indeed, in the best of circumstances well-functioning institutions and engagement in civic life are mutually sustaining.
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You can read more about Jonathan Eastwood from his faculty page here.
