Nine regional international organisations (RIOs) have adopted suspension clauses to defend democracy since 1990, but we have a weak historical understanding of the conditions under which these clauses are designed. The literature has advanced numerous arguments about delegation, generally based on power, preferences and norms. This article asks under what conditions RIO member states support suspension clauses for democracy enforcement, and what shapes their preferences over the design of said clauses. Taking the lock-in hypothesis as a starting point, I offer an alternative explanation to that of regime type: the nature of a state's anti-democratic experiences determines its preferences for expansive or restrictive multilateral democracy enforcement. States that suffered from external threats to their political regime will prefer a narrow scope and restricted use of suspension clauses, while those that suffered primarily from internal threats will be in favour of a broader role for RIOs and a more readily applicable suspension clause. I test the plausibility of this explanation in a case study which reconstructs the negotiations for the first such suspension clause in this era, the 1992 Washington Protocol amending the Charter of the Organization of American States (OAS).

In the EU, political crises often serve as catalysts for policymaking and ‘failing forward’. Yet as a breakdown of the rule of law has swept some member states, EU institutions have repeatedly failed to react. We argue that this outcome is partly tied to how political elites strategically mobilize rhetoric to legitimate stasis during crises. Building on theories of rhetorical action and discursive institutionalism, we rectify their bias for change and draw on Albert Hirschman’s work to theorize ‘rhetorics of inaction’: A coordinative discourse wielded by national and supranational actors to reconcile divergent preferences and justify stasis by appealing to the very policies and values threatened by crisis. We specify the conditions under which rhetorics of inaction are most likely to pervade EU policymaking and illustrate the theory’s explanatory purchase in a case study of the EU’s (non-)responses to the constitutional breakdowns of Hungary and Poland. By tracing the discursive interactions between EU and government policymakers, we demonstrate that populist and partisan affronts on the EU conceal far more sophisticated and obstructive argumentative strategies behind-the-scenes. We conclude that rhetorical politics are central to understanding the EU’s failure to respond to crises and elaborate avenues for future research.

ABSTRACTMost political scientists conduct and publish qualitative research, but what training in qualitative methods do political science doctoral programs offer? Do scholarly views converge on the proper content of such training? Analysis of methods curricula and syllabi from 25 leading US political science doctoral programs reveals a troubling gap: only 60% of top departments offer any dedicated graduate training in qualitative methods. Departments can remedy this disjuncture between scholarship and training by enhancing their basic qualitative methods curricula. Our research shows that scholars agree broadly on the content of such training, effective pedagogical practices, major alternatives for curriculum design, and a menu of focused topics. Graduate programs that aspire to train professionally competent qualitative and multi-method researchers now can orient their reform efforts on shared disciplinary standards for qualitative methods training.

In a recent contribution to Verfassungsblog, Professor Armin von Bogdandy observes, “European constitutionalism is perhaps facing a ‘constitutional moment’. But rather than calling on the EU to stand up to increasingly authoritarian member governments, von Bogdandy concludes that, “Powerful arguments suggest caution.” His admonitions offer a lesson into how scholars can inadvertently propagate what political economist Albert Hirschman described in his 1991 book as The Rhetoric of Reaction.

In 2002, the European Union (EU), the United States, Russia, and the United Nations coordinated their efforts to find a peaceful end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict collectively, as the Quartet for Middle East Peace. There are few examples of the EU represented as one by the supranational body on a global stage over a matter of foreign affairs. This paper asks how the EU and its institutions have been accepted by the other members of the Quartet, and whether or not the EU is an influential group member. The Road Map negotiations in late 2002 illustrate two important trends: the EU’s desire to foster a mutually acceptable, two-state solution between Israel and Palestine, and its persistent belief that the United States must remain impartially dedicated to the Middle East Peace Process. These proceedings demonstrate that the EU is accepted as a legitimate and indirectly influential force in the peace negotiations.