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With the establishment of the Copenhagen criteria for membership in 1993 the European Community has entered a complex process of guiding Eastern European countries on their way back to Europe. The substance of this process consisted in institutional models and behavioral patterns delivery, which through the mechanics of conditionality, timing and bargaining was expected to produce substantial effects on national governance systems . This paper aims to present this experiment as a distinct governance mode in the EU based on conditionality about institutional performance and political timing. It further argues that as a top down governance process accession affects domestic policy making and institutional building efforts, but is limited to formal institutional choices. Actual institutional performance in candidate countries is predefined by previous and existing formal and informal institutional structures, political actor?s interests and reform capacity. The paper further proposes a more governance oriented approach in researching the substance of accession process and its outcomes in a transformational context. It combines vertical and horizontal analytical tools for discovering at one hand the substance of accession conditionality as a distinct governance structure. On the other hand it takes a closer look at two economic policy sectors for examining the actual functioning of the accession conditionality at domestic level in a given accession country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will examine in detail thinking through the past century and into the current decade about the nature of the distinctive contributions that career public servants make to policy. In this regard, we will see that during the middle part of the 20th century the concept that officials play significant and legitimate roles in devising policies gained currency and then faced considerable challenges both from the right and the left. We will also note that public choice?which advanced the view that only political executives should devise policies that officials then implement according to highly prescriptive guidance?held great sway in Anglo-American systems through the last two decades of the 20th century. The treatment finds that the public choice view introduced a specific set of difficulties that eventually revealed inherent limitations to this approach as well. The paper argues?on the grounds of manifest difficulties both with granting officials a high degree of latitude in determining the contours of policy and greatly constricting their input?that systems should seek to achieve a balance between three competencies of salience to virtually all policy issues. This would entail integration of concerns centering upon fiscal feasibility and probity, political responsiveness, and likely eventual consequences?both negative and positive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on state policies concerning older drivers, with particular attention to two contrasting policy strategies ? one involving license renewal requirements targeted for elderly drivers and the other involving the use of the medical community to screen for problematic older drivers. The paper develops and test hypotheses concerning the substantial variation in utilization of these policies that is to be found across state-years in the period 1980-2003. Explanations focusing on the political power of important stakeholder interests such as senior citizens and the medical establishment find some support as do some explanations involving the objective problem context, such as the magnitude of the problem as reflected in the older driver fatal crash rate and the availability of transportation alternatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A chasm has long existed in political science between those who view the American policymaking process as static and those who see it as dynamic. Insufficient effort has been made to bridge this divide or to incorporate the insights of both perspectives into the analysis of major policy initiation and reform. This paper uses the case of federal education policy to demonstrate how a historically-based policy regimes framework can illuminate the evolution of specific policy areas over time and account for periods of dynamic change amidst long periods of policy stasis. This framework picks up where Baumgartner and Jones left off by focusing on what happens after agendas change, policy monopolies are broken, and equilibria punctured. The paper then demonstrates the efficacy of the policy regimes approach by using it to briefly examine the evolution of federal education policy and to explain how reformers were able to overcome both institutional and political obstacles to policy change in the 2002 No Child Left Behind law. Contemporary developments in American politics?particularly the existence of partisan parity and intense political competition for swing voters?have led politicians to adopt popular, moderate positions on swing issues such as education even if they conflict with longstanding ideological convictions or the preferences of allied interest groups. This political maneuvering can force both parties to the center and generate compromises on salient issues over which there may have long been great conflict and little change. Swing issues are thus an important political phenomenon?their unique characteristics facilitate major policy change even as they influence the direction of wider political debates and encourage greater democratic responsiveness from government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The challenges in isolating the substantive conflict in American politics as it actually moves the mass public are truly daunting. Two such challenges dominate all others, however. First, it is necessary to have consistent measures of the main domains of policy conflict across the postwar years, itself a demanding challenge. But second, it is necessary to combine these into a consistent issue structure across that same period, else good individual measures will mislead as much as they help, by masking and distorting the mix of available policy concerns. This paper builds on previous APSA papers aimed at eliciting this issue structure, and moves on to its impact on voting behavior from 1952 through 2000. A set of measures for the policy domains of social welfare, foreign affairs, civil rights, and cultural values are developed, with much confirmation of an existing literature specialized to these domains, plus some twists that arrive with the ability to address them in an extended time-frame. These individual measures are then combined into a more comprehensive picture, an ?issue structure?, so that their influence within a richer issue context can be examined. What results is a picture of postwar American politics at the mass level, confirmed in many familiar ways but, we hope, nuanced in many others and actually disconfirmed in a few. Said differently, what results is a picture of social welfare as the dominating issue concern in this politics among the general public, with foreign affairs as an important?and frequently cross-cutting?secondary concern. Civil rights changes its partisan direction as the postwar years pass. And cultural values does the same, while exploding to prominence in recent years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops a process-oriented approach to the study of policy diffusion. It divides policy diffusion into four political processes: agenda setting, information generation, customization, and enactment. This division provides an analytical framework for assessing the impact of many diffusion mechanisms that are largely neglected by existing studies. The paper illustrates the utility of the process-oriented approach by assessing the trajectory of medical savings accounts (MSAs) in Oregon. This case study suggests that external political forces have a strong impact on the early stages of policy diffusion, while the impact of internal political forces increases during the later stages of policy diffusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that the patterns of competition policy convergence in the European Union?s member states challenge existing formulations of the Europeanization process and specifically the notion that the likelihood of policy harmonization is a function of the preexisting compatibility or ?fit? between national and supranational policies. In the case of antitrust, the member states in which the existing arrangements were least compatible with the European policy were generally the first to adopt the approach of the European Commission?s competition enforcement regime, while the United Kingdom, in spite of having an established ? albeit dysfunctional? competition regime since the late 1940s, was the last of the medium and large-sized members to move toward harmonizing its antitrust rules. The paper concludes that the preexistence of an antitrust system actually made harmonization more difficult for Britain. It maintains that the unique homegrown policy and corresponding enforcement institutions allowed British industrial interests to develop preferences for specific orientations of the domestic system, which stymied attempts to Europeanize the British policy until a confluence of internal and external alignment pressures reshaped and redirected those preferences towards a more Europeanized approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Regulatory reforms in Europe have focused on ‘good regulation’, ‘better law-making’, and, most recently, ‘quality of regulatory tools and institutions’. This paper deals with the main instrument used by governments to achieve good regulatory governance, that is, regulatory impact assessment (RIA). The article shows that the diffusion of RIA programmes in the European Union (EU) disguises considerable variability in terms of principles, processes, and results. The lack of convergence is explained by contextual variables. The argument here is not the trivial one that ?context matters? in the diffusion of RIA, but how it matters in terms of dimensions. Hence the paper breaks down ?context? into four dimensions, that is, stakeholders, institutions, models of the policy process, and legitimacy. The paper shows how the four dimensions explain the variability in RIA activities and outcomes throughout the EU. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper asks whether Peter Katzenstein’s model of ‘semisovereign’ governance, first published in 1987, can still adequately account for policy developments in immigration and integration policy in Germany. It finds that although the policy field has evolved considerably, and that the institutional configuration has changed dramatically, policy outcomes remain incremental, in that policy change is rare and gradual. The paper also asks whether semisovereign governance is an asset in this field, as originally postulated by Katzenstein, or whether it has become a liability, [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates how the profound changes at work in the world, known commonly and somewhat opaquely as ?globalization,? have altered the behaviors and orientations of those citizens who participate in the dynamics of globalization. The evidence of rapid and pervasive transformation seems to be everywhere as neoliberal economic policies, vast movements of people around the world, communications and transportation technologies, and a host of other dynamics have led to what has been called the death of time and distance. These changes are so profound that it calls into question the assumption that those who preside over economies, societies, and polities simply absorb these changes into traditional practices. Rather, we theorize that globalizing processes and the backlashes against them alter the lives, outlooks, practices and relationships of all people?rich and poor, leaders and followers, Northerners and Southerners. More than that, we suspect that some of the most extensive transformations have occurred in the lives of those elites in all walks of life who are on the cutting edge of the dynamics presently underway. Using two surveys of over 800 American elites conducted in the fall of 1999 and the winter of 2002-2003, this paper investigates the degree to which an individual?s participation in the processes of globalization transforms his or her loyalties to a nation-state, attitudes toward authority, and orientations toward other collectivities. It also measures whether protests against the WTO and World Bank, the September 11th terrorist attacks, and the war in Iraq have affected the orientations of elites to globalization. To identify those respondents on the ?cutting edge? of global processes, the authors develop an index to measure a respondent?s involvement in global processes. The authors then use this index to conduct chi-square tests that uncover significant attitudinal and behavioral differences between elites on the cutting edge and the other respondents. These tests find that an individual?s participation in the processes of globalization significantly affects his or her orientation toward both the nation-state and other authorities. Those respondents on the cutting edge viewed globalization significantly more favorably than the other respondents. They travel significantly more; use communications technologies more extensively; are more likely to place their employers? or organizations? interests before their governments? interests; and feel significantly more empowered in the face of global processes. These findings support the argument that global elites today are developing political orientations that are incommensurate with traditional, state-centered notions of identity and loyalty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines community conflict over a proposal by the Match-e-be-nash-she-wish Band of Pottawatomie Indians to build a $100 million casino in a rural, culturally conservative county in southwestern Michigan. Conflict over the casino escalated in both scope and intensity over time until it involved local, state, and national governments. The paper examines the roles of various interests and actors in the conflict, focusing in particular on the activities of clergy and churches. Both ‘economic’ and ‘morality’ politics perspectives prove useful in helping us understand the complex dynamics of the casino struggle. The paper provides useful insights concerning (1) the role of people of faith in community conflict (2) the escalation of community conflict and (3) the impact of federalism on community conflict. The paper concludes with suggestions for future research related to the role of religious interests in community conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do national parliaments regain some of their influence over policy areas that have been lost to the European Union? National parliaments influence policy as it travels ‘upstream’ to the intergovernmental level or in the ‘downstream’ implementation process. This paper presents a model that demonstrates how national parliaments could strengthen their influence over European policy in the upstream stage by minimizing information asymmetries with their representative at the European level, the national government. The containment of agency losses in the upstream process is a necessary step toward regaining policy influence, but it is not sufficient. Downstream influence is also necessary. This paper uses principal-agent theory to explain why national parliaments establish European Affairs Committees (EAC) and illustrate EAC limitations. It presents a model for the strategic interaction between national parliaments and governments over European policy. The conclusion describes possible empirical tests of the model and gives suggestions for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To what extent has Japanese security policy been constrained by domestic norms and antimilitarism? How does the impact of domestic factors and norms compare to the effect of the external security environment? What theories best explain the past half-century of Japanese security policy, and what should we expect from Japan in the future? This paper makes three central arguments. First, the debate about the roots of Japanese security policy suffers from widespread misunderstanding about an important aspect of that policy: specifically, the level of Japanese military power. Scholars have either neglected to measure Japanese military power or have measured it superficially, fueling the misconception of Japan as ‘a military pygmy.’ Japan is no military pygmy; since the late 1970s Japan has transformed its military from a second-rate force to one of the world’s leading military powers. Second, constructivist theories–predicting that domestic antimilitarism will block major changes in Japan’s security policy–cannot account for this dramatic transformation. Third, the course of Japanese post-World War II security policy–both the period of meager defense effort and the period of vigorous military buildup–is consistent with a realist ‘free-riding’ strategy. This analysis has implications for international relations theory and the future of Japanese security policy. Antimilitarist norms have not prevented Japan from building a first-rate military. The fact that Japan accomplished this feat, in spite of a constitutional ban on military forces and widespread public opposition, should cast doubt on the power of domestic norms relative to other factors in security policy. Regarding U.S. foreign policy, this paper suggests that as long as Japan adheres to a free-riding strategy, it will not willingly build additional costly military capabilities or take on significant new roles within the U.S.-Japan alliance. Japan will deflect U.S. requests for significantly greater military contributions unless the United States reduces its military presence in East Asia, or unless other events cause Japan’s threat environment to deteriorate significantly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper gives an overview of results derived from a study of twelve Latin American party systems based on the 1997-98 Salamanca University survey among Latin American legislators. The dependent variables are four empirical specifications of programmatic party system structuration: the strength of political issue divides between parties; the extent to which such divides can be mapped on left-right divisions in the eyes of the politicians; the programmatic diffuseness of political parties on the issues that constitute the divides; and the congruence of policy preferences voiced by partisan politicians and their electorates. The paper shows that there is considerable diversity of programmatic structuration among Latin American coutries. This diversity can be explained better in terms of a theory of long-term learning of programmatic party competition than short term political experiences (such as those with dictatorship, economic development and reform, or democratic institutions). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses a specific type of deliberative policy analysis, viz. those that are to support the design of strategies for reflexive modernisation. It focuses on the consequences of the fact that, paradoxically, such design for innovations which include institutional reform, uavoidably takes place in an institutional arrangement that cannot be isolated from existing institutions. Drawing on several projects from a Dutch programme on sustainable lifestock systems (launched as a respobse to the animal food crises of the 1990s), the paper explores the implications of this problem. It draws lessons on more and less fruitful ways of dealing with them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper locates the British ‘New’ Labour government’s current ‘invest and reform’ startegy to improve the country’s public services - specifically health and education - in its wider historical, ideological and electoral context. Some think the stratgey is motivated by a neo-liberal desire to introduce private provision. The paper agues that it is rather an attempt to make the public services more efficient and responsive to individual needs - and that it is in line with earlier Labour attempts to construct a stable cross-class electoral coaliton in favour of a broadly social democratic agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the preferences of major political factions are likely to influence policy choice on security issues, the origins of these preferences remains unclear compared to those on foreign economic policy. This paper examines efforts to explain preferences on security issues using data on congressional roll call voting. A large body of quantitative research in this area concludes that ideology drives these preferences, and that constituency economic interests have little or no effect. Unfortunately, this literature conceives of economic interests in an unrealistically narrow way, and does not consider the possibility that these interests may shape the ideology of members of congress. Using data on Senate voting on foreign policy from 1947 through 2000, this paper presents evidence that Senators’ home states’ stake in the international economic order, as well as their stake in military spending, played an important role in shaping foreign and defense policy. Although liberal-conservative "ideology" also matters, its effects are more consistent with an interest-based vote trading arrangement than with a coherent set of ideas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to analyze Moldovan and Romanian foreign policy behavior(with emphasis on Moldova)at the United Nations between 1992-2001, from a neorealist perspective.It also is a study of small state diplomact in an international organization.Recent domestic political developments , such as the election of the leader of the Party of Moldovan Communists ,Vladimir Voronin ,to the Presidency of the country in 2001, has resulted in a new foreign policy concept that advocates a realignment of Moldovan foreign policy towards Russia, while at the same time maintaining a policy of neutrality or dealignment.The paper analyzes this development from both a theoretical and empirical point of view;first by discussing neorealism and Moldovan foreign policy concepts(1995 and 2002),and then by analyzing trends in Moldovan voting behavior in the UN General Assembly over the past ten years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analyzing public participation in policy making in terms of (a) the setting in which the deliberation takes place as well as (b) the particular staging of that exchange can enhance our understanding of the dynamics of policy deliberation. Portraying political processes as sequences of staged performances of conflict and conflict-resolution, always with a particular audience in place, the paper analyses how the design of the setting effects what is said, what can be said, and what can be said with influence. Drawing on an elaborate case study on regional planning, this paper aims to shed light on the ?performative? dimension of policy making. The analysis does not merely help to understand the failure of many participatory arrangements. It also gives a new perspective on policy learning and opens a perspective on how a policy deliberation may be conducted in a more democratic way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses a case study of the Iran-Contra affair to explore the relationship between framework legislation and the probabilities of success in presidential foreign policymaking. It tests the proposition, often claimed by presidents, their aides and their apologists, that there is a tradeoff between restraining executive prerogative and the efficacy of public policy. This paper concludes that in the case of the Iran-Contra affair, it was precisely the decision to rely on prerogative power and eschew the procedures mandated by framework legislation that ensured the failure of the president’s policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While a growing body of work provides empirical support for the notion that political leaders --substitute’’ foreign policies depending on a variety of domestic political and economic conditions, little work examines the underlying strategic causes of substitution. This paper argues that foreign states behave strategically in order to a) avoid becoming the targets of domestically troubled executives, or b) to take advantage of the domestic trouble another state endures. Such --strategic interaction’’ (Smith 1996, 1998) delimits the set of foreign policies reasonably available to leaders in trouble at home, thus producing the impetus for policy substitution. The paper develops a theoretical model of strategic behavior and policy substitution and reports empirical results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper outlines an institutional approach to the study of rebellions. It identifies and highlights the importance of three modes of substitutability: behavioral-routine, strategic choice, and institutional design. The first two sections lay out a conceptualization of rebel leaders as entrepreneurs who gather resource inputs (weapons, economic resources, human effort) and guide their transformation into behavioral outputs on the battlefield and at the negotiating table. Although they can substitute one input source or behavior for another, only certain configurations of inputs and outputs are sustainable over the long haul. Section 3 shows how these factors interact in a "configural" manner to define different "types" of rebel organizations Section 4 details a duplicitous negotiating strategy that might help explain the frequency of failed peace agreements. In section 5 rebel organizations in Eritrea (EPLF) and southern Sudan (SPLA) are used to illustrate two contrasting types of rebel organizations. Section 6 outlines a research agenda on the dynamics of civil wars and rebellions in which all three modes of substitutability play important roles. Finally, policy interventions that can enhance desirable modes of substitutability and limit the effects of dangerous ones in each stage of the sequence from peace to civil war to peace are discussed in the conclusion. Check author’s web site for an updated version of the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the assumption has always been that, compared to diplomacy or open military intervention, covert action is a quick, easy, and comparatively cheap way to accomplish certain foreign policy goals, in fact past covert operations have incurred significant financial, security, and reputational costs. The question this paper seeks to answer is why, despite the risks of increasing instability and mistrust of the United States, presidents decide to overthrow foreign governments? Drawn from a larger study of a structured, focused comparison of cases involving decisions both to use and not to use covert action from Eisenhower (Indonesia, Cuba, and Egypt) and Kennedy (Cuba, British Guiana, and Laos), this paper identifies the different causal mechanisms that can lead to a decision to use covert action. Decisions not to use covert action differed from the use cases in two key respects: first, policymakers conducted a thorough analysis of the available options and, second, and more importantly, the president was involved in the decision process. The decisions in the four use cases all involved the activation of schemas, which, in effect, overrode the normal process of policy evaluation. Thus, the non-use cases conformed to the rational choice interpretation of decision making, while the use cases showed the importance of individual differences. The cases also showed that the most important factor determining presidential involvement in the decisions was the degree of perceived risk; i.e., where there was a stronger chance of covert action leading to a confrontation with the Soviets, presidents were more involved and called for a more thorough analysis of policy options. The study found no support for the democratic peace hypothesis, or for the "CIA as rogue elephant" or the economic interests explanations of covert action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to develop a theoretical framework to explain the variation in the foreign policy of European states. It addresses the problem of cooperation in Europe and explores domestic reasons behind the variable foreign policies of certain European states with respect to the civil war in Yugoslavia. This paper attempts to bridge significant domestic values with systemic factors in its inquiry of the sources of foreign policy. The issues of recognition of Croatia and Slovenia and the military intervention in Bosnia determined the future of the former Yugoslavia. The examination of German and French policies with respect to these issues will show that domestic principles embedded in German and French nation-states influenced their foreign policy to a certain degree. Civic and ethnic principles, legally defined through citizenship and nationality, influenced certain aspects of foreign policy, such as the recognition of Slovenia and Croatia. Nevertheless, they are not as powerful with respect to participation in military intervention. The examination of these policies will show that perceptions of identity and security co-exist and influence foreign policy formation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding the relationship between globalization and security requires the analyst to look at not only the responses of the state to the transformation of the world ‘outside’ but also the transformation of ‘inside.’ This paper limits itself to analyzing the extent to which Turkey’s security discourse has been transformed in response to the impact made by globalization on security. In the first section, the paper seeks to tease out the conceptualization of security that has prevailed in Turkey during the Republican era by analyzing the security discourse of the policy-making elite. It is argued that Turkey’s security discourse has rested on an assumption of geographical determinism as well as a feeling of ‘distrust for outsiders’ and ‘fear of abandonment and fear of loss of territory’-the so-called Sevr’s syndrome. The second section identifies the extent to which Turkey’s security conceptualization has been reshaped in response to globalization. It is argued that the traditionalist elite in Turkey has responded to the impact of globalization by resorting to the language of ‘national security’ when addressing domestic problems with global dimensions. Yet, other segments of Turkey’s policy-making elite questioned this broadening of Turkey’s security agenda and opened a public debate on Turkey’s security conceptualization within the broader context of the process of Turkey’s bid for European Union membership. It is argued that this public debate itself could be viewed as an instance of ‘societal bargaining’ and transformation taking place within Turkey in response to globalization. The paper concludes by considering the extent to which Turkey’s security conceptualization fits textbook definitions of security, and whether its existing security discourse has the capacity to provide security in a globalizing world. Check author’s web site for an updated version of the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper aims to understand under what conditions the EU can set an international standard. It details the 1995 EU Data Privacy Directive and the reaction of the United States to it. The Directive has now become the de facto international privacy regime, binding US companies that do business with Europe. It thus becomes the first global standard that the US has been impacted by without having had input into its content. Given that the EU aspires to a greater role in transnational governance (White Paper on European Governance, 2001), what were the important factors necessary for the EU's success in this issue? This paper analyzes three different hypotheses that exist in the literature: 1) US government officials readjusting their views about the need for a comprehensive privacy policy after "communicative action" with the EU, 2) the successful threat of EU market exclusion backed up by the "shield" of the WTO exemption for privacy, and 3) US domestic interest groups trying to use the EU directive (gaiatsu) to accomplish a domestic agenda that they could not push through alone because of US domestic preference aggregation failure. The paper finds support for the third interpretation of the EU's success. For this reason, there may not be many other areas in which the EU can successfully project its regime preferences internationally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Network services reforms in the EU have stimulated a large new political science literature which tracks changes in national or sectoral institutional structures or policy making processes. This literature is strangely silent concerning the impact of these changes on the regulated firms. Taking its starting point in the telecommunications sector this paper examines whether the divergent administrative structures of Oftel and RegTP result in differences in market access and consumer protection in the German and UK telecommunications sectors. The paper concludes that these markets operate in a similar fashion because of the implementation of detailed EU directives. However, EU telecommunications directives do not regulate takeovers, which constitute a key aspect of telecommunications trade. Access to foreign telecommunications markets frequently takes place through takeovers. Divergent market structures in Germany and the UK shape very different perceptions of what an EU takeover directive should contain. Germany has changed some of its legislation to become more like the UK but these changes have made Germany more vulnerable to takeovers and to threats to its traditional ways of structuring its market. Germany’s new sense of vulnerability put a damper on Germany’s enthusiasm for an EU takeover directive while the UK wholeheartedly supported the proposal [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines whether political institutional factors - checks and balances that we proxy by utilizing data on veto gates and veto players - can help to explain cross national banking policy outcomes during the late 1990s. While controlling for the effects of economic variables as well as other political factors, we find checks and balances to be a robust and statistically significant explanation of banking reforms. Moreover, as expected, we find that the relationship between checks and balances and policy outcomes is non-linear. We also find that industry structure does not provide leverage for explaining policy outcomes. Check author’s web site for an updated version of the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prominent and influential theorizing suggests that rules of the political game explain major political puzzles and are solutions to diverse political problems. But this theorizing relies on the assumption that these institutions become insulated from exogenous factors, including those which led to their original adoption. To explain this, institutional theorists argue that institutions largely endogenize their own support through diverse mechanisms of positive feedback. This emerges as a key micro-foundation in the institutionalist project in political science. This paper argues that institutionalists offer two main models of self-perpetuation: "proactive" endogenization of support, characteristic of major social policies; and "defensive" endogenization, characteristic of technologies and diverse social conventions. Several prominent studies argue rules of the political game approximate the second model, since they are solutions to coordination problems. I argue these rules do not meet the criteria of either model. Because these rules are caught up in distributional conflicts and the costs of their revision is not that high, they remain dependent on conditions exogenous to the rules themselves. As such, wider socio-political contexts rather than institutions provide the predominant explanation of several major outcomes. The conditions which generate stability vs. change in rules of the game are stylized in terms of variations in levels of distributional conflict and power asymmetries. The paper concludes that this dependence of rules on exogenous conditions profoundly jeopardizes our ability to recommend rules of the game as solutions to problems in other countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In pursuit of the issue evolution of postwar American politics, and especially of its influence on the presidential vote, this paper asks what that influence would have looked like in a ?pure policy world?, that is, an environment in which policy preferences were the only influences on voting behavior. The paper begins with an exploratory consideration of postwar NES surveys by way of principal component (factor) analysis, seeking consistent and continuing measures of public preferences in four great policy realms: social welfare, international relations, civil rights, and cultural values. It moves to confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) of the resulting measures?AMOS is the specific program used here?testing them both within and across domains. And it constructs the vote itself in a parallel manner, so that vote analysis can proceed by means of structural equation modeling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper makes three key contributions to debates surrounding the effectiveness of democratic innovation, deliberation, and participation in representative political systems. In the first instance we argue that more attention should be paid to the role that participation actually plays in governance. We show that the burgeoning literature on democratic institutional design often neglects concern about the outcomes and effect of these designs on more traditional representative fora, at the expense of concerns about their internal procedures. Secondly we argue that despite limitations, replicable systematic comparison of the effects of institutional design is both necessary and possible even at the national level. We present a qualitative comparative analysis of 31 cases of National Public Policy Conferences (NPPCs) in Brazil. Finally, we show that popular deliberative assemblies that vary in their familiarity and their policy area of interest, and that organize their structure and sequence deliberation in different ways can be associated with differential effects on both option analysis and option selection stages of the policy process respectively. The paper proceeds by critically reviewing the relevant literature, presenting the data and describing its operationalization before explaining the different associations between NPPC designs and their effects on legislative activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I examine whether conditional transfers enjoy more support among non-beneficiaries than similar unconditional transfers, and whether\conditionality" has a greater effect on support for transfers when non-beneficiares perceive themselves as different from (potential) beneficiaries. The paper shows that what I refer to as the\otherness hypothesis" is compatible with crossnational survey data from Latin America that indicate that in countries where the poor and rich differ more along regional and ethnic lines, the greater is the resistance among the rich and white for redistribution. It also reports results from survey-experimental studies in Brazil that show that conditionality increases support for transfers only among the rich and/or whites, and has a much greater effect once respondents are primed to think about beneficiaries as different from themselves. Evidence also points to the fact that that priming based on region leads to much stronger increases on the effect of conditionality than priming based on race. Findings suggest that CCTs may help overcome resistance to redistribution in more heterogenous societies, which is precisely where resistance to redistribution tends to be greater. More generally, the paper makes the case that there is much to be learnt by exploring how individual preferences about government transfers vary with non-redistributive aspects of these policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A conference paper related to the impact of Child Welfare Waivers on the results for children in foster care to be presented at the 2014 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association on August 28-31, 2014. Topics discussed include public health laws and other federal funding to the children reducing the days in care and adoption, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services analyzing the reason for impermanency of children in placements, and health risks for children.

Collaborative governance has become a common theme in the literatures on environmental policy and the impacts of public administration and management on environmental governance. Research has addressed the structures and dynamics of effective collaboration and the perceived costs and benefits of this approach. However, a significant knowledge gap persists regarding whether collaborative efforts lead to improved environmental outcomes and the potential of collaboration to address existing regulatory limits and constraints. Public policy scholars have studied the limitations of iconic statutes such as the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act. These regulations based on a command-and-control approach have been criticized for being inefficient, expensive, inflexible and often, inadequate in addressing complex policy problems. However, a systematic analysis of the limits and constraints of the US environmental regulatory framework has not been undertaken to a large extent in the existing literature on collaboration. Further, the literature is limited in explicitly testing whether collaborative governance approaches such as public voluntary environmental programs (VEPs) can address the constraints of environmental regulations. The paper offers a conceptual framework to describe a type of limits and constraints of the US environmental regulatory framework. The paper analyzes the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative (GLRI)--a public voluntary environmental program lead by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), established in 2009 during the Obama Administration. Findings from the semi-structured interviews of GLRI participants and analysis of archival documents show that the GLRI has been largely a successful program in terms of achieving its objectives. The key characteristics that are attributed to its success are funding and bipartisan political support. The challenge of the GLRI, however, remains in terms of developing strong metrics to evaluate the outcomes of the GLRI and integrating climate change into its projects. The findings have important implications for practitioners, academics, and those interested in the evolving role of US federal agencies such as the EPA from being a regulator to a change agent developing creative solutions to address our contemporary environmental challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A conference paper is presented related to the importance given to gridlock and brinkmanship in the U.S. Congress. Topics discussed include partisan brinkmanship standoffs in the Congress related to government shutdowns and debt ceiling, a political party trying to convince the voting public that the opposition party is ineffective during elections, and the design of the U.S. Congress creating barriers for policy making with collective action.

Why do some countries have constitutional environmental rights while others do not? In this paper I conduct statistical analyses to respond to this inquiry. Through studying the impact of intraregional constitutional design, I aim to understand why states adopt environmental rights. I argue that regional isomorphism-that is, the tendency among states within a region to converge on certain policies-may explain the trend toward constitutionalization of environmental rights. In this paper I (1) define and provide historical background on environmental rights; (2) describe theories which support regional isomorphism as a means of explaining the adoption of constitutional environmental rights; and (3) conduct statistical tests to determine the validity of the regional isomorphism thesis. I find that the enactment of constitutional environmental rights within a region does not increase the likelihood that another state within the same region will include environmental rights within its constitution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

'Order' is a funny, fuzzy term in the international relations literature. While scholars have adopted many different definitions for the concept, most have not been clear on how their conception can be measured, how it can logically and empirically vary, and how it complements or clashes with alternative conceptualizations of the same term. In short, the literature on order in international relations is in a state of utter disorder. This paper aims to clean up the messy conceptual debate over what 'order' means in world politics. Drawing from both international relations (IR) theory and the literature on concept formation in the social sciences, it presents a new conceptualization of international order that seeks to address the shortcomings of its predecessors. More specifically, I present a 'two-step' conceptualization of international order that helps us both clarify and move beyond the stale debate between realism, liberalism and constructivism in IR theory. The first step establishes a baseline definition of what kind of behavior constitutes a state of order in the international system. The second step focuses on the 'stuff' that must be present to induce the behavior identified in the first step. I posit that while the three major approaches to order in the IR theory literature ultimately agree on the first step definition, they disagree on this crucial second step. The paper proceeds in four sections: First, I offer a first-step definition for order as patterned, equilibrium-perpetuating behavior among a particular system's units. That is, an ordered system induces its units to behave in ways that enable and reproduce the status quo. I then show how this definition broadly fits with how realists, institutionalists and constructivists already approach international order. Second, I demonstrate that the differences between these approaches come not in the first step definition but in the second. While realists emphasize material power forces bringing about this equilibrium-perpetuating state, liberals focus on the institutional environment and constructivists upon the presence of common ideas or identities across actors. Third, I develop my own second-step conceptualization, arguing that the 'stuff' of order can most usefully be conceptualized as the presence of 'observed rules' among an international system's units. Finally, I explicate the ways in which, in this new conceptualization, order could logically and empirically vary. I conclude by combining these elements to begin sketching a logically exhaustive typology of international orders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How does democratization affect environmental politics? This paper examines four polities in East Asia that run the full spectrum of political regimes from authoritarian (mainland China) to newly democratic (South Korea and Taiwan) to mature democracy (Japan). Surprisingly, the role of civil society and its relationship with government is found to be remarkably similar across the region in spite of the very different forms of government found in each of the four societies. This paper argues that while environmental advocates in democratic countries have access to more opportunities for activism than those in authoritarian countries, the main differences in environmental politics in the four polities has resulted primarily from the timing of their environmental movements. An interesting paradox revealed by the study is that places where environmental movements were linked to democratization movements (South Korea and Taiwan) led to the politicization of environmental politics, often hampering the ability of environmental activists to access government policy makers when compared to countries where there was no link between environmental advocacy and democratization movements (e.g. China and Japan). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that distinctive liberal traditions in France and Germany have been instrumental in shaping the two countries' policy responses to the post-2007 economic crisis. In France, a tradition of "neutralist liberalism" privileges a notion of individual equality before the law and aggregate social and economic welfare fostered by an activist state. In Germany, by contrast, a tradition of "corporate liberalism" is more pluralist in inspiration and emphasizes the economic powers and responsibilities of social and economic groups among which the state serves as a referee rather than as an architect of social and economic order. The paper traces the development of these liberal traditions and argues that they have shaped the character of the post-2007 turn to Keynesian policies designed to boost economic activity and create jobs. It argues further that both existing institutions of social protection and interpretations of the crisis by key political actors, themselves shaped by nationally specific variants of liberalism, have played central roles in fashioning these policy trajectories. It concludes that these outcomes are inconsistent with traditional rationalist or institutional accounts and calls for additional work on the role of ideas in shaping national responses to economic crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses three issues troubling predominant models of paradigmatic policy change and proposes an alternative perspective on the subject. The first issue pertains to the conflation of very specific, but difficult to operationalize, types of policy change in Peter Hall's standard three-order typology for understanding policy development. The second has to do with the view that exogenous phenomena, namely shifts in the locus of decision-making authority, are necessary for 'paradigmatic' change to occur. The third issue stems from Hall's strict adaptation of Thomas Kuhn's ideas concerning the (in)commensurability of succeeding paradigms. All three problems are shown to be derivative of the fact that policy change is more complex than often assumed in existing paradigmatic models. Instead of conceiving of policy change in definite or 'ordered' terms, it is argued that analytical focus should be directed toward the hermeneutic contest that unfolds as agents patch together ideas in the attempt to identify and explain the sources of policy problems. This largely discursive conflict takes place as agents vie to influence the authoritative definitions of problem-solutions in a process of 'policy bricolage'. The paper advances a revised and more actor-centered formula for understanding types of paradigmatic and intra-paradigmatic policy change by developing a more precise understanding of different types or 'orders' of policy anomalies and the role anomaly definition plays in the construction of new paradigms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Metaphors have much analytical purchase in the policy sciences - none more so than that of the notions of policy stages and multiple streams. Yet there are difficulties, even allowing for necessary parsimony, in applying these individual metaphors to policy processes. This paper attempts to combine metaphors about policy cycles and policy streams in order to provide a more realistic synthesis that can capture diverse factors such as changing governance norms, detailed program interventions and the sheer complexity of policy drivers - ranging from coalition building to 'garbage can' solutions. In doing so it examines the difficulties of mixing these two metaphors and the special difficulty of ascertaining how many streams should be conceptualised. We argue that three-stream models such as Kingdon's may be well suited to understanding one specific stage of policy-making but require augmentation in order to effectively interpret the full set of variables affecting processes and outcomes occurring through multiple stages of policy making. The paper proposes a five stream 'confluence' model which highlights the interactions between and among streams as a more effective metaphorical construction retaining the essence of the Kingdon 'stream' image while also incorporating elements of the 'cycle' or 'stages' one. The confluence model, it is argued, retains the basic thrust and vocabulary developed by Kingdon while offering a more comprehensive and relevant metaphor for capturing the dynamics of public policy-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we explore the influence of self-interest on people's policy preferences. Past research has found self-interest has little impact on political attitudes. However, many previous studies are limited by closed-ended survey data and objective measures of self-interest. To address these shortcomings, we conduct in-depth interviews to investigate people's subjective self-interest. The interviews show that people hold a number of beliefs about how policies will affect them personally, and that subjective self-interest influences policy preferences. Our research illustrates how people's perceptions of their self-interest can differ from objective measure of self-interest. The findings also provide evidence that subjective self-interest is not completely idiosyncratic or simply a rationalization for political attitudes. This paper highlights the importance of subjective self-interest, and illustrates the need for research into the origins of subjective self-interest and their impact on policy preferences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The surge of state adoption of policies to mitigate climate change in the late 1990s and 2000s appeared to be the first wave of an ongoing expansion of the use of policy tools such as carbon cap-and-trade in the absence of binding federal constraints. Horizontal, regional, and vertical diffusion all loomed as possibilities at the beginning of the current decade. Instead, a substantial number of states have rescinded earlier policy commitments, as have some Canadian provincial partners, raising the possibility of an unanticipated process of reverse diffusion. This paper examines this process and also considers the durability of three distinct regional cap-and-trade zones that were established with comparable intent but have met very different fates, including full-collapse, partial-collapse, and considerable durability. The analysis of these regional entities places particular emphasis on their political and institutional resiliency, their ability to be flexible through mid-course adjustments as new information emerges, and their capacity to build constituency support to counter opposition to cost-imposition. The paper also considers ways in which emerging changes in federal climate policy through executive branch action may create new incentives for state engagement with cap-and-trade and potentially reverse the process of reverse diffusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the relationship between quality of democratic governance and the judicialization of public policy. It is an attempt to go beyond the conventional argument that the policy "losers" (those that cannot achieve their policy goals through the traditional policymaking venues) are the ones who litigate. That argument oversimplifies how democratic governance operates and how it is linked to the phenomenon of judicialization. In contrast, this paper analyzes whether there are certain patterns in the way a democratic polity works that trigger the judicialization of policy issues. To that end, it unpacks the relationship between democratic governance and policy litigation by identifying and analyzing a set of four distinct yet interactive factors that can initiate processes of judicialization: political disadvantage, the passivity of the legislature, problems of state capacity and the opposition of the executive. To assess these factors as well as the loser argument, the paper develops a comparative qualitative analysis (QCA) of major conflicts that occurred in Argentina in the fields of environmental policy, consumer protection, health care and indigenous rights. After examining and comparing the processes by which these policy disputes reach the courts, the paper identifies three different patterns in how the quality of governance triggers policy litigation in Argentina. As the analysis of the Argentina case shows, this paper contributes in developing a theoretical framework to analyze the relationship between the quality of democratic governance and the judicialization of public policy processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Extending the veto player theory to semi-presidential regimes, this paper illustrates the dynamics of policy making in Taiwan's Ma Ying-jeou presidency. Semi-presidentialism is difficult to analyze in that the institutional veto players are usually vaguely defined, giving agenda-setters important roles to play. This paper shows that a veto player has the late-mover's advantage if he is allowed to revise a proposal. That explains why policies involving lawmaking gives Taiwan's Legislative Yuan considering bargaining power, even to the disadvantage of the president. The same logic implies that the president has a strong incentive to bypass the Legislative Yuan. The premier, encountering the president's policy initiatives and the Legislative Yuan's lawmaking power, is unlikely to be a dominant player. This paper exemplifies this dynamics by examining how the features of a policy affects its making in the first two years of Ma's presidency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how public policy is shaped by and shapes constructed notions of childhood and childhood sexuality in the regulation of young people's sexuality in Canada. I use the framework developed by Helen Ingram and Anne Schneider (Ingram and Schneider 1993; 2005; Schneider and Ingram 1997; 2005.; 2008) who argue that the state, through public policy, may solidify, perpetuate or change socially constructed groups, the identities of which have become so entrenched that they are thought of as 'natural'. Often, they argue, state actors through public policy not only reinforce the limits of political participation of target groups but also engage in a degenerative form of policy-making in which the manipulation of identities is used for political gain. In the case of dependents, while the rhetoric may express great concern for their welfare, they are not granted the freedom of responsibility and decision-making. The paper explores the chldren as a target population in the regulation of sexuality in several historic periods of the twentieth century including the recent debates and political process that resulted in the raising of the age of sexual consent to sixteen in Canada in 2008 and demonstrates that the constructed notion of childhood and childhood sexuality results in a targeted population of young people as dependents. As is often the case and demonstrated in this paper, there is no direct causal link between the proposed regulation of the targeted group and the ostensible purpose of the legislation which is to protect young people from sexual predators. Nevertheless, this constructed identity becomes of prime importance to political actors in persuading, influencing and bringing about concrete policy outcomes. At the same time the policy perpetuates 'natural' notions of childhood and childhood sexuality reinforcing dependent status on young people that enhances vulnerability, curtails responsibility and leaves them politically undermined. In the most recent period the manipulation of symbolic identities of children and youth for political purposes may fit the definition of a degenerative form of policy-making by the Conservative government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper looks at the effect of state capacity on the survival of democratic regimes that have recently transitioned from authoritarian rule. State capacity is conceived in terms of both resources at the state's disposal (government spending per capita and as a percentage of GDP) and effectiveness at implementing policy (quality of legal system and bureaucratic quality). My expectation is that higher levels of state capacity will increase both the odds and length of survival of new democratic regimes. I test this hypothesis using a Cox Proportional Hazard Model looking at new democracies in the years between 1984 and 2004. This paper contributes to the existing literature that shares the same central expection by testing the hypothesized link in a new way using some new measures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on the argument of the Blacksburg group of public administration scholars, this paper suggests that to make democracy work in the Constitutional Republic, public administrators have to expand "opportunities for direct citizen involvement in governance" (Wamsley et al., 1990; Wamsley & Wolf, 1996). Within this context, the public administrator plays the role of "collaborator in the public interest" (Goodsell, 2004), while the citizen becomes a "co-producer" of a product or service (Bovaird,2007). To test the viability of these arguments, the paper presents a case study of a collaborative project on community planning and visioning for the Town of Shenandoah, Virginia. The project was undertaken by the Office of Economic Development of Virginia Tech. where I worked as a graduate assistant in 2007-2008, with the participation of the Shenandoah residents, the representatives of the Shenandoah Industrial Corporation, the Town of Shenandoah, and Page County. The purpose of the project was to develop a roadmap for community revitalization and development that the citizens, governments, and other stakeholders would follow. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that the harsh interrogation techniques, abuse, and torture carried out by U.S. personnel in the war on terror were not merely the actions of a few bad apples at the bottom of the barrel. They were, rather, the result of policy decisions made by the Bush administration. The article will document attempts by military and civilian professional public administrators to have the policies changed before they were issued, during their operation, and after the abuse and torture had become public. That the policies were intended was demonstrated by the refusal of political leaders to change policies once the abuse and torture were called to their attention. The paper will conclude that the doctrine of command responsibility applies to the administration of the policies of harsh interrogation and torture, but that criminal prosecutions would be counterproductive to moving beyond this unfortunate episode in U.S. history and ensuring that such policies will not be repeated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Finnish National Election Study of 2003 revealed that in Finland most voters do not identify with parties and are selfdescribed as independents. In this article it is asserted that partisan attachments affect Finnish parties' optimal positions despite the large amount of independents. To show this, the paper is divided in two parts. In the first part voters' decisions are assumed to be deterministic. To show the effect of party identification under deterministic voting two different types of simulations are conducted; the partisan type, where the partisans' voting behaviour depends on their distance from the party and on a degree of partisan attachment, and the apartisan type where voting behaviour solely depends on issuepolicy distance. Results show that partisan attachments drive parties to adopt in general different optimal positions than they would if party competition was solely based on issuepolicy distance. In the second part of the paper, it is assumed that voters' decisions are probabilistic. Upon showing that party identification makes a voting model only based on distance significantly more fit, the predicted probabilities of party choice are computed. Results indicate that the probability that a voter will vote for a party is higher when the party is located at his optimal position according to the partisan than the apartisan type of simulations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]