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Following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, the European Union has attempted to reinforce its existing nascent capabilities to combat terrorism. The European Council adopted a comprehensive Plan of Action and reached political agreement on a number of important counterterrorism initiatives, including strengthening of Europol and Eurojust; and the introduction of a European Arrest Warrant. This paper provides a critical analysis of these key operational measures and reveals that the EU counterterrorism policy suffers from an implementation deficit, in large part due to the absence of genuine pro-integration thinking in the area of Justice and Home Affairs. A multitude of political, legal, and cultural challenges still need to be overcome in order to make the EU counterterrorism policy less of a paper tiger and more of an effective counterterrorism device. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A conference paper about momentary presidential leadership strategy is presented. It discusses a general theory of successful presidential leadership. It measures probable presidential influence on public opinion using a random sample of presidential policy statements from the pages of the "Public Papers of the President" from past U.S. presidents.

To what extent American cities are evolving towards a model in which their government is (or is not) adapting its structure to their growing Mexican immigrant population? What are the main factors for such transformation to take place? What is the role of the Mexican government in the process? This paper addresses these questions from two different perspectives, one local, and one transnational. From a local perspective, the paper addresses the government structure of the 14 most populated cities by Mexican immigrants. From a transnational perspective, the questions are addressed through the consideration of three stances: The use and acceptance of the Mexican Consular ID (Matrícula Consular) in an urban setting; the outreach activities of the Institute of Mexicans Abroad; and the motivations of the Mexican state governments in contacting directly U.S. local authorities regarding immigrant issues. Research for this paper suggests that some governments of American cities already count with (or have started a) structural transformation to address directly their immigrants? issues. The most important factors that lead to the creation of these offices are a strong and growing presence of foreign born population, high levels of community-based organization among immigrants, and the interaction of these organizations with some level of local government, like the Office of the Mayor or the City Council. Regarding the role of the Mexican government in the process, the interaction between different levels of Mexican government and local governments in the United States leads to the empowerment of the host society as a whole and, in particular, to the empowerment of the immigrant community. An important conclusion of this work is that the interaction between local and transnational politics explains different levels of empowerment of the home community in the host society. From a theoretical standpoint, this paper emphasizes the importance of incorporating research work on transnational politics into the mainstream research body of urban politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines public opinion towards the restriction or expansion of immigration in Canada, using data from the 2000 Canadian Election Study (CES). The paper is largely modeled on Citrin, et al (1997)’s "Public Opinion Towards Immigration Reform: The Role of Economic Motivations," although we make a methodological improvement that increases both the confidence of our results and our understanding of what drives not only opposition to immigration, but also for more immigration. In addition, we find that the variables explaining restrictionist opinions in the United States do not hold cross-nationally. Our methodological improvement is simple. Rather than using an ordered probit, we choose to use a multinomial logit. Because our three choices are exhaustive, we do not have to consider the irrelevance of independent alternatives. Thus, we can harness the principal advantage of the multinomial logit; namely, the independent measurement of the effect of each variable on each outcome. The model we use includes approximately 1200 respondents. Our initial results find that both personal and national economic evaluations are the principal factors causing opposition to immigration. This last significant result contradicts the American findings of Citrin et al. according to which personal economic circumstances play little role in opinion formation. In addition to challenging their main finding in regards to restriction, we generate a number of new findings on the factors influencing support for increased immigration. Most importantly, we demonstrate that these factors are not entirely symmetrical with the factors influencing support for decrease in immigration levels. Indeed, we find that national economic evaluations have much effect on support for decreased immigration, whereas it does not bear on support for increased immigration. Therefore our results demonstrate the value of employing a multinomial logit instead of an ordered probit in understanding public opinion towards immigration expansion or restriction. Moreover, the differences in significance of predictor variables between support for increase and decrease demonstrates that there can be various simultaneous processes at work in opinion formation on a single issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that out of the ?service learning? movement of the 1980s, a new form of scholarship is emerging known as the ?scholarship of engagement.? Engaged scholarship has two core components which are not fully captured by the concept of service learning: first, it includes other scholarly functions beyond teaching, including research; and second, it focuses on genuinely reciprocal collaboration with communities. This paper defines the scholarship of engagement, creates a taxonomy five forms of engaged scholarship, and documents practices associated with this movement. Informed by a problem-driven, pluralistic approach to engaged scholarship, this taxonomy suggests that the new forms of engaged scholarship each have important contributions to the civic renewal of American higher education, and together make up an exciting and growing movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main argument of this paper is that variation in state level institutions and local government administrative capacity are key factors in explaining the distribution of non-entitlement Community Development Block Grants (CDBG) in states. More specifically, we argue that local government capacity is positively associated with access to non-entitlement CDBGs, and decentralized state-level allocation institutions enhance access to these intergovernmental block grants as well. This paper provides a comparative institutional analysis of the allocation of non-entitlement Community Development Block Grants across four states: Texas, California, Kentucky, and Utah. We use probit, Poisson, and Tobit models to determine whether access to non-entitlement CDBGs is a function of variance in local government capacity and state-level institutional variation. We find that from 1999-2001, state institutions influence the odds of receiving a grant and the number of grants, but not the funding levels in dollars. These findings raise important questions about whether state administration of the non-entitlement CDBG program prevents local governments most in need of federal assistance from receiving federal assistance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the tension between raison d?état and morality that exists in US government humanitarian initiatives. It asks whether US humanitarian assistance overseas is truly based on needs alone through a detailed examination of one US agency dedicated to providing lifesaving emergency relief in situations of natural or man-made disaster ? the US Agency for International Development?s (USAID) Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA). The paper concludes that the majority of OFDA interventions are indeed driven by basic humanitarian need, though humanitarian interventions in conflict situations may serve as a replacement for a broader political engagement that addresses the conflict giving rise to the need for the humanitarian operation. However, in a small but significant number of instances, humanitarian aid, including assistance disbursed through OFDA, is strongly associated with US military intervention, with additional fiscal resources being mobilized through OFDA to respond to humanitarian needs during US military operations. In these situations (Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq) US humanitarian aid has been mobilized to respond to the humanitarian consequences of conflicts where the U.S. itself is a belligerent. This trend has been accelerated in US military interventions post 9/11. Finally, difficulties in the operationalization of the ?needs alone? concept mean that measuring the extent to which US humanitarian assistance, even in countries where the US military is not deployed, is genuinely targeted based on comparative needs remains a difficult challenge, and is an area requiring further research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The idea that the United States is going through a Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) rose from a marginal place in the realm of U.S. military thinking in the 1980s to a central role in studies of the future of warfare by the mid-1990s. However, the theory that the United States is in the process of a so-called Revolution in Military Affairs has fallen under intense scrutiny, as a wave of scholars have criticized the so-called "RMA" vision. This paper argues that the so-called RMA vision is misunderstood by critics and more relevant than ever for American military strategy. By viewing RMAs in their proper historical context, as a combination of both technological and, more importantly in many instances, organizational change, a more complete picture is revealed. The paper uses historical writings on the early-modern European RMA and studies of firm performance by business innovation scholars to create a more theoretically defensible definition of RMAs. The implications of this new analytical framework for studying developments in the American military over the last decade follow, along with some conclusions regarding the upcoming RMAs and the path for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the ways local governments accommodate Latinos in the new Latino destinations, as identified by Pew Hispanic Center and Brookings Institute, throughout the United States. The paper begins by examining the context of incorporation research, focusing on some of the broader individual issues such as the emergence of transnational lifestyles, the importance of social and economic networks and the impact of immigration on the lives of the children of immigrants. This is followed by a description of the research methods for collecting information about new Latino community local governments. The data regarding formal incorporation of Latinos in elected and appointed positions is then presented. The discussion of findings then centers on the various accommodation approaches embraced by these local governments. The paper concludes with the recognition that while formal incorporation of Latinos into the political process is limited, efforts by local governments demonstrate the desire, for the most part, to accommodate their nuevos residentes. [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]

This paper attempts to evaluate Bruce Ackerman?s theory of dualist democracy. He distinguishes two different decisions that may be made in a democracy. The first is a decision by the people themselves, which is designated as higher lawmaking that embodies the general will of the people; the second is a decision by government, which is designated as normal politics. The objective of Ackerman?s two-track theory of democracy is to resolve the tension between self-government and the rule law in American constitutionalism. I attempt to demonstrate that Ackerman?s idea of dualist democracy is a virtue-centric, populist, republicanism. His synthesis relies on the premise of the priority of self-government over the rule of law. It constitutes a solid alternative to the recent neo-Roman republicanism of Quentin Skinner and Philip Pettit, which emphasizes law-centric republican constitutionalism. The relevance of dualist democracy is explored via a contextualized analysis of the virtue-centric republicanism from Hannah Arendt to J. G. A. Pocock and Hanna Pitkin. Ackerman?s interpretation of the Federalist Paper as the main intellectual resource of his project is also examined. [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]

During the last decade the two largest democracies of the world, i.e., India and US have been constantly coming closer. Advent of satellite channels and beginning of economic liberalization program in India has generated a keen interest in U.S. affairs. US has become the hottest destination for Indian software professionals. Sociologists have been expressing deep concern regarding Americanization of Indian youth because of channels like MTV and Hollywood movies. 911 attacks on US and ensuing war on terror have been extensively covered and scrutinized by Indian media. Indian media has a love-hate relationship with US. On the one hand Indian media admires American democracy, entrepreneurship and rule of law, on the other it is portraying war on terror as hegemonistic design intended to turn international politics completely unipolar. While deepening commercial ties and joint military exercises between the two countries are being welcomed by all sections of media, certain quarters are vehemently critical of US attack and subsequent occupation of Iraq. The reason Indian government dithered, debated and ultimately decided not to send troops to Iraq can be attributed to media?s vociferous opposition. Bush administration?s unstinted support to Musharraf government in Pakistan is being termed by Indian media as the most glaring example of ?double standards? in war against terror. Indian media accuses that in spite of having full knowledge of terrorist camps in Pakistan, Bush administration has refused to take penal actions against Pakistan. This paper will deal with how media has covered America?s war on terror and what impact it has had on Indian public opinion and decision making process. The perception of Indian media regarding the burgeoning American hegemony in new world order will also be analyzed in this paper. The paper will make suggestions regarding what role media can play in bringing these two countries together in their mutual fight against terror. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Last summer, the Supreme Court handed down two landmark decisions regarding the use of affirmative action in higher education. In one case, Grutter v. Bollinger, the Court said it was constitutional to consider race in admissions decisions in order to achieve the educational benefits of a diverse student body. In stark contrast, the Court struck down in Gratz v. Bollinger the University of Michigan?s undergraduate admissions policy on the grounds that too much of the decision was based on race. Some scholars have suggested the Court has provided conflicting and confusing messages regarding the constitutional use of affirmative action in higher education. Others maintain that as this is the first time the Court has directly addressed this question since the 1978 Regents of University of California v. Bakke case (Ball 2000), these decisions will change admissions policies in undergraduate and law school programs across the country. This paper will not consider the meaning of the decisions or try to constitutionally reconcile their outcomes; instead, the focus of our analysis is to highlight how these decisions impact universities? admissions policies. This paper will use survey data and interviews to discover how institutions of higher education have responded to these two decisions. What changes, if any, have these universities made in their undergraduate and law school admissions policies? Why did the school make adjustments? How did they implement the changes? In this process, what pressures, if any, were exerted on the institutions and their Admissions Offices? This research will provide further insight on the relative power of the Court in the implementation of its own decisions. Regional differences in implementation and policy-making will also be highlighted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the political and economic dimensions of state takeover of local school districts in a theoretical framework that reveals the intergovernmental tensions evident in restoring local control after a contentious period of state intervention. Over the course of the past fifteen years, state takeover has generated not only the strongest resistance from local officials of any policy innovation to reinvigorate the performance of local education agencies within the American public education system, but also the most diverse set of results in the duration and extent of state involvement at the district level. What accounts for this variation? And, more importantly, what does the emergence of state takeover signify for the future of the intergovernmental system in the context of American public education? In this paper, the authors present preliminary findings from a national quantitative analysis of local school districts that have been subject to state takeover and have since regained local control, as well as empirical case studies of two states, Alabama and Kentucky, where state authorities have restored local control in at least eleven local school districts. An analytical consideration of the effects of state takeover on decision-making authority at the district level, fiscal and resource allocation, and the consequences of local capacity and local culture demonstrates that 1) local autonomy is conditional based on acceptable performance as defined by the state, 2) the sequential progression of state takeover in reforming the mode of local governance as well as the variable nature of duration necessitate more consideration by policymakers seeking to enhance performance accountability, 3) economic factors may have less to do with the return of local control than politics, and 4) the significance of unemployment and debt measures in contributing to the duration of state takeover has the potential to fundamentally reshape our understanding of intergovernmental relations and state policy leadership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars interested in the link between economic and military interests have asked whether trade follows the flag. Studies in this vein tend to examine the causal relationship between trade flows and diplomatic relations as measured through conflict or alliances. While informative, this formulation of economic interests neglects a vital--and extremely significant--aspect of US economic power: financial capital. In this paper we analyze the relationship between overseas asset flows and diplomatic relations, as estimated through US troop deployment. As both US financial flows and US military presence spread throughout the world, it is quite timely to untangle the causal arrow and illuminate whether economics guides politics or vice versa. In this paper, we explore the nature of the relationship between troop deployment and asset flows. Are financial flows and US military presence substitutes, as both serve to protect and expand the US national interest? Or, in contrast, does the US military ?stand guard? over vital economic interests, ensuring both economic and political stability within a state? This paper tests each hypothesis, utilizing both granger causality as well as an instrumental variable technique to determine not only the direction of causality between these economic and political variables, but also whether or not diverse financial flows similarly impact US troop deployment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines what can happen to judicial confirmations once they receive home-state senator approval and start down the road to confirmation. It begins by exploring the different ways in which judicial confirmations may be delayed once they reach the Senate. This paper then turns its attention to a key mechanism of delay, the use of ?holds? placed on confirmations once they reach the Senate floor by individual senators. This paper begins its analysis of the ?hold? by examining the historical use of holds and its present-day incarnation, and it ends by investigating all holds that have been applied to Circuit Court nominees between 1987-2002 (100th-107th Congresses), and assessing their application as well as the underlying reason for each usage. Strikingly, it finds that much of the delay and obstruction which mark the modern-day lower court confirmation process is not due to ideological opposition but rather is a function of nominees being used as bargaining tools in unrelated disputes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The creation of social movement organizations is considered one indicator of the development of a social movement. In the case of the U.S. women?s movement, new formal and informal organizations became the basis for a burgeoning activism on the national and local level focusing both on policy change and altering societal norms. Traditional social movement theory views social movement activism and the creation of social movement organizations as occurring outside of the formal boundaries of government. In this paper I argue that such a view is incomplete. Feminists within the state played an important role in the initial mobilization and organization of the movement that far exceeded their numbers within the growing movement. Moreover, their mobilizing activism was not limited to organizations within the state, professional organizations that focused only on their occupational interests or bureaucratic organizations (that is, formal organizations with division of labor, hierarchies and professional staff). Rather, feminist activists who worked within government bureaucracies emphasized the importance of organizing outside of government and some encouraged collectivist, nonhierarchical organizational structures focused on a wide range of feminist issues. The paper relies on interview and archival data to examine the role played by feminist bureaucrats in creating feminist organizations during the first phase of the women?s movement (1964-1975). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will use the mass media theory of framing to assess three major Japanese newspapers-Yomiuri, Asahi and Mainichi -editorials (694) concerning Japan’s homeland security from 9/11/01-2/29/04. Based on the kinds of topics addressed by the editorials surveyed, I utilized five frames - national interest, cost/consequence, threat, responsibility and human interest. This period was selected because it includes 9/11, the attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq, new Japanese legislation related to homeland security and anti-terrorism, PM Koizumi’s historic visit to North Korea, the killing of two Japanese diplomats in Iraq and finally the dispatch of more than 1000 ground, air, maritime SDF forces to Iraq for humanitarian and reconstruction assistance. The paper concludes by discussing the significance of this data for future Japanese homeland security. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When the charter for the Second Bank of the United States ended in 1836, the federal government discontinued the issuance of paper currency and handed over banking regulation to the state governments. The Legal Tender Acts of 1862, National Currency Act of 1863 and National Banking Act of 1864 reestablished a unified national currency which eventually became the greenback we use today. While these acts were passed during the Civil War, this paper argues that currency unification was not solely a function of wartime necessity. The pervasive acceptance of the national currency in the 1860s and 1870s can be linked as much with micro and macroeconomic interests evolving from the integration of product and capital markets in the mid-1800s, driven by technological advances in transportation and communications in the 1840s and 1850s, as it can with fiscal and security needs during the war. The case provides at least some purchase on linkages today between technology development, market globalization and international rules development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the functioning of the governing system of the United States by analyzing distributional outcomes from 1947-2000. The key question of this paper is whether public policy influences distributional outcomes. The macro politics model of the U.S. governing system (Erikson, MacKuen, and Stimson 2002) and the power resources theory of welfare policy (Huber, Ragan, and Stephens 1993) suggest that left policies should equalize the distribution of income. I utilize single equation error correction models to assess the impact of policy on income inequality through two mechanisms ? market distortions and redistribution. Since nearly every government action influences markets in some way, I examine policy in the aggregate rather than focusing only on policies explicitly designed to redistribute income. The analysis indicates that policy influences inequality through both mechanisms, with left policy producing more equality. The results are consistent with power resources theory and strongly support the macro politics model by demonstrating that political choices are an important determinant of distributional outcomes. Furthermore, I find that market distortion is as important as, and works in tandem with, explicit redistribution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the appointment of conferees in the United States Senate during the 101st-107th Congresses. The paper looks for evidence of strategic appointments as predicted by different theories of lawmaking. Using a count model, the study finds little support for partisan appointments in the Senate. Rather, seniority seems to driving the conference selection process in the Senate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to extend the attitudinal model to federal trial courts while empirically testing the claim that legal variables have little, if any, explanatory power. The attitudinal model?s adherents have limited its applicability to the United States Supreme Court because the High Court faces fewer constraints than do lower courts, but this limitation downplays the extent to which subordinate courts, in practice, may exercise discretion. When trial judges have opportunities to exercise discretion legitimately and under deferential standards of appellate review, they operate under conditions not all that different from those upon which the attitudinal model is premised. Furthermore, if judges? policy preferences can predict decision making at lower levels of the judicial hierarchy as well as at its peak, then it would become possible to develop more robust quantitative models of judicial behavior. This paper looks to develop a fuller model of trial court decision making through quantitative analysis of factors affecting trial judges? rulings on the admissibility of scientific or other technical expert testimony. Can admissibility rulings, for which trial judges receive substantial deference from superior courts, be explained primarily as a function of judges? ideology? Does the threat of reversal on appeal affect trial judges? decision making? And what impact does a change in legal rules?the Supreme Court?s assignment of more assertive gatekeeping responsibilities to trial courts in Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals (1993)?have, ceteris paribus, on trial judges? willingness to admit expert testimony? I find mixed evidence to support the claim that trial judges? ideology, measured in terms of the partisan coalition responsible for seating those judges, can predict their decisions concerning admissibility of expert testimony. I also find some support for the claim that Daubert had an effect on trial judges? willingness to admit such testimony. At the same time, however, I find no evidence that the outcomes of admissibility rulings are affected by the prospect of reversal by a superior court. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers whether constitutionalism presupposes the existence of a ?people.? After reviewing some of the relevant literature, the paper makes three claims. First, there are multiple varieties of constitutionalism. Only those varieties that aim at self-government presuppose the existence of a people, and not all constitutions need have that goal. Second, there are multiple conceptions of self-government which correspond to different conceptions of what a ?people? is. Third, there is a plausible version of constitutional self-government that presupposes only modest conditions for the existence of a people. In particular, it presupposes the right to travel, a common discourse, and a widely (though not unanimously) shared sense of mission, but it does not presuppose shared values, character, ethnicity, or (except in a very thin sense) heritage. These conditions are probably satisfied within the United States. The paper therefore concludes that it is possible to interpret American constitutionalism as an effort to secure a form of self-government that does presuppose the existence of an American people, but that does not presuppose the existence of shared American values, an American character, or an American ethnicity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract OLD STANDARDS AND NEW PRACTICES OF GOVERNING: FEDERALISM AND RIGHTS PARADIGMS AND THE RISK-MANAGEMENT REGIME This paper will address the questions: Is American politics undergoing changes in its constitution and practice? If so, what is the nature of the new constitutional structure and administrative practices for governing America? How has the judiciary reacted to the new constitution and administrative practices? The thesis of the paper is that the Supreme Court?s current federalism and rights interpretive paradigms developed for the Progressive and New Deal ways of governing the American regime. These paradigms addressed the problems of the proper allocation of governmental police power and individuals? rights when federal and state governmental exercise powers primarily use regulation to suppress social and economic misbehavior. However, as reconstituted by the New Right, more and more frequently federal and state governments have sought to manage future behavior of populations and contain sociopolitical risks through policies such as warning labels, public notification of the risks posed by released offenders, the surveillance and detention of ?risky? persons, and the devolution of governmental functions to the private sector. Using U. S. Supreme Court opinions, the paper will argue that though the justices clings to traditional modes of constitutional federalism and rights discourse, they have granted legitimacy to changes in governing that forward the reconstitution of the American regime as a risk prevention and risk management regime in which governing is shared with corporations and risk-bearing individuals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper evaluates the extent to which differing regional and individual stakes in the world economy influence public opinion about the world role of the United States, and American military spending. Theoretically, Americans who are better positioned to take advantage of opportunities for international trade and investment underwritten by the active world role of the United States should be more willing to pay the costs of maintaining that world role, including supporting military spending, which is the most expensive component of American global activism. Data from the American National Election Studies finds partial support for this argument, but also uncovers a surprising anomaly concerning support for military spending since 1980. The paper offers a preliminary test of one possible explanation for this anomaly using two additional sources of data on attitudes toward military spending from the 1950s and 1960s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the United States is commonly thought to be long on power (e.g., political, economic, cultural, technological, etc.), its citizens remain short on the competencies (i.e., knowledge, skills, and attitudes) needed to be responsible and effective members of a global community. Taking this paradox of global competency and power as my starting point, this paper examines one unique effort to use online technology and an interdisciplinary pedagogical approach to educate young people for global citizenship. Specifically, this paper presents ?The Global Challenge,? a three-credit hour interdisciplinary course on global issues required since Fall 2001 of all freshmen at Fairleigh Dickinson University. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

OVERVIEW: Ten years after the failure of President Clinton?s ambitious attempt to overhaul the U.S. health care system, a growing number of policymakers, clinicians, employers, insurers, and patients are renewing the age-old argument that comprehensive reform is urgently needed. My paper examines how events over the last decade have led to the new health care crisis in America. DATA SOURCES: The paper illustrates how health inequalities in the U.S. are exacerbated by our nation?s beleaguered, patchwork system of health care: (1) Based on data from the Census Bureau, the paper shows how lack of health insurance has become as much a ?working class? and ?middle class? phenomenon as it is a ?poor? one; (2) Based on data from the Kaiser Family Foundation, the paper shows how the costs for employers and employees who have health insurance are increasing at their fastest rate since the early 1990s; (3) Based on data from the American Bankruptcy Institute, the paper shows how health care problems?lack of health insurance, insufficient health insurance, and/or substantial medical problems?have become the single leading cause of personal bankruptcy in the United States; (4) Based on data from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), the paper shows how the government?s primary health insurance programs?Medicare for the elderly and disabled, SCHIP for children, and Medicaid for the poor?are experiencing considerable financial strain; (5) Based on my personal interviews with key policymakers and senior staff (many of whom have only recently gone on record), the paper includes a reexamination of Clinton?s failure at health care reform. Interviewees include: Clinton?s Health Care Communications Director, Bob Boorstin; Chief of Staff to former Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole, Sheila Burke; Director of Clinton?s Health Care Transition Team, Judy Feder; former White House Chief of Staff and Director of OMB for President Clinton, Leon Panetta; Senior Economist for the Clinton Health Care Task Force, Sherry Glied; former Senator from Nebraska, Bob Kerrey; former CBO Director, Robert Reischauer; former Chair of Ways and Means, Dan Rostenkowski; former Treasury Secretary, Robert Rubin; current CMS Administrator, Tom Scully; former CEA Chair, Laura D?Andrea Tyson; and former Chairman of Prudential Insurance and Chair of the Business Roundtable?s Health Subcommittee, Robert Winters. CONCLUSION: The paper concludes with a brief overview of the leading proposals for solving the problem of the uninsured that have recently emerged. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the relationship between the Mexican government and the organized Mexican immigrant community in the United States from a historical perspective and within a framework of transnational politics. We argue that transnational relations between the Mexican government and Mexican immigrants in the United States are not new; however, these relations vary across time depending on political and economic circumstances that involve U.S.-Mexico relations. These historical links have provided the basis for the existence of current organizations of Mexican immigrants in the United States as well as the recent creation and development of the Mexican government?s institutions to manage this relationship. In recent years, we identify a change in Mexico?s traditional approach to migration issues in the bilateral agenda, as well as a shift in the relationship between the Mexican immigrant communities and the government. The process of institutionalization of this new relation began with the Program for Mexican Communities Abroad (PCME, in Spanish) in 1990, and was strongly consolidated in 2003 with the creation of the Institute of Mexicans Abroad (IME, in Spanish). We argue that the IME is the first Mexican governmental transnational institution in the history of relations between the Mexican government and the Mexican community in the United States. As such, we explore some of the challenges it faces in order to achieve its objectives and exert influence in American ethnic politics. In the first part of the paper we present a theoretical overview about the historical perspective of transnational politics. The second part offers a historical account of the development of the transnational relations between the Mexican government and the organized Mexican immigrant community in the last 156 years. In the third part, we analyze the challenges faced by the IME and its potential influence in American ethnic politics. Finally, we conclude with a section of remarks from both theoretical and empirical standpoints. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Content analysis of major national newspapers can help answer the question of why elites think the way they do. What discourse about war is in the public sphere, from which an elites might draw an opinion? My paper discusses the results of a content analysis of major newspapers in the United States, Pakistan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. These newspapers have the highest readership rates for their respective states, lending them a broad influence. My universe of samples includes all editorials commenting on the justness of the causes of the Iraq war in 2002 in the six months prior to the conflict’s outbreak. While providing longitudinal depth, this parallel will also suggest whether the political atmosphere of the times influences moral judgments. The paper addresses the question of what belief systems are used in the public discourse. These belief systems will be classified into several types, including Westerna nd Islamic just war theories, secular moralism, realism and collective security. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that for white elites in the late-nineteenth century U.S. South, race was partly constructed as and through wage labor relations between landowners and sharecroppers. This construction was premised on an account of wage labor as a ?status contract?: as a contract that created a hierarchy of personal dependence between the contracting parties. The paper uses this as a starting place to consider the relation between the free labor conception of wage labor and the concept of race. This latter conception, by which dependent hirelings were reconceived by free labor advocates as "self-governing" laborers, gained prominence only in the late 1880s and 1890s. In so far as it directly challenged the idea that working for wages entailed dependence, this view also, though perhaps inadvertently, challenged racial constructions premised on such dependence. The paper argues that the increased attention to scientific biological accounts of race in the same period should be seen against the background of this subterranean shift. The paper concludes that to understand the relation between race and labor we must be very attentive to historical shifts in the meaning of each. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Power resources theory leads us to expect the working and lower classes to carry the battle over distribution beyond the sphere of industrial relations into the (welfare) state sphere. Moreover, most political theory (e.g. of rational choice and of interest-group and voting behavior) and welfare-state theory classically proceeds from the assumption that individual and group actors will act politically in line with their material interest. Finally, in policy research on democratic systems, public opinion is often assumed to translate into public policy. In each of these research paradigms, a theoretical enigma is constituted by the fact that the working and lower classes in the US have not mobilized politically for a redistributive welfare state. Working-class mobilization has been neither the sole nor a necessary factor for welfare state formation in advanced industrial countries, yet in all others the working classes did mobilize for a welfare state (independent of their degrees of success), and hence the question of the failure of the US working classes to do so calls for explanation. This paper first empirically scrutinizes and partially rejects the prevailing explanation, dating from Sombart, that favorable historical circumstances rendered working-class mobilization for a redistributive welfare state unnecessary in the United States. It then weighs historical-sociological, political-cultural and state-structural explanations of workers? failure to mobilize politically for a redistributive welfare state in the US. It finds that working-class consciousness did not develop strongly in the US, both because individual, ethnic and religious identities were most often stronger than class identities (and elites were effective at manipulating these identity-based divisions), and because class identities per se were antithetical to US political culture. Moreover, not only was working-class consciousness weak; attempts at political engagement for redistributive goals were impeded both by the historical-sociological lack of other motivating collective identities (nationhood), and by formidable institutional hurdles such as the peculiar US franchise (district-based, majoritarian, racially discriminatory and plutocratic) and the lack of an addressable state (late, decentralized, fragmented and patronage-based). For these reasons, US workers only rarely and weakly fought for social citizenship rights or redistribution, and when they did, lacked the strength to overcome these mobilization hurdles. Instead, they supported non-redistributive elite policies aimed at the welfare goals of securing individual economic opportunity (through low taxes, minimal labor and environmental regulation and aggressive foreign economic policy), individual self-sufficiency (through high commodification of benefits and low benefit levels in non-contributory schemes), decent living standards for the ?deserving? poor (through homesteads, disability, Aid to Dependent Children, EITC, Social Security and Medicare), and rewards for service to the state (through the warrior welfare state and ADC). The paper concludes by calling for more attempts at complex causal explanation, and for giving more weight in particular to the social bases and political-cultural framework of institutional development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is the first in a larger project to estimate Congress-Administrator-President (CAP) scores, or ideal point estimates for federal cabinet secretaries, presidents, and members of congress on a common scale. In this paper, we present ideal point estimates for labor secretaries, presidents, and members of the Senate from 1991-2002. Two sets of estimates have been generated: (a) single-congress W-NOMINATE estimates with bootstrapped standard errors (Lewis and Poole 2004), and (b) Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods in a Bayesian framework (Clinton, Jackman, and Rivers 2004; Martin and Quinn 2003). Administrative positions have been constructed through a content analysis of congressional testimony in which an administrator expresses a position on a bill submitted to a roll-call vote in the current Senate session. Results indicate that most labor secretaries have ideal points distinct from their appointing presidents, questioning the assumptions of much of the theoretical literature on the executive branch. Also, using the CAP scores for labor secretaries and senators, we examine the effect of secretary preferences on the allocation of distributive policy projects. We find that the distances between the labor secretary and senators of the same party (Republican) in the 107 th Congress are directly related to the amount of labor department funding allocated to the senator?s state: the further the secretary?s ideal point is from senators of her own party, the less those senators receive in labor outlays. The implications are that the preferences of unelected officials have a direct impact on policy outcomes in Congress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The question that drives this paper is why some school districts decide to open up charter schools and others do not. The answer to this question may involve a number of different theories. In this paper we explore three theories: 1) entrepreneurial initiative; 2)structural explanations; and, 3) spatial competition. We use data on the state of Wisconsin derived from extensive case studies of 19 charter schools and quantitative data on Wisconsin school district from state files and the U.S. Department of Education common core data bases. We find evidence to support all three explanations for why districts “go charter.” First, in almost every school and district we visited for case studies, at the heart of either the district or the charter school, and often both, there were entrepreneurial administrators, school board members, teachers, or parents. Our evidence was anecdotal but very consistent across 19 case studies. Second, there are two general sets of structural characteristics that were shown to be quantitatively correlated with becoming a charter district. The first were resource characteristics (size, federal revenue, and for suburbs available seats); the second were indicators of unmet students needs (the percent of students eligible for free lunch). Finally, we argued and believe we provided significant evidence that competition is also a motivation for going charter. We posited and the data supported that open enrollment and charter schools are working together to enhance the flows of students from home schooling, private schools, dropouts, and from other public school districts into charter school districts. Thus using several different indicators and models, estimating either which districts become charter districts, or the flow and net gain directly from open enrollment, there is no question that charter schools are increasing competition for students in Wisconsin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent scholarship explains the impact of Supreme Court precedent on state supreme courts primarily as a function of the typical political preferences of state supreme court justices, the institutional mechanisms governing retention of those justices, and the state?s recent history of conflict with the U.S. Supreme Court, but not the characteristics of the original Supreme Court decision (Comparato and McClurg 2002, 2003). While this research provides interesting evidence on the sources of judicial impact at the lower level, it contradicts the emphases found in a number of case studies (Beavers and Walz 1998; Manwaring 1968; Vines 1965). Additionally, this research operates under the assumption that the mechanisms impacting the state supreme courts are homogenous across states. In this paper, we directly confront the disjoint between qualitative and quantitative work on the sources of judicial impact courts by taking advantage of a ?middle-N? strategy. Specifically, we will use the logic of diversity-oriented research and qualitative comparative analysis as a way of analyzing the relationship between state institutional factors, legal characteristics of Supreme Court decisions, political characteristics of the state and the Supreme Court that influence the decisions of state supreme courts. In this paper, we examine twenty-five different state supreme court cases that cite Illinois v. Gates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Broadly defined, affirmative action encompasses any measure that allocates goods ? such as admission into universities, jobs, promotions, public contracts, business loans, and rights to buy and sell land ? on the basis of membership in a designated group, for the purpose of increasing the proportion of members of that group in the relevant labor force, entrepreneurial class, or university student population, where they are currently underrepresented as a result of past or present discrimination. The programs involved vary substantially across countries, regarding the identification of their intended beneficiaries (ethnic, national, or racial groups held to be economically or socially disadvantaged, aboriginal peoples, women, people with disabilities, war veterans?), the form of the programs involved (quota/non-quota), the level of the legal norms from which they derive (constitutional, legislative, administrative), and their domain of implementation (whether restricted to the public sector or not). Drawing from previous research on the United States (« Judicial Uses of Subterfuge: Affirmative Action Reconsidered », Political Science Quarterly, 18 (3), 2003, p. 411-436) and France (« Affirmative Action at Sciences Po », French Politics, Culture, and Society, 20 (3), 2002, p. 52-64), the paper will compare affirmative action programs in the United States, India, Malaysia and South Africa, considering each of these four parameters and the relations between them. It will focus both on the intended results and on the different side effects of the policies and of the justifications advanced on their behalf. In particular, I shall argue that in India and Malaysia, reducing the inequality in the distribution of social goods between the different groups involved is not conceived as partaking of the more utopian project of reducing the saliency of group boundaries within the nation-state. Giving communities their proportional share of social benefits is not supposed to lead to the blurring of the lines that keep them separate from each other in private, non-allocative spheres. In the United States and in South Africa, on the other hand, the connection between affirmative action policies equalizing patterns of economic distribution among various ascriptive groups and the ideal of societal integration is a much stronger one. This is reflected in the definition of the social outcome whose attainment would justify the eventual termination of affirmative action programs. In India and Malaysia, the proportionality criterion provides an obvious « focal point » in this respect, generally acknowledged as such. In the United States ? and, to a lesser extent, in South Africa ?, proportional representation is emphatically rejected as a distributive principle, even though it arguably operates covertly at the policymaking level, by providing the benchmark against which « discrepancies » and « deficiencies » will be identified and compensated for. Last but not least, the paper will distinguish among affirmative action regimes according to their degree of internal differentiation, attempting to account for the highly specific configuration found in India, where members of the group generally considered as the most disadvantaged ? the Untouchables ? are being granted some kind of preferential treatment also in relation to the policy?s other beneficiaries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is about the foreign policy thinking of neoconservatives, a group that distinguishes itself from others with its pessimistic outlook about world affairs and its belief that the U.S. should spread its values and ideals to the rest of the world, by unilateral force if necessary. This paper argues that the neocons? imperial project of imposing American values (especially democracy) on the world in general, and the Middle East in particular, has certain limits. The most important limits are related to the nature and character of American society, politics, and government. Moreover, people on the receiving end of U.S. power may be ambivalent towards American values and ideals. In order to illustrate these points, I draw on the example of post-war Iraq. It has become clear in Iraq that the neocons overestimated the capacity of the U.S. for nation-building which is a necessary condition for building an empire and establishing a decent democracy. Neocons also underestimated the cultural difficulties involved in transforming the political landscape of Iraq and the Middle East. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper charts the evolution over the last half-century of how the Republican party has increasingly used the economy in its campaign appeals. Two dimensions are examined: agenda-setting (how prominent the economy is relative to other concerns) and framing (whether positions on specific issues are rhetorically linked to the economy). Despite embracing similar positions, the initial part of the paper shows, Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan defended them in different ways, with Reagan elevating economic matters in his agenda-setting and framing. An analysis of the party?s platforms from 1948-2000 shows that the rhetorical differences between Goldwater and Reagan were representative of the party?s approach in their respective eras. The analysis then turns to Republican governors? state-of-the-state speeches, with the sample chosen to include similarly matched years of both strong and weak economic performance. During the period under study the governors greatly increased the use of the economy in their agenda-setting and framing, a finding that applies to both the strong and the weak years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Does the allocation of ?pork? projects to constituents affect legislative position-taking? Are legislators who deliver substantial amounts of federal largesse more likely to diverge from their campaign opponents and from their constituency medians? Three competing, though overlapping, literatures are examined in this paper: valence theories of position-taking, trust theories of position-taking, and marginality theories of position-taking. These three literatures lead to competing predictions in terms of the extent that legislators deviate from their constituencies and diverge from their campaign opponents given the extent of valence advantages available to incumbents. Examples of valence advantages are numerous (e.g., charisma, constituency service), though we measure an incumbent?s valence advantage as the extent of federal project outlays distributed to a legislator?s constituency. The marginality hypothesis suggests a linear and negative relationship between project allocations and legislator deviation from the district. The trust hypothesis also suggests a linear relationship, though in a positive direction. The valence hypothesis suggests a nonlinear relationship, where increased levels of project allocations at first lead to more legislator convergence toward the median, but eventually lead to more legislator divergence from the median. These competing expectations are tested by examining candidate convergence data from the 1996 U.S. House elections and data on senator divergence from their states? median voters during the 104th-107th Congresses. One key contribution of this paper is the creation of ideal point estimates of legislators and constituency medians on a common scale using MCMC ideal point estimation techniques. The findings are that valence theories are demonstrated when examining incumbent divergence from the constituency median, though these theories are not demonstrated when examining candidate divergence from one another. In addition, we also find that the extent of project outlays (though not deviation from the constituency median) is related to the margin of victory for legislators. The deviation from the constituency median, and not the extent of project outlays, is directly related to the likelihood of winning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that, in conjunction with relative power, ideational changes in US nationalism explain long-term variation in American democracy promotion strategy, including its most recent iteration in the Bush administration. The paper concludes by using this perspective to critique the neoconservative approach to extending liberal values and instituions in the international system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As events in Iraq and Afghanistan illustrate, occupations confront both opportunities and obstacles in their pursuit of democratic nation-building. Military conquest would appear to be a promising moment for the wholesale transformation of political, social, and economic institutions. As occupations wear on, however, obstacles to nation-building become more apparent. This paper contributes to discussion about what conditions constrain the reforms in concurred nation. Previous studies have focused on how the broader geopolitical context, prewar economic and political legacies of the concurred nation, or the administrative structures of occupation authorities impact postwar reconstruction. Although these are important factors, I focus on an additional source of constraint: the interplay of domestic political forces within the occupying nation. As a case study of occupation politics, this paper examines the impact of domestic U.S. interest groups on the American occupation of Japan after World War II. I find significant evidence of U.S. interest group activity in health policy during the occupation of Japan. At war?s end, U.S. officials envisioned a comprehensive reform that would bring together Japan?s patchwork system of public health insurance into a single national program. Although the plan received support from key Japanese interests and health policy experts, efforts to promote universal health insurance stumbled because of opposition back home in the United States. Ultimately, domestic U.S. opposition to occupation policies helped foreclose a comprehensive reform of the Japanese health insurance system. Although this paper is broadly instructive about the political constraints on occupation, I am also motivated by a keen interest in the two countries studied here: Japan and the United States. Scholars of Japanese health care and Japanese social policy more generally have noted the patchwork quality of the system: a complex mix of public insurance programs that affords universal coverage yet defies easy categorization or comparison with other industrialized nations. In the case of the United States, scholars routinely note the conspicuous absence of national health insurance yet continue to debate which factors left the United States alone among industrialized countries without a guarantee of universal access to health care. In the conclusion, this suggests how the occupation struggle shed light on the distinctive politics of health policy in both countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Income inequality in the U.S. has increased over the past thirty years after declining since the turn of the century. Although inequality creates real economic, social and political costs, conservatives have developed an elaborate philosophical argument that defends inequality. This paper challenges the conservative defense by arguing that the long term consequences of income inequality are non-sustainable. Policy supported by conservative ideology ultimately will result in the destruction of the very values that conservatives purport to uphold. The paper concludes by showing that by challenging the conservative argument, liberalism can help clarify its own objectives and agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The United States are usually described, in general discussions of American as well as comparative politics, as the most constitutionally stable democracy, and as a model of presidential system ‘engineered’ by the creative minds of framers dedicated to establish a democracy based on separated institutions checking their respective use of delegated power. This paper challenges this mechanic approach to constitutional design and evolution. It argues, through historical and theoretical evidence, that the American constitution (much like most constitutions generally, and like the French Fifth republic constitution specifically) could have lead, in the early phase of its implementation, to either a presidential system or a ministerial government, given the combined influences of historical forces and the political sensibilities and strategic actions of the nation’s first leaders. The American constitutional construction has been the product of unstable and temporary coalitions, not the straightforward design of a coherent and cohesive majority. The process is full of doors left open, interpretative disputes, and turning points in the implementation phase, and this project first reviews the different ‘constitutional moments’ of the American constitutive process, and replaces these turning points in a larger political and historical context, as products of historical struggles and legacies of competing visions of governance. The key element of our analysis is to make better substantive use of observations made by different scholars: namely that American revolutionaries, in their efforts to construct a republic, sought not to get rid of the architecture of institutions of Great Britain, but to improve them by setting up mechanisms that would prevent the corruption that had perverted British politics. The British institutions were for the new American political leaders, both their main source of inspiration and the very system they had built so much resentment against. After the frustrating experience of the Articles of the Confederation, the United States Constitution was to be the perfected synthesis of two extremes, executive corruption and legislative tyranny. The two institutions newly constructed had different historical roots: while the presidency was essentially a transformation of the British Crown and Cabinet, Congress was the refinement of much more recent and radical idea of democratic governance. The challenge was to make democratic, efficient and stable not only the institutions themselves, but their interaction as well. This paper indicates that the early United States went, from 1789 to 1800, through a much more floating and unstable implementation phase than what is generally believed: an uneasy struggle of each institution to test and practice its potential for subordination, to assert its prerogatives, and to find its place in the constitutional order. Next, the paper traces the evolution of clauses, statutes, and behaviors that could have led the United States on the evolutionary path towards ministerial government, or a close version of it. We will first look at the design of the constitution and look for clauses that signaled the erection of a presidential system, but left the door open for different ulterior developments: selection process, presence of Cabinet members in the House, senatorial power of appointment, presidential power of removal, … We will then examine the early implementation phase to identify when and how the original model could have taken different equilibration paths. Much attention is given to historical evidence regarding Alexander Hamilton’s political entrepreneurship, his critical attempt to shape executive-legislative relations, and his underlying desire to morph his executive function into prime ministership -in a tellingly similar fashion as the British Lord Treasurer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Second World War killed approximately fifty million people, while it led policies and institutions to improve people’s health. This paper will ask why and how these events occur ironically at the same time, and rethink the development of health insurance policies. Scholars explain welfare state development by focusing on industrialization, labor power, culture, and policy and institutional path dependence. When they do study the impact of war, they tend to treat war as a simple and identical exogenous shock and do not address how variations in war experiences affect policies and institutions. This paper contrasts ‘Japanese’ war with ‘American’ war in terms of a war’s duration, depth of mobilization, casualties, battle sequence, and war-fighting regime. It also examines how war mobilization formed and consolidated the Japanese national health insurance policies in the 1930s and the 1940s. This paper has three contributions. First, theoretically, it shows the difficulties of existing studies to take variations in war experiences into their analyses, and suggests a necessity of further studies to understand the relationship between war and health insurance policy. Second, empirically, it examines origins and development of the Japanese health insurance that political scientists have not sufficiently addressed. Third, it sheds a new light on a frequently asked question: Why does the United States not have the comprehensive national health insurance system? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper claims that the spread of privatization of delivery in social services - that is privatization of provision while funding remains public - has not proceeded uniformly across different policy domains. Certain differences in the attributes of policy domains are responsible for the variance in the incidence and extent of privatization of delivery. The paper examines two such attributes: the size of policy domains and the prevalence of professional philosophies that support institutional restructuring for reasons other than privatization. By utilizing a comparison of privatization of delivery initiatives in the education and mental health domains, across two political systems - England and Massachusetts - this study suggests that privatization of delivery is more difficult in large policy domains than in small ones and that privatization is facilitated by the pre-existence of dominant professional philosophies that demand institutional restructuring. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to analyze the power fluctuations in the Presidency-Congress relationship, by using a punctuated equilibrium model. The theory, initially described by biologists as an alternative to Darwin’s gradual evolutionism, argues that the evolution of species benefited from sudden events, bursts of change that moved the system to a subsequent position of partial equilibrium. A similar argument is used in this paper to explore the way in which the two American political institutions evolved, and how have they shared the governing power. Starting from a theoretical point ‘zero’ envisioned by the Framers, where the balance of power inclined heavily in favor of the Congress, the growth in size and political power of the White House shifted the relationship to subsequent positions of temporary stability. Evolution from one position of equilibrium to the next is triggered by major crises or events. Historical events have generated periodic gains and loses in the political power of the legislative; however, the long-term trends show an almost constant growth of the Presidential institution and its power over time, to the stature of a ‘fourth branch.’ Overall, the model shows a significant increase in presidential power over time, in part at the expense of the Congress. Methodologically, this paper uses historical analyses and scholarly opinions to define an empirical model of presidential power and the most appropriate variables to operationalize the concepts. Then, it explores several dimensions of the institutional development of each of the two players, with a closer look at the increases in institutional units, number of employees, and expenditures over time. Several indicators of the Presidency-Congress interactions are also succinctly explored (e.g., presidential legislative success rate, number of vetoes and overrides). While attempting to develop original models, this research draws upon reach data and scholarly work on Presidency and Congress for the theoretical discussion as well as the empirical analysis. Furthermore it is intended to represent a first step in a new direction of research for the author, who would like to explore further theoretical arguments and empirical relationships surrounding presidential power issues. In terms of organization, the paper starts with a presentation of the original punctuated equilibrium model, and its applications to political science research. Following is an analytical assessment of presidential power theories. The model of punctuated equilibrium power fluctuation is then introduced, building on the richness of ideas in the literature. For an in-depth look at this model, I employ an exploratory analysis or institutional growth (in size and complexity), and propose empirical models and variables for measuring the presidential power and assessing the role of crises (punctuations of history). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Thoreau’s political thought there is a pronounced tension between the right of individuals to lead private lives and their obligations to act on behalf of their fellow citizens and humans. On the one hand, Thoreau valued moral integrity and the pleasures of solitary reflection greatly, and thus was indisposed to participate in politics for love of solitude and for fear of the moral compromises that politics so often requires. On the other hand, Thoreau agonized over the possibility that retreat into private life quietly enabled political evil, such as the perpetuation and expansion of racial slavery in the United States. This paper examines Thoreau’s 1859 lecture, "A Plea for Captain John Brown," as a way of exploring the tension between Thoreau’s love of negative liberty and his sense of duty to work for slavery’s abolition. By analyzing Thoreau’s startling claim that John Brown was "the most American of us all," the paper shows how Thoreau’s defense of John Brown makes political action central to the ethical practice of democratic individuality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper revisits some old propositions of pluralist theories and the Columbia school about the impact of ‘cross-pressure’ on political attitudes and behavior that, following some discouraging test results, largely vanished from scholarly works since the early seventies. Cross-pressure means that some individuals, like socially conservative trade union members in the United States, are pulled in opposite partisan directions because of their different characteristics. In their most generalized form the relevant hypothesis suggests that the more conflicting are the ways the various attributes of citizens pull them towards one party or another, the more disengaged they become, reducing cognitive and affective involvement with politics as well as participation. The paper scrutinizes the micro-logic of the proposition, points out that cross-pressure on citizens may be one of the mechanisms underlying the freezing effect of cleavages postulated by Lipset and Rokkan (1967), develops a greatly improved measure of cross-pressure, and subjects the hypothesis to a far more comprehensive test than those attempted before. The empirical analysis finds some support for the hypothesis using worldwide cross-sectional data on various forms of political participation from the World Values Study. However, not all forms of participation are affected to the same extent, and there are also signs of some significant cross-national variations. The cross-national differences can, however, be linked to survey sample and political system characteristics in ways that are consistent with the original hypothesis. Interestingly, it is the conflicting electoral influence of different value orientations that seems to be the truly consequential source of cross-pressure, and not the conflicting influence of two or more socio-demographic characteristics on party preference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Ghost of Lochner and American Constitutional Development: The Post 1937 Search for Constitutional Rights Both traditional and revisionist scholarship continues to see the Constitutional Revolution of 1937 as recasting the role of the Court in American constitutionalism. With the dramatic expansion of state power, the Court retreated from the realm of economic issues and took up the protection of civil rights and liberties. Thus the New Deal paved the way for the articulation of preferred freedoms. In this, revisionist accounts march easily in step with the New Deal justices version of our constitutional development post 1937. The constitutional struggle of 1935-41 settled the central question of the government’s power to regulate the economy. Yet, this very settlement opened up another area, judicial review in relation to civil liberties and rights, which remained–and indeed remains–in a state of constitutional flux. These issues remain troublesome because at the heart of the New Deal revolution was the central questions of judicial discretion: how do we tether judicial will? This paper argues that first, rather than giving us clear constitutional principles to guide the Court, our constitutionalism developed in ways that saw constitutional interpretation through the lens of disciplining judicial discretion. Thus it is difficult to speak of the New Deal Constitution as a regime that gives us constitutional guidance. At the heart of this regime lies an unsettled question about the relationship between judicial will and individual rights. Second, while scholars of American constitutional development focus on the fundamental changes wrought by the New Deal, the insistence that Lochner was part of an earlier era that no longer applies, is more difficult to maintain. This does not suggest a return to the jurisprudential vision of the Lochner Court. Rather, this paper suggests that Lochner remains potent in the search for grounding judicial discretion. It haunts the ‘painstaking and politically-charged task of articulating, for the first time in American constitutional history, precisely what kinds of freedoms deserved to be characterized as truly fundamental.’ And it does this precisely because the New Deal critique of Lochner is bound up with the Constitutional Revolution of 1937 making it a part of the New Deal’s constitutional trajectory. The point is important insofar as it suggests that subsequent constitutional developments, Roe v. Wade for instance, are not easily rooted in the Constitutional Revolution of 1937. Revisionist attempts to elide the old equation of if Roe, then Lochner, remain troublesome if we take the Constitutional Revolution of 1937 seriously. There may well be no going back to Lochner, but that doesn’t make for an easy fit between Roe and the New Deal. Thus the paper concludes by suggesting that the return of original intent in the wake of Roe has its roots firmly in the Constitutional Revolution of 1937 (rather than the founding). Yet this makes originalism’s critique of Roe more powerful, not less so. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]