The changing relationship between education and marriage in the United States, 1940-2000

In 1940, when gender specialization was high, there was a negative relationship between education and marriage for women. College-educated women were least likely to be currently married and most likely to be never married. Declines in specialization were accompanied by a transition in this relationship. By 2000, when gender specialization was low, there was a positive relationship between education and marriage for women. College-educated women were most likely to be currently married, in part because they were more likely to stay married or remarry after divorce or widowhood. This transition occurred earlier and more completely for black women than for white women. These changes suggest that the relationship between education and marriage is shaped in part by the gender-role context.     

Political Attention and Public Spending in the United States

According to Jones and Baumgartner's disproportionate information processing model, it is crucial to study fluctuations in congressional attention over time and across policy issues to understand congressional policy decisions including decisions on the federal budget. Drawing on classical ideas about reelection-oriented behavior, on the one hand, and the blocking power of federal agencies, on the other, this paper extends and specifies the attention-spending predictions of the disproportionate information processing model. Specifically, spending effects of congressional attention shifts are argued to be crucially dependent on both the spending preferences expressed by the U.S. public and on pressure from spending advocates. An empirical evaluation of the association between changes in congressional attention measures and federal budget appropriations across 12 spending domains and 33 years (1970–2003) supports this conditional hypothesis derived from the extended disproportionate information processing model.     

论美国文官群体的历史演变

19世纪80年代以来,随着美国历史的发展,以文官制度的逐步完善为契机,文官群体的政治角色、经济地位、价值观念以及社会影响都发生了很大的变化,逐步朝着成为美国社会中的一个独立阶层的方向发展。首先,从"政治附庸"发展到"行政主管",文官群体的政治角色发生转换,其政治势力得以迅速膨胀;其次,从收入菲薄到待遇优厚,文官群体的经济地位得到提升,政府的财政负担也随之加重;再次,从"官本位"发展到"权本位",文官群体形成了带有现代官僚特征的价值取向,同时也开始蜕变为一个有人格缺失的群体;最后,从声名狼藉到公众认可,文官群体不仅扩大了社会影响,而且也在新的层面上形成了真正的官僚主义。     

卡特总统与1978年美国文官制度改革

1978年卡特总统的文官制度改革．不仅是20世纪美国历史上的一个重大事件．而且是继1883年《彭德尔顿法》颁布以来美国联邦政府文官制度发展史上的又一个重要的里程碑。这次文官制度改革不仅涉及到联邦政府高级文官结构的变化,中级文官报酬制度的改革,下级文官利益的重新分配等问题．而且也触及到联邦政府文官管理机构的调整与改组。因此．改革不仅影响到联邦政府行政工作效率的提高,而且关系到总统对联邦文官的政治控制。     

A solution from hell: the United States and the rise of humanitarian interventionism, 1991-2003

This article traces the rise of humanitarian interventionist ideas in the US from 1991 to 2003. Until 1997, humanitarian intervention was a relatively limited affair, conceived ad hoc more than systematically, prioritized below multilateralism, aiming to relieve suffering without transforming foreign polities. For this reason, US leaders and citizens scarcely contemplated armed intervention in the Rwandan genocide of 1994: the US 'duty to stop genocide' was a norm still under development. It flourished only in the late 1990s, when humanitarian interventionism, like neoconservatism, became popular in the US establishment and enthusiastic in urging military invasion to remake societies. Now inaction in Rwanda looked outrageous. Stopping the genocide seemed, in retrospect, easily achieved by 5,000 troops, a projection that ignored serious obstacles. On the whole, humanitarian interventionists tended to understate difficulties of halting ethnic conflict, ignore challenges of postconflict reconstruction, discount constraints imposed by public opinion, and override multilateral procedures. These assumptions primed politicians and the public to regard the Iraq war of 2003 as virtuous at best and unworthy of strenuous dissent at worst. The normative commitment to stop mass killing outstripped US or international capabilities—a formula for dashed hopes and dangerous deployments that lives on in the 'responsibility to protect'.     

Balancing Preservation and Logging: Public Lands Policy in British Columbia and the Western United States

Both the United States and Canada have made fundamental changes in their policies regarding natural resources. The province of British Columbia made major revisions to its forest policy in the earlyto-mid-1990s; in the western United States, policy efforts have been stymied by conflicts between state and federal officials and between conservationists and resource developers. The different structures of federalism in the two countries result in two different approaches to policymaking that are discussed here. However, the ultimate test of natural resource policy, I argue, should be their consistency with the goal of sustainable ecosystems and preservation of biodiversity. From the perspective of ecological science, neither country has been particularly successful in policymaking for public lands and for logging in particular. Both nations have failed to give priority to protecting old-growth forests and largely have rejected the idea that ancient forests are much more valuable than simply sources of timber