Profiling House Members: The Policy Dimensions Approach

Abstract

With decreasing debate, a unidimensional approach to the study of roll-call voting in Congress has increasingly achieved acceptance. We argue in favor of an alternative, the policy dimension approach, and suggest that such an approach has the advantage of allowing us to examine sets of policy positions that deviate from a unidimensional model, and to explain these policy profiles.     

Party Ideologies and Regional Inequality: An Analysis of Party Manifestos in Japan

ABSTRACT

Regional inequality within Japan has been a key political issue in Japanese politics throughout the entire postwar period. In this analysis, we examine how Japanese parties have positioned themselves on the question of regional inequality, focusing on how the party system response has been shaped by ideas and ideologies. The article analyses two 15-year periods separated by a quarter of a century (1960–75 and 2000–15) during which regional inequalities became a particularly salient and pressing issue. We compare institutional and socioeconomic contexts, broader governing ideas, and policy responses to this issue by major parties in their election platforms (manifestos). We find that party ideology and broader paradigms continued to shape party responses to regional inequality during both periods.     

Acting on the Hill: Congressional Assertiveness in U.S. Foreign Policy

A controversy has developed in recent years pitting those who see a resurgent Congress in U.S. foreign policy against those who argue that Congress remains largely acquiescent and uninvolved. This article addresses the disagreement, using a database of congressional foreign policy activity from 1946 to 1997 to weigh the competing claims. Our results show that congressional foreign policy activity has declined over the post-World War II era while congressional foreign policy assertiveness, relative to the administration's requests, has increased during this same period. Congress is thus less active but more assertive. Based on these results, we offer a two-dimensional model of congressional foreign policy behavior that better reflects the variety of congressional roles in U.S. foreign policy.     

Forts or agricultural estates? Persian period settlement in the territories of the former kingdom of Judah

ABSTRACT

The territories of the former kingdom of Judah were only sparsely settled during the Persian period, as exemplified by the extreme rarity of domestic structures unearthed in excavations. Viewed against this background, the large number of excavated forts and isolated administrative buildings from this period is remarkable, and they apparently outnumber the period's excavated dwellings. Not only is this an extremely unlikely situation, but various lines of evidence, pertaining to specific sites as well as to the phenomenon as a whole, render the possibility that all these structures were forts or administrative buildings re-examines implausible. Consequently, this article reexamines the phenomenon within the social landscape of the region in particular, and of the Achaemenid empire in general, in an attempt to embed those unique buildings within the broader demographic and political reality of this time. Given the location of many of the sites and the finds unearthed in them, and in light of the demographic reality in the region and of the broader Achaemenid imperial policy, the article suggests that most of the so-called forts were estates, created in the process of the resettlement of this previously devastated region.     

Royal Scottish Geographical Society April 1948

ABSTRACT

Land use in Scotland's countryside is currently an issue of major public concern, largely because of a sea-change in agricultural policy which seemslikely to lead to the withdrawal of some land from agricultural use. In addition, there has been concern about the scale of upland afforestation, about land availability for housebuilding, and about claims on land for conservation and for rural development. This article provides an overview of these current landuse issues in Scotland.     

ADMINISTRATIVE LOBBYING EFFECTIVENESS: WOMEN AND ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES IN U.S. FOREIGN ASSISTANCE

This paper compares the administrative lobbying efforts of women's and environmental groups to nudge the U.S. Agency for International Development (AID) to conform with Congressional mandates. In 1973, Congress mandated that AID involve women in its development programs, and AID responded with the establishment of a small, resource-poor monitoring office whose leader nurtured a wider constituency for the issue. In contrast, AID ignored its responsibilities under the National Environmental Policy Act, but once established environmental groups initiated a suit against AID, its General Council joined the environmental monitoring office and other executive branch advocacy units to increase environmentally sound programming. The progress of these two issues is compared, focusing on interest groups, internal AID structure, and the issues themselves.     

China's Nuclear Energy in Light of the Disaster in Japan

An American specialist on Russian agriculture examines that country's agrarian policy, as well as the agricultural sector more generally, one year into the presidency of Dmitriy Medvedev. Focusing on the three key policy issues—state financial support, state intervention in the grain market, and international food trade policy—he assesses the extent to which current policy represents a continuation of that prevailing during the presidency of Vladimir Putin. The author discusses the appointment of a new Agriculture Minister in 2009, which may signal a different approach to the management of the sector, and concludes with an assessment of the impact of the global financial crisis. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: F130, Q100, Q170, Q180. 2 tables, 63 references.     

New Spatial Patterns and Territorial–Administrative Structures in the European Union: Reflections on Eastern Europe

Abstract

Spatial patterns and territorial–administrative structures in Eastern Europe are a mix of historical?territorial path-dependencies influenced by the current path-creating policies. Since the early 2000s, the European Union (EU) policies, practices and challenges have concerned also Eastern Europe. This article discusses spatial patterns and territorial–administrative structures in theory, illustrates their practices and presents scenarios for their future in the EU contexts. The Europeanization of spatial policy and planning and the territorial–administrative structure harmonization are the key current trends. The transposition and implementation of the EU spatial policy mechanisms and practices in Eastern Europe are influenced by contextual path-dependent legacies and the uncertain long-term future of the EU. Conditionality as governmentality and relational regions open new perspectives to territorial dynamics in the EU and Eastern Europe.     

The Pendulum of Congressional Power: Agenda Change,Partisanship and the Demise of the Post-World War II Foreign Policy Consensus

Many scholars contend that Congress rarely matters in the realm of foreign policy. The source of this collective impotence is often explained by the weaknesses in congressional institutions vis-a-vis the president, as well as a general inability to respond effectively to a dynamic international political environment. We contend that the debate over congressional activism has not adequately addressed the role of agenda change. We analyze all roll call votes in the House of Representatives relating to the international affairs agenda between 1953 and 1998. We find that presidents have become significantly more likely to stake out positions on economic and trade issues as compared to other international issues. We also observe that presidential positions in the realm of foreign policy are increasingly characterized by interparty and interinstitutional conflict. While this increased conflict has dramatically decreased the president's ability to successfully pass executive priorities in foreign affairs more generally, presidential success on economic and trade issues has witnessed a significantly greater decline. We infer from these results that changes to the foreign policy issue agenda represent one important factor that has affected not only the incentives for political parties to participate actively, but also the willingness of Congress to challenge the president in the foreign policy debate.Asked one day whether it was true that the navy yard in his district was too small to accommodate the latest battleships. Henry Stimson (chair of the House Naval Affairs Committee early in the century) replied, 'That is true, and that is the reason I have always been in favor of small ships.'1Carriers have been, are and will be for the foreseeable future an absolutely essential part of our deterrence force…2John Warner, senator from Virginia, home state of Newport News Shipbuilding     

Municipal Boundary Conflicts Between Jewish and Arab Local Authorities in Israel: Geography of Administration or Geopolitics?

Municipal boundaries shape the influence of local government on patterns of development and disparities. Based on a largely qualitative assessment of initiatives to change municipal boundaries of Arab localities in Israel between the 1960s and 2001, we aim to demonstrate the tension between geographical‐administrative considerations and political, particularly geopolitical, issues at two levels: Arab claims and central government decisions. We emphasize that municipal boundary conflicts provide broader insights on societal transformations and dilemmas, as well as influencing them. Growing activism of Arabs and trends of political decentralization led not only to class‐based demands, but also to ethno‐national‐based demands. In addition to development needs with an emphasis on equality, claims of Arab municipalities also reflect aspirations to reverse consequences of the 1948 war and to redefine the Jewish essence of the state. A major dilemma among Arabs is whether to emphasize geographic‐administrative justifications or to explicitly take the ethno‐national path. Among central government decision‐makers, an explicitly political discourse has apparently given way to a professional one, which faces dilemmas of incorporating unique political‐cultural attributes of Arabs in professional assessments, and balancing them with concerns of security and state identity. Whereas professional jargon is not value free and can mask political agendas, dialogues based on a professional jargon could lead to solutions in otherwise dead‐end political disputes, although such dialogues could gain momentum only if showing results.     

Welsh Indians and savage Scots: History,antiquarianism, and Indian languages in 18th-century Britain

This paper compares late eighteenth-century claims for the authenticity of Macpherson's Ossian and for the existence of Welsh Indians. It shows that although both claims were supported in part by appeals to similarities between Celtic and American Indian languages, the appeals in each case were very different. On the one hand, the Edinburgh literati who supported Ossian's authenticity focused on expressive structures shared by all primitive societies. On the other hand, radically Protestant antiquarians and philologists focused on lexical similarities that they argued demonstrate a genetic link between certain American Indians and the Welsh. The paper uses this fundamental difference underlying a superficial similarity, to explore in greater detail the distinction between philosophical historians among the Edinburgh literati, who were religiously moderate, politically conservative, and promoted Scotland's integration into a modern, polite, commercial and English-speaking empire, and the Welsh antiquarians, who were religious and political radicals and whose interest in the Welsh Indians reflected and reinforced their attempts to resurrect a distant golden age of Celtic Britain.

pe’nguin. (1) A bird. This bird was found with this name, as is supposed, by the first discoverers of America; and penguin signifying in Welsh a white head, and the head of this fowl being white, it has been imagined, that America was peopled from Wales …     

President Obama at mid‐term

This article provides an analysis of President Obama at mid‐term. It looks at the mid‐term elections from the perspective of the political issues that informed the debate, the implications of Republican control of the House of Representatives for both legislation and relations between the administration and Congress, and the policy areas where cooperation and possible progress is possible. The article looks at the Tea Party movement as a collection of single issue and multi‐issue political groups ranging from ‘nativists’ to Christian fundamentalists to the eclectic and unprecedented combination of fiscal and social conservatives seen at Glen Beck's ‘honoring America’ event at the Washington Monument. This broad movement may be seen as a classical revitalization movement, not unlike those described by Anthony F. C. Wallace. It is opposed by another ‘revitalization movement’ namely the ‘American renewal’ promised by Obama as he ran for office in 2008. These countervailing narratives—in effect two different versions of America, one reflecting the Tea Party broadly conceived and the other reflecting Obama's ‘promise’—are seeking political traction among independents. The implications of this struggle are momentous. The prevailing narrative will frame policy going forward on a range of domestic issues and on selected foreign policy questions, which will include the present debate on the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) with Russia and the upcoming debate on China, which will have even further reaching effects. Finally, this article describes Obama's struggle to frame his policy successes and the ensuing debate in a favourable light. His opponents have sought to limit his progress by presenting him as ‘the other”, an effective but destructive technique that could have longer term effects on the domestic political discourse. However, the author remains an optimist; he believes, together with 50 per cent of Americans, the president is likable, logical and gives a good speech, and that he will be re‐elected in 2012.     

Direct election of regional presidents and party change in Italy

This article assesses the impact that direct election of regional presidents has had on party politics in Italy. It finds regional presidents exert a growing personalisation of power within parties at sub-national levels, primarily through their capacity for political nomination and de facto status as party negotiators in the governing coalition. While presidents may shape structures of regional party competition, they remain constrained by coalitional politics and can struggle to assert their authority against powerful governing partners or local powerbrokers rooted in the legislature. They also possess few mechanisms to consolidate their position at national level, consistent with a broader tendency towards ‘stratarchy’ in multi-level parties. Although the distinction between densely and loosely structured parties remains relevant, a common trend towards ‘cartelisation’ at sub-national levels is noted as political parties prioritise the control of state resources and the governing legitimacy this entails. This article contributes to our broader understanding of the multi-level dynamics of party politics in Europe, as well as the unintended consequences of experimenting with an untested hybrid model of ‘directly elected Prime Minister’ in the Italian regions.     

Representation and Agenda Setting

We develop a new approach to the study of representation based on agenda setting and attention allocation. We ask the fundamental question: do the policy priorities of the public and of the government correspond across time? To assess the policy priorities of the mass public, we have coded the Most Important Problem data from Gallup polls across the postwar period into the policy content categories developed by the Policy Agendas Project ( Baumgartner & Jones, 2002 ). Congressional priorities were assessed by the proportion of total hearings in a given year focusing on those same policy categories, also from the Agendas Project. We then conducted similar analyses on public laws and most important laws, similarly coded. Finally we analyzed the spatial structure of public and congressional agendas using the Shepard‐Kruskal non‐metric multidimensional scaling algorithm. Findings may be summarized as follows: First, there is an impressive congruence between the priorities of the public and the priorities of Congress across time. Second, there is substantial evidence of congruence between the priorities of the public and lawmaking in the national government, but the correspondence is attenuated in comparison to agendas. Third, although the priorities of the public and Congress are structurally similar, the location of issues within the structure differs between Congress and the general public. The public “lumps” its evaluation of the nations most important problems into a small number of categories. Congress “splits” issues out, handling multiple issues simultaneously. Finally, the public tends to focus on a very constrained set of issues, but Congress juggles many more issues. The article has strong implications for the study of positional representation as well, because for traditional representation to occur, there must be correspondence between the issue‐priorities of the public and the government. We find substantial evidence for such attention congruence here.     

尼克松政府对中国钓鱼岛政策初探

尼克松政府时期是美国关于中国钓鱼岛政策的基本定位时期。在返还琉球群岛的过程中,美国单方面擅自将钓鱼岛的"施政权"返还日本,中日钓鱼岛争端由此产生。在钓鱼岛主权归属问题上,尼克松政府保持"中立"立场。在《日美共同合作和安全条约》是否适用于钓鱼岛问题上,尼克松政府一方面对日作出了默许的承诺,但另一方面却极力淡化甚至回避对其采取实际行动。在与台湾当局交涉钓鱼岛的问题上,尼克松政府否决了将钓鱼岛"施政权"从日本手中重新收回的建议,并建议日本与台湾当局进行协商解决。     

One among many renegades: the Serb janissary Konstantin Mihailović and the Ottoman conquest of the Balkans

ABSTRACT

Konstantin Mihailovi?, a Serb born in Novo Brdo, was taken by the Ottomans and became a janissary in Mehmet II’s army. After he returned to the Christian side, he penned a report on Ottoman governance, religion, military structures and tactics. It explained by organisational advantages, fairness to subjects of all faiths coupled with deceit vis-à-vis enemies, divisions within Christendom, and providential history’s retributive measures, why the ‘heathen’ had the upper hand. But the author, Konstantin, remained discreet. Autobiographical details on his years as a janissary are scarce. He had risen high in the Ottoman system. While conveying his expertise about the enemy to Christian courts was his key to a further career, he also had to conceal that he had been an important member of the janissary corps, and probably had converted to Islam. The first imperative, sharing expertise, complicated the second, self-silencing, and made it impossible to dissimulate fully.     

A Review of Optimal Input Methods: Fixed Field,Free Field,and the Edited Text

Abstract

With the growth in interest in collective biography as a historical technique, many predominantly qualitative historians find themselves faced with large amounts of information. These data, collected from a variety of sources, are often highly irregular, making statistical analysis extremely problematic. Current practice is to ignore these problems and proceed with quantitative analysis suitable only for much more regular data. It is argued that a more satisfactory approach is to ascertain and directly confront the difficulties of analyzing such information. The three central problems are identified as missing data, systematic bias, and the lack of a representative sample. Using a practical example, the author explores the relationship between gender, the family, and political socialization within the Communist Party of Great Britain and shows how each of the issues can be dealt with in turn. The author first distinguishes truly missing data from “negative information,” which commonly appears to be missing in historical sources. He then stratifies the data to remove systematic biases relating to the issue at hand. Finally, he divides the sample into different populations, on the basis of the sources from which individuals are known, and compares the results obtained to examine whether his conclusions appear to depend on quirks of populations contained in the sources. These ideas open a new range of sources to quantitative analysis and raise the possibility of allowing new types of evidence to count in historical inquiry.     

The Paradoxes of Community‐based Participation in Dar es Salaam

The current discourse and practice of international development rest on the assumption that community‐based participation is an essential component of efforts to facilitate change across the global South. Such participation is thought not only to ensure efficiency and sustainability, but also to accelerate broader structural transformation by empowering individuals to exercise agency in relation to development. This article seeks to contribute to critical participation studies by analysing the broader processes and structures that shape participatory opportunities in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The author argues that by promoting community‐based organizations (CBOs), national and transnational development actors have produced and legitimated a system of popular participation that, in contrast to their claims, disempowers local citizens. Paradoxically, these CBOs have further contributed to the exclusion of the majority of community actors.     

The politics of disenchantment: Marcel Gauchet and the French struggle with secularization

ABSTRACT

This article looks at Marcel Gauchet’s major metahistorical statement, The Disenchantment of the World: A Political History of Religion (1985), and uses it to advance a series of claims about the place of secularization in debates within and about French politics, especially in relation to modern French history. The argument is put forward that Gauchet’s work is best understood as offering an alternative philosophy of history to Marxism that could serve to support a broadly republican realignment of French politics in the 1980s. Revisionist historiography concerning the French Revolution likewise played a role in this development, and served as a prerequisite of sorts to Gauchet’s broader historical project. The article also considers Gauchet’s work in light of postmodern skepticism of the utility of historical metanarratives.     

Unfinished Decolonisation and Globalisation

ABSTRACT

This article locates John Darwin’s work on decolonisation within an Oxbridge tradition which portrays a British world system, of which formal empire was but one part, emerging to increasing global dominance from the early nineteenth century. In this mental universe, decolonisation was the mirror image of that expanding global power. According to this point of view, it was not the sloughing off of individual territories, but rather the shrinking away of the system and of the international norms that supported it, until only its ghost remained by the end of the 1960s. The article then asks, echoing the title of Darwin’s Unfinished Empire, whether the decolonisation project is all but complete, or still ongoing. In addition, what is the responsibility of the imperial historian to engage with, inform, or indeed refrain from, contemporary debates that relate to some of these issues? The answer is twofold. On the one hand, the toolkit that the Oxbridge tradition and Darwin provide remains relevant, and also useful in thinking about contemporary issues such as China’s move towards being a global power, the United States’ declining hegemony, and some states and groups desires to rearticulate their relationship with the global. On the other hand, the decline of world systems of power needs to be recognised as just one of several types of, and approaches to, analysing ‘decolonisation’. One which cannot be allowed to ignore or marginalise the study of others, such as experience, first nations issues, the shaping of the postcolonial state, and empire legacies. The article concludes by placing the Oxbridge tradition into a broader typology of types and methodologies of decolonisation, and by asking what a new historiography of decolonisation might look like. It suggests that it would address the Oxbridge concern with the lifecycles of systems of power and their relationship to global changes, but also place them alongside, and in dialogue with, a much broader set of perspectives and analytical approaches.