The White House and Congress on Child Care and Family Leave Policy: From Carter to Clinton

Over the last two decades four presidents produced a variety of family policy initiatives with mixed results. Carter issued his nine-point plan on the family and convened the first White House Conference on Families in American history. Reagan created the White House Working Group on the Family and issued Executive Order 12606, which established family impact statements. George Bush continued many of Reagan's policies and pushed family values to near the top of the political agenda by 1992, and Bill Clinton set forth his eight-point plan on the family and moved quickly to reverse many of the policies of the Reagan-Bush era. Discussed is the role of the White House and Congress in shaping two family policy initiatives in particular: The Child Care and Development Block Grant of 1990 and the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993.     

Congress and Foreign Policy: Toward a More Functional Analysis

Crabb, Cecil V., Jr., and Pat Holt, eds. Invitation to Struggle: Congress, The President and Foreign Policy. Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly, 1980. Pp. xii, 234. $9.75, paper. Franck, Thomas M. and Edward Weisband. Foreign Policy by Congress. New York: Oxford University Press, 1979. Pp. ix, 357. $15.95, hardbound. Spanier, John, and Joseph Nogee, eds. Congress, The Presidency and American Foreign Policy. New York: Pergamon Press, 1981. Pp. xxxii, 211. $30.00, hardbound; $10.95, paper. Whalen, Charles W., Jr. The House and Foreign Policy: The Irony of Congressional Reform. Chapel Hill, N.C.: The University of North Carolina Press, 1982. Pp. x, 207. $18.95, hardbound; $9.95, paper.     

Congress,the Presidency,and U.S. Foreign Policy

Gibson, Martha L. Conflict Amid Consensus in American Trade Policy. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2000. Pp. 213. $55.00 hardbound; $17.95 softbound.

Henehan, Marie T. Foreign Policy and Congress: An International Relations Perspective. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2000. Pp. 248. $49.50 hardbound.

Brands, H.W. The Foreign Policies of Lyndon Johnson: Beyond Vietnam. College Station, TX: Texas A&M Press, 1999. Pp. 194. $29 95 hardbound.

McNamara, Robert S., James G. Blight, and Robert K. Brigham, with Thomas J. Biersteker and Herbert Y. Schandler. Argument Without End: In Search of Answers to the Vietnam Tragedy. New York, NY: Public Affairs, 1999. Pp. 512. $27.50 hardbound; $17.00 softbound.     

President Clinton and the Republican Congress, 1995-2000: Political and Policy Dimensions of Veto Politics in Divided Government

This article melds alternative theoretical perspectives on veto threats to explain President Clinton's influence over legislative outcomes in the 104th-106th Congresses (1995-2000). Formal models of executive-legislative relations–in particular the "coordination model"–yield an incomplete understanding of veto politics and executivelegislative conflict from 1995-2000. Explaining Clinton's success through veto politics requires a recognition of the unique context of legislative conflict from 1995-96. Presidential- congressional relations in the 104th Congress turned on "blame-game" politics that Clinton manipulated to his advantage. Clinton's second term heralded a return to "normal politics" during which the Republican majority's response to his veto threats coincided better with the basic tenets of the coordination model. Quantitative analysis of Clinton's public threats and secondary analysis of bill histories are brought to bear to test the theoretical framework.     

Cold War,Public Opinion,and Foreign Policy Spending Decisions: Dynamic Representation by Congress and the President

Conventional wisdom before the Vietnam War held that public opinion exerted no influence on U.S. foreign policy decisions. Scholars working in Vietnam's aftermath found episodic influence of public opinion on foreign policy, but missing in our understanding were longitudinal examinations of public opinion's influence on foreign policy. A number of post-Vietnam scholars subsequently revealed a long-term relationship between public opinion and defense spending. This study extends that work by analyzing responsiveness to public opinion in different foreign policy arenas by different government institutions, and by accounting for a critical variable not relevant in most previous studies: the end of the cold war. We construct a model explaining the influences of public opinion and the cold war on spending proposals for defense and foreign economic aid by the presidency, the House of Representatives and the Senate. Both public opinion and the end of the cold war exert direct influence on defense spending proposals by the presidency, while the Senate and the House respond primarily to public opinion inputs and the partisan composition of the Senate. In the case of foreign economic aid, the cold war's end gives occasion for increasing spending proposals, contrary to the public's expectation that the end of the cold war minimized the need for the U.S. to provide foreign economic assistance.     

《改革时代中国外交与安全政策的制定》述评

在《改革时代中国外交与安全政策的制定》一书的序言中,戴维·莱姆伯顿特别提到“作为一名教师,我发现自己需要系统闸述关于‘中国的外交和国家安全政策是如何制定的’这样一本书。”该书的出版使莱姆伯顿梦想成真,其圆满成功得益于下述三个因素:首先,在过去的二十年里中国的政策程序已达到了可以被评述及分析的成熟程度。改革时代的机构最早可在多克·巴涅特(Doak Barnett)的《中国外交政策的制定》(1985)一书中瞥见,然而这些机构当时还处在发展的初级阶段,以至于巴涅特该书的中文译本被用     

Credibility in Policy Expertise: The Function of Boundaries Between Research and Policy

As science becomes an increasingly crucial resource for addressing complex challenges in society, extensive demands are placed upon the researchers who produce it. Creating valuable expert knowledge that intervenes in policy or practice requires knowledge brokers to facilitate interactions at the boundary between research and policy. Yet, existing research lacks a compelling account of the ways in which brokerage is performed to gain credibility. Drawing on mixed‐method analysis of 12 policy research settings, I outline a novel set of strategies for attaining symbolic power, whereby policy experts position themselves and others via conceptual distances drawn between the “world of ideas” and the “world of policy and practice.” Disciplinary distance works to situate research as either disciplinary or undisciplinary, epistemic distance creates a boundary between complex specialist research and direct digestible outputs, temporal distance represents the separation of slow rigorous research and agile responsive analysis, and economic distance situates research as either pure and intrinsic or marketable and fundable. I develop a theoretical account that unpacks the boundaries between research communities and shows how these boundaries permit policy research actors to achieve various strategic aims.     

Leaving on a Jet Plane: Polarization,Foreign Travel,and Comity in Congress

No political observer, politician, or political scientist doubts that party polarization has weakened the social fabric of Congress. Measuring that effect, however, is exceedingly difficult. In this article, we operationalize the congressional social fabric by examining the foreign travel behavior of members of Congress over time. We evaluate the social disintegration in Congress by examining if and whether changes in member travel can explain why the social connectedness of members has waned. Using a unique dataset of foreign travel for House members from 1977 to 2012, we find that Republican House members, in particular, have altered their foreign travel patterns. Ideologically extreme members have always been less likely to take foreign trips, but extremely conservative Republican have become much more likely to travel only with co-partisans as polarization has increased in Congress. Ideologically moderate Republicans, while still traveling as members of bipartisan delegations, have also increased their willingness to travel only with fellow Republicans. Our results suggest that bipartisan foreign travel is a victim of the partisan war waging in Congress.     

Making Racial Change, Managing Radical Change: The Civil Rights Movement, U.S. Foreign Policy, and Race Relations on the World Stage

Books reviewed:
James H. Meriwether. Proudly We Can Be Africans: Black Americans and Africa , 1935 – 1961.
Thomas Borstlemann. The Cold War and the Color Line: American Race Relations in the Global Arena.