The Tax Policy Regime in American Politics, 1941-1951

This article analyzes the inception of the mass income tax during the Second World War as a decisive moment when relations among state, market, and citizens were reconfigured in a durable way. The state institutionalized the means to devise tax reform–a policy regime–during this formative period of partisan conflict over macroeconomic management strategies. The approach to policy analysis presented here illuminates the process by which political choices are made among competing policy visions embedded in state agencies. This study demonstrates that a policy regime perspective, when applied in a complementary way with interest-driven or institutionalist accounts, is best equipped to bring important but tacit constraints into clear analytical focus.     

The Politics of Air Bag Safety: A Competition Among Problem Definitions

In light of 121 deaths attributed to air bag deployments, mainly to children and adults of small stature, recent policy debate has focused on modifying current Federal automotive air bag regulations. A problem definition perspective is employed to understand the nature of this debate. Utilizing a content analysis of the official record of one U.S. House and two U. S. Senate hearings, it is argued that four problem definitions characterize the debate over air bag safety: behavioral, regulatory, technological, and corporate greed. Furthermore, it is argued that a problem definition perspective offers a better explanation of recent changes to Federal air bag regulations than do pluralist, elitist, and principal-agent models.     

Global Hollywood and the Politics of Nationality

Book reviewed:
John Trumpbour. Selling Hollywood to the World: U.S. and European Struggles for Mastery of the Global Film Industry , 1920 – 1950.     

从科学到政治:全球变暖问题的历史演变

国际社会在对待全球变暖问题上经历了从科学回应到政治回应的发展过程。一方面,全球变暖科学理论的发展为国际气候科学界达成有关共识提供了基础,同时为政治家的政治决策提供了相关的科学背景知识,从而为全球变暖问题在20世纪80年代的政治化创造了必要的前提条件。另一方面,国际社会对全球变暖问题的政治回应过程反映了更为复杂的国家集团间的利益矛盾,主要包括南北矛盾和北方内部的矛盾,它们的妥协和合作是确保温室气体减排成功的关键因素。     

The Politics of Media Infrastructure: Mobile Phones and Emergent Forms of Public Communication in Papua New Guinea

Recent work in anthropology proposes that the ethnographic study of infrastructure offers a productive way to think about how states and corporations, citizens and consumers, all define their relations and obligations to each other. This article considers the politics of media infrastructure in Papua New Guinea (PNG) by tracing the moral economy of mobile phones. It focuses on (1) how mobile phone users have taken to social media to express dissatisfaction with the dominant mobile network operator, Digicel, a privately owned foreign company; and (2) how the PNG state has attempted to regulate the use of mobile phones and social media through cybercrime legislation and registration of Subscriber Identity Modules (SIM cards). Consideration of these two issues – matters of concern that gather publics around them – enables an assessment of the promise of improved telecommunications and social media, in particular, to make government in PNG more accountable and transparent.     

Women Workers and the Politics of Claims Making: The Local and the Global

This article analyses the evolving politics of claims making in relation to women workers in the global South. It asks what claims are being made and by whom, who these claims are addressed to and what strategies are being employed to press these claims. It distinguishes between women working for global markets and those working for domestic markets in order to identify possible differences in constraints, priorities and opportunities underlying these strategies. It also distinguishes between the different kinds of organizations involved in making claims: organizations of women workers, organizations working with women workers and organizations working on behalf of women workers. The article is one of several papers forming a cluster on feminist mobilizations.     

The Case for Mainstreaming Gender Politics Studies

Swers, Michele L. The Difference Women Make: The Policy Impact of Women in Congress. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2002. Pp. xii, 194. $45.00 hardbound, $16.00 softbound.

Borrelli, Mary Anne. The President's Cabinet: Gender, Power and Representation. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2002. Pp xii, 270. $59.95 hardbound, $26.50 softbound.

Watson, Robert P., and Ann Gordon, eds. Anticipating Madam President. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2003. Pp. xv, 271. $55.00 hardbound, $22.50 softbound.

Carroll, Susan]., ed. Women and American Politics: New Questions, New Directions. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2003. Pp. xii, 250. $74.00 hardbound, $24.95 softbound.     

The Politics of Contraception

Abstract

In modern societies the more obvious risks have already been reduced to level which are acceptable to the public, but there is a growing realization that serious error may be present in the allocation of resources to improve public and industrial safety. There appears to be considerable additional potential for saving many human lives, as well as large sums of money, by more rational and better-informed policies in the field. To reach this better understanding, it is necessary to compare risks and benefits for a set of alternatives and carry through a cost-effectiveness analysis for each proposal. It rapidly becomes more and more expensive to produce equal increments of risk reduction and, beyond a certain level of investment, further expenditure on safety actually increases the number of deaths and injuries, and becomes counter-productive.     

The Politics of Religion

The Politics of Religion in Restoration England. Edited by Tim Harris, Paul Seaward and Mark Goldie
From Persecution to Toleration. The Glorious Revolution and Religion in England. Edited by Ole Peter Grell, Jonathan I. Israel and Nicholas Tyacke.
The Restoration Church of England, 1646–1689. By John Spurr