The Politics of HDTV in the United States

Policies adopted by the United States government between 1987 and 1993 regarding high definition television (HDTV) were made primarily by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). A brief effort by members of Congress and their bureaucratic and industrial allies to link HDTV to broader industrial policies was thwarted by the George Bush Administration between 1988 and 1990. The FCC's policies with respect to simulcasting and digital signals reflected the concern of that agency to protect the interests of consumers, broadcasters, and electronics manufacturers. The first two interests traditionally were protected by the FCC, whereas the protection of electronics was somewhat unusual and was influenced by perceptions of declining United States competitiveness. In addition, United States policymaking in this area depended strongly on the framing effect of policies adopted in Japan and Western Europe.     

Politics,Society and Financial Liberalization: Turkey in the 1990s

This article focuses on the political economy of Turkey in the 1990s to illustrate the importance of analysing economic variables that intersect with the quality of political democracy. In 1989, the debt‐ridden state moved to systematically and completely deregulate Turkey’s financial markets. Together with the ongoing processes of liberalizing commodity markets and integrating with global capital markets, financial liberalization was expected to achieve fiscal and monetary stability, stimulate business confidence to invest in productive sectors, produce stable growth, encourage privatization and control inflation. However, the new hegemony of the capital markets has gone hand‐in‐hand with deteriorating macroeconomic performance, a worsening income distribution, the discrediting of politics and its isolation from society. The authors examine several key dynamics which are helping to legitimate the neoliberal agenda of the 1990s. These include the distribution of state largesse to manipulate electoral capitalism; the rise of an informal sector in the ‘Anatolian Tigers’; promotion of the seductive attractions of the market; and an antipolitical reform populism adopted by political actors to exploit popular disillusionment with the political system.     

冷战时期科学家与美国的空问决策——兼及肯尼迪政府科技政策转型的动因

战后美国的科技政策经历了一次重大变革：联邦政府在国家决策层中设立了负责科技事务的职位,并开始将大量联邦资金投入到支持国家冷战目标和保障国家安全而进行的科研项目上;与此同时,美国科学家也由疏离政治转而融入举国一致的冷战中。这一变革始于冷战初期,到肯尼迪执政时期才最终转型成功。本文试图从美国空间决策的角度探讨科学家在美国冷战决策和政府科技政策转型中的作用以及科学家和科学研究又是怎样通过与国家政治目标保持高度一致而被“冷战化”的。     

Theorizing the Submerged State: The Politics of Private Schools in the United States

In this paper, I apply Mettler's concept of the “submerged state” to aid for children at private schools in the United States, including education vouchers, in‐kind aid, and property tax exemptions. All aid policies are “submerged” in that they help private organizations take on state functions but some are more submerged than others. Theoretically, this paper distinguishes between subcategories of submergence. Using policy data from 50 states and an original database of court challenges between 1912 and 2015, I employ probit regression with sample selection to evaluate the effect of submergence on successful court challenge. I find that more submerged policies are less likely to be successfully challenged than less submerged policies. Submerged policy design enables supporters to avoid legal as well as political challenge.     

冷战时期科学家与美国的空间决策--兼及肯尼迪政府科技政策转型的动因

战后美国的科技政策经历了一次重大变革联邦政府在国家决策层中设立了负责科技事务的职位,并开始将大量联邦资金投入到支持国家冷战目标和保障国家安全而进行的科研项目上;与此同时,美国科学家也由疏离政治转而融入举国一致的冷战中。这一变革始于冷战初期,到肯尼迪执政时期才最终转型成功。本文试图从美国空间决策的角度探讨科学家在美国冷战决策和政府科技政策转型中的作用以及科学家和科学研究又是怎样通过与国家政治目标保持高度一致而被“冷战化”的。     

Policy Coherence and Component-Driven Policymaking: Arctic Policy in Canada and the United States

This research extends theorizing about the implications of political environments to the content of policy areas. We consider the case of Arctic policy in Canada and the United States as an example of what we label as component-driven policymaking. We show how the lack of a clear constituency and the lack of a stable policy subsystem for the Arctic create a policy environment for which the politics of particular issues dominate Arctic policymaking. The result is a policy space labeled Arctic policy that lacks policy coherence. We suggest that similar features of component-based policymaking help explain limited policy coherence for a variety of policy areas such as policies for children, families, rural areas, urban areas, and women in the United States.     

Putting the Brakes on Greased Wheels: The Politics of Weak Obstruction in the United States Senate

Obstruction is a fundamental aspect of legislative politics. In the United States Congress, senators exercise procedural prerogatives to defeat a bill with which they disagree on policy grounds. We argue that senators also utilize obstructive tactics in order to do more than block legislation with which they disagree. We claim that legislators engage in “weak” (as opposed to strong) obstruction in an effort to accrue political benefits to themselves and their constituents, but only when senators support the underlying policy the bill addresses. We test our theory by measuring the frequency with which senators engage in weak obstruction on bills that passed the Senate between 1973 and 2013. We find that senators are significantly more likely to engage in weakly obstructive behavior when they stand to benefit politically.     

The Politics and Administration of Privatization: Contracting Out for Corrections Management in the United States

Shrinking budgets and the emergence of "new public management" and other market-based reforms have put increasing pressure on many governments and government agencies to use contracting as a means of service delivery. This essay suggests that contracting should be viewed as a multistage affair, in which both political and administrative actors make key decisions at different stages of the process. It also hypothesizes that these actors weigh the political and instrumental motivations for contracting differently and, therefore, that the relative importance of these factors varies depending on the stage of the contracting process. An empirical analysis of corrections management contracts in the American states provides significant evidence for these assertions.     

The United States and Latin American Revolution in the 1960s

Book reviewed:
Michael D. Gambone. Capturing the Revolution: The United States, Central America, and Nicaragua.