Agricultural Research Policy

Abstract

From Galileo's measurement of time by musical beats at about half-second intervals to modern atomic clocks, progressively more accurate instruments have been developed and are here reviewed. Both the mechanical and the pendulum clock were major advances and led to theories of a clocklike universe in the 17th century. Barrow, Newton and Leibniz treated time as mathematical concepts and in the 19th century time as a linear advancement became accepted as evolutionary biology extended the vision of time to millions of years. In modern physics, Einstein's special relativity introduced 'time dilation', an idea somewhat contrary to our common sense intuition but now supported by abundant empirical evidence.     

Gender mainstreaming and the Common Agricultural Policy

While there are many case studies looking at gender mainstreaming in national contexts, this article offers a pan-European perspective to examine how a stated commitment to gender equality at this meta-level works in practice. The European Union's (EU) stated commitment to gender mainstreaming the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is critically reviewed. The article reviews theoretical literature on gender mainstreaming, considers the position of women in agriculture across Europe, and examines efforts by the EU to gender mainstream the CAP. It argues that at best, gender mainstreaming focuses on the symptoms of gender inequality in agriculture rather than the causes. Because of this, gender mainstreaming cannot be transformative in this context. Little thought has been given to the practical difficulties of actually gender mainstreaming a policy such as the CAP. The EU's priority for the CAP focuses on the mainstream business goal of a viable agricultural industry and does not pay any heed to gender inequalities in agriculture. In short, the stated commitment to gender mainstreaming is empty rhetoric.     

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.     

State,Industrialization and Agricultural Policy in Korea

Analyses of Korean (Republic of Korea) development point to the strong role of the state in directing the industrialization process. State intervention has also been pronounced in agriculture, as state agents have mobilized bureaucratic resources to direct agricultural production activities in support of the national development project through the creation of strategic agroindustrial linkages. The Korean green revolution campaign to achieve rice self-sufficiency is used to illustrate the state's role in fostering intersectoral linkages. Agriculture is brought back into the debate about Korean development.     

Evaluating the Environmental Effects of Agricultural Policy

The fact that agricultural policy decisions can have important environmental consequences has become common knowledge among policy scholars and policy practitioners. This relationship is reflected in the increasingly prominent soil conservation and environmental protection components of the 1985 and 1990 Farm Bills. In debating the value of continuing these provisions in the upcoming reauthorization of this legislation, scholars and politicians alike focus almost exclusively on their water quality benefits. However, the soil conservation components of agricultural policy also may affect air quality significantly. Using multivariate transfer function analysis, we find that implementation of the 1985 Farm Bill's Conservation Reserve Program has improved air quality significantly in that area of the country most plagued by agricultural air pollution.     

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.     

Controlling Forum Choice and Controlling Policy: Congress,Courts and the IRS

Considerable scholarly attention has been paid to litigation and its influence on social and bureaucratic policy. One area of research has focused on interest group litigation. Another area of scholarship has shown that Congress encourages individual use of the courts to monitor and control bureaucratic behavior. In several areas of law, litigants have a choice of forum by deliberate legislative design, which is sometimes derided as “forum shopping.” Little attention has been paid to the dominant national political coalition's ability to encourage forum shopping through legislation and the appointment process. One area of law that the coalition can encourage forum shopping is in challenging tax audits. It can do so through implict legislative signals and the appointment process to influence litigants to sue the Internal Revenue Service in the forum that offers the litigant the greatest chance of success. Given the prominent role of courts in setting and determining policy and given the particular prominence of taxes and tax policy over the past three decades, whether and where tax litigants choose to sue is critically important to understanding the dynamics of both tax policy and tax enforcement, as well as public policy creation and change. To demonstrate the influence of political forces on tax forum choice, I compare tax and district court filings from 1994 through to 2000. I find that as the Tax Court and national political coalition become more conservative, more taxpayers sue in the Tax Court and this “forum shopping” choice is supported by the national political coalition.     

法国农业经济政策的历史考察

中古晚期以来,法国政府农业经济政策包括赋税政策,经历了重视、解放、保护、补贴农业的过程。中间虽时有逆转,但基本趋势没有改变。现在的法国是一个高度发达的现代化工业国家,农业在国民经济中所占比重不大,尽管如此,法国政府仍然重视农业的基础地位,厉行惠农政策。法国现代化过程中的农业经济政策经验,对于发展中国家的经济建设具有重要的借鉴意义。     

Clinton,Congress, and Cuba Policy Between Two Codifications: The Changing Executive-Legislative Relationship in Foreign Policy Making

We examine the changing dynamics of institutional control over U.S. policy toward Cuba that have played out during the time between two codifications of Cuba policy: The 1996 Helms-Burton legislation that codified the long-standing embargo policy as law, and the 2000 bill that wrote travel restrictions into law. The study of who makes U.S. foreign policy has long been characterized by a debate over the respective roles of the president and Congress in this area, but-in theory, at least-Helms-Burton should have put an end to the scholarly debate about who makes Cuba policy: With codification, Congress does. But the practice of making Cuba policy has been more complicated than it might have first appeared in March 1996. We track the politics of Cuba policy between these two codifications and try to understand what they mean for who makes Cuba policy now, and speculate about what these dynamics may more generally mean.     

The Origins of New Deal Agricultural Policy: Interest Groups' Role in Policy Formation

In its examination of New Deal agricultural programs, this article takes issue with the pluralist, state-centered, and class-centered approaches which ignore the complexity of these policy programs' development and implementation as well as the role of organized interests. This over simplification is rectified through a comparison of the AAA and FSA programs, which demonstrates the primary role played in these programs' existance by organized interests both outside and within, the state.     

对新疆建设兵团农牧团场职工代表大会的思考

职工代表大会是国有企业实行民主管理的基本形式,是职工行使民主管理权力的机构。新疆建设兵团作为＂党政军企＂合一的特殊组织,既具有企业性质,又具有政府性质,在这个大背景下,其职工代表大会必然具有特殊职能。文章立足团场这一体现兵团性质、履行兵团职能的基层组织,对其职工代表大会的组织保障、选举功能以及与人民代表大会职权的比较等方面作了梳理,指出了加强兵团团场职工代表大会权力的必要性。     

Mexican Public Sector Food Policy Under Agricultural Trade Liberalization

Mexico has enjoyed one of the Third World's most successful food production systems, based on a complex pattern of public sector intervention. Since 1982, the public sector has withdrawn, in a remarkably Steadfast commitment to privatization, external stabilization, and trade liberalization. This article traces the key elements of that process, and their likely impacts on traditional political goals of food security progressive social policy in the countryside, and external sector dependence. The principal argument is that privatization and trade liberalization leave poor agriculturalists vulnerable, but undoubtebly offer fiscal gains to the state and benefits to urban consumers, especially in light of reduced subsidies.     

罗斯福“新政”的农业政策

富兰克林·罗斯福上台执政后,面对美国的严重农业危机、农民悲惨处境和反抗浪潮,实行了以<农业调整法>为主要内容,以国家干预为重要手段,以控制农产品产量为目标的农业政策.罗斯福政府的农业"新政",是在维护资本主义制度的前提下,对这种制度进行改革的重要组成部分.这种改革虽然只是一种农业资本主义的结构改革,而非革命性的改革,更未促成一场社会革命,但它保护和促进了美国垄断资本主义,使美国的农业和工业一样进入了国家垄断资本主义阶段.     

Passing Nonincremental Policy: Presidential Influence in Congress,Kennedy to Carter

This article represents an important step in understanding early, modern presidents’ strategic use of signing statements by taking a sharp focus on the presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower. In contrast to recent presidents who have used the instrument increasingly to challenge legislative provisions, Eisenhower's use of signing statements was rather complex—from political credit-claiming, explaining the provisions of bills to the American public, and reinforcing his views on the federal-state balance of power—to maintaining bipartisan relations on foreign policy, shaping implementation of congressional bills, and selectively criticizing Congress for overspending. The theoretical framework devotes particular attention to the interplay of contexts—electoral, institutional, and economic—on Eisenhower's use of signing statements by policy area across his two terms.     

China's Quiet Agricultural Revolution: Policy and Programs of the New Millennium

Two specialists on China's agricultural sector review the recent course of agrarian reform in the country since the year 2000. More specifically, they summarize the more significant policy changes occurring during the period 2000-2009 (including the rollout of major new programs and agricultural tax relief) while simultaneously tracking impressive improvements in a variety of standard indicators of agricultural performance and rural per capita incomes across China's province-level units. Among other things, the authors draw contrasts between the current (post-WTO accession) and earlier reform period (1980-1985) in agriculture in terms of level of government direction and commitment to develop the sector for its own sake, outline measures undertaken to address problems with the production of tainted and/or adulterated food products, trace significant spatial "reshufflings" of rice and corn production at the provincial level, and offer possible explanations for the outwardly confounding lack of positive relationships between aggregate value of field crops/total value of all agricultural activities and rural incomes at the provincial level. They argue that renewed (yet underpublicized) government attention to the farm sector since 2000 has helped promote social stability in China by increasing food supplies (thus reducing food price effects on inflation), encouraging more sustainable farming practices, and improving rural environmental quality in many areas.     

Campaign Promises,Democratic Governance,and Environmental Policy in the U.S. Congress

One important criterion for assessing the quality of democratic governance is the extent to which the policy process effectively translates citizen preferences into collective choices. Several scholars have observed a discrepancy between citizen preferences for strong environmental protection and weak policies adopted in the United States, indicating that the United States may fall short on this criterion. We examine one possible mechanism contributing to this discrepancy—legislator defection from campaign promises. Our data indicate that legislators in the U.S. Congress routinely defect from their campaign promises in environmental protection, undermining the link between citizen preferences and policy choice. We also find that legislators are much more likely to defect from pro‐environmental campaign promises, which moves government policy toward less stringent environmental programs. Finally, the propensity of legislators to defect from their campaign promises is systematic, with defection affected by partisanship, constituency influence, the influence of the majority party, and the likely consequences of defection for policy choice. These findings contribute empirical evidence relevant to the “mandate theory” perspective on how citizen preferences are translated into collective choices through the policy process. These findings may also complement research in comparative politics concluding that legislatures selected through single member districts adopt less stringent environmental policies than do legislatures chosen via proportional representation in that the mechanism for this effect may go through legislator defection from campaign promises.     

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.