Sovereignty,Risk and Biotechnology: Zambia's 2002 GM Controversy in Retrospect

The southern African food crisis of 2002 led to one of the most significant controversies over the use of genetically modified (GM) crops in the developing world to date. Zambia's staunch opposition to GM food aid during the crisis is still frequently used as a reference point in debates over GM seed technology in agricultural development, and the morality of advanced biotechnology. This article re‐examines the controversy and its contemporary relevance using oral history interviews with key scientists, policy makers and development practitioners engaged in debates and decision‐making processes in Zambia in 2002, alongside a review of discourses in the Zambian press. The author argues that, rather than different perceptions of health and environmental risks derived from GM crops, it was questions of sovereign regulatory control of technology in a context of diminished state capacity — and the decline in the Zambian state's capacity for agricultural science research in particular — that played a central role in shaping anti‐GM attitudes. In addition, trust in the arguments of GM advocates was diminished by communication efforts which treated Zambian scientists and policy elites as a lay rather than an expert audience.     

Over‐promising and under‐delivering? Ambitions and risks in US defence strategy

Recent changes to US defence strategy, plans and forces have placed the United States at greater risk of over‐promising and under‐delivering on its global security ambitions. In 2012, the Obama administration released a new defence strategic guidance document to adapt to a shifting security environment and defence budget cuts. The guidance upholds the two long‐standing American goals of global pre‐eminence and global reach, but seeks to apply this military power by using new planning and regional concepts. It revises the Department of Defense's force planning construct, an important tool used to size US military forces, and identifies the Asia–Pacific and the greater Middle East as the two regions where the US military should focus its attention and resources. There are three major risks facing this revised US strategy: emerging security threats, the role of US allies and partners, and domestic constraints in the United States. Included in these risks are the proliferation of advanced military technologies, the US response to the rise of China, the continued prevalence of state instability and failure, the capability and commitment of NATO and other US allies, additional US budget cuts, political polarization in the United States, and interservice competition within the US military. In light of these risks, the United States faces a future in which it will continue to struggle to direct its military power towards its most important geopolitical priorities, such as rebalancing towards the Asia–Pacific, as opposed simply to respond to the many security surprises that are certain to arise. If the past is any guide, American political leaders will respond to the aforementioned risks in the worst way possible: by maintaining the current US defence strategy while slashing the resources to support it.     

Popular consent and foreign policy choices: war against the Philippines and covert action in Chile

It is usually assumed that US policy makers need to generate popular consent in order to undertake regime change against another state. This article explores the ways in which contextual factors such as the joint democracy effect, popular values and public moods influenced efforts by elites in the United States to generate popular consent for regime change in the Philippines and Chile. Against the backdrop of the Vietnam War, the United States undertook covert action in Chile due to public recognition of the target state's democratic credentials and a public mood opposed to further military ventures. In contrast, the absence of a strong joint democracy effect, a national mood infused with romantic nationalism qua militarism and social Darwinism facilitated efforts by US elites to generate consent for the invasion and occupation of the Philippines. Subsequently, this article contributes to understandings of the domestic-level factors that influence foreign policy decisions.     

The Public Policy Process among Southeastern States: Elaborating Theories of Regional Adoption and Hold‐Out Behavior

Having been adopted by legislatures in over a dozen states, postsecondary merit aid programs are largely concentrated in the southeastern United States. The observed clustering pattern seems to support previous evidence that policies spread between proximate states, a phenomenon referred to by political scientists as policy diffusion. Often, however, policy diffusion is not complete, and one or more states in a region fail to adopt. By interviewing policymakers throughout the southeastern United States—including actors in the three states in the region without merit aid—the study addresses the following question: Why do diffusion pressures lead to adoption in some states but not in others? Studying state “hold‐outs” promises not only to uncover the reasons for failed legislation in specific state contexts but also to better our understanding of the limits of diffusion theory.     

Indigenous Youth and Decolonial Futures: Energy and Environmentalism among the Diné in the Navajo Nation and the Lepchas of Sikkim,India

In India and the United States, Lepcha and Diné youth are articulating decolonial futures that diverge from past aspirations. Rather than demanding big infrastructure such as dams or power plants, Indigenous youth forward decolonial visions that reimagine the landscape and energy technologies. In this article, we suggest that Lepcha and Diné activists are articulating a youthful decolonial futurity—a vision for the future where their generation and the ones to follow can flourish in their own territories and on their own terms. We propose youthful decolonial futurity as a prefigurative politics specific to Indigenous youth, who view their activism as integral to creating a future where their communities have more control over decision-making processes and their ancestral territories. What emerges is a consideration of the role of Indigenous youth in building a language and politics of decolonisation against the roles of power brokers, elites, and naysayers.     

From security blanket to security risk: scientists in the decade after Hiroshima

Aside from a number of early prophesies of abundant and cheap nuclear power, and increased supplies of isotopes for medical research, diagnosis and therapy, visions of the Atomic Age were overwhelmingly troublesome in the aftermath of Hiroshima. Not only did nuclear Armageddon seem likely to many observers, the steps taken to enhance national security in the United States cast classes of citizens into the doleful category of “security risk.” Scientists were among those feared—a stunning (and almost instantaneous) change from their perception in August 1945 as the nuclear wizards who brought World War II to an end. National security was the dominant factor in this transformation, but there were nuances to it. This article attempts a taxonomy of the ways in which scientists were viewed in the United States.     

Le plan de sauvetage des scientifiques français

From 1940 to 1942, a number of French scientists take refuge in America with their families. They are part — often not being aware of it — of a rescue program organized from New York by two of their colleagues. Henri Laugier and Louis Rapkine, with the help of the Rockefeller Foundation (financial and logistic). Reconstitution of the different stages that paved way to an applicant for exile proves that the Vichy government did not prevent, as a rule, the temporary departure of French intellectuals, even if Jews. As for the United States, they made easier the reception of the only scientists who could enrich durably the American intellectual life.     

The stubborn persistence of local land use powers: a comment on Morrill

Contrary to Professor Morrill's thesis, land use powers in the United States are not centralizing in the hands of regional and national elites favoring metropolitan consumption interests. Indeed, the article cites evidence that land use powers have decentralized since the 1970s. The white middle and upper classes, concentrated in suburban residential enclaves, are well-served by decentralized land-use controls. Morrill is right to be concerned about threats to local democracy in the United States. But his suggested solution, leaving local governments alone to set land use policies, is flawed. Regional land use planning, does not necessarily reduce local liberty but could enhance it by dampening the beggar-thy-neighbor chase for tax ratables and enhancing the residential choices of low-income, as well as minority, households.     

Mental Health Policy Inquiry, Its Importance, and Its Rewards

This article suggests some characteristics of the field of mental health that might explain why political scientists and public policy analysts have evidenced little interest in the study of mental health policy. Following a brief overview of United States mental health policy, the author makes the case for the importance of menial health policy inquiry on grounds of both pragmatic and theoretical significance.     

The Secret Policemen's Ball: the United States, Russia and the international order after 11 September

In this article, Anatol Lieven argues that the collapse of the Soviet and communist threats and the triumph of capitalism and bourgeois values gave the United States an unprecedented chance to act as a status quo hegemon, dominating the world with the consent of other major powers. The United States threw up this chance by acting instead as a 'dissatisfied' and even revolutionary power, creating a sense of menace and resentment across much of the world. After the 11 September attacks, the near-global threat of Sunni Islamist terrorism and revolution gives the United States another opportunity to rally much of the world behind it, in a kind of new 'Holy Alliance' of states against threats from below. But by mixing up the struggle against terrorism with a very different effort at preventing nuclear proliferation, and by refusing to take the interests of other states into account, the US risks missing this opportunity for a second time, and endangering itself and its closest allies such as Britain.     

Let them eat cake? Status-based differences in diet in medieval Denmark

The goal of this research is to explore status-based differences in diet of the peasants, monks and elites interred at the medieval Cistercian monastery of Øm Kloster. In order to accomplish this task bone samples were taken from 98 individuals from the monastery for the stable isotopic analysis of carbon and nitrogen found in both bone collagen and apatite. Significant differences were found in the diet of these three groups. Elites demonstrated significantly enriched δ¹⁵N and δ¹³C values and had the smallest δ¹³C_coll-ap spacing in comparison to the peasant and monastic population. Although there were no changes in the diet of the elite or peasant population through time, the monastic diet shifted from resembling the diet of the peasant population early in the period to more closely matching that of the elites at the close of the period, although small sample size precluded the significance testing of this shift. This research suggests that social status played a considerable role in the types and quantity of food resources available to a given individual in society and that there were some socially based differences in the medieval Danish diet.     

"The Defendant Has Seemed to Live a Charmed Life": Hopt v. Utah: Territorial Justice, The Supreme Court of the United States, and Late Nineteenth-Century Death Penalty Jurisprudence

On March 7, 1887, the Supreme Court of the United States decided Fred Hopt's fourth appeal to that Court. The Utah Territory murderer's conviction had been reversed three times over seven years-his "charmed life"-but this time both his luck and his legal argument had run out: his fourth conviction was upheld. Justice Stephen J. Field dismissed Hopt's four major claims: that several members of the jury were improperly seated in spite of bias; that a doctor's evidence of cause of death was beyond the scope of his expertise; that the trial judge's "reasonable doubt" jury instruction was inadequate; and that the prosecutor's reference to the "many times the case had been before the courts" was prejudicial. Five months later, on August 11, Hopt was executed by a firing squad in the yard of the Utah Penitentiary. Hopt was only one of over two thousand convicted criminals, mostly murderers, who were legally executed in the United States in the two decades between 1880 and 1900. However, his defense team of court-appointed Salt Lake City lawyers had kept him alive for seven years. During that time he had four jury trials, four appeals to the Supreme Court of Utah Territory, and four appeals to the Supreme Court of the United States. He is the only death penalty litigant ever to be the subject of four full opinions of the Supreme Court of the United States.     

AUTHORITY, POLITY, AND TENUOUS ELITES IN IRON AGE EDOM (JORDAN)

Summary.   The strategies political elites implement to garner political authority and legitimacy in emergent polities are scrutinized in a case study from Iron Age Edom, located in modern southern Jordan and the south-east corner of the State of Israel. Edom provides a productive context in which to conduct this investigation as local elites managed a fractious polity consisting of unstable segmentary identities, while at the same time, remaining loyal to the successive Assyrian, Babylonian, and Persian empires that dominated them. This tenuous position required elites to maintain a flexible elite identity while promoting broader metaphors of attachment (e.g. Edomite) among their disparate constituents. This case study ultimately moves toward an understanding of political polities, not as disembodied entities (e.g. States), but as embedded phenomena within the societies they comprise.     

Political Correctness and Political Science: An Exploratory Study of New York State

Abstract

The term political correctness identifies a controversy that has gained wide coverage in the press over the last several years concerning academic policy in higher education in the United States. In an effort to obtain some preliminary indication of how widespread perceptions of political correctness are among political scientists, a survey of political scientists in New York State was conducted in December 1991. The survey revealed that at least in New York, political scientists are likely to perceive political correctness as an issue on their college campus and in the discipline but generally not in their departments.     

Public Policy and Emerging Sources of Technology and Technical Information Available to Industry

As technologies grow in complexity, firms often target their internal R&D resources on core competencies and utilize outside sources for supporting knowledge and technology. Where do firms turn to find such resources? This paper reports the perceptions of technology transfer managers in United States manufacturing firms toward federal and university labs and identifies the types of farms that are better positioned to utilize externally available technological resources. Based on replies from research-intensive companies within the United States, the authors find that larger firms with high research and development (R&D) budgets tend to ascribe greater significance to external sources than do smaller ones. Also, companies spending over $500 million in R&D rank universities the most significant external source of knowledge, followed by V S.-based firms, and then foreign firms.     

THE INFLUENCE OF ECONOMIC DIVERSITY ON UNEMPLOYMENT AND STABILITY*

ABSTRACT. For many years, regional scientists, economists, and geographers have been unable to clarify the influence of economic diversity on unemployment and instability in regional economies of the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada. This article presents plausible theory, proper units of analysis, valid measures, and more inclusive models of the diversity-stability relationship. The findings are generalizable because the sample includes most metropolitan areas in the U.S. The empirical analysis estimates the influence of diversity, employment concentrated in unstable industries, population size, growth rate, and control variables on unemployment and employment instability during the 1972–88 period. The results indicate that metropolitan areas which are more diverse experience lower unemployment rates and less instability than areas which are less diverse.     

Church and Empire: Free-Church Ecclesiology in a Global Era

Abstract

Jesus was cruelly executed as the alleged "king of the Jews" because of his efforts for grassroots religious renewal and resistance to Roman rule in Palestine through local religious-political elites. By the fourth century CE, however, Christianity had become the official religion of the Roman imperium. An ambiguous account of both resisting and supporting imperialism has shaped all church history. Today the United States of America is widely recognized as the central power in a new global empire.     

THE HIGHER EDUCATION POLICY RESEARCH AGENDA

Substantial opportunities exist for social scientists, humanists practitioners, and other scholars to contribute to research on higher education policy. Not only is the university or college an interesting study objective itself but also with higher education in the United States and worldwide so immersed in public policy considerations, the relations between academe and government raise many political, economic and other Questions. Some issues currently on the research agenda are listed here. The consequences of higher education policy research are also considered.     

Refugees and racial capitalism: Meatpacking and the primitive accumulation of labor

When meatpacking plants in the United States lost a third of their undocumented Latinx workers to Federal immigration raids in the late 2000s, the industry began recruiting vulnerable, but “legal,” refugee workers to replace them. In the spring of 2020, as COVID-19 threatened to halt meatpacking, two separate executive orders designated meatpacking production as essential to the United States food system and introduced new restrictions on refugee resettlement in the United States. Bridging Marxian literature on race, labor, and capitalism and critical refugee studies, this paper examines the paradox of refugees’ positioning as both “essential” sources of vulnerable labor and “prohibited” threats to the American nation-state. We argue that the placement of refugees in meatpacking jobs is actually the primitive accumulation of unfree labor. In the case of “essential” meatpacking work in the United States, racial capitalism articulates with conditions of statelessness and unequal citizenship rights to anchor “prohibited” refugees to meatpacking work.