Les Occidentaux: Western Europe and the United States since the Second World War

In his recent book, Les Occidentaux, Alfred Grosser describes and analyses the complex conundrum of relations between the countries of Western Europe and the United States since 1945. In the late 1970s, this story is of course still incomplete, because there has been no ‘end of an era’ in transatlantic relations, in spite of the deep economic crisis which has affected all the countries involved. His study focuses not only on the facts, but also on how these facts were perceived by those involved; in so doing it poses, answers and provokes many questions. In the following edited and translated extract from the Conclusion of his book, Professor Grosser briefly re‐examines some of the more significant problems he has considered and takes another look at his solutions and their implications.     

意识形态也是美国的国家利益--评《美国与反共主义--论美国对社会主义国家的意识形态外交》

冷战结束后,美国的外交政策特别是对华政策使人感到变化多端。尤其是意识形态因素的作用,时隐时现,时明时暗,让许多研究者琢磨不透。常听到这样的议论:美国的对华政策有时是从意识形态出发,而不是从国家利益出发。似乎意识形态与国家利益是两个完全不相干的概念。那么,意识形态在美国外交政策中到底占居什么位置?意识形态与国家利益到底是什     

The War on Terrorism and the Administration of the American State

Conditions of war lead to a style of teleocratic governance and administration that is at odds with the idea of civil association reflected in the American constitutional state. As a result, war can put our traditional notions of humanity, pluralism, and limited government at risk. In order to defend the values of civil association, public administrators should understand and appreciate the principles undergirding our constitutional system of governance and administration.     

The United States of America

European Journal of Political Research -     

The “growth tax” in the United States

By providing public goods, including law and order, national defense, and income redistribution that expands the gains from exchange (the scope and membership of the constitutional agreement), government expenditures act as a positive externality on the growth rate. Beyond that level, taxes act as a negative externality. In this paper a simple model is formulated and the optimal (growth-maximizing) tax rate found. Empirical estimation finds it to be in the range of 21.5–22.9 percent. The effect of taxation beyond this level is a cumulative loss of about $30 trillion (1972 dollars) in GNP over the period 1949–89.     

Punishing German Soldiers during the Cold War: The Case of Erich von Manstein

Bloxham examines the events and rhetoric surrounding the trial and premature release from custody of Field Marshal Erich von Manstein. Von Manstein was convicted of involvement in atrocities on the Eastern Front, yet his story aroused the sympathy of many in Britain, including influential politicians, who believed the Wehrmacht to be innocent of the crimes of Nazism. His trial also fell squarely into a period, the onset of the Cold War, when Britain was attempting to restore relations with West Germany. Pressure both from the nascent West German elite and from within the Conservative government (re-elected in 1951) and its foreign diplomatic corps ensured that a series of dubious legal devices would be used to accelerate the liberation of von Manstein at a time of negotiations about a German contribution to a Western European army. Similar contrivances abetted the early release of another field marshal, Kesselring, and a senior general, Falkenhorst. The releases, and the obfuscations of the soldiers' war-time records that were an essential part of justifying the releases, constitute a substantial British contribution both to the undermining of the process of war crimes trials and to the rewriting of the Second World War.     

The Politics of Fiscal Austerity: Implications for the United States

As austerity becomes the new normal for advanced nations, questions are raised about whether nations can make the hard choices necessary to bring about a sustainable fiscal future. The political defeat experienced by so many European governments undertaking fiscal consolidations points to the vulnerabilities that leaders will face. This article shows that how some Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) nations have survived the daunting politics of fiscal consolidation by timing actions for periods of economic recovery and political honeymoons following elections and by pursuing deficit reduction strategies that emphasize broad sweeping changes yielding high potential for dramatic economic gains over the longer term. Unlike many European nations today, the seemingly endless appetite for US treasuries by worldwide markets give the United States the luxury of choosing to begin deficit reduction only when the economy strengthens. However, the absence of market pressure also reduces the sense of urgency, consigning national leaders to create internal crises such as the 2012 “fiscal cliff” to force their own hand. While the polarized politics characterizing our party system does not bode well for concerted fiscal action, divided government carries the potential for spreading political risks and promoting more sustainable fiscal outcomes, as it has in our recent history and in other nations as well.     

States on Steroids: The Intergovernmental Odyssey of American Climate Policy

Climate change has conventionally been framed as an issue that would be addressed by an international regime established through negotiation among nation‐states. The experience of policy development in the decade following the signing of the Kyoto Protocol indicates that climate change also needs to be examined as a challenge of multilevel governance. The increasingly central role of state governments in American climate policy formation squares with recent experience in other Western democracies that share authority across governmental levels. This paper examines the American experience, considering factors that have contributed to a state‐centric policy process and using that body of experience to assess competing strategic choices faced by individual states based on their mix of emission trends and policy adoption rates. In turn, the collective state experience allows for consideration of the varied political feasibility of competing climate policy tools that remain under active review in subnational, national, and international contexts. The paper concludes with a set of scenarios that explore different ways in which a state‐centric system may be integrated with expanding involvement at the national level.