Display's the thing: The real stakes in the conflict over high-resolution displays

Japan has a strong lead over both the United States and Western Europe in the development of liquid crystal displays (LCDs). We argue in this article that LCDs and associated integrated display technologies are critical for competition in a growing proportion of global electronics markets. The “architecture of supply” is the issue here, and U.S. firms need help from the government to insure that they will have access to the latest display technologies in a timely manner at market prices. Besides adopting foreign economic policies designed to achieve this purpose, it will be necessary for the government to continue to work with the domestic electronics industry to raise the industry's technological capabilities in new display technologies.     

Japanese voluntary environmental agreements: Bargaining power and reciprocity as contributors to effectiveness

Theoretical and empirical research on voluntarism has focused primarily on U.S. and European examples, but has generally failed to consider the Japanese system of voluntary environmental agreements. Nevertheless, Japanese VEAs are one of the worlds oldest experiments in voluntary policy; careful analysis of the characteristics and contexts may improve understanding about the critical factors associated with effective voluntary policy. This paper reviews the extant literature on voluntarism focusing specifically on the bargaining context within which agreements are negotiated. It details three factors that contribute to the effectiveness of voluntary policy generally: regulatory bargaining power, non-regulatory bargaining power and reciprocity. The paper then provides a brief but detailed analysis of the development of voluntary agreements in Japan. Comparisons with voluntary policies in the U.S. and Europe are included. Findings indicate similarities and some significant differences between the Japanese system and other national systems of voluntary policy. Conclusions discuss implications for theory and policy.     

The harmonization of automobile environmental standards between Japan,the United States and Europe: the ‘depoliticizing strategy’ by industry and the dynamics between firms and governments in a transnational context

Abstract

When initial automobile environmental standards were introduced during the 1970s and 1980s there was a large difference in the level and timing of the introduction of these initial emission standards in the United States, Japan and Europe. Trade in automobiles was the target of fierce trade disputes in the 1980s between, for example, the United States and Japan. The governments of Japan, the United States and Europe were involved in trade negotiations as agents of the automobile industry of each country, often focusing on environmental standards as sources of non-tariff barriers. But since the mid-1990s, because of the globalization of the automobile industry, automobile firms have had common interests in collaborating in relation to voluntary harmonized standards. They also have common interests in relation to other sectors such as the petroleum industry in that the burden for emission reductions needs to be shared equitably among sectors. In that sense, it can be said that a ‘depoliticizing strategy’ has been used, which is the strategy used by the automobile industry not to rely on government intervention and trade conflicts at an intergovernmental level to deal with the difference in standards. There is a tendency for high-level convergence concerning environmental emission standards for NO_x etc. in Japan, the United States and Europe and related sulfur content standards for complying with them. In addition, the automobile industry has been consciously seeking international harmonization through the Trans Atlantic Business Dialogue (TABD) and the TrilateralWorking Group. Harmonization has also been attempted at the intergovernmental level to gain legitimacy at the arena of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) through the signing of the 1995 Agreement (the revision of 1958 Agreement) and the establishment of the 1998 Global Agreement. In the process, governments have been requested by automobile firms to adopt harmonized standards; but governments also have their own incentives to set up an intergovernmental mechanism to establish harmonized standards.     

B: THE NORMATIVE/IDEOLOGICAL CONTEXT OF POLICY FORMATION FAMILY POLICY: HAS THE UNITED STATES LEARNED FROM EUROPE?

"Family Policy" is a term that is used increasingly in the U.S. to describe policies affecting children and their families. In this article, the authors focus on whether societal learning has occurred across the Atlantic with regard to family policy and what, if anything, the U.S. has learned or borrowed from Europe. The authors conclude that there has been some borrowing, albeit modest; currently, some of that learning is reflected in an expanding child policy debate.     

Political Science and Prediction: What's Next for U.S. Climate Change Policy?

This article analyzes how U.S. climate change politics and policy making are changing in the public, private and civil society sectors, and how such changes are likely to influence U.S. federal policies. It outlines the current status of U.S. climate change action and explores four overlapping pathways of policy change: (1) the strategic demonstration of the feasibility of climate change action; (2) the creation and expansion of markets; (3) policy diffusion and learning; and (4) the creation and promulgation of norms about the need for more aggressive climate change action. These four pathways seek to fruitfully draw from rationalist and constructivist approaches to policy analysis, without collapsing or confusing the different logics. Building on this analysis, it predicts that future federal U.S. climate policy will include six major components: (1) A national cap on GHG emissions; (2) A national market based cap‐and‐trade GHG emissions trading scheme; (3) Mandatory renewable energy portfolio standards; (4) Increased national product standards for energy efficiency; (5) Increased vehicle fleet energy efficiency standards; and (6) Increased federal incentives for research and development on energy efficiency issues and renewable energy development. In addition, expanding federal climate policy may bring about significant changes in U.S. foreign policy as U.S. international re‐engagement on climate change is likely to occur only after the development of more significant federal policy.     

Investment of Social Security reserves in three countries

The current buildup of the U.S. Social Security Trust Fund has caused speculation about both the potential consequences of the buildup under different policy objectives and the fund's management. As is often the case, the search for precedents under similar circumstances abroad has been quite extensive on the part of legislators and U.S. experts in the field of financial policy. This article summarizes the experiences of Canada, Japan, and Sweden--all of whom have accumulated large trust fund reserves--with a focus on their investment policies. Trust fund investments in the three countries are similar as to types of investments, but the pattern of distribution of these investments varies widely from one country to another.     

Uneven institutional configurations and sectoral variation in China's socialist market economy: a comparative study of three pillar industries

By comparing three Chinese pillar industries, automobile, petroleum, and machinery, this paper analyzes how the development of uneven institutional configurations bred sectoral variation in transitional China. In 1994, at the dawn of the Chinese socialist market economy, the State Council issued guidelines for national industrial policy and proposed the enactment of similar growth-promoting policies for all pillar industries. The level of policy enactment and the resulting outcomes, however, vary significantly across the industries. Previous literature on China's rapid industrialization has sought to build a single model encompassing China as a whole, and has emphasized either the state's institutional capacity or China's unique governance mechanisms. This study investigates China's industrialization by taking account of the uneven development of institutional capacity amid macro institutional reforms. Every idea and institution evolved at a different pace in these reforms, and the incremental nature of the reforms further deepened the gaps between sectors. This paper argues that, due to this uneven development, the Chinese state was not strong enough to be considered a developmental state until at least the early 2000s.     

Political strategies of large companies and their significance for the implementation of the European single electricity market: the examples of France and Germany

Electricity supply in the European member states has been a closed national public sector service without competition for a long time. Currently, the European electricity industry is subject to radical change resulting from the European directive establishing common rules for the internal market in electricity, which came into force in 1997. This paper attempts to explain the varying forms of implementation of the internal electricity market in France and Germany. First, it clarifies the special characteristics of electricity supply and European electricity policy. Secondly, the paper shows the divergent sectoral arrangements of the French and German electricity industries. Thirdly, it points out that the different degrees of linkage between the public players and the electricity companies in France and Germany produce different political strategies which are followed by the companies at the European level, especially those strategies which seek direct influence on the European Commission. Finally, the paper reveals the significance of these strategies in Brussels in terms of the implementation of the single electricity market in both member states. Copyright © 2003 Henry Stewart Publications     

养老产业政策体系及其协调性--基于政策文本的量化分析

发展养老产业是应对未来深度老龄化的重要国家战略。聚焦养老产业政策体系,构建其协调性分析框架,选取调查2006—2018年中央、陕西省及安康市的资料,分析国家、省、市三级层面现行养老产业政策文本,应用MAXQDA软件对其进行编码,采用文本内容分析、共词分析、社会网络分析与聚类分析方法,对养老产业政策层级、政策发展历程、政策主体、政策效力、政策专项性、政策内容等进行双维协调性定量分析。研究发现:养老产业政策体系内部不同层级之间政策联系紧密,涉及的政策各要素较为完备,但仍然存在纵向、横向维度中的不协调因素。应通过丰富养老产业政策类型与内容、优化体系结构、加强相关部门合作等有效措施,进一步提升养老产业政策体系的协调性,为推动养老产业的健康可持续发展奠定制度基础。     

Assessing Policy Design and Interpretation: An Institutions‐Based Analysis in the Context of Aquaculture in Florida and Virginia,United States

Recently in the field of policy studies, there has been a renewed interest in research that connects policy design with broader governance outcomes. As opposed to past studies of policy design that have characterized policies along broad categories of variables, however, recent studies have sought to systematically assess the language of public policies and resultant outcomes. This paper contributes to the existing and emerging literature on policy design by coupling a content analysis of polices governing the aquaculture industry in two U.S. states and interviews with aquaculture community members to understand policy design and perceptions of policy legitimacy, coerciveness, and enforcement.     

Integration of Environmental Concerns in a Trans‐Atlantic Perspective: The Case of Renewable Electricity

The issue of integrating environmental concerns into energy policy decision making is increasingly addressed, not least related to climate change. Although the United States, unlike the EU, did not sign the Kyoto Protocol, several U.S. states promote renewable electricity (RES‐E), and some of these initiatives are linked to climate‐change mitigation efforts. The present article assesses in this connection the six New England states of the United States, comparing their efforts of integrating RES‐E with climate change to the Nordic countries in Europe. In order to explain different approaches, the article focuses on the importance of different EU and U.S. multilevel governing structures. The analysis indicates that the New England states' RES‐E promotion thus far has not been substantially integrated with climate‐change concerns, whereas in the EU's more top‐down approach, climate change figures more prominently vis‐à‐vis RES‐E. EU policies represent an increasingly important driver for the Nordic countries. In the United States, on the other hand, it remains an open question as to how future federal policy efforts will relate to existing policies at the state level.     

Federalism, Political Structure, and Public Policy in the United States and Canada

Two of the three large countries on the North American continent—the United States and Canada—share a number of similarities that often make it difficult for the untrained observer to differentiate between the two nations. On the surface, the two are structured similarly as federal systems that, by definition, exhibit shared power between the national government and provincial or state political entities.Although there are other important social and economic characteristics of the two countries that help explain differences in policy processes and outcomes, it is the contention of this article that one gets the clearest sense of what Elazar has called thinking federal by utilizing an analytical approach that joins questions related to federalism with some conceptual frameworks of the public policy field. Two frameworks undergird the argument in this article—the Lowi typology of different types of policies and Deil Wright's typology of different models that describe the American inter-governmental system.In both countries, policies must be sensitive to the greater interdependencies between units of government as well as to linkages between policy areas. The mechanisms or instrumentalities for dealing with policy issues are intrinsically complex. It is also clear that the intergovernmental networks that exist in both the U.S. and Canada are composed of an array of actors. The differing political structures of the systems do impact the types of intergovernmental policies that have emerged in the two countries. The executive dominance so imbedded in Canadian governments has contributed to their ability to adopt and implement certain controversial redistributive policies, such as a national health insurance program. By contrast, the fragmentation of the U.S. system makes redistributive policies more difficult.     

Information technology and economic recovery in Western Europe

This article sets out to analyse the response of West European governments and of the European Community to the challenge of information technology (IT). European countries have joined the race among industrial nations to restructure their economies around the industries of the future (micro-electronics, computers and advanced telecommunications). The race is currently led by Japan and the United States with Western Europe following a poor third. In order to catch up, West European governments have for some time pursued national strategies and are now attempting to develop a common approach with the assistance of the European Commission. This attempt has been bedevilled, however, not only by national chauvinism, but by conflict between the ambitions of governments and the goals of private sector strategies. Eureka - Europe's response to America's Strategic Defence Initiative - marks a step towards resolving such differences. But as this article suggests, it will not resolve the deeper tensions between the major aims of current policies: the concentration of research and production resources while also creating an open and fully competitive market for IT in Western Europe.This article is part of a wider project on new technology policies in Western Europe, funded by the Leverhulme Trust and directed by Professor J.J. Richardson. The main findings will be published in Information Technology and the State, Oxford University Press, forthcoming.     

Information, market government, and health policy: a study of health data organizations in the states.

Information is essential to the success of market-oriented policies. Information on health care costs and quality is collected and distributed by state governments through health data organizations (HDOs) to enhance competition and lower costs in the medical industry and to improve consumer choice among medical alternatives. This article examines the information collected, produced, and distributed by state health data organizations in Colorado and Pennsylvania. Findings reveal that information was not the objective determinant of choice and competition as market-oriented policy designers had hoped. Nor did market-oriented bureaucracies produce and distribute data readily accessible for public choice. Instead, information produced and distributed by these HDOs was the result of political and bureaucratic exercises that conform much more to classic interest group policymaking and captured bureaucracies than to contemporary market-oriented government ideals. The findings underscore the extraordinary difficulties facing federal-level policy designers as they contemplate introducing market-oriented health care policies on the national level.     

NEW DIRECTIONS IN EMPLOYMENT AND TRAINING POLICY: A FEDERAL PERSPECTIVE

The U.S. Department of Labor's "Work Force 2000" project has identified long-term trends that will affect future employment and training policy. These include demographic trends such as a decline in the pool of young labor market entrants and an increase in women, minority, and immigrant workers; the continued shift from goods-producing industries to the service sector; and continued technological innovation in response to increased international competition. These projected changes in the labor market and workplace present a national challenge and an opportunity to tackle the longstanding problems of disadvantaged workers. Cooperative public and private programs to eliminate illiteracy and increase job skills and competencies, ease labor mobility and provide retraining, and attack underlying social problems that support the cycle of welfare dependency and unemployment are needed to provide the workforce America needs for the future.     

Continuity and change in U.S. foreign policy: Carter and reagan on el salvador

In attempting to understand continuity and change in U.S. foreign policy, analysts have tended to place too much emphasis on the importance of process and too little on that of values, interests, and strategies. In formulating policies toward the conflict in El Salvador, both the Carter and Reagan administrations were constrained by some enduring moral and political factors in the U.S. civic culture and by some fundamental processes of decision-making, which together account for the similarities in policy between administrations. Despite such factors, each administration's remaining space for choice produced a decidedly different set of policies with different outcomes.     

Do voters affect or elect policies? A new perspective, with evidence from the U.S. Senate

Using quasi-experimental evidence from close elections, Lee et al. (2004) - henceforth LMB - argue competition for voters in U.S. House elections does not affect policy positions, as incumbent Senate candidates do not vote more extremely if elected than non-incumbents. Despite stronger electoral competition and greater legislative independence, similar results, shown here, hold for the Senate. Yet, the hypothesis that voters do not affect policies conflicts with how Senators moderate their positions prior to their next election. LMB-style estimates appear to be biased downwards as junior members of Congress prefer to vote more extremely than senior members, independently of their electoral strength. Corrected estimates are more favorable to the hypothesis that candidates moderate their policy choices in response to electoral competition.     

Housing Subsidies and Early Childhood Development: A Comprehensive Review of Policies and Demonstration Projects

ABSTRACT

In this article, we ask how housing subsidies might influence young children. We examine two national housing policies – public housing assistance and the Section 8 vouchers program – and two demonstration projects that aimed to improve the administration of providing housing subsidies – HOPE (Homeownership Opportunities for People Everywhere) VI and Moving to Opportunity. This article is a critical examination of these policies and demonstration projects in relation to the following housing dimensions that promote the healthy development of young children: income supplements residential stability, physical environment, access to services and amenities, housing choice, neighborhood safety, and social capital. We compared advantages and limitations of each of these national housing policies and demonstration projects and examined ways in which they might influence children in these housing dimensions. The article concludes with implications and future research directions for U.S. housing policy by discussing its most recent U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) initiative, Rental Assistance Demonstration, in addressing limitations of housing policies and demonstration projects we examined.     

U.S.-China Space Cooperation: Balancing Act between the U.S. Congress and President

There are a growing number of U.S. space scientists and managers calling for reinitiating cooperation with China in space. It is well-known that investigations of the U.S. Congress into various allegations involving China have resulted in a series of laws curtailing space cooperation between these two countries. By surveying the concurrent political developments within the United States in the 1980s and 1990s, this article attempts to reveal the domestic compulsions that propelled changes in the U.S. space policy towards China. The fundamental impetus is the power struggle and differences between the U.S. president and Congress in their perception of U.S. economic interests and national security in the context of space technology that strained these relations. Recent U.S. presidents who inherited this situation added to the discourse based on their own perceptions about outer space and China. These perceptions either found congruence with the policy of the U.S. Congress or led to finding ways to circumvent its legal restrictions. Based on these developments, it is concluded that the view of the U.S. president has alternated between necessary, desirable, and objectionable on the issue of U.S.-China space cooperation, and the U.S. Congress has thus shifted from supporting to restricting and then legally banning cooperation.     

Education and Poverty: Confronting the Evidence

Current U.S. policy initiatives to improve the U.S. education system, including No Child Left Behind, test‐based evaluation of teachers, and the promotion of competition are misguided because they either deny or set to the side a basic body of evidence documenting that students from disadvantaged households on average perform less well in school than those from more advantaged families. Because these policy initiatives do not directly address the educational challenges experienced by disadvantaged students, they have contributed little—and are not likely to contribute much in the future—to raising overall student achievement or to reducing achievement and educational attainment gaps between advantaged and disadvantaged students. Moreover, such policies have the potential to do serious harm. Addressing the educational challenges faced by children from disadvantaged families will require a broader and bolder approach to education policy than the recent efforts to reform schools.