Who Supports Nuclear Armament in Japan? Threat Perceptions and Japan's Nuclear Armament

The security environment in East Asia has been going through drastic changes. As China and North Korea pose a serious threat to Japan, the Japanese are now more concerned about the security issue in the region. Recognizing the highly volatile situation Japan is facing, the purpose of this study is to examine the issue of nuclear proliferation by focusing on people's attitudes in Japan. More specifically, it systematically analyzes the factors that can determine people's opinions of nuclear weapons by utilizing the survey data. The result of the statistical analysis suggests that threat perceptions significantly boost people's support for nuclear armament. Advancing our understanding of nuclear proliferation from a unique perspective, this study makes an important contribution to the literature, thus helping us predict Japan's security policy.     

American opinion toward terrorism: The Reagan years

Abstract

Using a variety of public opinion sources, this article explores American attitudes during the two Reagan administrations toward terrorism. It establishes the salience of terrorism in the public's mind, the perceived causes of terrorism, opinion about preventing future terrorist incidents, and attitudes on negotiating with terrorists. The paper also examines sentiments about military retaliation options and reviews beliefs about media coverage of terrorism. In this overall attitudinal context, the study touches on the theoretical relationship between public opinion and foreign policymaking, contending that the American public is responsible and sensible enough to comprehend the general nuances and basic complexities of an issue such as terrorism. Public opinion is judged to be a capable and logical determinant in foreign policy formation. The paper also concludes that there must be some symmetry between U.S. policy and public opinion on the issue for the policy to be effective.     

Strategic communication by regulatory agencies as a form of reputation management: A strategic agenda

This article develops a strategic agenda concerning regulatory agencies' strategic communication in light of the reputation literature. It highlights the main strands in this literature, presents the fundamental findings discovered so far, responds to the critiques that have recently surfaced, and offers guidance about where scholarship on strategic communication might most profitably head. The critiques discussed here centre on two aspects: (i) the claim that an agency's communication choices are to some extent driven by the distinctive logic of the media rather than by reputational concerns, and (ii) the argument that strategic communication provides only short-term solutions to emerging threats and is therefore overemphasized in the literature. Future agendas include, for example, the selection of audience segmentation strategies, and the management of competing and even contradictory communication for segmented audiences when agencies enjoy exclusive jurisdiction, as opposed to cases in which other agencies share the same stage.     

Compliance and non-compliance as sources of recognition: Slovakia and NATO

This article argues that there is a difference in what constitutes the sources of recognition prior to countries' membership in the Euro-Atlantic community represented by NATO and after countries become its members. While prior to membership, countries are recognized for their compliance with NATO standards and policies, upon membership countries get the opportunity to promote specific interests legitimately and may seek recognition via non-compliance with NATO mainstream.The paper explores this dynamic of recognition on the issue of Kosovo independence where Slovakia went from supporting NATO in its effort to protect civilians in Kosovo in the late 1990s to non-recognition of Kosovo in defiance of the majority of NATO member states less than a decade later. The crucial point proposed here is that there was a shift in how recognition by NATO worked prior to Slovakia's membership and upon membership in these frameworks. While prior to membership recognition was achieved by compliance and identification with NATO standpoints, policies and actions, upon membership, recognition is achieved by differentiation from these patterns. More generally, the study shows that NATO membership is a powerful source of conditionality in relation to future members and a powerful source of legitimacy in relation to current members' actions. While this has been discussed in the literature, the point here is that recognition in its various forms is an important driving force in these conditionality processes.     

Corruption in the Courts: the Achilles' heel of Nigeria's regulatory framework?

Abstract

The exponential growth in the size of the private security sector (PSS) in Africa has helped give the issue of its regulation new importance. Yet the ongoing debates over what laws should be passed and by whom tend to ignore the more basic and arguably urgent question of whether African states' justice systems are sufficiently robust to give this legislation meaning. The aim of this paper is to cast some much needed light on this topic by drawing lessons from Nigeria's current experiences. By tracing the development of its PSS code and examining instances of malpractice in its justice system, the article argues that its regulatory framework is fundamentally compromised by corruption.     

The Roots of Algeria's Religious and Ethnic Violence

Although the existing literature on Algeria's civil conflict recognizes the role of religious and ethnic violence in the crisis, it does not sufficiently explain the various reasons behind it. The main aim of this article is to fill in this gap to some extent by examining the main factors determining the emergence of armed religious and ethnic groups in this country. The basic conclusion to emerge from the analysis is that, although such factors as the closure of the country's political space, state repression, and the growth of atavistic sentiments remain important in explaining Algeria's religious and ethnic violence, economic collapse, religious spending, and diversionary politics are variables that should not be ignored when addressing the sources and sustainability of such violence.     

EVALUATING THE BREADTH OF POLICY ENGAGEMENT BY ORGANIZED INTERESTS

This article probes the variation in the breadth of policy engagement among organized interests. The literature, heavily shaped by large‐n US studies of Washington and its lobbying system, suggests many reasons for organized interests to focus policy engagement relatively narrowly. This claim of policy specialization has been long repeated in the British public policy literature. The aim of this article is to empirically test the extent to which expectations of narrowed engagement hold in a UK context. This article uses a new Scottish dataset that tracks actual engagement by any organized interest on executive policy consultations over a 25‐year period. It tracks over 90,000 ‘mobilization events' by over 18,000 organizations in 1,690 distinct consultation issues across the entire Scottish policy system. In analysing these data, we concern ourselves with establishing: (1) the extent of generalized engagement; (2) the type of organized interests that are more or less general in their engagement; and (3) the extent to which a specialized style of policy engagement is on the increase over time. In the process, we develop measures that are appropriate for assessing breadth of engagement using issue‐based policy data.     

An Examination of Pre-Purchase Information-Search Tendencies of an Immigrant Population

Abstract

Perhaps because immigration is currently one of the most hotly debated issues in America (e.g., Kuttner 2004), there is little appetite, especially lately, in the academic literature for an examination of some of the more serious, but lesser known issues that go along with this key demographic factor. These currently ignored issues nonetheless have serious implications for businesses (Crock 2004), the government (Bernstein et al. 2004), public-policy makers (Magnusson and Kripalani 2003) and social-service providers (Dobbs 2004), among others.

One such much ignored, albeit serious issue is that of how immigrants gather information to solve problems (including those of consumption) in their new host culture. This issue has been barely investigated in the academic literature, though anecdotal evidence from the popular press show that it has serious implications for marketers (Vence 2002), public-policy makers (Aldrich and Variyam 2000) and social-service providers (Stewart 1996), among others.

Consequently, in this paper I investigate this issue as follows. First, I focus on Chinese-American immigrants, for reasons I explain later in this paper. Second, I examine assimilational differences between these individuals, again, for reasons I explain later in this paper. Third, I investigate how these differences affect how these individuals search for information prior to the purchase of three durable products (personal computer, video camera and color television) and one non-durable product (dandruff-control shampoo). What I found is that each of the cultural, identificational, and structural assimilation has (1) distinct effects on this search behavior and (2) these effects vary by type of Product-purchase. I conclude by discussing implications of these findings for marketers, social-service providers and public-policy makers, among others.     

Making a Difference? NGOs and Civil Society Development in Russia

The role of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in the development of Russia's civil society has been the focus of academic study since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. In light of this literature, this article aims to assess the impact of the movement that has most often been seen as very promising for Russia's future civil society development—the environmental movement—by utilising research undertaken in Samara Oblast’ of the Russian Federation. While the results do reveal some positive contributions to civil society development in Russia, they also exhibit many similarities with other studies in the extant literature, illustrating the relative weakness of Russia's social movements in the area of civil society development.     

ENVIRONMENTAL INJUSTICE: AN EMERGING PUBLIC POLICY ISSUE

ABSTRACT

Environmental justice is a major issue today and of interest to citizens, administrators, and scholars of public administration. In this introduction, we review the emergence of the environmental justice movement and discuss the development of the field by presenting an overview of the literature and existent research on environmental justice. This research has focused to a large extent on siting issues and on the causes and explanations of environmental equity. In particular, five causes or explanations of environmental injustice have been emphasized in the literature: (a) race; (b) economic and market factors; (c) political and administrative issues; (d) attitudinal issues; and (e) post-materialism. We review the major pieces of research and evidence in these areas and compare and contrast the explanations of environmental injustice. for the most part we find that there is considerable controversy over the different explanations and causes of environmental injustice. In the third section of the paper, we highlight some of the issues that have not been explored so far and the unfulfilled gaps, in academic research on environmental justice issues. We conclude by presenting a brief synopsis of the articles in this symposium.     

The 'nameless fever': The HIV/AIDS pandemic and China's women

HIV/AIDS is fundamentally an issue of human rights. To the right to medical provision must be added rights to the provisions of social justice necessary to the prevention and alleviation of HIV/AIDS. China has become the focus of international concern over HIV/AIDS. Applying the concepts of 'capabilities poverty', 'discursive democracy', gender construction, 'structural violence' and the 'hypermasculine state', the study identifies the threat to China's women from HIV/AIDS; evaluates the factors contributing to this threat with reference to issues of human rights; and assesses the quality of the national and international response to the HIV/AIDS threat. It is argued that there is a growing threat to women from HIV infection in China; that there are gender-specific factors that render women in China especially vulnerable; that the belated epidemiological response is weak and its capability to meet the threat seriously weakened by social patriarchy; and that, ultimately, the HIV/AIDS threat to China's women is an issue that can only be resolved through political reform leading to discursive democracy and social justice.     

The Development of the Urban Government System in Bangladesh: Does Coordination Exist?

This paper is intended to shed some light on the development of urban governance in Bangladesh by highlighting the issue of coordination. It addresses the question of whether there is any mechanism through which urban government bodies can ensure coordination on matters of dispute between different government organisations. The paper is based on a review of secondary literature as well as on primary data drawn from a case study on a city corporation. The available data substantiates the view that the process of urban service delivery in Bangladesh has lacked proper coordination mechanisms from its very inception. Successive governments since the independence of Bangladesh have experimented with the structural design of urban government bodies without considering the need for a proper mechanism to ensure sound coordination among actors involved in implementing the various policies of these bodies. Although an attempt was made by the then Awami League1 1 The Awami League is one of the two major political parties in Bangladesh. View all notes (1996–2001) government to establish a high-powered coordination committee under the chairmanship of the minister in charge of the Local Government, Rural Development and Cooperatives (LGRD&C) Ministry for each city corporation, in order to ensure better management of services and to settle disputes between various government agencies, the initiative was perverted upon the change of state power in 2001. As a result, these bodies continue to suffer from problems of coordination.     

How policy agendas change when autocracies liberalize: The case of Hong Kong, 1975–2016

This article considers how autocrats decide to expand or narrow the issue diversity of their policy agenda during a period of political liberalization. Prior studies have two competing perspectives. First, political liberalization increases the social and political freedom that enhances information exchange, and thus expands issue diversity. Second, political liberalization decreases government's control of the legislature and thus narrows the issue diversity. This article offers a novel theoretical perspective by combining these two countervailing theories. Specifically, it predicts a diminishing marginal benefit of information exchange and an increasing marginal bargaining cost. As such, this article argues that issue diversity follows a negative quadratic (inverted‐U) relationship as the regimes liberalize. The analysis of a new and unique dataset of Hong Kong's legislative agenda (1975 to 2016) offers support for this theory. This study sheds light on policy‐making in authoritarian regimes and democracies, and advances the theory of information processing.     

The importance of geopolitics in firms' international location decisions: The Polish case

Despite connections and common traits between geopolitics and International Business based on geography and location, literature on this matter is scarce. This study aims to contribute to this literature gap, by assessing the importance of Poland's geopolitical factors in FDI location decisions. By applying a hybrid methodology which combines qualitative and quantitative analyses we conclude that there is a connection between Poland's geopolitical factors (stable, variable and interactional) and the volume, origin and distribution of the FDI received.     

Women's Job Participation in and Efficiency of NREGA Program—Case Study of a Poor District in India

NREGA program in India offers a lucrative opportunity for the rural women to participate in job market, earn income, and have control over life events. However women's decision for participation as well as share in NREGA jobs are influenced by various socio-economic factors like education, caste, religion, alternative income, health-related achievements, and fund availability. Variation in some of these variables is often beyond their control. In this context logit regression and DEA efficiency analysis is done to analyses the issue of women's participation and share of employment days in the context a poor region in India.     

Political corruption,economic performance,and electoral outcomes: a cross-national analysis

The current study examines how the incumbent government's economic performance plays a role in mediating the impact of political corruption on electoral outcomes in 115 developing countries with relatively higher levels of corruption than Western consolidated democracies. Borrowing theoretical insights from the information-processing theory of voting, this study finds that political corruption becomes a formative electoral factor when the regime fails to sustain a sufficient level of economic growth. Otherwise, political corruption is not a significant factor that shapes electoral outcomes, irrespective of the level of perceived corruption, because the economy occupies voters' minds as the most important issue, making it a more accessible issue than political corruption.     

The long shadow of John Stuart Mill: Brian Barry on culture and freedom

Brian Barry's recent critique of the theory and practice of multiculturalism reflects a robust defence of a version of liberal egalitarianism which accords individuals political rights and opportunities to pursue cultural goods and to assert against cultural communities. This argument is self-consciously defended as following in the tradition of J. S. Mill's theory of liberty. However, Mill's liberalism has two distinct legacies, both libertarian and perfectionist. This article argues that Barry's discussion of the issue of multicultural education reflects a much stronger and perfectionist Millian influence than he either needs or wants to assert in the face of multicultural critics. Exploring this complex legacy exposes the possible resources that contemporary political theorists have, to deal with the issue of cultural recognition and integration.     

The Resource Curse - What Have We Learned from Two Decades of Intensive Research: Introduction to the Special Issue

Abstract

There has been increasing interest in the so-called ‘resource curse’, that is the tendency of resource-rich countries to underperform in several development outcomes. This has generated a mountain of (often contradictory) evidence leaving many floundering in the flood of information. This special issue compiles eight papers from some of the most prominent contributors to this literature, combining original research with critical reflection on the current stock of knowledge. The studies collectively emphasise the complexities and conditionalities of the ‘curse’ – its presence/intensity is largely context-specific, depending on the type of resources, socio-political institutions and linkages with the rest of the economy.     

Improving organisational performance—some thoughts on the role of management development

This article addresses the issue of local citizenship in the context of shifting urban structures. Drawing on the literature on modes of responses to local public policy based on Hirschman's (1970) model of Exit, Voice and Loyalty, the study offers the concept of urban civic worlds as an explanatory concept for local citizenship behavioural manifestations. The hypotheses regarding urban civic worlds are tested in a survey in the city of Tel Aviv. Eight types of urban civic worlds are examined. The implications of the multiplicity of urban civic world on the governance in localities is discussed.     

Public needs vs. private loss: land use regulation and property rights

Property rights and government regulation have been the subject of considerable discussion and controversy in recent years. The issue of “takings” has been raised in most of the state legislatures in the 1990s. Congress has considered legislation as well. Supreme Court decisions, in particular the Lucas and the Dolan cases, have focused judicial attention on the issue in recent years. Local elected officials, planners and local government administrators confront the issue increasingly as they attempt to respond to growth pressures and regulate land use. Unfortunately, a great deal the public's perception of property rights is myth or fable. This article addresses the issue of takings by putting it first into historical perspective. Thus, we see that regulation of private property by government is not new. The concern over “regulatory takings” is explored and traced briefly noting the entry of the federal government into the arena of land use regulation. Legislative responses are reviewed and finally the status of judicial consideration of the issue is brought up to date. The article closes with recommendations for those who confront the takings issue. While caution is indeed called for, regulation of private property is still a fact of life in American public administration and will be for some time to come.