The future in comparative politics

This article is based upon a key speech that Professor Robert Bates gave at the 13^th Annual Conference of the Association of Chinese Political Studies (ACPS) held in Bethesda, Maryland between October 17–18, 1998. Professor Bates observes that there is a sense of crisis among comparative political scientists and central to their concerns is an apparent loss of diversity. Professor Bates believes that homogenization presents an opportunity for comparatists to redirect their comparative social inquiries. He argues that comparative politics is a field that is based upon method; that the presumed homogenization of politics, globally, and the existence of large-scale collections of data, highlight the utility of returning to large-N, cross-national research; and that the subfields of political economy and development are best positioned to secure rapid advances from their redirection. He also emphasizes that we need to blend cross-national statistical research with in-depth case studies, arguing that the two are not substitutes but rather complements, and should be pursued in tandem. Professor Bates further argues that there is an “over supply” of theory in comparative politics and debates over theory should be based on assessments of the theory’s capacity to account for outcomes. In this sense, questions of theory cannot and should not be separated from questions of method. A good theory, in practice, provides a powerful engine of empirical discovery.     

基于网络媒介的突发性公共危机信息传播仿真和管理对策研究

危机信息的健康传播在突发性公共危机管理中至关重要。为了研究突发性公共危机信息在网络环境中传播的特征,本文以复杂适应系统理论为指导,利用多主体建模方法,基于Repast平台模拟突发性公共危机信息在网络媒介中的传播过程。通过模型仿真我们发现突发性公共危机在网络环境中传播的生命周期现象和群极化现象;并且分析比较了各主体属性在不同参数值下的演化结果,探寻危机信息传播的有效方法,为政府如何应对危机管理提供决策支持,以期有效控制突发性公共危机信息在网络环境的恶性传播。     

HAVA and the States

Two major events—the 2000 vote counting crisis in Floridaand passage of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) in October 2002—spawneda wave of federal, state, and local policy innovation and policyimplementation. The major effect of the Florida crisis was anationwide effort to analyze information on elections and todebate policy solutions. Subsequently, HAVA, the first majorelection law in U.S. history that includes federal funds forelection equipment and operations, had a more substantial effecton policy innovation and implementation. Both before and afterHAVA, election law changes have been affected by partisan considerations,policy analyses, and entrepreneurial leadership. Thus far, HAVAhas positively affected election administration, though administrativepractices and their effectiveness vary across and within thestates.     

Public opinion, party messages, and responsibility for the financial crisis in Britain

The political consequences of the crisis in world financial markets are only beginning to be understood. In this article, we take up one of these many repercussions by examining public beliefs of who’s to blame for a complex and unparalleled set of events. Analyses of survey data from Britain find that while most assign responsibility for the crisis to market actors, the likelihood of blaming governments, as opposed to blaming banks and investors, is greater among low sophisticates and Conservative Party identifiers. We further show how elite messages from competing political elites evolved over-time and were reflected in mass beliefs about the crisis. Results highlight the centrality of partisan cues and, in particular, of political sophistication in understanding the dynamics of responsibility attributions. Lastly, we estimate the consequences of blaming the government for the crisis for voter choice.     

Evidence and Actions on Mortgage Market Disparities: Research,Fair Lending Enforcement,and Consumer Protection

ABSTRACT

In this article, we present an overview of the research on discrimination in mortgage underwriting and pricing, the experiences of minority borrowers both prior to and during the financial crisis, and federal efforts to mitigate foreclosures during the crisis. We next discuss the history of legal cases alleging disparate treatment of minority borrowers, and recent cases alleging disparate impact in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Inclusive Communities decision. Using these discussions as a background, we examine and discuss mortgage regulations issued by the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau following the financial crisis, describe recent developments in the FinTech industry and explore the implications for fair lending policy and minority borrowers more generally. Finally, we draw conclusions and make recommendations for improving the mortgage market outcomes of minority borrowers and increasing minority borrowers’ access to credit.     

Tracing leadership: the ECB’s ‘whatever it takes’ and Germany in the Ukraine crisis

Abstract

Political scientists face problems when assessing a leader’s impact: how can we know that a policy outcome or institutional change is caused by leadership? This article argues that in addition to relying on comparisons and counterfactuals, we need to trace the causal mechanisms by which leadership affects outcomes. Therefore, the article proposes a way to trace leadership and applies it to two cases of EU crisis management: the European Central Bank’s role in announcing Outright Monetary Transactions in the eurozone crisis, and Germany’s role in shaping the EU’s response to the Ukraine crisis. Systematic process-tracing shows that both actors provided leadership ‘by default’. However, while the ECB had to combine the provision of knowledge with unilateral action in order to overcome the eurozone crisis, Germany could use manifold bargaining-based strategies and thus became the EU’s de facto agenda setter and main representative in managing the Ukraine crisis.     

Discursive Dislocation: Toward a Poststructuralist Theory of Crisis in Global Politics

In the discipline of International Relations (IR) and beyond, the concept of crisis is essentially contested, and one specific usage, it seems, is called into question by alternative uses of the term. The article develops the argument that crisis must not be misunderstood as exogenous to social construction; indeed, the very notion of crisis only makes sense if understood as produced entirely in what we will later specify as discourse. In this way, it can be illustrated how allegedly objective crises are expressions of particular configurations of social forms of power. The discourse theoretical notion of dislocation will be introduced in order to develop an understanding of crisis as a qualitative as well as constitutive feature of the social crisis. Crisis can in this sense be seen as a permanent attribute of the social, not some transitory condition that appears from time to time.     

The 2001 “spy” plane incident revisited: the Chinese perspective

The 2001 “spy” plane incident was probably the most serious military incident in Sino-American relations since the 1970s, and it generated a crisis in the already brittle relationship since the new Bush administration came into office. This article attempts to revisit this incident from the Chinese perspective and provides some insight into the understanding of the Chinese foreign policy behavior and position on Sino-American relations. It presents the respective arguments concerning the responsibilities of the incident, explores the Chinese historical memory of US hegemonic behavior, and examines the Chinese perspective and attitude towards the incident and their causes through a study of the reactions of the Chinese government and the Chinese people to the incident.¹ He is the founding editor of theHong Kong Journal of Social Sciences and theJournal of Comparative Asian Development. He is also Guest Lecturer at the School of Government, Zhongshan University in Guangzhou, China. The author wishes to thank anonymous reveiwers for their helpful comments made on earlier drafts of this paper.     

Genocide in Kosovo

Conclusion That Kosovo exploded with genocidal violence in 1999 and ultimately prompted outside intervention surprised few—it was a long-festering hotspot but one that fell low on the world politics priority lists, despite the brutal “wars of Yugoslav” succession that engulfed Serbia, Bosnia, and Croatia. But for a relatively small scale conflict in a rather unknown corner of the world, Kosovo’s crisis of 1998–1999 brought with it a host of complex issues that challenge the international community to this day. As with any issue or case in the area of genocide studies, attention and understanding must first go to the dramatic human suffering inflicted upon one group by another. The macro-level political, legal, and ethical discussion and debates swirling about Kosovo should not and must not obscure the powerful and provocative human element at play. First and foremost, the Kosovo issue revolves around how best to save lives following an explosion of genocidal violence. Simultaneously, however, Kosovo in 1999 exploded with ramifications for the future of state sovereignty, the United Nations, and understanding the causes of genocide, nation building, and humanitarianism in the twenty-first century.     

Crisis and employment: The case of Korea

This paper examines Korea's employment dynamics and analyzes how adverse impacts could be mitigated during the recent economic crisis in comparison with the 1997 to 1998 Asian crisis. A clear lesson is that policies to mitigate adverse impacts of financial crisis on the macroeconomic level should be given priority for preserving employment. In this regard, expansionary monetary and fiscal policies to keep aggregate demand from collapsing need to be emphasized once a crisis breaks out. However, equally crucial is the maintenance of sound pre‐crisis fundamentals to help keep negative impacts from proliferating, even when a crisis is triggered. In addition, flexible labor market structures and temporary employment‐boosting policies appear to be necessary to reduce the negative impacts of a crisis on workers. © 2011 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

Issue management as a post‐crisis discipline: identifying and responding to issue impacts beyond the crisis

• While there is a prolific literature on processes for organizational crisis management, and extensive scholarship on response methodologies such as apologia, image restoration and immediate post‐crisis discourse, little has been written about the longer term post‐crisis challenge beyond recovery, business resumption and organizational learning.
• Crises can lead to persistent and damaging issues, but there has been limited substantive research to illuminate the optimal processes to navigate the transition from crisis to issue. Moreover, if organizations remain in conventional post‐crisis mode there is a real risk of failure to put in place proper processes for longer term management of post‐crisis issues.
• After considering linear and non‐linear process models, and the development of a more holistic, integrated approach to issue and crisis management, this article proposes issue management as the most effective practical discipline to identify and respond to longer term post‐crisis impacts.

Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Nature,art and artfulness

[E]cosocialism entails different and more complex judgments of value than first-epoch socialism. It demands of us that we take into account a kind of valuation distinct from those values, attached to use and exchange, that enter into economic calculation. Once we open ourselves to the ecosphere, a realm of intrinsic value opens as well, a value inhering in ecosystemic being …. What is called an “ecocentric ethic” is essentially ethics in defense of intrinsic value. Simply put, it is the refusal to reduce the world to cash, and to knuckle under to the lords of economic calculation. … This perspective becomes necessary in the overcoming of the ecological crisis, and therefore the climate crisis as well. It is the deepest level of the resistance to capital, and the foundation of all others.1 ¹Joel Kovel, “Ecosocialism, Global Justice, and Climate Change,” Capitalism Nature Socialism, Vol. 19, No. 2, June 2008, p. 9.      

Financial and world economic crisis: What did economists contribute?

In this paper we deal with two questions, (1) what are the origins of the current financial crisis, and (2) what did economists contribute, or why did economists fail to provide a convincing answer for the origins of the crisis, and possible solutions to overcome it? The economics profession apparently was unaware of the looming worldwide financial and economic crisis, and significantly underestimated its global dimensions and consequences. A first and preliminary analysis is undertaken to explore reasons for these failures. We conclude by pointing to some consequences for economics as well as for economic policy.     

The Forgotten Hysteria Over Malpractice

This article explores the origins of the medical “malpractice crisis,” and describes the basic social, economic, and political transformations that led to its emergence and the reasons for its rise. An understanding of these dynamics explains the gap in awareness about what the doctor/patient relationship is and what it should be, and its correlation to the upsurge in medical malpractice lawsuits and patient safety programs. The author recommends managing for and conserving the doctor/patient relationship as the key priority to be tackled in order to put an end to the “crisis” and prevent circumstances that further encourage it.     

公共管理视角下的中国危机管理研究——现状、趋势和未来方向

中国近年来社会科学视角的危机管理研究已进入瓶颈期。本文旨在梳理这十年来公共管理视角下的危机管理相关研究,以期为危机管理研究进一步深入发展提供参考。评述文献主要来源于公共管理、政治学、管理学和综合社会科学领域的重要学术期刊以及依据专业知识所选取的近些年来具有代表性的研究专著和报告。在对文献进行分类、编码和统计分析之后,分析结果表明:危机事前分析的文章占据主导地位,而对危机应对过程和危机后分析相对不足;应然研究类文章占据很大比重,但对于危机理论的建构和实证检验的研究比较缺乏;对于危机的综合分析多于单灾种分析。近些年中,虽然上述研究方式依然居于主导地位,但是研究者开始关注危机后的分析,注意理论的建构和检验,特别值得注意的是对于社会安全事件的分析呈上升趋势。最后,本文结合危机管理研究的现状和趋势总结出未来值得研究的若干领域。     

Between Integration and Freedom: School Segregation in Critical Perspective

In the Danish case, school segregation is recognized as a crisis of society, but it is also a crisis in the deeper sense that central actors disagree about in what sense it is a crisis. This raises the general questions: In what sense is school segregation a problem? What exactly is the crisis? Though these are partly normative questions, in Scandinavian contexts we can interpret them in light of the internal value‐commitments of society. Accepting this premise allows us to build on the empirically informed and philosophically rigorous work of Elizabeth Anderson according to which segregation should be viewed in light of the imperative of social integration. The demand for citizens’ equal participation in the main institutions of society is, according to her, already entailed immanently if a society is broadly commitment to democracy. Finding this immanent democratic approach to be insufficient considering widespread concerns with respecting parental freedom, this article discusses the more value‐integrative approach found in the political philosophical work of Hegel. According to this approach, our value‐commitments to both social integration and individual freedom can be integrated if central public institutions reflect a complex structure of recognition. On the basis of both of these two steps, the article suggests ways of understanding and tackling the crisis of school segregation in a Scandinavian setting.     

Linking two levels of governance: Citizens’ trust in domestic and European institutions over time

This article puts forward a comprehensive framework for explaining the complex and dynamic relationship between trust in the domestic government and trust in the EU, considering time, country and individual-level variation. Using longitudinal comparative data from 32 Eurobarometer survey waves (2004–2018), we first establish that the link between attitude formation at the national and the EU supranational levels is present over time. Second, we show that during ‘extraordinary’ times of crisis the strength of that relationship intensifies. Third, we posit that the European sovereign debt crisis changed the mechanism for this relationship in two ways: during ‘extraordinary’ times, the link is much stronger in countries hardest hit by the crisis, and the relationship holds independent of individuals' political sophistication across all countries. Our findings have implications for understanding the drivers of EU support and theories of institutional trust.     

Time for a New Paradigm? Past and Present Transitions in Economic Policy

This article seeks to place the UK's present economic ‘moment’ in historical context. Over the course of the decade since the 2007 financial crisis, it has increasingly been acknowledged that a cyclical crisis has become a structural crisis. The failure of most economists to predict the financial crash in the first place, and the inadequacy of economic policy in responding to its lasting effects, has led many to conclude that economics itself is in crisis. This article seeks to contribute to a better understanding of the present period of disjuncture. Drawing on theories of paradigm shift from both the physical and social sciences, we argue that the speed of change in UK economic policy is comparable to the two major historical transitions that ended with the post‐war consensus and neoliberalism. We conclude by offering some remarks on how and where the present change might take us.     

The Incumbent Electoral Defeat in the 2011 Spanish National Elections: The Effect of the Economic Crisis in an Ideological Polarized Party System

Abstract

This article examines the effect of the economic crisis on voting preferences in the 2011 Spanish national election. Specifically we demonstrate that Spanish voters' reactions to the economic crisis were not uniform and that their evaluations of the economic situation and final electoral decisions were conditioned by prior ideological preferences. Our findings have several important consequences for the economic voting model. First, in a more polarized party system how voters evaluate the economic performance of the incumbent is a better predictor of vote choice than evaluations of the economy as a whole. Second, this effect varies depending on where parties are located and competing ideologically. Finally, those effects are more conditional on voters' ideological predispositions than the effects of voters' evaluations of the situation of the economy.     

A theory of entangled political economy, with application to TARP and NRA

The recent financial crisis has provoked a raft of contending claims as to whether the cause of the crisis is better attributed to market failure or political failure. Such claims are predicated on a presumption that markets and polities are meaningfully separate entities. To the contrary, we argue that contemporary arrangements create an entangled political economy that renders theorizing based on separation often misleading. Within this alternative framework of entangled political economy, we illuminate both the recent Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) and the New Deal??s National Recovery Administration (NRA).