Burden sharing in the NATO alliance: An empirical test of alternative views

This paper undertakes an empirical test of two opposing views of interdependencies among members of military alliances. The first view, associated with Olson and Zeckhauser, argues that the public good aspect of defense induces free riding behavior by smaller alliance members, which imposes a disproportionate burden of supporting the alliance on the larger members. A second view argues that NATO defense activities produce a mix of outputs, some of which are not purely public, and some of which may be complementary across nations. Furthermore, the nature of the weapons systems and their relative use by alliance members may induce substantial cooperation by allies. The test proposed here analyzes the relationship between defense spending shares of NATO members and their population and relative wealth shares. A simple model is specified and tested using pooled time series cross sectional data. The empirical results indicate more support for the cooperative view of ally relationships than the Olson-Zeckhauser non-cooperative model.     

NATO summit: reassurance and effective responses

Events in Ukraine and northern Iraq dramatically increased the significance of NATO's September summit. It marked a turning point for the Alliance, as combat operations in Afghanistan drew to a close and members renewed their commitment to collective defence.     

NATO enlargement and the CFE Treaty

In an attempt to assuage Russia's concerns about NATO enlargement, the Alliance has presented Moscow with a series of radical proposals for revising the 1992 Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty. One of the key recommendations involves replacing the original bloc-to-bloc and zonal restrictions on the five categories of military hardware with national limits. With NATO poised to announce candidates for membership at its Madrid summit in July, a strategy to calm Russian fears about the military consequences of enlargement is becoming increasingly urgent. The process of revising the CFE Treaty, however, is unlikely to be completed before the Madrid summit.     

Managing the Environment: Rhetoric, Policy and Reality

This article argues that, despite environmental issues climbing higher on the political agenda and considerable recent policy activity, rhetoric is not matched by reality in our efforts to manage the Australian environment. We integrate the imperatives emerging from the policy and sustainability literatures and from actual policy, with detailed work on wildlife conservation in Victoria's Central Highlands. Our analysis demonstrates that, rather than undertaking the more intensive policy and 'adaptive management' that is needed, governments are often doing less and may actually be 'taking their hands of their wheel'. Some public policy and administration implications of the emerging policy field of sustainability are illustrated.     

Politics and the attack on FDR's economists: from the grand alliance to the Cold War

US government economists in the later years of the administration of Franklin Roosevelt were urged to treat the Soviet Union as an ally, in the interests of winning World War II and establishing the basis for peaceful cooperation after the war. The onset of the Cold War and the subsequent rise of McCarthyism sullied the reputations of many of them, especially the two most prominent: Lauchlin Currie (chief economist in the White House) and Harry Dexter White (chief economist in the Treasury). Close examination of the parallels between these two seemingly disparate cases reveals that recent attempts to revive the charges are no more firmly based than those of the early 1950s.     

Managing in the Regulatory Thicket: Regulation Legitimacy and Expertise

Although the influence of government regulation on organizations is undeniable, empirical research in this field is scarce. This article investigates how the understanding of and attitudes toward government regulation among public, nonprofit, and for‐profit managers affect organizational performance, using U.S. nursing homes as the empirical setting. Findings suggest that managers’ perceptions of regulation legitimacy—views of regulation fairness, inspectors’ effectiveness, and internal utility of the mandates—positively affect service quality. Subgroup analysis suggests that managers’ views of regulation matter in nonprofit and for‐profit organizations but not in public organizations. In nonprofit homes, performance declines when managers report higher regulatory expertise—better knowledge of the regulatory standards. In for‐profit facilities, frequent communication with regulators lowers quality. These findings suggest that the regulated entities’ views of government regulation are central to their success, which necessitates improvements in the regulatory process.     

也谈中苏同盟破裂的原因

中苏同盟的破裂,既源于中苏意识形态内在的深刻的分岐,也与俄罗斯大国沙文主义的传统以及中俄两国文化差异性有莫大的关系,同时也与冷战有着直接的关联。     

Shirking in the Contemporary Congress: A Reappraisal

Michael H. Crespin Department of Political Science, Michigan State University, 303 S. Kedzie Hall, East Lansing, MI 48824 e-mail: e-mail: crespinm{at}msu.edu Jeffery A. Jenkins Department of Political Science, Northwestern University, 601 University Place, Evanston, IL 60208 e-mail: e-mail: j-jenkins3{at}northwestern.edu Ryan J. Vander Wielen Department of Political Science, Washington University in St. Louis, Campus Box 1027, One Brookings Drive, St. Louis, MO 63130 e-mail: e-mail: rjvander{at}artsci.wustl.edu This paper replicates the findings that appeared in the article"Severing the Electoral Connection: Shirking in the ContemporaryCongress," published in the American Journal of Political Science(44:316–325), in which Lawrence Rothenberg and MitchellSanders incorporated a new research design and, contrary toall previous studies, found evidence of ideological shirkingin the U.S. House of Representatives. We investigate the robustnessof their results by reestimating their model with Congress-specificfixed effects and find that their results no longer hold.     

Managing Collaborative Service Delivery: Comparing China and the United States

Successful adoption of collaborative service delivery requires that governments develop better capacity to handle potential pitfalls. In this essay, Yijia Jing of Fudan University and E. S. Savas of the City University of New York provide a framework that compares and contrasts the management practices in China and America. Both nations favor collaborative service delivery and engage in it extensively. Can China's state-affiliated strategy and the United States' competition-oriented strategy both work effectively? Such distinct systems, embedded in vastly different socioeconomic and political institutional environments decisively influence the effectiveness of collaborative service delivery management in the two countries.