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.     

Regional Power in National Diplomacy: The Case of the U.S. Section of the International Boundary and Water Commission

An interesting anomaly in the usual pattern of federal foreignpolicy management is found in the case of the U.S. Section ofthe International Boundary and Water Commission, United Statesand Mexico. The U.S. Section functions as a quasi-independentagency formally subject to the U.S. Department of State forpolicy oversight. Since its formation in 1945, however, theU.S. Section has acquired substantial institutional autonomyfrom the State Department due to its specialized jurisdiction,clientele relations with U.S. border states, and bilateral diplomacy.The U.S. Section performs a mediator role between the StateDepartment and its state clientele in resolving transboundaryproblems with Mexico, and leans toward the states when federaland state interests conflict.     

Geospatial intelligence and the U.S. Exploring Expedition (1838–1842): reframing the history of U.S. Naval Intelligence

This paper reframes the U.S. Exploring Expedition (USEE, 1838–1842) as a naval/geospatial intelligence collection activity. By charting the Pacific, the USEE furthered U.S. commercial interests, while also building a picture of the ‘maritime operational environment’ on which all other forms of intelligence were (and are) based. Viewing the USEE in this light broadens the opportunities open to historians of U.S. Naval Intelligence and historicizes contemporary concerns about climate change and resource scarcity. It suggests that ‘knowledge of the environment’ has long coexisted with ‘knowledge of the enemy’ as a priority for the U.S. Navy.     

Growing Stem Cells: The Impact of Federal Funding Policy on the U.S. Scientific Frontier

This paper articulates a citation‐based approach to science policy evaluation and employs that approach to investigate the impact of the United States’ 2001 policy regarding the federal funding of human embryonic stem cell (hESC) research. We evaluate the impact of the policy on the level of U.S. hESC research, the U.S. position at the knowledge frontier, and the strategic response of U.S. scientists. Consistent with recent research on the science of science and innovation policy, we employ a difference‐in‐differences approach using bibliometric data with the aim of analyzing the causal impact of the policy on cumulative research. Our estimates suggest that in the aftermath of the 2001 policy, U.S. production of hESC research lagged 35 to 40 percent behind anticipated levels. However, this relative decline was largely concentrated in the years 2001 to 2003 and ameliorated over time. The rebound in U.S. hESC research after 2003 was driven by contributions by researchers at elite U.S. institutions and U.S. researchers who collaborated with international partners. The results suggest that scientists respond strategically to research funding restrictions and that modest science policy shifts can have a significant influence on the within‐country composition of research and the pattern of global research collaboration.     

The Armenian-American Lobby and Its Impact on U.S. Foreign Policy

Most of the few studies and press articles dealing with the U.S. Armenian lobby have tended to insist on this lobby’s successes, regarded as impressive and disproportionate. This has generated a few problems in its global understanding, especially with regards to its impact on U.S. foreign policy, and has contributed to shape a generalized perception of a “small” lobby, capable of considerable influence on U.S. foreign policy. The main goal of this article is to question this common perception in order to propose a more accurate evaluation of this lobby. Mostly thanks to its influence in Congress, it has succeeded in getting positive results, particularly concerning U.S. financial assistance to Armenia. However, it has also experienced some failures, particularly on issues related to Turkey or American energy policy.     

The State Constitutional Pedigree of the U.S. Bill of Rights

A direct comparison between the U.S. Bill of Rights and prominentEnglish common law documents shows that the first ten amendmentsto the U.S. Constitution have only a limited relationship toEnglish antecedents. Nor were the amendment proposals by thestate ratifying conventions the primary source of the U.S. Billof Rights. Instead, this famous addition to the federal Constitutionwas a summary of the common core found in the seven existingstate bills of rights. James Madison's use of this source restedupon colonial developments in rights theory, contrasting notionsof rights in England and America, competing notions of libertyin America in the 1780s, and the political exigencies surroundingthe ratification of the U.S. Constitution.     

A sociosemiotic interpretation of cybersecurity in U.S. legislative discourse

ABSTRACT

Based on one specially created corpus of U.S. cybersecurity-related laws, this study employs the corpus approach to examine the referent objects and securitizing actors in U.S. cybersecurity legislative discourse, which are two critical issues in constructing security, including cybersecurity. Through corpus data analysis, it is found that unlike traditional security, cybersecurity has become more people-oriented in terms of referent objects with critical infrastructure as a key referent object. Additionally, the role of private sectors and cooperative security are highlighted in U.S. cybersecurity legislative discourse. From a sociosemiotic perspective, it is noted that the meaning-making process of U.S. cybersecurity not only is conveyed by the texts but also interacts with other sign systems, such as historical background, cyberspace as a virtual realm and social contexts, which suggests that the specific meanings of signs constructing cybersecurity and cybersecurity itself should be interpreted in specific temporal or spatial contexts. Furthermore, a sociosemiotic approach to U.S. cybersecurity legislative discourse also offers valuable insights to how signs and concepts in cybersecurity contribute to sketching a holistic landscape of cybersecurity and further security on a large scale.     

COVID-19 and American Attitudes toward U.S.-China Disputes

The COVID-19 outbreak has fueled tension between the U.S. and China. Existing literature in international relations rarely focuses on virus outbreaks as factors affecting international relations between superpower countries, nor does research examine an outbreak’s potential influence on the public’s opinion about their country’s foreign policy. To bridge this research gap, this study explores the extent to which the American public may be prone to favor policies that “punish” China via existing U.S.-China disputes, such as the South China Sea dispute and the U.S.-China trade war. I conducted an online survey using Amazon’s Mechanical Turk and ran multinomial and ordered logit models to estimate the association between an individual’s preferred policies and the country or government an individual blame for the impact of the pandemic. After controlling several essential confounding factors, such as one’s levels of nationalism and hawkishness, I found strong evidence that there is a positive association between people’s attribution of blame to the Chinese government and the likelihood of supporting aggressive policy options in the two disputes with China. That is to say, U.S. citizens who believe that the Chinese government is solely culpable for the outbreak in the U.S., compared to those who think otherwise, are more likely to support hawkish policy options, such as confrontational military actions, economic sanctions, or higher tariff rates. The research provides a glimpse into where Americans may stand in these disputes with China and the potential development of U.S.-China relations in the post-pandemic era.

     

U.S.‐Style Leadership for English Local Government?

Significant changes in the political management of local authorities in the United Kingdom are now taking place as a result of legislation passed by the Labour government since 1997. The new political management models aim to modernize local governance by strengthening local leadership, streamlining decision making, and enhancing local accountability. These changes owe much to U.S. experience: They involve the introduction of a separation of powers between an executive and an assembly, and they allow local authorities to introduce directly elected mayors for the first time ever. Is U.K. local government beginning to adopt what might be described as U.S.‐style approaches to local governance? The evidence suggests the new institutional designs for U.K. local authorities represent a radical shift toward U.S.‐style local leadership and decision making. However, the U.K. central state remains heavily involved in the details of local decision making, to an extent that would be unthinkable in the United States.     

The U.S. regulatory environment and international trade: Lessons from the electricity sector

Regulation has been frequently blamed for the decline of U.S. international competitiveness. This article examines the alleged link between regulation and trade within the context of electric utility policies implemented since 1970. Under an alternative electricity future in which the regulatory burden is reduced and regulatory inefficiencies are minimized, electricity prices are shown to fall by at least 30%. This reduction in the price of a key factor input is shown to lead to reductions in the prices of U.S. export- and import-competing goods and, ultimately, to a modest reduction in the U.S. trade deficit.     

Interorganizational Mobility within the U.S. Federal Government: Examining the Effect of Individual and Organizational Factors

Interorganizational mobility can make a positive contribution both organizationally and government‐wide. Using data from the U.S. Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey, this article seeks to provide a better empirical understanding of the determinants of interorganizational mobility within the U.S. federal government. A specific analytical framework is used, as the intention to take another job within the federal government is nested in the intention to leave the current organization. The results highlight that gender, minority status, length of service, and promotion are determinants of interorganizational mobility within the U.S. federal government.     

Pleasing the Principal: U.S. Influence in World Bank Policymaking

How do policies in international organizations reflect the preferences of powerful institutional stakeholders? Using an underutilized data set on the conditions associated with World Bank loans, we find that borrower countries that vote with the United States at the United Nations are required to enact fewer domestic policy reforms, and on fewer and softer issue areas. Though U.S. preferences permeate World Bank decision making, we do not find evidence that borrower countries trade favors in exchange for active U.S. intervention on their behalf. Instead, we propose that U.S. influence operates indirectly when World Bank staff—consciously or unconsciously—design programs that are compatible with U.S. preferences. Our study provides novel evidence of World Bank conditionality and shows that politicized policies can result even from autonomous bureaucracies.     

Economic performance and U.S. Senate elections: A comment

This paper investigates the issue of economic performance and U.S. Senate elections analyzed by Bennett and Wiseman (1991) in a work published in this journal. Our study analyzes the electoral margins and election outcomes of U.S. Senate elections using state-level data involving only incumbents up for reelection in the 1976–1990 period (212 elections). The ordinary least squares and logit estimation results suggest that the effects of economic performance variables on incumbent senatorial elections are in general overshadowed by other factors known to be important in determining electoral margins and outcomes. In addition, the empirical results of the entire model are in general consistent with prior findings noted in the public choice and political science literature concerning the analysis of U.S. Senate elections. Therefore, we suggest that the findings raised in our study provide enough theoretical and empirical evidence to raise sufficient doubt regarding the robustness of the results suggested by Bennett and Wiseman (1991), and thus call upon other researchers to study further the relationship between economic performance and voting behavior in U.S. Senate elections.     

U.S. Foreign Policy and the Complex Factors in the Decision-Making Process

The founding myths and ideals have greatly shaped U.S. foreign policy since the emergence of the young republic. They constitute the framework within which institutional and non-institutional actors try to influence the decision-making process. But to provide a complete picture of U.S. foreign policy making, one has to take into account all the dimensions and parameters at all levels.     

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.     

Partisan Differences in Economic Outcomes and Corresponding Voting Behavior: Evidence from the U.S.

The present empirical work examines the differences ineconomic outcomes delivered by partisan governments, and theway in which voters take this into account. Autoregressivemodels of output growth, unemployment and inflation, augmentedwith political variables; and probit binary choice models ofvoting decisions, incorporating expectations about inflationand unemployment, are estimated for U.S. post-war data. Theanalysis confirms that partisan differences in economic outcomes are actually observed in the data. U.S. unemployment rate exhibits adistinct partisan cycle, behavior of output growth andinflation rate partly supports the partisan differenceshypothesis. Thus suggesting that each party can be``instrumental'' in solving particular economic problems. Inline with this logic, U.S. voters seem to believe in theasymmetric abilities of parties to fight inflation andunemployment. Most interesting empirical findings includeevidence that U.S. citizens tend to vote for the left party(Democrats) when high unemployment is expected, and for theright party (Republicans) when high inflation is expected.This relation is especially robust for Presidential elections.There is also evidence pointing to the presence of electoralinertia and absence of ``midterm'' electoral cycle in the U.S.     

The impact of the U.S. war on terrorism upon U.S.-China relations

Using a framework of geopolitical analysis. Oliver Lee argues that the fundamental geopolitical relationships between the United States and China, namely the relationship between the world’s strongest naval and air power and the world’s strongest land power, would not be upset even after the American military presence in central Asia since September 11, 2001. The relationship would remain essentially unaltered because — American initiation of the use of nuclear weapons against China being ruled out for fear of Chinese retaliation — China would be able to withstand any U.S. military offensive conducted with conventional land, sea, and air forces, regardless of whether the U.S. possesses permanent air bases in Central Asia or not, and regardless of how many troops it may station on them. His teaching and research interests include domestic and foreign policies of China and power in America and U.S. foreign policy.     

The Branding of Candidates and Parties: The U.S. News Media and the Legitimization of a New Political Term

Political marketing research indicates that brands and branding are a robust aspect of politics. However, little is known of the broader cultural appreciation of political branding. Through a content analysis of major U.S. newspapers over a 40-year period, we provide evidence that the U.S. news media is increasingly aware of political branding. Moreover, we present a typology of media treatment that indicates that the national media in the U.S. increasingly perceive brands and branding in the public sphere as an innate, multifaceted, and effective part of modern politics.     

Capacity to Sustain Sustainability: A Study of U.S. Cities

Why do some governments implement more sustainability practices than others? Based on a national survey of U.S. cities, this article finds moderate levels of sustainability efforts and capacity in U.S. cities; about one‐third of the sustainability practices identified in this article have been implemented. The authors conclude that, first, capacity building is a useful conceptual focus for understanding sustainability implementation in U.S. cities. Capacity building involves developing technical and financial support and increasing managerial execution. Second, sustainability is strongly associated with managerial capacity, which includes establishing sustainability goals, incorporating goals in operations, and developing a supportive infrastructure. Third, getting stakeholders involved furthers the capacity for sustaining sustainability efforts. Citizen involvement is strongly associated with securing financial support for sustainability.     

美国应急志愿者管理制度及其经验借鉴

为了提高应急志愿者的组织化与专业化程度,美国建立了完善的应急志愿服务体系,实施了严格的应急志愿者认可与保护制度,并对无组织归属的志愿者进行了有效的管理。借鉴美国的经验并结合中国实际,文章提出了完善我国应急志愿者管理制度的建议。