Ethnocentrism as a Short‐Term Force in the 2008 American Presidential Election

Faced with a choice between John McCain and Barack Obama, voters in 2008 were swayed by the familiar play of factors—party identification, policy preferences, and economic conditions—but also, we find, by ethnocentrism, a deep‐seated psychological predisposition that partitions the world into ingroups and outgroups—into “us” and “them.” The effect of ethnocentrism was significant and substantial, and it appeared over and above the effects due to partisanship, economic conditions, policy stances, political engagement, and several varieties of conservatism. Two features of Obama were primarily responsible for triggering ethnocentrism in 2008: his race and his imagined Muslim faith. As such, we demonstrate that ethnocentrism was much more important in 2008 than in the four presidential elections immediately preceding 2008, and we show that it was much more important in the actual contest between Senator McCain and Senator Obama than in a hypothetical contest between Senator McCain and Senator Clinton.     

The Capitalist Peace: a New Way Forward for American Foreign Policy

Since the beginning of the republic, Americans have viewed their state as a “beacon of liberty.” This self-conception has caused Americans to think that they can be a force for positive change in the world. Over time, their outlook has facilitated increasingly aggressive efforts to democratization other countries, leading many to see America as an imperial power. It is my contention that regardless of other factors, Americans become the most invasive when liberal ideology, the very thing that makes them a “beacon of liberty” overpowers other ideological forces. Only by restoring a balanced debate about the merits of democratization by reintegrating other perspectives on America’s role in the world can they be the force for good they believe themselves to be.     

The Moral Community and Immigration

In “Which American Dream Do You Mean?” David Stoll never justified his assumption that Guatemalans who want to immigrate to America have a moral claim on our attention. The “conversation” he describes really involves only Americans as only they are held responsible for immigration. Some advocates justify immigration on the basis of rights while others appeal to compassion, but both assign all responsibility to rich Americans and none to the sending societies. A huge moral asymmetry separates the West, which is assumed capable of achieving civic values from the non-West, which is not. Americans hunger for a more candid conversation about how to distribute the responsibility for immigration. That is essential to legitimizing immigration policy and preserving the civic character of American society.     

The need for a third party in u.s. politics

Abstract

This article is based on a presentation to the “Future Directions for American Politics and Public Policy” seminar at Harvard University, Kennedy School of Government, on May 6, 1993. The theme of the article is that a national third party is necessary in order to advance a social welfare agenda that would improve measurably the quality of urban life, and resolve the problem of race and racism in the United States. The author proposes that despite important changes in race relations, including the elimination of a multi‐generational system of legally‐sanctioned political apartheid, society still reflects continuing and intensifying race and class divisions and tensions. Neither the Democratic or Republican parties have the political will or base to offer policies that would effectively eliminate racial hierarchy in this country. It is argued that the development of a national and organzationally viable third party is essential in order to challenge the philosophical and political tendencies of the major parties regarding social welfare and race, economic development and growth, and foreign affairs. In addition to using a few historical examples to make this case, the author also critiques the exploitation of race as an electoral tool by both major parties.     

Shaking Hands with Hitler: The Politics‐Administration Dichotomy and Engagement with Fascism

Researchers have examined the impact of the politics‐administration dichotomy on the practice and theory of public administration within the United States. But the dichotomy also influenced patterns of international engagement by American experts in the 1920s and 1930s. Americans believed that they could set politics aside and collaborate on administrative questions with regimes that did not respect democracy and human rights. This belief was tested after the rise of Adolf Hitler. American experts in public administration engaged with the Nazi regime for three years, ignoring the rising controversy over Nazi policies. The breaking point came in 1936. American experts finally recognized that it was impossible to ignore political questions and became forthright proponents of “democratic administration.” This struggle to define the boundaries of international engagement is relevant today, as specialists in public administration again find themselves in a world in which a shared commitment to democracy and human rights cannot be taken for granted.     

Lobbying in developing countries: The Peruvian case

In the transparent exercise of democracy, there is a technique of persuasion called lobbying. The technique involves applying persuasion by representing one's own interests or the interests of third parties. In literature, lobbying is therefore related to interest groups and pressure groups. It is considered a key tool to guarantee equal conditions in the decision‐making process that promotes democracy and citizen control is transparency. Lobbying, also called interest management, is a legitimate activity that in Latin America has a bad press and consequently a bad reputation. However, it is a very important input into the democratic process. According to the NGO Legislative Directory: “It allows the general public to engage in the public decision‐making process, and it has the potential to improve the quality of public decisions by opening channels for diverse opinions and thematic experts.” It is an activity that is put into practice in all countries of the world and that has a regulatory background in most countries of the northern hemisphere and in some South American countries such as Peru and Chile. The general spirit of these norms is to “transform a suspected irregular activity into a deliberation and democratic game,” justify the Legislative Directory.     

American Indian Tribal Governance and Management: Public Administration Promise or Pretense?

Research on tribal governance in the United States is scarce within modern public administration scholarship. Nonetheless, tribal governance is a pre‐Columbian practice that predates the U.S. Constitution and federal law. Drawing from several disciplines, John C. Ronquillo of the University of Georgia demonstrates that interdisciplinary sources offer rich information for present‐day public administration research about Native American tribes. Tribal governance literature is definitely not “missing,” but instead is moderately “unassembled” as a subfield of public administration. Building on what is available, the author suggests several key issues within tribal governance in need of urgent academic attention.     

The Bush Administration Record in Latin America: Sins of Omission and Commission

The conventional wisdom among analysts and scholars is that at least since September 11, 2001, the United States has tended to neglect its relations with Latin America. As a result of that inattention, other countries from outside the region have been able to make inroads, and there has generally been a regional drift in the direction of election and policy outcomes that do not favor US interests. While this article assumes that conventional understanding of the outcomes in the region, the central argument here is that it is not neglect (or “sins of omission”) that best explains those developments. Rather, it is the actual US policies that have been pursued (“sins of commission”), as well as the effective strategies pursued by Latin American leaders and organizations, which are largely responsible for the situation that confronts President Obama in Latin America. The article focuses on Venezuela, Cuba, and Bolivia, the three countries that have sometimes been described as the Latin American “axis of evil.”     

Pictures at an exhibition revisited: reflections on a typology of images used in the construction of corporate social responsibility and sustainability in non‐financial corporate reporting

• Strategic corporate and public affairs communication about Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has emerged as a major component of corporate efforts to interact with their stakeholders and society at large. Non‐financial reporting, and CSR reporting in particular, is now seen as an essential corporate communication process by most members of a company's stakeholder community. This growth in CSR reporting has been driven by the need to increase corporate transparency and accountability concerning social and environmental issues. Arguably, the European Union is the most progressive region in adopting CSR reporting. Almost all of Europe's top 100 companies report on social and environmental performance, whilst figures for the USA and the rest of the world are much lower. The latest Accountability Rating concludes that ‘Europe leads, America lags’ after measuring companies' social and environmental impacts.
• The authors argue that visual communication is as important as words and numbers in creating meaning and assess UK and German Companies' non‐financial performance. Utilizing a range of research methods including content analysis and semiotic interpretation the authors propose a typology of images used in non‐financial reporting. This typology and associated conceptual development can used to more accurately define and interpret CSR and sustainability.

Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

DELEGATION: A CASE STUDY

• 1 Whether to delegate or not to delegate has been an active issue in the New South Wales Public Service since 1960.
• 2 There has been considerable delegation of personnel authority to department heads during the period 1960–68, and the benefits of this programme have been significant.
• 3 The following rules seem to govern the selection of areas ripe for further delegation:

The “monopoly” rule: Where a department has a virtual monopoly over a particular occupational group in the Service, it should have authority to employ members of that group. The “rubber-stamp” rule: Where the rate of approval to departmental submissions approaches 100 per cent in any area, delegation of authority should be considered. The “guide-line” rule: Where the Board finds it possible to formulate guide-lines for the making of decisions within its own office, these guide-lines should be communicated to the departments, together with authority to make the appropriate decisions. The “no-harm” rule: Whenever authority can be exercised in a department without breaching any general or departmental limitation, delegation should be considered.

• 4 The following limitations to delegation of further personnel authority are seen to exist:

The “size” limitation: The small size of many departments limits the scope for further delegations of authority. The “geographical” limitation: The geographical dispersion of departmental staff is a factor that limits the scope for further delegations of authority. Regional decentralization, paradoxically, often leads to centralization of personnel authority. The “uniformity” limitation: The need to achieve uniformity in the Service, from one department to another, limits the scope for further delegations of authority. The ideal of uniformity, however, has probably been over-emphasized in the past because of the early history of the Public Service Board, and the centralized system of arbitration within which it operates. Other limitations: Factors unique to individual departments, such as historical influences and lack of competence in personnel administration, impose specific barriers to further delegations of authority.     

Energy and social change: An historian's perspective

The dominant model for analyzing the relationship between energy and social change, the “technology assessment” model, is criticized for being technologically deterministic, over-ambitious and insensitive to the political and social context of technology development. Three “lessons from history” are offered:

1. A multiplicity of disciplines, world views and explanatory factors are required to fully understand the relationship between technology and social change.
2. The lack of historical understanding and explicative theory in this field call for modesty in attempts to quantify and predict social impacts.
3. More emphasis should be placed on developing an understanding of the process by which technology is developed and diffused through society.

     

The Use of Rental Housing Assistance by Immigrants in the United States and New York City

Abstract

The large influx of immigrants to the United States and New York City from poorer countries has sparked considerable debate as to whether immigrants are becoming a “public charge” to American society. Most arguments have centered around immigrants’ use of cash assistance programs. This article compares immigrants’ receipt of rental housing assistance with that of native‐born Americans.

Bivariate analyses reveal that immigrants, as a group, are no more likely than native‐born households to use any form of rental housing assistance. Indeed, in most instances immigrants are less likely than native‐born households to receive assistance, with two exceptions: immigrants who have been in the United States since 1970 and immigrants from the former Soviet Union in New York City. Multivariate analyses reveal similar results, except that immigrants who have been in the United States since 1970 are no more likely than other immigrants to receive housing assistance when we control for other factors.     

Corporate political action in China and America: a comparative perspective

• Corporate political action (CPA) is always an interesting topic for management scholars since 1980s. There are a large plenty of literatures from different disciplines focus on this topic. But till now, studies on this topic are almost conducted under the Western culture and taking the Western countries as objective, very few studies are conducted in non‐Western countries, and specifically, the CPA in China is nearly untouched. Due to the differences of culture and political economy between China and the West, CPA in China may be very different from the West's. This article discusses the similarities and differences of CPA in China and America. The result shows that due to the differences in culture and political economical system between China and America, CPA in China is very different from America. This study will help to understand the CPA in China for outsiders, especially for Americans. It also helps multinational enterprises (MNEs) in China to take suitable political actions to support their interests.

Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Erik Gustaf Geijer’s “On Slavery” (1845)

This article is a translation of Erik Gustaf Geijer’s article on slavery, published in Stockholm in 1845. Geijer writes: “Such was the world in which Christianity made its appearance with its doctrine: that all human beings were God’s children...” Of North America, he writes: “And on that soil the final battle of slavery and freedom within the Christian world is also likely to be fought.”     

Civil rights on the white earth reservation

Abstract

The concept of “civil rights” is based on assumptions that do not extend to all lands within U.S. borders, including Native American reservations. A central policy tension exists between enforcing Euro‐American “civil rights” and recognizing Native American sovereignty. This tension is discussed in light of the situation on the White Earth Reservation, one of six reservations that make up the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe. Four possible means of addressing White Earth civil rights issues are discussed, each with possible applications in other reservation settings. None of the four is found to be clearly effective in gaining the civil rights defined for U.S. citizens for reservation residents. Although the underlying question of the relationship between civil rights and sovereignty defies easy solution, some suggestions are offered.     

Kazin’s Trilling: A Cold War Portrait

This essay describes the eminent Americanist, critic, and New York intellectual, Alfred Kazin’s creation of a Lionel Trilling “character” in his 1978 autobiography, New York Jew, and his use of that character to critique significant features of the country’s Cold War literary culture. Among these are: the narrowing and hardening of intellectual discourse in a cultural-political climate dominated by the “liberal consensus,” the discrediting of the progressive impulse in American writing, the subordination of “class” to “culture” in evaluations of American writers, and the changing status of Jews and Jewish writers in post-war America. Tapping into strong personal feelings, Kazin creates in Trilling a harsh, thoughtful and compelling portrait of an era.     

When the witch doctors agree: The family support act and social science research

In 1986 the author was recruited by Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan to draft new federal welfare reform legislation for the 100th Congress. The result was the Family Support Act of 1988. From the beginning it was planned that the bill would reflect the best knowledge available about helping poor families make the transition from dependence on welfare to independence and work. In contrast to the experience of the 1970s, when the “Witch Doctors” of social science seemed unable to agree on appropriate policies, research made a difference for FSA. The education, training, and work requirements in the legislation were substantially influenced by the evaluations of welfare-to-work programs conducted by the Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation, and the conduct of MDRC in the dissemination of these results contributed significantly to the effort's political success. Whether this marks a new phase in the connection between social policy and research is uncertain.     

The Contested Politics of Public Value

The emerging field of public values helpfully focuses on the norms and government policies that serve the public interest, but its analysis neglects the barriers to actually creating public value in contemporary America. Chief among these barriers are contending strains of public beliefs and opinions, the disproportionate influence of affluent individuals and business and professional associations, as well as governing structures predisposed toward inaction and drift. This article contrasts the expectations of the public values field with research on American politics to identify barriers to advancing the public interest under current conditions. Although public values scholars offer an analysis of American public life that is inadequate, they do raise challenging questions about how a public‐regarding agenda can be “designed in” to politics and policy. The article concludes by suggesting feasible reforms to improve the conditions for pursuing the public interest.     

The Past Is a…Native Land?

Did the events of September 11, 2001 “change the world,” signifying the birth of an incommensurable brave new world of heightened uncertainty and insecurity? No. That headline-grabbing claim lacks historical perspective. Rather, the Cold War has exerted a profound impact on how America wages the War on Terror simply because the intelligence, bureaucratic, and military-industrial institutions that have shaped U.S. strategy since 9/11 took their present shape during the Cold War. Indeed, dramatic differences between the circumstances of the Cold War era and the dangers confronting the twenty-first century prevail, among them the shift from “conventional” to digital warfare, and from ominous nation-states to “rogue” states and sects. But the respective challenges and constraints shared by the two periods also possess notable similarities. Both the obvious discontinuities and the more subtle continuities with the recent past require judicious assessment from us today. Just as American leaders before World War II needed to “unlearn” the lessons of isolationalism in the 1930s in order to fight World War II, so too do American policymakers today need to unlearn the lessons of conventional warfare—including “intelligence” warfare–in order to combat rogue states and terrorist cells in the twenty-first century.     

Global Citizenship and Empire

Global citizenship is a concept that has been both propounded and critiqued on a number of grounds in recent scholarship, but little attention has been paid to what it might mean in an age of empire. Beginning with an analysis of American empire, the author argues that there has been an important shift in the meaning of imperial rule from what was initially a “realpolitik” version of empire in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 to what has become a more “liberal” form of imperial power since late 2003. Whereas the former sought national security in a seemingly anarchical and hostile world, the latter has sought to spread a particular kind of globalized citizenship to the world, particularly in the Middle East. The author argues that the ideological grounding for such an imperial “civilizing mission” needs to be challenged through an alternative theorization of global citizenship. Thus, the second half of the article suggests a new theory of global citizenship rooted in two basic principles: social rights (in order to address the least well off) and shared fate (in order to draw the links between the north/south and east/west). Taken together, they provide a starting point for an alternative theory of global citizenship that speaks not simply against empire but to it.