Political Competition,Path Dependence,and the Strategy of Sustainable Energy Transitions

Previous research emphasizes the importance of path dependence for sustainable energy transitions, but their strategic nature is frequently overlooked. We examine formally how exogenous shocks, such as changes in international energy prices, interact with positive reinforcement factors, such as the growing strength of the renewables advocacy coalition. We find that political competition modifies the effect of path dependence on policy and outcomes. Specifically, while “green” governments can use positive reinforcement mechanisms to lock in policy commitments (by creating green constituencies), “brown” governments strategically underprovide public support for renewable energy (to avoid creating green constituencies). The effect of positive reinforcement also decreases with international energy prices. Our empirical analysis shows that (1) political competition conditions the policy response to exogenous shocks and market failures, while (2) governments strategically exploit path dependence for political gain.     

A Cold War before the Cold War: Early Soviet Relations with the West

The field of international relations has seen considerable debate about the reasons for conflict between revolutionary states and status quo powers. The two works reviewed here deal with the early years of the Soviet regime. The material presented indicates that tensions were largely the result of Bolshevik attempts to “export the revolution.” This indicates that it is the nature of a revolutionary state and its desire to challenge the international status quo that leads to tension with other powers.     

Among the Energy Tribes: A cultural framework for the analysis and design of energy policy

My four years at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) have provided the opportunity for some participant observation among the Energy Tribes. The uncertainties that envelop trends in energy supply and demand are so wide that the exploratory mode (asking “What would you like the facts to be?”) turns out to be more rewarding than the adversary mode (asking “What are the facts?”). The three Energy Tribes are distinguished by their three contradictory scenarios: “Business as Usual,” “Middle of the Road” and “Radical Change Now.” Each scenario sets very different bounds on what is credible and incredible, possible and impossible, sensible and foolish, rational and irrational. More often than not, the name of any particular tribe turns out to mean simply “the people” in the language of that tribe. Each tribe, seeing itself as the repository of everything that is human, consigns all the others to a sort of unmenschionable limbo. That, in essence, is what has happened in energy policy analysis.     

The Quest for a Coherent School Science Curriculum: The Need for an Organizing Principle

Achievement test results from the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) suggest that the performance of US students in science is not strong either in terms of international or national standards. Yet, the US is preceived as a world leader in standards‐based and “hands‐on” science reform. In this article I argue that the major policy issue confronting the science community that addresses this apparent disconnect is the development of an organizing principle that would serve to limit the number of essential topics, subordinating some topics in science standards to others. Furthermore, this organizing principle would weave the reduced set of topics into a sequence that is logical and that leads to an unfolding of a key story or stories in science that are intrinsically interesting to students and that provide the basis for understanding science by future literate citizens and not just the memorization of isolated facts to be forgotten when school finishes.     

Communicative Diplomacy for the 3rd Millennium

Abstract

In today's world of revolution in communications and information as well as of global interdependency, a medialised politics became a general reality. One can observe such a trend specifically in the field of international and foreign affairs where state and other actors use communication channels and public relations to a large extent to improve on the content and in particular, on the image of their policies. Here one can also argue that a major share of bilateral and multilateral relations among states is shaped by the international media, or vice versa, that all major “wars” are “fought” through the media.

This article explores the increasing inter-relation between state foreign affairs on one side, and media and public relations, on the other. The article starts off with basic concepts of a “new/democratic diplomacy” (Nicholson, 1988) and a “public diplomacy” (Signitzer in Combs, 1992), and compares them with definitions of “international public relations” (Kunczik, 1997). It attempts to build the general analytical framework on the basis of comparative case studies of developed countries with an established diplomatic tradition and of new democracies still proving themselves on the international fora. In this context, particular attention is given to communication in relation to international organisations like NATO and the EU.     

The State as Investment Market: A Framework for Interpreting the Post‐Soviet State in Eurasia

What type of state has emerged in post‐Soviet Eurasia, and what kind of theoretical framework can help us understand its behavior and performance? This article argues that we can usefully understand the logic of political and administrative organization in terms of a kind of “investment market.” Access to the state is frequently determined by actual financial payment. Would‐be officials invest in offices to obtain access to a stream of income associated with an office. This framework represents a novel perspective on the post‐Soviet state, which has hitherto either been premised on modernization theory or emphasized a robustly personalistic logic of political organization.     

Regulating public procurement in Brazil,India, and China: Toward the regulatory-developmental state

Since the 1990s, emerging economies such as Brazil, India, and China have adopted transparency-enhancing public procurement regulations in line with international norms. Yet they have hesitated to join the World Trade Organization's legally binding Government Procurement Agreement (GPA). Based on the Special Issue framework, this article scrutinizes the underlying domestic and international determinants, and how they influence emerging countries’ positions in two overlapping international procurement regimes. In particular, reform-oriented state actors, societal pressure, and lesson-drawing from international templates have induced a strengthening of domestic procurement institutions and turned emerging countries into “promoters” of the international transparency regime. Conversely, the rising powers have remained, to varying degrees, reluctant “spoilers” of the GPA-based market access regime in order to keep policy space and use procurement for domestic development objectives. The article suggests that this regulatory-developmental layering of rule-based governance and interventionist ambitions characterizes the variegated regulatory state in emerging countries.     

Highway to the Danger Zone: United States Legislative Framework Regulating the Commercial Space Sector

The last decade has been witness to a rapid rise of the commercial space sectors of many countries. This development offers myriad prospects for the development and exploration of outer space, but simultaneously poses threats to the international community if not regulated properly. The potential dangers of outer space activity were recognized by both the United States and the former Soviet Union in the midst of the Cold War, which led to the concretization of the international legal regime regulating outer space activities. However, without the enforcement of these legal standards at the municipal level of the state, this regime is ineffective. Therefore, it is an imperative that all states with a commercial space presence develop national space legislation that appropriately incorporates international standards. The U.S. space legislation is, at present, the most robust legal framework which addresses many of the necessary concerns. At the same time, in attempts to promote the growth of its space sector, the U.S. regime regulating commercial space ignores some of the standards developed in the international regime. The critical evaluation of the salient features of the U.S. legislation undertaken by this article serves as a guide for many states seeking to develop their own legislation regulating the commercial space industry. It serves as a guide to adopting comprehensive standards of protections provided for in the U.S. legislation and the International Law Association’s “Model Law on National Space Legislation,” but also cautions against the dangers of weaponization, poor environmental protection, and exposure to international liability. A thorough legislative framework that adequately balances economic, strategic, and political concerns with accepted legal principles of international law is essential to prevent commercial space activities from becoming a “highway to the danger zone.”     

A political-class perspective and theory for the study of racial stratification in the 21st century: a revised and expanded version of the 1997 ABS presidential address

In this article, I present historical and contemporary evidence of “political class” stratification by race in the U.S. I identify historical sources (e.g., see Rose, 1976, A Documentary of Slavery in North America. New York: Oxford University Press) that show that the founding fathers statutorily defined such classifications as “Blacks” and “Whites” and “slaves” and “free people,” and then legislated that “Whites” be the “free people,” and “Blacks” be the “slaves” in perpetuity. Most importantly, I present historical evidence showing that racial stratification did not come into existence through free marketplace competition as so many social scientist theorize; it came into existence and continued mainly by litigation and legislation. U.S. racial stratification is an estate system not a market-class system.     

Introduction: The OECD and Policy Transfer: Comparative Case Studies

Abstract

The six articles in this issue examine the role of the OECD in policy transfer. Two articles (Kudrle on international tax agreements, and Legrand and Vas on Australia’s vocational and educational training policy) conclude that the OECD has been influential, albeit in a grinding and lengthy way. Two others (Clifton on the OECD’s “enhanced engagement” policy with five G-20 countries, and Eccleston and Woodward on tax transparency) find the OECD’s influence either patchier or even dysfunctional. Carroll’s article provides a novel analysis of policy transfer through accession processes, while Alasuutari explores transfer in terms of a comparative analysis of policy rationalizations that refer to the OECD as a “standard.” A common theme of all six articles is the way in which policy transfer is driven by exogenous pressures and crises, and how international governmental organizations like the OECD exploit these pressures to protect and expand their global relevance.     

From corporatism to lawyocracy? On liberalization and juridification

In 1997 Robert Kagan questioned whether European countries had to fear the coming of American style adversarial legalism. He answered this question with a qualified “no.” Today we are no longer so sure the answer is “no,” even in a country that Kagan considered the antipole of US adversarial legalism, the Netherlands, traditionally characterized by informal and consensual conflict resolution. In the present article we chart a trend of increasing juridification and legalism, that is, more formal and legal conflict resolution, in the Netherlands between 1970 and 2008. The trend is related to major changes in economic governance institutions, which generated a shift from corporatism toward lawyocracy; from power of the associations of civil society toward power of courts, lawyers, and judges. Yet the newly dominant system of governance is modified and merged with elements of the old system, producing a specific Dutch version, which one could call “corporatist lawyocracy.” We identify two types of liberalization as major driving forces: social liberalization in the 1970s and 1980s, followed by economic liberalization in the subsequent decades. If one considers economic liberalization a product of neoliberal “Reaganomics,” the legal changes are in a way an “American export product,” although a different one than the lawyering styles of large international American law firms mentioned by Kelemen and Sibbitt in 2004.     

Viewpoint: Space and Religion in Russia: Cosmonaut Worship to Orthodox Revival

This article follows the evolution of the relationship between the Russian space program and spirituality from an astrosociological perspective. It demonstrates that the Russian space program has its roots in Nikolai Fedorov's Cosmism, which envisaged the technological resurrection of the dead and space colonization, and in Marxism, which used space exploration as a means of proving atheism. Whereas the conquest of space has been perceived throughout the world in an ambivalent way, either as an act endorsed by Divinity or as a blasphemous feat, the Soviets took pride in reinventing the “Tower of Babel” in order to “make a name for themselves” and dethrone God (Genesis 11:4). Moreover, the technological miracles of spaceflight and the worship of Yuri Gagarin support the view that Soviet Communism was a state religion. After the fall of the Soviet Union, Orthodox Christianity brought its own contribution to the Russian space program. It will be also shown that, even during the Soviet period, appearances contrasted with the feelings of many of the cosmonauts.     

Escaping the International Governance Dilemma? Incorporated Transgovernmental Networks in the European Union

This article investigates the role of transgovernmental networks of national regulators in addressing collective action problems endemic to international cooperation. In contrast to recent work on transgovernmental actors, which emphasizes such networks as alternatives to more traditional international institutions, we examine the synergistic interaction between the two. Building on the broader premise that patterns of “dual delegation” above and below the nation‐state enhance the coordinating role of networks of national agencies in two‐level international governance, the article examines the formal incorporation of transgovernmental networks into European Union (EU) policymaking. The focus on authoritative rule‐making adds a crucial dimension to the landscape of EU governance innovations while connecting to the broader study of transgovernmental networks in international governance. The article develops an analytical framework that maps these incorporated networks across different sectors in terms of function, emergence, and effectiveness. Two case studies of data privacy and energy market regulation are presented to apply and illustrate the insights of this mapping.     

The new plenty; why are some post‐Soviet farms thriving?

In the 1990s, rural economies in many post‐Soviet countries suffered from a staggering decline in production and from outmigration. Over the last 10 to 15 years, some agricultural producers in the former Soviet Union have managed to reverse decline: they have updated production facilities, improved productivity, and increased production and exports. These trends are uneven, as some farmers in some countries are thriving, while others are on the brink of economic collapse. What are the conditions for recovery—for the “new plenty”? This article will argue that targeted and flexible public support to specific rural producers, combined with the recovery of demand in other post‐Soviet countries made rural recoveries possible. These findings suggest that conditions for recovery have materialized from within the post‐Soviet region, rather than being dependent on a transition toward particular type of “good” governance institutions and access to markets in the European Union.     

“Freedom of Choice”: Israeli Efforts to Prevent Soviet Jewish Émigrés to Resettle in the United States

Beginning in 1967 the Soviet Union allowed some Jewish citizens to leave for family reunification in Israel (see Appendix ). Due to the break in diplomatic relations between Israel and the U.S.S.R., most émigrés traveled to Vienna where they were then flown to Israel. After 1976 the majority of émigrés who left on visas for Israel “dropped out” in Vienna and chose to resettle in the West. Several American Jewish organizations facilitated their obtaining visas and being resettled in the United States and other countries. This article examines efforts by Israel to deny Soviet Jewish émigrés the option of resettling in the United States. Israeli officials pressured American Jewish organizations to desist from aiding Russian Jews who wanted to resettle in the United States. Initially American Jews resisted Israeli efforts. Following Gorbachev's decision in the late 1980s to allow free emigration for Soviet Jews, the American Jewish community agreed to a quota on Soviet Jewish refugees in the United States, which resulted in most Soviet Jewish émigrés to Israel. The article uses the case study to explore efforts by American Jews and Israel to influence American refugee policy in the 1970s and 1980s. It provides insights into ethnic politics as well as “sponsored politics,” whereby Israel used the American Jewish community to further its interests in the making of United States foreign policy. It also deals with the issue of human rights and migration. While no migrant has the right to go to a country of his or her choice, Israel did deny some émigrés the right to exercise freedom of movement to other countries who welcomed them as refugees.     

How Do “Organizational Designs” Influence Welfare Politics? A Study of the Nordic Pension Systems

The interplay between organizational structure and political behaviour is one of the focal points of political science. How and to what extent do existing organizational structures constrain and channel future political decision-making? One specific hypothesis from the welfare literature provides the starting-point for this article: Korpi's argument that “institutional” welfare arrangements grant the poor better welfare provisions than “marginal” welfare arrangements. By confronting Korpi with his critics, I argue that the interplay between welfare designs and political decision-making is more complex than Korpi's thesis suggests. Implications for the broader welfare debate are discussed.     

Ecosocialisms,Past, Present and Future: From the Metabolic Rift to a Reconstructive,Dynamic and Hybrid Ecosocialism

John Bellamy Foster and his colleagues have recently argued that the project of ecosocialism should be understood in terms of a “prefigurative” and “first stage” of red-green thinkers whose insights have largely been transcended by their own work on the metabolic rift. Rift scholars have further argued that “second-stage” ecosocialists should push back against “idealist” deviations occurring amongst historical materialists concerned with the production of nature, socionatures and “hybridity,” as well as more or less all engagements with literatures on eco-technological transitions, industrial ecology and the like, which are implicated in supporting “green capitalism.” This paper critically evaluates these claims. In each case, it is argued, rift scholarship is narrowing the possibilities for interdisciplinary engagement and for thinking in dynamic and reconstructive terms about red-green futures. It is our sense that an ecosocialist vision of just transitions has to be conceptualized as a diverse, dynamic, iterative and always incomplete affair. Anthropocene ecosocialisms are inevitably going to involve co-producing, making and remaking hybrid social ecologies on an irreducibly restless, turbulent and warming planet. We argue that what follows from this is the necessity to both critique and recuperate the better insights of hybrid political ecology and ecological modernities.     

Cycle avoiding trajectories,strategic agendas,and the duality of memory and foresight: An informal exposition

This paper considers the notion of cycle avoiding trajectories in majority voting tournaments and shows that they underlie and guide several apparently disparate voting processes. The set of alternatives that are maximal with respect to such trajectories constitutes a new solution set of considerable significance. It may be dubbed the Banks set, in recognition of the important paper by Banks (1985) that first made use of this set. The purpose of this paper is to informally demonstrate that the Banks set is a solution set of broad relevance for understanding group decision making in both cooperative and non-cooperative settings and under both sincere and sophisticated voting. In addition, we show how sincere and sophisticated voting processes can be viewed as mirror images of one another — embodying respectively, “dmemory” and “foresight.” We also show how to develop the idea of a “sophisticated agenda,” one in which the choice of what alternatives to propose is itself a matter of strategic calculation.     

International diffusion of regulatory governance: EU actorness in public procurement

This paper attempts to go beyond actor‐centered explanations of the European Union's (EU) presence in regulatory politics by examining the role of the EU in the diffusion of regulatory norms and practices. We explore the international diffusion of public procurement policy, to which multiple organizations and especially the EU and the World Trade Organization have made an active contribution. Using the “opportunity‐presence‐capability” scheme, we argue that the EU is actively co‐shaping the global agenda on public procurement, mainly as a result of the “opportunity” and “presence” dimensions of its global actorness and its role in the horizontal diffusion of public procurement regulations between international organizations. For “EU as a global actor” literature to offer valuable explanations, an in‐depth analysis of its relationship with other international organizations, such as the World Trade Organization, reveals significant interactions and the co‐shaping of policy agendas.