Traveling AI-essentialism and national AI strategies: A comparison between South Korea and France

In this paper, I investigate what common discourses National AI Strategies (NAISs) share and how they have unfolded differently in diverging national contexts. For this purpose, I compare the South Korean and French cases by relying on the notions of sociotechnical imaginary and future essentialism. I analyze (1) the emergence of the common discourses, which I call AI-essentialism, over the past decade; (2) the development of imaginaries around IT in Korea and France in the twentieth century, namely technological developmentalism and the American challenge, respectively; and (3) the integration of the traveling AI-essentialism and nationally embedded imaginaries of IT into each country's NAISs. The analysis indicates that: (1) AI-essentialism incorporated discursive strategies, enabling political and industrial leaders to naturalize AI development, hence justifying increased investments in the field; (2) two countries' imaginaries of IT diverged due to the successes and failures throughout the second half of the twentieth century; and (3) while two countries' NAISs share AI-essentialism's discursive instruments, their specific measures and unfolding have varied in relation to each case's existing imaginaries of IT.     

Effects of deregulation and performance on government accountability: Role of trust in Korea,Japan, and the United States

Public administration has been struggling to address the balance between conflicting government values. Trust in the study is employed as nodal value to reconcile modern management dilemma concerning conflicting relationships between performance and accountability and between discretion and accountability. Using 2012 International Social Survey Program data, this paper analyzed the moderator and mediator role of government trust among discretion, performance, and accountability in cases of South Korea, Japan, and the United States. This study used factor analysis and ordinary least square multiple regression analysis. The statistical results partially confirmed the hypotheses regarding the mediating and moderating role of trust: (a) the moderating effect of the trust on the relationship between performance and accountability in South Korea; (b) the moderating impact of the trust on the relationship between deregulation and accountability in Japan; and (c) when governments work well, it leads to high level of trust, in turn followed by high accountability in the United States and Japan.     

Development and security in international aid to North Korea: commonalities and differences among the European Union,the United States and South Korea

In this paper, we contend that the nexus of security and development lies in the crux of challenges confronting human security and aid failure in North Korea. We first review academic and policy discourses concerning the security-development nexus. We then analyse how the nexus works out its logic in North Korea by exploring how insecurity and underdevelopment have fed into each other, producing a vicious cycle that complicates efforts to address human security in North Korea. In the third and main section, we examine the ways in which South Korea, the USA and the EU provided for assistance to North Korea from 1995 to 2012 at national and international policy levels. We analyse their approaches to international aid and identify differences and commonalities in them so as to better understand how aid giving exacerbates or mitigates the insecurity/underdevelopment and then impacts on the development-security nexus. We finally conclude with a consideration of various strategies to help overcome the dual challenges of underdevelopment and insecurity that besiege North Korea.     

Interactions between scientists and public officials: A comparison of the use of science in regulatory programs in the United States and West Germany

This essay compares and contrasts important attributes of the use of scientific knowledge and judgment in regulatory decisions in the United States and West Germany. It decribes the broader historical context for such decisions in each country. Although the system in America exhibits considerable conflict and assumption of adversarial positions, it is argued that a more fundamental attribute of the system is that policy decisions are reviewed according to rules of evidence and its interpretation. Similarly, although the German system involves a great deal of consultation, a more fundamental aspect of policy decisions there is that of the determination of the social obligation to act. In the United States, it is more important that a decisionmaker has properly developed and interpreted the evidence than that he or she has consulted with all the relevant parties. In Germany, the order of importance of the two is reversed.Based on seminars given in Berlin in December 1984 at the International Institute for Environment and Society of the Science Center Berlin and in Washington, DC in January 1985 at the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences.The author, a National Research Council Fellow, wishes to thank his colleagues in Berlin and Washington for their comments, many of which have been integrated into this essay. The ideas presented here, however, remain the responsibility of the author.     

Interest groups and social media: An examination of cause and sectional groups' social media strategies in the EU

This paper examines social media use by cause and sectional interest groups in the European Union. The literature suggests that cause groups should focus on building a constituency more than sectional groups, because they do not offer exclusive benefits to their members. Cause groups face collective action problems more than sectional groups, so they have to take a proactive approach to community building. The nature of the causes cause groups lobby for is also more suitable for protest and thus calls to action. An in‐depth analysis of a random sample of 1,000 tweets by cause and sectional groups reveals differences with respect to social media use. Cause groups use social media to pursue two‐way communication with the public slightly—albeit not significantly—more than sectional groups. Cause groups mobilise the public to take action significantly and substantively more than specific interests.     

The effects of national cultures on two technologically advanced countries: The case of e-leadership in South Korea and the United States

The increased use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) has triggered enormous innovation in the public sector and created positive public value at the managerial, delivery of services, and policy levels. However, these positive outcomes do not automatically accrue simply by adoption of ICTs as public leaders can fail to adopt relevant new ICTs, use them poorly, or use them in ways that actually diminish public value, which raises the question of the importance of e-leadership. This article examines e-leadership and innovation capacity at the individual public manager level and fills in some gaps about the practice and implementation of ICTs in the public sector. We explore eight research questions useful in theorizing about e-leadership, develop constructs of e-leadership, and describe the current development of e-leadership. By comparing e-leadership in two country settings (South Korea and the United States), we also overcome the limitations of the existing Western-oriented studies about innovations in the public sector. In addition to the growth of e-leadership use and requirements for a variety of competencies equivalent to, but separate from, traditional communication competences, we find that national cultures exert significant influence on the major constructs of e-leadership, which implies that an effective e-leadership strategy should consider cultural contexts seriously.     

Peddling a semiotics of fear: a critical examination of scare tactics and commercial strategies in public health promotion

In this study, we critically examine the ways in which a nationwide health promotion campaign – the 2013 Diabetes UK/Tesco diabetes campaign, the largest of its kind in the UK – seeks to raise the general public's awareness of Type 2 diabetes. We subject a series of six campaign images (including their layout and accompanying text) to a multimodal discourse analysis, identifying the presence of a range of fear-inducing, stigmatising and commercial strategies, through which the campaign emphasises the dangers of diabetes and advocates personal responsibility for assessing both individual and others' risk of the disease. Specifically, we describe, in multi-semiotic detail, three discursive techniques deployed in the campaign to achieve these ends: (1) the depiction of grief and amplification of diabetes-related danger, (2) the promotion of diabetes risk and localisation of individuals' responsibility for their health and (3) the commercial branding and framing of the Diabetes UK/Tesco partnership – including the promotion of goods and services – as a means of diabetes prevention and management. Our findings raise concerns about the moral legitimacy of using fear-inducing and commercial strategies in order to (effectively) raise public awareness of and responses to Type 2 diabetes, strategies which do little to address the environmental factors which are associated with increasing rates of the disease.     

Federalism and suitable housing for the frail elderly: A comparison of policies in Canada and the United States

Abstract

The frail elderly have special multidimensional housing needs beyond affordability, including shelter that is more adaptive to reduced function and offers supportive services. Suitable housing for this population comprises three policy areas—housing, health care, and social services. In a federal system, development and implementation of policies in these areas involves participation of several levels of government and the nongovernmental sector. This paper uses federalism as a conceptual framework to examine and compare these policy areas in Canada and the United States.

In both countries, general national housing policies—relying heavily on the nongovernmental sector and characterized by joint federal‐provincial programs in Canada and by important local government roles and age‐specific programs in the United States‐have benefited the elderly. The effects of such policies on the frail elderly, however, have been less positive because of the general lack of essential human services and, to a lesser degree, health care that enables them to live outside institutions. This is especially true in the United States, where health care policy is fragmented and is dominated by a private insurance system, partial federal financing of health insurance for the elderly, and tense federal‐state relations in financing health care for the poor. Although Canadian policies and programs operate autonomously and more uniformly within a national health plan, neither country has a universal, comprehensive long‐term care system. Geographically diverse patterns of social services, funded by grants to states and provinces and the nonprofit sector, are common to both countries. However, the United States has inadequately funded age‐specific programs and has relied on a growing commercial service provision. Housing outcomes for frail elders are moving in the right direction in both countries; however, Canada seems to be better positioned, largely because of its health care system. As increased decentralization continues to characterize the three policy areas that affect suitable housing for frail elders, the United States can learn from Canada's negotiated federalism approach to more uniform solutions to merging housing and long‐term care.     

Interaction between States and Citizens in the Age of the Internet: "e-Government" in the United States, Britain, and the European Union

We examine the origins of the recent shift towards "e-government" in three cases: the United States, Britain, and the European Union. We set out three heuristic models of interaction between states and citizens that might underpin the practice of "e-government." Focusing on U.S., British, and European Union initiatives, we undertake a comparative analysis of the evolution of key policy statements on e-government reform in national (and supranational) government. We conclude that the democratic potential of the Internet has been marginalized as a result of the ways in which government use of such technology has been framed since the early 1990s. An executive-driven, "managerial" model of interaction has assumed dominance at the expense of "consultative" and "participatory" possibilities.     

单一制和联邦制：中、美政府体制的宏观制度选择背景比较

中国和美国分别是单一制和联邦制国家结构模式的典型代表,两国政府体制的核心制度背景、两国的国内政府间关系、行政权的空间划分和政府结构形式都呈现出巨大的迥异之处,并且发挥出各自所具有的优势作用。从两国建国初的一段历史中,可以最清晰地看到各自的民族历史、制度渊源和理论背景等因素所彰显出的对于国家结构模式的影响和发挥出的决定作用。随着历史的发展,单一制和联邦制都在积极打破原有的制度界限,有走向融合的趋势。     

The situational public engagement model in a municipal watershed protection program: information seeking,information sharing,and the use of organizational and social media

In an extension of the situational theory of publics, we tested a situational engagement model to answer how situational factors affect public engagement via both communication behaviors and the use of social media and organizational media. As part of the evaluation of a collaborative stormwater outreach and education campaign, a campus‐wide survey, assisted by a large public university's public affairs office, was conducted to identify key predictors of public engagement in a watershed protection program. A path analysis for the proposed situation engagement model revealed that problem recognition was the key to predicting both information seeking and sharing. The path analysis also yielded a significant association between communication behaviors and public engagement, mediated by the use of organizational media in seeking information on the issue. Further, the analysis showed a significant direct effect of involvement on engagement. The current study provided a preliminary framework that explains individuals' environmental behaviors in today's participatory and user‐generating media environment. Theoretical and practical implications were discussed. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.