The State of China’s Environmental Governance After the 17th Party Congress

To redress its deteriorating environment, Chinese leaders have elevated the environmental agenda in its political discourse, especially at the recent 17th Party Congress. In this article, I answer whether the changes and reforms enacted at the 17th Party Congress and codified in the National Eleventh Five-year Plan for Environmental Protection (PEP) address the flaws of the Chinese environmental governance regime. First I identify the critical shortcomings of China’s environmental governance. Then I examine the PEP, focusing on the reforms that correspond with each of these shortcomings. I find that the PEP reforms are insufficient in addressing the shortcomings of the Chinese environmental governance regime. However, in examining empirical evidence, I find that despite almost non-existent institutional reforms, China’s environmental performance has improved. Finally, in the conclusion, I summarize my findings, examine the implications of the paradoxical increase in environmental performance without corresponding governance reform, and suggest areas of future research.     

Property and whiteness: the Oregon standoff and the contradictions of the U.S. Settler State

On 2 January 2016, armed anti-government protestors took over the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge (MNWR) in rural Oregon. The takeover of the MNWR is part of a larger, much longer set of movements called the Sagebrush Rebellion that has come to define contemporary white contestations about the federal regulation of lands in the American West. Specifically, we argue that the armed takeover of MNWR is revelatory of the way white supremacy intersects with place in important and consequential ways. In addition, we examine the politics of place and property to interrogate the way settler imaginaries affords settlers a perceived right to property and the land. We contend that this perception, illustrated by the events at Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, is enmeshed within particular conceptions of property, the frontier, and whiteness. The MNWR takeover illuminates how discourses of whiteness and property rights are essential to the ongoing production of white supremacy within the US settler state.     

A Bottom‐Up Theory of Public Opinion about Foreign Policy

If public opinion about foreign policy is such an elite‐driven process, why does the public often disagree with what elites have to say? We argue here that elite cue‐taking models in International Relations are both overly pessimistic and unnecessarily restrictive. Members of the public may lack information about the world around them, but they do not lack principles, and information need not only cascade from the top down. We present the results from five survey experiments where we show that cues from social peers are at least as strong as those from political elites. Our theory and results build on a growing number of findings that individuals are embedded in a social context that combines with their general orientations toward foreign policy in shaping responses toward the world around them. Thus, we suggest the public is perhaps better equipped for espousing judgments in foreign affairs than many of our top‐down models claim.     

A Prospective,Longitudinal Examination of the Influence of Childhood Home and School Contexts on Psychopathic Characteristics in Adolescence

Much of the existing research examining etiological contributors to psychopathic characteristics considers only biological and physiological deficits, with little consideration given to contextual factors that may play a role in their development. This prospective, longitudinal study examined the influence of childhood home and school environments on adolescent psychopathic characteristics among 390 youth (50.5% female; 46.2% Black/African American, 44.9% Hispanic/Latino, 6.9% Asian or Native American/Alaska Native, and 2.1% Non-Hispanic White). Specifically, this study examined (1) the effect of home chaos and poor parental monitoring on adolescent primary and secondary psychopathy and callous-unemotional traits through the lens of multiple reporters, and (2) whether classroom climate quality across three years of childhood moderated these relationships. The results indicated that delinquency and home chaos in childhood were related to primary psychopathy in adolescence and that exposure to higher quality classroom climates across childhood acted as a buffer by mitigating the negative relationship between parental monitoring in childhood and secondary psychopathy in adolescence. These findings have implications for designing interventions to mitigate the manifestation of youth psychopathy.     

Changing the Debate About “Success” in Conflict Resolution Efforts

This essay outlines a conceptual framework for discussing success in interactive conflict resolution and in conflict resolution efforts more generally. It first proposes reasons why evaluation is crucial for improving practice. An overview of the new framework and its development are then presented. This gives the reader a window into its construction and some of the challenges of evaluation in conflict intervention processes. Next, the uses of the framework are explained as well as how its use helps to change the debate about successful processes. Finally, this article discusses how the theoretician, practitioner, and researcher-evaluator can use this framework for their own purposes, and how evaluating processes based upon their goals helps to improve the theory, practice, and research of the field.     

Rally ’round which flag? Terrorism’s effect on (intra)national identity

Public Choice - Exploiting a unique panel of student respondents surveyed both shortly before and after the March 2016 bombings in Brussels, this paper analyzes the effects of terrorism on social...     

Reinforcing or Breaking Party Systems? Internet Communication Technologies and Party Competition in Comparative Context

Many scholars speculate about the political implications of Internet proliferation. The Internet might, for example, open new channels of communication, which should benefit ideologically extreme and electorally small parties. On the other hand, the Internet might push party systems toward normalization, ultimately reinforcing the extant dominance of incumbent parties. We draw on data from 205 small and extreme parties in 35 countries and focus on both party- and system-level outcomes to investigate some of the most pressing research questions from this debate. We find that where party systems were previously concentrated or restrictive, Internet proliferation has no effect on votes for small and extreme parties. By contrast, in more permissive settings, Internet proliferation has had the small—but measurable—effect of driving up votes for these parties. At the level of the party system as a whole, however, we find little evidence that Internet proliferation increases either polarization or fragmentation.     

From Aristotle to Sadat: A Short Strategic Persuasion Framework for Negotiators

Persuasion is undoubtedly a critical negotiation skill. But while the literature has examined its role in negotiation, few, if any, scholars or practitioners have offered a clear strategic framework for putting persuasion into negotiation practice. The ethos, pathos, and logos modes of persuasion elucidated by Aristotle in the fourth century B.C.E. provide a clear, understandable, and easy‐to‐apply framework that students and trainees can use to prepare for negotiation, to deploy during the negotiation process, and to conduct debriefings following a negotiation. In this article, I describe how to apply this Aristotelian framework and explain an additional dimension of persuasion in negotiation that I believe is also critical: timing. Through the real‐world example of Anwar Sadat and his trip to Jerusalem, I demonstrate how this framework has worked in practice.