Organizing the War on Terrorism

The network of public agencies, private firms, nonprofit organizations, ad hoc groups, and individual volunteers that deals with natural and technological hazards and disasters did a remarkable job of responding to and helping us recover from the September 11th attacks. That national emergency management network, along with the national security and law enforcement networks, provides a foundation for our war on terrorism, helps us mitigate the hazard of terrorism, and improves our preparedness for future violence. However, coordinating the efforts of the networks will be a real challenge for the director of homeland security and his or her state and local counterparts. Coordination will necessitate using legal authority to assure compliance, economic and other incentives to encourage compliance, formal partnerships to encourage collaboration, informal understandings to encourage cooperation, and personal encouragement to influence appropriate action. A top–down, command–and–control approach to the war on terrorism, such as the proposed Department of Homeland Security is intended to provide, may be counterproductive.     

Issues of Federalism in Response to Terrorism

The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, provoked, among other reactions, considerable commentary about the future of American federalism, particularly predictions of administrative centralization. To assess the potential impact of terrorism on U.S. intergovernmental relations and the ways the federal system should respond, members of the American Political Science Association's Section on Federalism and Intergovernmental Relations were surveyed in late 2001. Generally, these federalism scholars believe the September 11 terrorism will have little effect on intergovernmental relations or on the U.S. Supreme Court's state–friendly jurisprudence, and the surge in public trust and confidence in the federal government will be short–lived. The scholars tend to support a highly federalized response to terrorism, but with intergovernmental cooperation. Partisan differences among the scholars on policy options, however, mirror the party differences in Congress and the resurgence of "politics as usual" less than a year after September 11, 2001.     

Learning and re-learning regime support: The dynamics of post-communist regimes

Abstract. The political support of citizens of new democracies reflects two sets of experiences. Initially, people are socialized into an undemocratic regime; then, they must re-learn political support in relation to a new regime. In an established democracy, it is difficult to disentangle the effect of early socialization and current performance because both refer to the same regime. However, this is both possible and necessary in countries where there has been a change in regime. Critical questions then arise: When, whether and how do citizens determine their support for their new regime? At the start of a new regime past socialization should be more important but, after a few years, current performance should become more important. We draw on 47 Barometer surveys between 1991 and 1998 in ten more or less democratic post-communist regimes of Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union to test the relative importance of early socialization influences, the legacy of the communist past, and the political and economic performance of new regimes. We find that economic and political performance explains the most variance in support and, secondarily, the communist legacy. Early socialization is insignificant. However, contrary to economic theories of voting, the impact of political performance is greater than the impact of economic performance in post-communist countries – and its impact is increasing.     

Public Opinion on Federalism in the United States and Canada in 2002: The Aftermath of Terrorism

This research reports on a public-opinion survey on intergovernmentaland border issues in Canada and the United States conductedin mid-April 2002. In the United States, there was an upsurgein public support for the federal government in 2002 over 2001,and a slight decline in public evaluations of state and localgovernments. Increased support for the federal government wasespecially notable among whites, Republicans, and respondentswith post-undergraduate education-groups that previously registeredlow support for the federal government. Canadians reported lesssatisfaction with all governments in their federal system, lowersupport for their federal government, and much more regionaland partisan division over intergovernmental issues. On internationalborder issues, Americans and Canadians generally agreed thata common border-security policy would be a good idea, thoughCanadians were slightly more likely than Americans to preferease of cross-border trade over improved border security.     

The need for centres of health research excellence in the developing world

Pervasive ill health and overpopulation impede progress in most developing countries but in recent years, programs providing aid to these regions have de-emphasized health as a priority. Furthermore, support for building the health research capacity, so essential to the success of efforts to promote improved health, has been lacking. This paper examines these policies as they relate to one developing country, one global h ealth program and a major Canadian development agency. Much has been achieved in the past decade in one of the world's poorest countries, Bangladesh, but major health problems persist, particularly in maternal and child health. With the will to build effective health programs, Bangladesh lacks the resources and the research base needed for their development. The World Health Organization, (WHO) Diarrhoeal Disease Control (CDD) program, which addresses a major cause of child mortality in Bangladesh, promotes effective treatment but it contributes little to a permanent research establishment in that country. The Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) which directs only a small portion of its $2.2 billion annual budget to health, lacks an influential level of technical expertise in health. This agency has no mandate to support health research in the developing world; research is the responsibility of the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), the Health Sciences Division of which closed in July, 1995. To upgrade the place of health and health research in development, the attitudes and policies of major donors must change and models of success are needed. Of the existing institutions or programs involved in health and health research in the developing world, the internationally funded health research centre, strategically sited in the developing world could provide the excellence around which relevant programs should flourish. An existing example of this rare species, the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh, merits particular consideration in this regard.     

Research in Context: Measuring Value Change

Abramson and Inglehart find a significant trend toward postmaterialist values in Western Europe, which they argue is largely driven by the gradual processes of generational replacement. Clarke, Dutt, and Rapkin argue that this trend is a methodological artifact of the wording of Inglehart's four-item measure of materialist/ postmaterialist values. They claim that because this battery does not include a question about unemployment, in periods of high unemployment respondents tend to choose postmaterialist goals. The long-term trend toward postmaterialism in Western Europe, they argue, results from rising levels of unemployment during the past two decades. Abramson and Inglehart point out that increases in inflation have a short-term impact on decreasing postmaterialism, but maintain that the positive relationship between unemployment and postmaterialism is spurious. As this analysis shows, Clarke, Dutt, and Rapkin find a positive relationship between unemployment and postmaterialism by building a model that has little theoretical justification and that is not robust to changes in specification. As this analysis demonstrates, unemployment is actually linked with support for materialist goals, and the trend toward post-materialism is robust in the face of alternative time frames, models, and specifications. The weight of the evidence demonstrates that the long-term trend toward postmaterialism in Western Europe is driven by generational replacement.