Collegiate Executives and Direct Democracy in Switzerland and Uruguay: Similar Institutions,Opposite Political Goals,Distinct Results

Uruguay, defining itself as the “Switzerland of Latin America”, took the Swiss model (collegial executives and direct democracy) as an example when building its own political institutions. Despite the similarities of these institutions, the results were quite different due to the different context. The comparison between the institutions in these two isolated countries highlights the ways in which the same institutions may produce different results and evolve in distinctive ways. This is important to recognize as foreign models and experiences continue to inspire policies. Contrary to common arguments presented in the literature, even in such a “most likely case”, institutions cannot simply be copied. Institutional effects are context‐dependent and we need to pay attention to this interaction. This article provides new evidence showing that universalist institutional arguments can be misleading.     

Advancing without Attacking: The Strategic Game around the Use of Force

What is the nature of the strategic game that states play during crises? Extensive research examines the leading answer: coercive bargaining. States prevail by signaling resolve, establishing the credibility of their threats, and coercing their adversaries into backing down. However, instead of (or in addition to) traditional coercive bargaining, this article shows that states frequently play out a different game with its own set of rules and tactics. The article explores how states outmaneuver their adversaries: working around their red lines, taking gains by fait accompli and imposing pressure where it is possible to do so without quite crossing the line of unambiguously using force. Based on this premise, the article develops a theoretical framework for understanding strategic interaction during crises, referred to as advancing without attacking, and shows that it best explains the course of the Berlin Blockade Crisis of 1948–49 while also shedding light on other prominent crises.     

Writing the regulations for health

The development of regulations in health is much more than a purely technical procedure. Rather, it involves decisionmaking and bargaining processes that engage a wide range of individuals and organizations with diverse interests and varied resources. Attempts at statutory precision and goal clarification may improve, but will not fundamentally alter the regulation writing experience. The dynamics of regulations development are revealed in three cases. The primary case, The Health Maintenance Organization Act of 1973, suggests that despite the efforts of the regulations writers themselves, there are limits to the extent to which basic interest conflicts and questions of health policy can be resolved in the process. Other cases examined are the Professional Standards Review Organization Act of 1972 and the National Health Planning and Resources Development Act of 1974.     

Health care for the poor.

In the 1980s the convergence of a number of factors is causing government at all levels, industry, and labor to plan or initiate major reductions in health spending. Important among these are rising health care costs, a troubled national economy, mounting federal deficits and state revenue shortfalls, and the philosophical course and domestic policy of the Reagan administration. In this context government has been rethinking its capacity to finance health services for the poor, and new and sometimes controversial arrangements for delivering these services are being developed. The dilemma government officials face now is how to cut costs while still assuring that quality medical services are available. This article focuses on what these new policy developments and arrangements are and whether the significant gains in access and in health achieved over the past 20 years will be sustained. Because truly sweeping reforms are unlikely, whether government will maintain earlier commitments and established arrangements for financing and delivering health services to the poor will be worked out piecemeal over the next several years.     

Health news and the American public, 1996-2002

The Kaiser Family Foundation/Harvard School of Public Health Health News Index, a series of 39 surveys with a total of over 42,000 respondents from 1996 through 2002, measures how closely Americans follow major health stories in the news and what they understand about the issues covered in those stories. On average, four in ten adults reported following health news stories closely. The public reports paying the most attention to stories about public health, followed by health policy and disease-related stories. While knowledge about health news varies, individuals who follow health news stories closely are significantly more likely to give the correct answer to knowledge questions about those stories.     

Replication with Attention to Numerical Accuracy

Numerical issues matter in statistical analysis. Small errorsoccur when numbers are translated from paper and pencil intothe binary world of computers. Surprisingly, these errors maybe propagated and magnified through binary calculations, eventuallyproducing statistical estimates far from the truth. In thisreplication and extension article, we look at one method ofverifying the accuracy of statistical estimates by running thesesame data and models on multiple statistical packages. We findthat for two published articles, Nagler (1994, American Journalof Political Science 38:230–255) and Alvarez and Brehm(1995, American Journal of Political Science 39:1055–1089),results are dependent on the statistical package used. In thecourse of our replications, we uncover other pitfalls that mayprevent accurate replication, and make recommendations to ensurethe ability for future researchers to replicate results.     

Dynamic optimization of political popularity in an empirical macroeconomic model

We estimate a political popularity function for Israel, taking account of the effects of institutional and political changes on the structure of the function, and then use this function, in conjunction with a simple macroeconomic model of the Israeli economy, to calculate dynamic macroeconomic strategies which would have maximized the political popularity of three previous Israeli governments. We conclude that the dominant strategy was always to keep unemployment at the natural rate, but that this strategy was optimally combined with either rising inflation close to elections (for the earlier governments) or with near-zero inflation throughout the term (for later governments).We are indebted to Alex Cukierman, Moshe Mandelbaum, Jacob Rosenberg, Gordon Tullock, and Ben-Zion Zilberfarb for helpful comments, and to Shulamith Levy and the late Louis Guttman for the use of their popularity data. Research assistance was provided by T. Cagan, A. Friedman, J. Hertz, I. Landau, J. Mizrahi, and J. Sapir. This research was supported by grants from the Friedrich Flick Foundation, FRG, and the Economics Research Institute, Bar-Ilan University.     

“I could not have made it without them”: Examining Trainee Cohort Perspectives on MSW Education for Public Child Welfare

This article reports findings from an evaluation of an MSW child welfare training program focused on increasing retention of knowledgeable, competent and experienced child protective service workers. From qualitative data gathered as part of the process evaluation, we found the cohort effect to be the most salient factor participants experienced as contributing to their successful program completion and their 100% retention rate. Analysis of the cohort effect yielded five themes instrumental in participants' individual and collective success: mutual support, empowerment, belief in self and their finding of a home base which ultimately helped them to launch their professional selves.     

When and where do elections matter? A global test of the democratization by elections hypothesis, 1900–2010

Successive multiparty elections in sub-Saharan Africa are associated with incremental democratization. Yet tests in other regions are less than encouraging. Non-significant findings on Latin America and post-communist Eurasia, as well as conceptual criticism regarding the theory’s application in the contemporary Middle East, suggest that this may be a case of African exceptionalism. This article moves these debates forward by posing a comprehensive, global set of tests on the democratizing effect of elections. We seek to establish the scope conditions of the argument geographically, temporally, and substantively. Although we find a correlation between reiterated multiparty elections and improvements in the liberal-democratic components of electoral regimes globally since 1900, the relationship is only substantial in the period since the onset of the third wave of democracy. Experiences with iterated multiparty elections have substantive importance for democratization in sub-Saharan Africa, the post-communist region, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Asia. For the Middle East and North Africa, the relationship is weaker and less robust. Finally, the results suggest that reiterated sequences of multiparty elections are associated with improvements to liberal and deliberative components of democracy more so than egalitarian components.