The global economic crisis and domestic political agendas

There is an ongoing debate within the economic voting literature about whether the economy's salience systematically fluctuates over time or is constant. The recent global economic slowdown provides leverage to test the proposition that voters give greater weight to economic performance when it is weak. Data on voters' issue priorities from 2000 to 2011 shows that voters were more likely to consider the economy an important issue during periods of bad or volatile economic performance. A weak economy also focuses voter attention on corruption and crime while reducing attention to social policy and foreign affairs. Crime rates, terrorist attacks, globalization, and the level of development also affect the economy's place on the electoral agenda. Thus one impact of the recent financial downturn was a shift toward economic voting in countries where it was deepest.     

Invitation Phone Calls Increase Attendance at Civic Meetings: Evidence from a Field Experiment

Public managers, in addition to implementing sound policies, are expected to manage public participation in the policy process. Civic meetings, in which citizens, elected officials, and public managers discuss proposed policies, can be an effective venue for citizen input, but only if participation is sufficiently high. This article shows that municipal government managers can improve attendance at civic meetings through invitation phone calls. Results from a field experiment in which stakeholders were randomly assigned to receive an invitation phone call for a civic meeting indicate that invitation phone calls can significantly increase meeting attendance. The attendance rate among the 108 stakeholders selected to receive the phone call was higher than among the 169 stakeholders in the control group (8.3 percent versus 4.7 percent). The $20 cost of increasing meeting attendance by one stakeholder is about equal to the cost of increasing turnout in an election by one voter.     

Comparing US and UK Intelligence Assessment in the Early Cold War: NSC-68, April 1950

US and British intelligence assessments regarding the Soviet Union during the early years of the Cold War contained substantial differences despite the remarkable level of cooperation and information sharing that existed between the respective services in the period. Using NSC-68 as a "pivot", this article examines these discrepancies as well as those similarities that did exist, considering their significance and evolution in an effort to understand what factors drove and shaped intelligence analysis on both sides of the Atlantic.     

‘Stella polaris’ and the secret code battle in postwar Europe

Much has already been written about the September 1944 evacuation of the Finnish intelligence service to Sweden, which was designated Operation ‘Stella Polaris’. Newly declassified intelligence documents found at the US National Archives provide a fresh perspective on the role of the American wartime foreign intelligence service, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and its successor, the Strategic Services Unit, in ‘Stella Polaris’ and its aftermath. The documents reveal that throughout World War II, the OSS secretly obtained sensitive intelligence information concerning America's wartime ally, the Soviet Union, from agents within the Finnish intelligence service. The OSS Stockholm Station purchased Soviet and other foreign government code and cipher materials from the Finns, not realizing until later that the Finns had sold the same material to other states. The Americans responded by recruiting some well-placed agents within the Finnish ‘Stella Polaris’ organization, who provided detailed information about the intelligence activities of the Finns in Sweden, and the work of Finnish intelligence officers in France after the end of the war. Among the key pieces of intelligence obtained was the fact that the French intelligence service was intercepting American radio traffic.     

Rethinking Intersectionality: Towards an Understanding of Discursive Marginalization

In recent years, political science research on “intersectionality” has breathed new life into perennial debates about group politics, inequality, and marginalization, demonstrating that unitary identity categories are insufficient for understanding group interests. This article critiques this emergent body of literature, noting the theoretical tensions that have surfaced as the concept has taken hold within political science. It posits that the theoretical underpinnings of this growing research paradigm have to date relied upon a liberal conception of political power that advocates greater administrative attention to particularized subgroups. This pervasive liberalism glosses over the complex and dynamic power structures that both produce political marginalization and offer sites of political resistance. Using the internal tensions of LGBTQ politics as a guiding example, this article calls for a move beyond intersectionality and towards a notion of discursive marginalization to more accurately account for the processes by which citizen-subjects are produced.     

Why Freedoms Do Not Exist by Degrees

The overall freedom of an individual or a society is something that exists in differing degrees. By contrast, anyone's particular freedom to engage in this or that mode of conduct is something that exists (or does not exist) in an all-or-nothing manner. Many political philosophers have taken a contrary view, however, and have contended that each particular freedom exists to a greater or lesser extent in proportion to the easiness or difficulty of exercising it. This essay argues that the temptation to view particular freedoms as matters of degree can be overcome when careful attention is paid to three distinctions: overall liberty versus particular liberties, the existence of any particular liberty versus the probability of its emergence, and becoming more free to do something versus becoming free to do something in more ways. By properly marking these distinctions, one can readily apprehend that the existence or inexistence of each particular freedom is characterized by no gradations – an insight that improves one's understanding of the necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of any such freedom.     

The Productivity Costs of Inefficient Hiring Practices: Evidence From Late Teacher Hiring

We use matched employee–employer records from the teacher labor market to explore the effects of late teacher hiring on student achievement. Hiring teachers after the school year starts reduces student achievement by 0.042 SD in mathematics and 0.026 SD in reading. This reflects, in part, a temporary disruption effect in the first year. In mathematics, but not in reading, late‐hired teachers remain persistently less effective, evidence of negative selection in the teacher labor market. Late hiring concentrates in schools that disproportionately serve disadvantaged student populations, contributing to challenges in ensuring an equitable distribution of educational resources for all students.     

Macro Implementation: Testing the Causal Paths from U.S. Macro Policy to Federal Incarceration

Policy implementation is usually studied at the micro level by testing the short‐term effects of a specific policy on the behavior of government actors and policy outcomes. This study adopts an alternative approach by examining macro implementation—the cumulative effect of aggregate public policies over time. I employ a variety of methodological techniques to test the influence of macro criminal justice policy on new admissions to federal prison via three mediators: case filings by federal prosecutors, conviction rates in federal district courts, and plea bargaining behavior. I find that cumulative Supreme Court rulings influence the incarceration rate by altering conviction rates in district courts; however, I find only mixed evidence of congressional and presidential influence. The results suggest that U.S. macro policy influences bureaucratic outputs by altering the behavior of subordinate policy implementers; however, the Supreme Court may enjoy an advantage in shaping criminal justice policy.     

Institutional Sources of Legitimate Authority: An Experimental Investigation

Unelected officials with coercive powers (e.g., police, prosecutors, bureaucrats) vary markedly in the extent to which citizens view their actions as legitimate. We explore the institutional determinants of legitimate authority in the context of a public goods laboratory experiment. In the experiment, an “authority” can target one “citizen” for punishment following citizen contribution choices. Untargeted citizens can then choose to help or hinder the authority. This latter choice may be interpreted as a behavioral measure of the authority's legitimacy. We find that legitimacy is affected by how authorities are compensated, the transparency with which their decisions are observed, and an interaction between these. When transparency is high, citizens are more willing to assist authorities who receive fixed salaries than those who personally benefit from collected penalties, even when citizens' material incentives are controlled for. Lower transparency reduces support, but only for salaried enforcers.