The 1948 Coup d'État in Prague Through the Eyes of the American Embassy

This article examines the dramatic events that transformed Czechoslovakia into a totalitarian dictatorship primarily from the perspective of the United States Foreign Service officers posted at the American Embassy in Prague. It is based on new archival sources, on interviews with former American Foreign Service and Intelligence officers, and on their unpublished mémoires.     

Markets and democracy: A critique of Charles E. Lindblom

Abstract

Using a 1988 Home Box Office (HBO) series as a point of departure this paper examines the state of mass‐mediated politics. Examples from Tanner ‘88 reveal unmistakable signs of contemporary electoral campaigns ‐ stage management, monitored public opinion, and mythinformation. Pseudo‐events replace actual political circumstances to create politically useful images. The consciousness industry, in creating almost universal commodification, has fused propaganda and advertising in the selling of products and politics. Emphasis on spectacle and happening, immediate delivery, and manipulation of demand represent important changes in the way that capitalism and democracy work. A new mode of information in which social relations are mediated by electronic communication systems is being created. But saturation coverage in the media has not created a better‐informed, more active electorate. Rather, it has reduced the political process to a level of mindless slogans, trivial issues, and meaningless simulations.     

Domestic politics and the strategy of international trade

The policymaking problem in international trade is fundamentally strategic, since optimal national policy depends on what other nations choose to do. The game is not between unitary rational actors, however, but rather between players with considerable internal divisions about what policy should be. There is a rich domestic politics to international trade policymaking. Conventional wisdom holds that internal division is a liability in international interactions. This article demonstrates that if countries are divided internally between divergent interests, this will alter the outcome of strategic games between countries in, for example, setting tariffs. In particular, internal division can actually be helpful to a country, since a protectionist faction helps to make a protectionist threat more credible.     

Election Laws,Mobilization, and Turnout: The Unanticipated Consequences of Election Reform

State governments have experimented with a variety of election laws to make voting more convenient and increase turnout. The impacts of these reforms vary in surprising ways, providing insight into the mechanisms by which states can encourage or reduce turnout. Our theory focuses on mobilization and distinguishes between the direct and indirect effects of election laws. We conduct both aggregate and individual‐level statistical analyses of voter turnout in the 2004 and 2008 presidential elections. The results show that Election Day registration has a consistently positive effect on turnout, whereas the most popular reform—early voting—is actually associated with lower turnout when it is implemented by itself. We propose that early voting has created negative unanticipated consequences by reducing the civic significance of elections for individuals and altering the incentives for political campaigns to invest in mobilization.