20世纪国际关系领域的基准时间:历史视角中的三次世界大战

基准时间是宏观历史过程中的临界点,标志着一连串的重大变革可能会在较长时间内延续。基准时间具有九条标准,可以分为一等基准时间、二等基准时间和三等基准时间。20世纪的基准时间主要包括三次世界大战(一战、二战和冷战),第二次世界大战前后发生的变革比第一次世界大战和冷战前后的变革都要来得更为深远。将20世纪的三个基准时间置于两个世纪的视角中加以审视,可以突出现代性革命,这种视角能够观察20世纪的三个基准时间在正在展开的"全球性变革"这一大的主题下是否会相互联接、是如何相互联接的。20世纪国际政治的关键事件,都应该被视为19世纪"全球性变革"所引发的发展态势和挑战的后期结果。     

Anthropological stranger: the intellectual trajectory of Hortense Powdermaker

This article investigates the life and works of Hortense Powdermaker (1896-1970). In contradistinction to the intellectual climate of her times, Powdermaker's intellectual trajectory can be characterised as eclectic, dynamic and forward thinking. Spanning nearly four decades, Powdermaker's academic career was dedicated to developing a distinct ‘anthropological vision’. Yet, although she conducted studies of culture and society that transcended structures of orthodoxy and charted alternative theoretical and methodological terrain, in turn establishing herself as a pioneer of contemporary anthropological thought, Powdermaker's work has failed to gain incorporation into wider disciplinary research agendas. Set within a sociology-of-intellectuals framework, it is argued that Powdermaker occupies a peripheral position in the history of anthropology – a position which does not adequately reflect the significance of her work – and that Powdermaker's greatest intellectual contribution was her innovative epistemology and sophisticated ‘anthropological vision’. Nonetheless, as a result of the powerful traditions and orthodox schools of thought which reigned supreme in mid-century anthropology and sociology, she was unable to exert any enduring influence on British or American social thought.     

Agency Problems, the 17th Amendment, and Representation in the Senate

A prominent change in American electoral institutions occurred when the 17th Amendment to the Constitution established direct election of U.S. Senators as of 1914. How did this change the political agency relationship between the mass electorate and U.S. Senators? We develop theoretical expectations about the representational effects of direct election by a relatively inexpert mass electorate and indirect election by a relatively expert political intermediary, based on principal‐agent theory. The chief predictions are that the representative will be more responsive to the mass electorate under direct election, but will also have more discretion to pursue his or her own ends. We use the 17th Amendment as a quasi‐experiment to test the predictions of the theory. Statistical models show strong support for both predictions. Moreover, the 17th Amendment is not associated with similar changes in the U.S. House of Representatives—as expected, since the amendment did not change House electoral institutions.     

Race, Region, and Representative Bureaucracy

Scholars of representative bureaucracy have long been interested in the linkage between passive representation in public agencies and the pursuit of specific policies designed to benefit minority groups. Research in this area suggests that the structural characteristics of those organizations, the external political environment, and the perceptions of individual bureaucrats each help to facilitate that relationship. Work to date has not, however, sufficiently investigated the impact of region on representation behavior, which is surprising given the emphasis that it receives in the broader literature on race and politics. Drawing on that literature, this study argues that, for black bureaucrats, region of residence is an important moderator of active representation because it helps to determine the salience of race as an issue and the degree of identification with racial group interests. It tests hypotheses related to that general argument in a nationally representative sample of more than 3,000 public schools. The results suggest that black teachers produce greater benefits for black students in the South, relative to other regions. A supplementary analysis also confirms the theoretical supposition that race is a more salient issue for Southern black bureaucrats, when compared with their non-Southern counterparts.     

Dynamic Representation(s): Federal Criminal Justice Policy and an Alternative Dimension of Public Mood

Does public policy respond to public opinion? Previous research suggests dynamic representation occurs in the aggregate. Yet, most of the evidence for policy response is limited to the policy intentions of elected officials on issues related to more or less government spending. We examine policy response to an alternative dimension of public mood, public preferences for more or less punitive criminal justice policies, using multiple indicators of policy from various stages of the policy-making process. Criminal justice policy should be responsive to public preferences given the public’s concern about crime and the negative social construction of criminals. Thus, there is an electoral incentive for public officials to respond to public preferences along this alternative dimension of public sentiment regarding criminal justice policy. We estimate a DYMIMIC model of federal criminal justice policy as a function of the multiple dimensions of public policy mood using Kalman filtering. The results indicate that criminal justice policy responds to the second, not the first, dimension of public mood. We find evidence that policy-makers at multiple stages of the policy process are able to differentiate among multiple signals from the public and respond appropriately. The results present a more sophisticated portrait of democratic responsiveness.     

Slackers and Zealots: Civil Service, Policy Discretion, and Bureaucratic Expertise

We investigate how aspects of "civil service" systems of personnel management interact with bureaucratic discretion to create expert bureaucracies populated by policy-motivated agents. We construct a dynamic model in which bureaucrats may invest in (relationship-specific) policy expertise and may or may not be interested in policy choices per se. The legislature makes sequentially rational grants of discretion, which serve as incentives for expertise investment and continued service only for policy-motivated bureaucrats. Bureaucratic policy preferences and the legislature's agency problem vis-à-vis bureaucracies develop endogenously in the model. Bureaucratic expertise can be supported in equilibrium only at a cost of its politicization; "neutral competence" is inconsistent with strategic incentives of bureaucrats. We identify several conditions that support the development of an expert bureaucracy in equilibrium, including security of job tenure and control over policy issues for policy-motivated bureaucrats.