The Benefits of Experimental Methods for the Study of Campaign Effects

Researchers rely heavily on observational designs to study the effects of political campaigns. In doing so, scholars often overlook serious threats to causal inference that bedevil their research designs. The strategic nature of campaigns leads to serious selection biases in voter exposure to campaign stimuli and, ultimately, generates biased estimates of campaign effects. Standard approaches to establishing causal effects in observational research, such as the collection of panel data and the inclusion of covariates, are often inadequate. In contrast, experimental approaches offer researchers a more promising way to estimate accurately the causal effects of campaigns. In this essay, I discuss the recent renaissance of experimental research in the study of campaigns and illustrate how scholars can use lab, field, and survey experiments to good effect. When experimental methods are not feasible, studies of campaign effects would benefit from paying better attention to the causal identification strategy. In closing, I discuss how the logic of experimentation can be applied to some observational settings.     

Taking the High Ground: FEMA Trailer Siting after Hurricane Katrina

Using data on more than 300 census blocks from across New Orleans, Louisiana, this article investigates two steps in the placement of temporary housing after Hurricane Katrina. First, the authors seek to understand the factors that determined whether census blocks were selected for Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) trailers. Then, in light of the widespread resistance to the trailers, they focus on variables that influenced whether trailers were successfully placed on those sites. Despite past research arguing that race, collective action potential, and political factors are the primary determinants of facility placement and the success or failure of the attempt, these data show that technocratic criteria dominated. Interestingly, although census blocks in less vulnerable areas were more likely to be selected as locations for FEMA trailer parks than ones in more vulnerable areas, it was precisely the former areas where siting success was less likely. Flood‐resistant areas that decision makers chose for housing were less willing to accept such projects than more flood‐prone ones.     

New Sources for the Study of Iraqi Intelligence during the Saddam Era

The US Department of Defense (DOD) has made available to scholars a significant collection of documents captured from the files of the Saddam-era Iraqi intelligence services. DOD is also studying ways in which further such documents can be released. These documents paint a picture in many ways reminiscent of the intelligence services of the totalitarian Soviet Union. These and forthcoming documents may enable important research on Iraq and on the role of intelligence services in totalitarian states. One newly available document gives the Iraqi General Military Intelligence Directorate's assessment of Iran on the eve of the Iran–Iraq War.     

Can the U.S. government legally monitor private communications? If so,given the U.S.'s significant protection of privacy rights,what government cannot?

Wikimedia Foundation v. NSA/CSS is the most important case ever regarding whether a government can monitor private communications. This case's discussion could not be any more timely for public affairs purposes. Given continuing terrorist attacks and concomitant calls for private industries, such as Wikimedia Foundation, to do more to stop the spread of violence and rhetoric on the Internet, there has never been a more important time to consider what limits should be placed on government's access to personal data in the quest to prevent terrorism. Here, the district court referred to the plaintiffs' injuries from NSA upstream surveillance as speculative, denying them Article III standing. The Fourth Circuit reinstated Wikimedia Foundation as a plaintiff, finding sufficient allegations for it to survive a facial challenge to Article III standing based on the Wikimedia Allegation. However, the other plaintiffs, relying on the Dragnet Allegation, were properly dismissed based on lacking standing. Until more details of upstream surveillance become public, suing under a dragnet theory should prove difficult. In fact, lobbying the legislative and executive branches to enact changes could be more effective and efficient than relying on the courts.     

Foucault and the Telos of Power

In this paper, I argue that the unique contributions of Foucault’s late work to critical social theory can be identified in the ways in which power relations are refined as the material condition of “politics” as distinguished from that of law, where “politics”: (a) includes both competitive and goal-oriented strategic actions and interactions, (b) excludes the coercive technologies of law embodied in State institutions, (c) presupposes “incomplete” reciprocity between actors engaged in directing others, (d) always entails modes of revealing truth and acting upon the self. By contextualising the break between pastoral power and direction in the 1979–1980 lectures, I show how for the late Foucault, power relations constitute the material condition of “politics” precisely because, unlike relations of control or coercion, their aims and objectives remain open to the possibility of building new relationships and potentially more “political” forms of social action. I conclude by situating this major distinction within Foucault’s unfulfilled project to study the “military dimension” of society, and the relevance and urgency of this project for contemporary struggles against new forms of militarism and austerity.     

‘Two bodhisattvas from the East’: Minhe Monguor funeral orations

This paper presents and analyzes the texts and performance context of funeral orations for Monguor living in Minhe Hui and Monguor Autonomous County, Qinghai Province, China. The orations provide an important insight into the Minhe Monguor religious worldview. It is further noted that the longer, more traditional orations are now rarely given and that the Minhe Monguor funeral orations differ considerably from those heard in Huzhu Monguor Autonomous County, also located in Qinghai.