Centrality and Continuity: ASEAN and Regional Security since 1967

Security has undoubtedly been a central and continuous feature of ASEAN since its establishment. While it has modified its basic thinking on security and adapted elements of the attendant principles, aims and ways of operation to meet changed circumstances, the level of consistency is still readily observable. Centrality of a different sort has been evident, too, during the post-Cold War period. ASEAN has consciously sought to position itself at the heart of the developing security architecture in both East Asia and the wider Asia-Pacific. The Association has been largely successful at limiting competition and preventing inter-state conflict among its members and at fostering a stable regional order in Southeast Asia (and an incipient one outside of the boundaries of Southeast Asia). Broadly speaking, this stability has been aided and abetted by the policies of the major external powers in whose interests it has been, up until now. The extent to which a stable regional order remains in the interests of the major powers will be one of the great questions for the next phase of ASEAN??s life.     

Affirmative Action and Its Alternatives in Public Universities: What Do We Know?

University administrators have made difficult choices in response to the changing policy context for the use of affirmative action in admissions. This paper synthesizes the empirical literature on affirmative action and evaluates the efficacy of alternative strategies, including top-percent programs, class-based affirmative action, and targeted recruiting. The analyses offer several findings of interest to officials who direct such programs: (1) Affirmative action preferences given by top-tier universities have been large; (2) affirmative action leads minorities to enroll in higher-quality institutions; and (3) affirmative action has mostly positive effects on minority students later in life. The evidence shows a decline in minorities' relative share of enrollment at flagship public universities after affirmative action was eliminated in several states, and the alternative strategies used by these universities have not offset these declines.     

The impact of child SSI enrollment on household outcomes

We use data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) to investigate the impact that child Supplemental Security Income (SSI) enrollment has on household outcomes, including poverty, household earnings, and health insurance coverage. The longitudinal nature of the SIPP allows us to control for unobserved, time‐invariant differences across households by measuring outcomes in the same household in the months leading up to and immediately following the first reporting of child SSI income. Our regression analyses demonstrate that for every $100 increase in household SSI income, total household income increases by roughly $72, reflecting some modest offset of other transfer income and conditional household earnings. Our analyses further demonstrate that child SSI enrollment is associated with a statistically significant and persistent reduction in the probability that a child lives in poverty of roughly 11 percentage points. Additional analyses suggest that program enrollment has virtually no impact on health insurance coverage because most new SSI recipients have health insurance from Medicaid or another source at the time of enrollment. © 2007 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management     

The Development of Competitive Industries: The Role of State Government Actors

Despite widespread adoption of Porter's Industrial Cluster Theory as a policy development framework by federal and state governments over the past decade, Australia remains significantly below the OECD average in terms of its industries' economic contributions to real wealth creation ( Brown 2000 ; OECD 1998 ). The major cause cited for this relatively poor performance has been inability of key government officials to implement effective industry policy that simultaneously avoids de facto protectionism and distortion of competition. This article provides an insight into the key policy decisions undertaken by the Tasmanian state government that coincided with development of an internationally successful shipbuilding industry in that state. As such, this article provides a reflection on policy initiatives that may be valuable for government officials elsewhere.     

International Constraints and Domestic Choices: Economic Convergence and Exchange Rate Policy in France and Italy

As tensions in the European Monetary System demonstrate, international capital flows can have a decisive influence on countries' economic policies. The external constraint of high international capital mobility led the countries of Western Europe in the 1980s to attempt to stabilize their exchange rates and converge toward low levels of inflation. Yet this process was not uniform: French governments pursued a rigorous anti-inflationary policy of high interest rates and a strengthening currency, while Italian governments had difficulty controlling inflation and maintaining the lira in the European Monetary System. This difference is best explained by comparing political institutions and policymaking processes in the two countries. Particular attention is given to political leaders' access to economic policy tools and their capacity to design and implement long-term goals.     

Party attachments and political fragmentation in Europe

Abstract. Values and ideologies seem to be changing rapidly in many countries of Western Europe. These developments imply a shift among the adherents of political parties. On the one hand, we expect to see a process of deideologization weakening the traditional ties between parties and their adherents. On the other hand, increasing pluralization is suggested by the ongoing process of individualization. In this study we analyze the orientations of the adherents of the main political parties in 12 Western European countries in the last two decades. We expect to find clear traces of ongoing deideologization as well as pluralization, but this expectation proves to be inaccurate. Neither deideologization nor pluralization can be accepted as a common feature of party adherents in advanced industrial societies. On the contrary. Each of these processes seems to follow a different path of development in distinct countries and in distinct party families. A general 'decline-of-the-party' or an 'end-of-ideology' is not to be found among the adherents of the main parties in Western Europe in the last decades. The processes appear to be more complicated, with divergent developments in different countries.