Power and changing modes of governance in the euro crisis

Which European Union actors are most powerful in the governance of the euro crisis? The euro crisis has reignited the classic debate between intergovernmentalists, who tend to stress the coercive power of dominant member states in the European Council, and supranationalists, who maintain that through the use of institutional power, the Commission, and the European Central Bank turned out the “winners” of the crisis. This article argues that euro crisis governance is best understood not just in terms of one form of power but instead as evolving through different constellations of coercive, institutional, and ideational power that favored different EU actors over the course of the crisis, from the initial fast‐burning phase (2010–2012), where the coercive and ideational power of Northern European member states in the European Council was strongest, to the slow‐burning phase (2012–2016), when greater influence was afforded supranational actors through the use of ideational and institutional power.     

Management strategies in response to an institutional crisis: The case of earthquakes in the Netherlands

When a policy sector is confronted with a relatively strong and steep decline in legitimacy, we speak of an institutional crisis. We know little about the causes or consequences of these crises. This article explores how institutional crises are managed. It focuses on the effects of management strategies observed in a case study of an institutional crisis in the Netherlands. While we found that policy elites displayed a tendency to maintain the status quo of a policy sector, we also found that the effectiveness of their response strategies was negated by the counter‐response it evoked among freshly energized interest, advocacy and citizen groups. We conclude that the resolution of an institutional crisis is inherently contested. Based on our case study, we develop a theoretical model and formulate propositions that may help to improve our understanding of institutional crisis management.     

The European Court of Justice and its political impact

This article reviews recent advances in the study of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) and its political impact at the European and member state levels. New quantitative as well as qualitative analyses show with great empirical precision that member state preferences guide the Court. The article summarises these findings, but argues that greater attention needs to be given to the (over-)constitutionalisation of EU law in order to fully capture the political impact of ECJ jurisprudence. Even if European judges are less activist than is often assumed and individual decisions are more restrained in the face of member state opposition, incrementally, case law evolves in a highly expansive fashion. And, exercising caution regarding unrealistic expectations about quasi-deterministic judicial law-making, it is found that the Court’s constitutionalised jurisprudence impacts heavily on European and member state policy-making.     

Explaining the Consequences of Imprisonment for Union Formation and Dissolution in Denmark

Crime and subsequent imprisonment reduces men's chances on the marriage market and increases their divorce risk, but existing research, with a few notable exceptions, is silent about the underlying mechanisms driving these effects. This article studies the effect of home confinement under electronic monitoring as a noncustodial alternative to imprisonment on the risk of relationship dissolution and being single, thereby distinguishing between effects of incarceration and of committing crime. We study a policy that expanded the use of electronic monitoring to address nonrandom selection into electronic monitoring instead of in prison. Results from a sample of 4,522 men show that home confinement under electronic monitoring significantly and persistently lowers the risk both of being single and of becoming single during the first five years following conviction. The results show that one of the tools that could promote decarceration trends also secures better relationship outcomes of convicted men.     

Walking Away From The Wire: Housing Mobility and Neighborhood Opportunity in Baltimore

Families using the Housing Choice Voucher Program rarely experience large gains in neighborhood or school quality when compared with unassisted poor renters. Research on housing mobility programs has reached mixed conclusions about whether vouchers can improve neighborhood and school quality, especially in the long term. We revisit these findings using new data from the partial remedy to the Thompson v. HUD desegregation case in Baltimore, known as the Baltimore Housing Mobility Program (BHMP). Through targeted vouchers, intensive counseling and innovative policy features, the BHMP helped families move to low-poverty, nonsegregated neighborhoods with higher performing school districts. We examine residential outcomes for the first 1,800 families that moved through the program for a period of up to 9 years. We find that BHMP families moved to more integrated and affluent neighborhoods, in school districts with more qualified teachers and fewer poor students—and most families stayed in these neighborhoods beyond their initial lease-up period. Eventually, a small proportion of families moved to neighborhoods that are less white, but still significantly less poor and less segregated than their original communities. We interpret these findings in light of past mobility programs and discuss policy implications for the Housing Choice Voucher Program.     

Teaching Students about the Vietnam War: The Case for Balance

This work examines how the American role in the Vietnam War has been portrayed in standard college- and university-level textbooks dealing with American foreign policy. It argues that this topic has been presented in a manner that leaves an incomplete understanding. This conclusion is based on scholarship that has been available for decades as well as much Cold War historiography that has appeared since 1975. I conclude that the distortions need to be addressed for several reasons. Their propagation produces bad scholarship, gratuitously alienates Americans from their institutions of government, and justifies anti-Americanism and authoritarianism elsewhere.     

EU Simulations and Engagement: Motivating Greater Interest in European Union Politics

While the effects of simulation-based courses on the knowledge of participating students may be marginal in relation to standard lecture and discussion-based courses, this article argues that the greatest leverage is gained by increasing participating students’ level of interest in the subject of study and in politics more broadly. Participants tend to become increasingly absorbed in their roles and in the politics of the institutions at the center of the simulation. To better consider this possibility, we conducted a survey of students participating in the 2015 Mid-Atlantic European Union Simulation and of appropriate control populations. The survey results indeed suggest that, much more than simply acquiring knowledge about the EU, the simulation experience serves to generate more robust interest in the subject of study.     

Hirohito and General Douglas MacArthur: The First Meeting as Documented by Shōwa tennō jitsuroku

This analysis allows readers to confront for themselves the 27 September 1945 meeting between the Shōwa Emperor and General Douglas MacArthur, as recently documented by Japan’s Imperial Household Agency. It also introduces readers to a long-standing debate amongst Japanese scholars that has received no attention in English-language literature. The debate centres on the question as to whether the emperor offered at this meeting to take responsibility for the war fought in his name. This analysis offers its own conclusions and suggests that the emperor in all probability offered to take responsibility for the war.     

A Systematic Approach to Evaluating the Effects of Collaborative Negotiation Training on Individuals and Groups

Negotiation training evaluation tends to be short-term, aspectual and piecemeal; evaluations often focus on only one or two salient outcomes of training. This essay presents a model for negotiation training evaluation research that offers a broad conceptualization of the hypothesized individual and group-level effects of training in collaborative negotiation. The model assesses change at the individual level in conflict-related cognitions, attitudes, affect and behaviors; and at the group level in conflict outcomes and work climate. The Negotiation Evaluation Survey (NES), a time-delayed, multi-source feedback approach to assessment and development, is presented as a means of addressing some of the conceptual and methodological problems inherent in more common methods of training evaluation. An illustrative assessment of one model of collaborative negotiation training for adults, the Coleman/Raider Model, is presented. The results, implications, and future research challenges are discussed.