Dimensions of Federalism In U.S. Senate Voting, 1981-1982

The concept of federalism is important in political science;yet it has proven difficult to clarify and to use in empiricalanalyses of American political institutions. This analysis demonstratesthat the congressional federalism scores reported in Publiusare not unidimensional and that a better measure of federalismcan result in improved explanatory power of empirical analysisof the determinants of congressional attitudes toward federalism.A procedure for constructing a better measure of federalismis suggested.     

FACTORS INFLUENCING LEGISLATORS'USE OF POLICY INFORMATION AND IMPLICATIONS FOR PROMOTING GREATER USE

Despite a tremendous growth in the volume of policy analysis in the past decade, recent research indicates governmental decisionmakers make little direct use of such research; at best, policy-oriented research alters a decisionmaker's conceptualization of the policy problem over the long term. Previous efforts to explain policymakers'limited use of policy research have generally not considered the opportunities and constraints presented by specific decisionmaking contexts. To a large extent, the research utilization literature has focused on attitudinal and demographic characteristics of decisionmakers and has adopted as a central focus the "two-communities" theory which asserts that frequent, direct use of policy research by policymakers is unlikely because of the competing worldview and belief systems of policy researchers and policymakers. While the two-communities theory may partially explain the limited use of policy research, it ignores the institutional incentives motivating decisionmakers. More specifically, this earlier research does not consider the different motivations of policymakers and their relative impact on use of policy information. To expand the explanation of decisionmakers'use of policy information, I postulate a model of legislators'use of policy information that includes four types of factors that influence legislators'propensity to use policy information. These factors-worldview and attitude toward social science, perception of the way policy issues are considered in the legislature, perception of the legislative structure, and legislative orientations-combine two-communities type of independent variables and perceptions of the legislative environment. In this way, policymakers'use of policy information can be examined more realistically and comprehensively.     

EVALUATING TVA: THE CONTRIBUTION OF ECONOMIC. HISTORICAL. AND ADMINISTRATIVE ANALYSIS

William U. Chandler. The Myth of TVA: Conservation and Development in the Tennessee Valley, 1933–1983
Robert F. Durant. When Government Regulates Itself: EPA, E V A, and Pollution Control in the 1970s
Erwin C. Hargrove and Paul K. Conkin, eds. TVA: Fifty Years of Grossroofs Bureaucracy     

An Application of Unconditional Quantile Regression to Cigarette Taxes

This study investigates heterogeneous response to state cigarette tax increases using unconditional quantile regression (UQR). We make two contributions to the empirical policy analysis literature. First, we argue that UQR provides more policy‐relevant information than conventional quantile regression in most empirical state policy analyses. Second, we document cigarette tax elasticity across a sample of adult smokers in the Current Population Survey Tobacco Use Supplements between 1992 and 2011. Our ordinary least squares regression show an imprecise negative relationship between taxes and cigarettes smoked in the past 30 days, while UQR reveals a U‐shaped relationship: Only moderate smokers reduce their smoking following a cigarette tax increase, and the magnitude of the effect is small. A $1.00 (135 percent) increase in the cigarette tax leads to a 3.5 percent reduction in the number of cigarettes smoked in the past 30 days among the most responsive smokers (implied tax elasticity = ?0.03).     

Japan's ‘green’ economic diplomacy: environmental and energy technology and foreign relations

The principal regional organizations in East Asia and Asia-Pacific, ASEAN and APEC, are widely seen to be crisis-stricken, ‘becalmed’ or ‘adrift’. At the same time, East Asia is witnessing the emergence of a new, as yet embryonic body, ASEAN Plus Three (APT), and ambitious projects implying closer integration between Northeast and Southeast Asia are being mooted. Departing from an analysis of the determinants of the success and failure of regional integration, this article discusses the roots of the perceived decline of ASEAN and APEC and the origins of the rapid rise of APT. The Asian financial crisis in particular, it is argued, has been instrumental both in undermining ASEAN and APEC and in fostering the rise of APT. The crisis has brutally exposed the structural weaknesses of ASEAN and APEC, both of which are handicapped by the political and economic diversity of their member states and the absence of a benevolent dominant state or coalition of states. It has simultaneously fuelled the development of APT because it has greatly strengthened perceptions of mutual economic interdependence and vulnerability in East Asia and resentment against the West and the US. As APT is likely to exhibit similar structural weaknesses to ASEAN and APEC, the odds, however, are against it developing into a strong regional organization, notwithstanding the possibility that, in the near future, external forces and trends (stagnation of world trade liberalization, closer European and American integration) will, if anything, encourage plans for closer East Asian integration.