Cultural Penetration and Punctuated Policy Change: Explaining the Evolution of U.S. Energy Policy

Punctuated equilibrium theory (PET) suggests that the policy process is characterized by long periods of incremental change and short periods of punctuated change. The impetus for the latter is usually a focusing event that breaks open policy monopolies, allowing for major changes in legislative decision making. While a burgeoning body of literature, a shortcoming in the PET literature is that it has yet to explain why focusing events and subsequent breakdowns in policy monopolies sometimes fail to result in punctuated policy. We integrate theories on cultural change with punctuated equilibrium to explain why focusing events do not always result in the dramatic policy changes that we might expect. Specifically, we use the context of national energy policy and the lexical database, Google Ngram Viewer, to trace punctuating energy‐related events and the occurrence or lack thereof subsequent policy change from 1952 to 2000.     

Extended Mind and Embodied Social Psychology: Contemporary Perspectives

This study traces the evolution of a research program that frames the human mind as an embodied social phenomenon. The essay is divided into two parts, the first one focused on historical issues, the second on contemporary developments. The discussion begins with the mind-body problem central to the scholarship in this area and then focuses the changing perspective on consciousness as a symbolically mediated process. Next, the paper surveys the relevant writings of Mead and Vygotsky, tracks the debate about the place of body in interactionist sociology, and connects this debate to current research in neuroscience. The report concludes with reflections on the prospects for embodied sociology and the contribution it can make to the debate about extended mind.     

Front‐Door Difference‐in‐Differences Estimators

We develop front‐door difference‐in‐differences estimators as an extension of front‐door estimators. Under one‐sided noncompliance, an exclusion restriction, and assumptions analogous to parallel trends assumptions, this extension allows identification when the front‐door criterion does not hold. Even if the assumptions are relaxed, we show that the front‐door and front‐door difference‐in‐differences estimators may be combined to form bounds. Finally, we show that under one‐sided noncompliance, these techniques do not require the use of control units. We illustrate these points with an application to a job training study and with an application to Florida's early in‐person voting program. For the job training study, we show that these techniques can recover an experimental benchmark. For the Florida program, we find some evidence that early in‐person voting had small positive effects on turnout in 2008. This provides a counterpoint to recent claims that early voting had a negative effect on turnout in 2008.     

The Role of Citizen Participation and the Use of Social Media Platforms in the Participatory Budgeting Process

In the United States participatory budgeting (PB) is a relatively new and innovative approach to municipal budgeting that has implications for improving the role of citizen participation in the budgetary process. The research is based on personal interviews with local community leaders involved in the PB process in the 49th Ward of Chicago, Illinois; the 6th Ward of St. Louis, Missouri; and the City of Boston, Massachusetts. Highlights are provided of the specific experiences and perceptions of these community leaders with a particular emphasis on the use of social media platforms in engaging citizens in the PB process. This article concludes with recommendations for creating a PB infrastructure, for increasing citizen participation in the PB process, and for assessing and increasing the impact of PB in cities within the United States.     

Just the Two of Us? Civil Conflicts,Pro-State Militants,and the Violence Premium

Quantitative literature discussing violence in civil conflicts tends towards a typical model of engagement between governments and revolutionaries. Whilst recent work has shown the significant impact of multiple anti-government groups, a further feature remains understudied—the role of pro-state militants. This article theorizes a “violence premium” when such groups arise, which leads to all connected groups devoting greater energy to conflict than they would in isolation. Employing duration analysis and data from The Troubles in Northern Ireland, where Republicans act as revolutionary insurgents, Loyalists as pro-state militants, and the British Army as government forces, the violence premium is empirically confirmed. Both Loyalists and Republicans deviate from their underlying strategies to attack more frequently when violence by their rivals increases, with Republicans and the British Army engaging in the same way. An extended analysis, accounting for the status of the victim, shows that the violence premium resulting from interaction between Loyalists and Republicans targeted only the civilian population of Northern Ireland, elucidating the sectarian component of The Troubles. These results show that including all conflict parties and considering how they are linked are important features in studies that aim to determine the net level of violence in civil conflicts.     

Whole-person health and development: two South Indian initiatives

ABSTRACT

In responding to the 2016 reformulation of the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals, the development community’s efforts are focused on a sweep of initiatives aiming to promote whole-society, sustainable development. The ambition of the SDGs is inspiring, but also daunting, and does not always sit easily within national models of economic development. This viewpoint profiles two organisations in the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu, that have decades of experience in whole-person development among scheduled tribes and disability communities. Both organisations serve as timely examples of ongoing holistic, whole-person health and development in the context of new ideals and economic realities.     

Rethinking the Economic Relationship between Kazakhstan and Russia

According to their governments, economic relations between Kazakhstan and Russia—the two largest post-Soviet countries—have been exceptionally solid and robust. However, statistical data demonstrate that Russian investments in Kazakhstan's economy have been weak, and that Kazakhstan has only recently increased investment in the Russian economy. This raises the question of whether relations between the two countries have been more uneven than has been claimed officially. The article also explores the influence of off-shore investments via third countries and other aspects of the bilateral relationship between Kazakhstan and Russia and the involvement of each country in the other's economy.     

Corruption complaints,inequality and ethnic grievances in post-Biafra Nigeria

Based on anthropological field work in southeastern Nigeria, this paper explores the public concerns and everyday experience of corruption in a society still living with the legacies of the Biafran secession attempt. The paper shows how the revival of Igbo nationalism and resentment over perceived marginalisation is fuelled by perceptions that the corrupt machinery of the federal government runs against the interests of the Igbo people, and funnels resources away from the southeast as punishment for the failed separatist struggle more than 40 years ago. Hence, complaints about corruption are used to critique the Nigerian state and other regional or ethnic groups, but they also figure in an internally focused critique by Igbos of their own complicity in Nigeria’s endemic corruption.