Information Dilemmas and Blame‐Avoidance Strategies: From Secrecy to Lightning Rods in Chinese Health Crises

China and other authoritarian states notoriously keep mum about disasters. Yet two recent but dissimilar Chinese responses to infectious disease epidemics show that authoritarian crisis management can shift from secrecy to openness. China maintained prolonged secrecy during 2003 SARS, yet was open from day one about 2009 H1N1 flu. To explore why, this article links crisis information dilemmas to blame avoidance concepts from democratic political theories. We argue that greater Chinese transparency about infectious disease response reflects evolution in blame avoidance, from heavy reliance on information control to insulating leaders by using technical experts and agencies as “lightning rods.” In 2003, the Chinese strategy of information containment and secrecy backfired, and the Chinese leadership eventually received blame at home and internationally for crisis mismanagement. In 2009, China put in place public health specialists and institutions as responsible for H1N1 information and responses, thereby insulating the top‐tier leadership.     

Trade versus aid: donor generosity in an era of globalization

Why do foreign aid budgets vary across countries and over time? Existing research indicates that the same set of factors shapes commitments toward both domestic and international redistribution. While scholars have acknowledged international normative influences on aid allocations, research on levels of donor generosity has not examined how international trade influences aid budgets. This paper examines whether imports from developing countries have a ‘displacement effect’ on aid commitments. Employing a panel of nineteen OECD donor countries, we analyze aid budgets from 1980 to 2000. We find that increased imports from developing countries to donor countries are associated with aid reductions. These results persist after controlling for international and domestic variables identified in previous research, and under other estimation techniques and model specifications.     

Reconsidering The Counter-Mobilization Hypothesis: Health Policy Lobbying In The American States

Despite its widespread use since the concept was introduced by David Truman (1951. The Governmental Process. New York: Alfred A. Knopf), counter-mobilization by organized interests has remained theoretically ambiguous and rarely studied empirically. We more fully develop the concept of short-term counter-mobilization, distinguish it from long-term counter-mobilization, specify the conditions under which we might observe short-term counter-mobilization, and test the resulting hypotheses with data on health care lobby registrations in the American states during the late 1990s. We find little evidence of short-term counter-mobilization among health interest organizations, which leads us to more fully consider several null hypotheses about the limits of strategic behavior on the part of organized interests.An earlier version of this paper was prepared for presentation at the Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, April 2004. This research was supported by a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Investigator Award in Health Policy Research (ID#047727).     

Power struggles in policy feedback processes: incremental steps towards a circular economy within Dutch wastewater policy

Policy Sciences - Environmental problems are usually not tackled with path-departing policies but rather with incrementally adjusted or unchanged policies. One way to address incremental change is...     

Hague Case Law: Latest Developments

Netherlands International Law Review -