Developing the relevance potentialities of national security and foreign policy research: Some proposed criteria

While effective foreign and national security policy-making increasingly requires research that is produced outside government, little is known about how such research affects the actions of policy-makers, or why it may or may not be policy-relevant to them. This essay poses a number of criteria which can be used to weigh the policy relevance of applied social science research for national security and foreign policy issues. These criteria can be divided into content and process categories, the former including aspects of time, issue salience, format, and confidence; and the latter incorporating questions related to the origin of research, the strategy which informs it, and the tactics by which it is presented. Hopefully, such criteria can be applied to existing works, serve as guidelines for future research, and perhaps illuminate the general role of social knowledge in policy formulation.The authors wish to express their appreciation for the opportunity to participate in the National Security Education Seminar held at Colorado College, Colorado Springs, Colorado, June 18–July13, 1973, directed by Fred A. Sondermann and conducted under the auspices of the National Security Program, New York University, Frank N. Trager, Director. This paper is a revised version of a report originally prepared for the seminar. The views presented here are those of the authors, and not necessarily of any of the institutions with which they are associated.     

The structure of private life and the family: the house and family size in Zacatecas. Early decades of the nineteenth century

The author reviews family characteristics in Zacatecas, Mexico, during the early decades of the nineteenth century using data from a census conducted in 1827.     

Irreplaceable Legislators? Rethinking Minority Representatives in the New Century

We use state legislator ideology estimates (standardized W‐nominate values) to examine whether Latino and African American legislator ideological differences can be explained away by traditional constituency characteristics like partisanship and demographics. We find instead that both Black and Latino legislators are unique “types.” Our evidence supports the theoretical presumption that there is a minority dimension to legislative voting and that it is uniquely personified by minority officeholders. White, Black, Latino, Democrat, and Republican representatives are all examined for responsiveness to different partisan and racial/ethnic populations. The dataset includes all 50 state legislatures from the 1999–2000 legislative sessions, including information from the U.S. Census, NALEO, the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, Gerald Wright's Representation in the American Legislature Project, and CQ Press's Almanac of State Legislative Elections.     

Trust in elections and the institutional design of electoral authorities: Evidence from Latin America

It is often assumed that the institutional organization of electoral management bodies (EMB) has an impact on the credibility of elections, but this proposition has been difficult to verify empirically. I examine whether the degree of autonomy from the political process of EMB administrators affects attitudes towards elections among citizens and legislators by analyzing mass and elite surveys across Latin America. I conclude that levels of confidence in the electoral process among political elites are higher in countries with politically autonomous EMBs, but this effect is muted in the analysis of citizen attitudes. This association holds after controlling for individual-level determinants of trust in elections and for other relevant country-level predictors in multilevel statistical models.     

Recent problems of the historic centres in Spain

In the last thirty years, historic centres that were considered as impoverished urban structures that ought to be replaced are now viewed as crucial enclaves of urban identity that ought to be protected. The singularity of the old city increases its importance in our global world. The value of the city as a living cultural legacy, with all its embedded symbolism, is thus recognised. We can find some problems within these spaces, as for example, depopulation and dwelling price increase with their consequences： degradation in some parts and revaluation in others, especially in those with progressive increase in the service economy.     

Examining the Link Between Funding and Intellectual Interventions Across Universities and Think Tanks: a Theoretical Framework

Policy-oriented expert knowledge is increasingly applied, collaborative and socially accountable, created in a variety of organisations and institutions that display a diversity of funding patterns with a wide range of requirements and expectations. Given the complexities of knowledge production and recent changes in its funding environment (e.g. mode and availability of research funding and evaluation), few existing theoretical elaborations consider tensions between structural funding conditions and intellectual production in policy research contexts. This paper examines the role of funding in shaping the policy issues, format and content of intellectual output across two research contexts (universities, think tanks). It sets out a theoretical and methodological approach to understand the link between funding modalities and the type of knowledge and intellectual interventions they facilitate or thwart.     

Investigating the Refugee Health Disadvantage Among the U.S. Immigrant Population

Much health-disparities research focuses on race and ethnicity, but nativity has proved to be a crucial factor in explaining the immigrant health advantage. Foreign-born subgroups with certain immigration statuses, such as refugees, may have an initial disadvantage. Using nationally representative survey data, we explore differences in health outcomes by analyzing two visa category subgroups in the United States: refugees and nonrefugee immigrants. Our findings show that refugees have a significant disadvantage across multiple health outcomes. This suggests that current refugee health-screening practices should be changed to take into account broader issues, such as chronic disease and functional limitation.     

Burden sharing in the NATO alliance: An empirical test of alternative views

This paper undertakes an empirical test of two opposing views of interdependencies among members of military alliances. The first view, associated with Olson and Zeckhauser, argues that the public good aspect of defense induces free riding behavior by smaller alliance members, which imposes a disproportionate burden of supporting the alliance on the larger members. A second view argues that NATO defense activities produce a mix of outputs, some of which are not purely public, and some of which may be complementary across nations. Furthermore, the nature of the weapons systems and their relative use by alliance members may induce substantial cooperation by allies. The test proposed here analyzes the relationship between defense spending shares of NATO members and their population and relative wealth shares. A simple model is specified and tested using pooled time series cross sectional data. The empirical results indicate more support for the cooperative view of ally relationships than the Olson-Zeckhauser non-cooperative model.