Public Commitment in Crisis Bargaining

The "audience cost" literature argues that highly-resolved leaders can use public threats to credibly signal their resolve in incomplete-information crisis bargaining, thereby overcoming informational asymmetries that lead to war. If democracies are better able to generate audience costs, then audience costs help explain the democratic peace. We use a game-theoretic model to show how public commitments can be used coercively as a source of bargaining leverage, even in a complete-information setting in which they have no signaling role. When both sides use public commitments for bargaining leverage, war becomes an equilibrium outcome. The results provide a rationale for secret negotiations as well as hypotheses about when leaders will claim that the disputed good is indivisible, recognized as a rationalist explanation for war. Claims of indivisibility may just be bargaining tactics to get the other side to make big concessions, and compromise is still possible in equilibrium.     

Openness, Uncertainty, and Social Spending: Implications for the Globalization— Welfare State Debate

We extend the literature on openness and spending in developing countries arguing that the effect of increasing openness depends on both regime type and the level of openness. Democracies respond to increases in openness by increasing spending while dictatorships respond by decreasing spending. However, the degree to which countries pursue the strategy of choice depends on the level of openness. In autarkic countries, an increase in import competition has more severe consequences for perceptions of job insecurity and dislocation. In response, government management of openness will be more vigorous under these conditions regardless of whether the leader increases or decreases spending. Economic selection mechanisms at work will produce an outcome wherein, at higher levels of openness, further import liberalization has smaller effects on perceptions of job insecurity and dislocation. Hence, both the demand and the supply of government management of openness will be lower.     

Climate Change and Environmental Security: For Whom the Discourse Shifts

This article explores the implications of the April 2007 United Nations Security debate on the security dimensions of a changing climate for international climate change politics. Specifically, our analysis focuses on whether and how security concerns have been addressed in past international political debates on climate change and considers whether the Security Council debate, which emphasized the threat of climate-related conflict, reflects a discursive shift. We elaborate on two general discourses on the relationship between environment and security, which we call environmental conflict and environmental security . Using content and discourse analysis, we demonstrate that both the historical climate change debate and the more recent Security Council debate have been informed by the environmental security discourse, meaning that a discursive shift has not taken place. We conclude by considering the possibility of a future discursive shift to the environmental conflict perspective and argue that such a shift would be counterproductive to the search for an effective global response to climate change.     

Busting Drugs While Paying With Crime: The Collateral Damage of U.S. Drug Enforcement in Foreign Countries

The "Americanization" of the global drug war is now synonymous with the global expansion of the United States (U.S.) Drug Enforcement Administration's (DEA) drug enforcement operations in foreign countries. Recent research posits that the rise in violent crime in Latin America is the "collateral damage" of the "Americanization" of drug enforcement in the region. However, the causal inference of the "collateral damage" thesis is biased because drug enforcement and violent crime in Latin America are endogenously related. This research corrects this bias in two ways. First, we collect data for cases to which the endogenous bias does not apply. Namely, we ask what effect does the operations of the DEA, specifically trafficker immobilization and drug interdiction, have on violent and property crimes in Central American and Caribbean countries where drug producing cartels and narco-insurgent organizations are not indigenous to the political landscape? Second, we estimate the data via a structural equation model. The results lend support to the collateral damage hypothesis. The DEA's coordinated drug enforcement operations contribute to increasing the level of violent and property crimes in the region.     

U.S. Senators' Support for Israel Examined Through Sponsorship/Cosponsorship Decisions, 1993–2002: The Influence of Elite and Constituent Factors

This paper explores Senate policy-making toward Israel from 1993–2002. Previous scholarship suggests that congressional policymaking toward Israel is heavily influenced by the ethnic and religious identification of both legislators and their constituents, not simply by legislators' abstract perceptions of the national interest. Other literature de-emphasizes the likelihood that constituent interests will affect Congressional foreign policy making. We test for an impact of both elite and constituent characteristics on Congressional support for Israel, using sponsorship–cosponsorship decisions in the 103rd–107th Congresses. Israel's strongest supporters in this period are shown to be Jewish, conservative, Republican, and evangelical senators. Notably, elite characteristics (partisanship, ideology, and religion) matter more than constituency factors, with the exception of the Jewish population in senators' home states. While Jewish and conservative senators have long been vocal supporters of Israel, evangelical and Republican senators have not historically taken such a strong pro-Israel stance; hence they are relatively new additions to the active pro-Israel coalition. Thus the pro-Israel coalition shows both continuity and change as it has broadened to include new partners. However, we suggest that this coalition is not necessarily stable and may undergo further evolution in the future.     

The Neglected Power of Elite Opinion Leadership to Produce Antipathy Toward the News Media: Evidence from a Survey Experiment

Today, most Americans dislike the news media as an institution. This has led to considerable debate about why people dislike the media and how their public standing could be improved. This paper contributes to this literature by using a survey experiment to test the effect of several different considerations on evaluations of the media. It finds, consistent with the broader literature on political persuasion, that elite partisan opinion leadership can powerfully shape these attitudes. Additionally, it finds that tabloid coverage creates antipathy toward the press regardless of predispositions and that horserace coverage has a negative effect on opinions among politically aware citizens on both sides of the political spectrum. Contrary to some claims in the literature, this study finds no detectable effect of news negativity.     

Social Science and the Public Interest

Social Science and the Public Interest

Social Science and the Public Interest November/December 2010     

In Arms We Trust: the Economic and Strategic Factors Motivating China-Iran Relations

This article examines contemporary China-Iran relations, focusing on the economic and strategic ties that have helped solidify the relationship since 1979. We begin with an overview of the arms and technology transfers that mark the early years of the relationship, analyzing the benefits each side gained from these transactions. In addition to discussing the short-term financial benefits behind forging stronger ties, we examine how the regional ascent of both states has also presented several long term factors that helped motivate their cooperation. These developments shed light on the important role the U.S. has played, both in terms of where it has tried to intervene and what success it has had influencing the Sino-Iranian relationship.     

江苏高校廉洁教育状况的调研报告

高校作为传授知识、传承文明、培养人才、创新知识的重要场所,肩负着弘扬和创造先进文化、为社会培养合格建设者和可靠接班人的重任。因此,高校的廉洁教育不仅事关高校自身的反腐倡廉建设,而且对整个社会的反腐倡廉建设都将产生深远的影响。课题组选取省内20多所不同层次与类型的高校发放问卷10000多份,从廉洁教育的基本概念到接受廉洁教育的对象、从廉洁教育的形式与内容到接受廉洁教育的渠道和途径、从高校开展廉洁教育的基本情况到影响廉洁教育成效的原因、从高校反腐倡廉教育对廉洁教育的影响到师生员工对党风廉政建设的满意度等方面,就各校开展廉洁教育的现状进行了调研。全省高校共有12508名师生参与了此项调查,课题组通过对调查所示的各种信息与数据的统计处理与分析,进而探讨了如何通过创新高校廉洁教育的形式与内容,进一步增强高校廉洁教育的针对性和有效性,从而实现从源头上预防与消除腐败。     

关于两种有限责任公司资本制度的比较研究

<正> 有限责任公司是我国在1993年12月29日颁布的《中华人民共和国公司法》(以下简称《公司法》)中予以规定的两种公司形式之一。对于中外合资经营企业(以下简称合营企业)的公司形式,早在1979年7月8日公布的《中华人民共和国中外合资经营企业法》(以下简称《合营企业法》)第4条和1983年9月20日公布的《中华人民共和国中外合资经营企业法实施条例》(以下简称《实施条例》)第19条中都分别作了明确规定:“合营企业的形式为有限责任公司”,“合营各方对合营企业的责任以各自认缴的出资额为限”。由此可见,中外合资经营企业实际上是中外合资有限责任公司,有关中外合资经营企业的法律法规实际上是中外合资有限责任公司法。