De-Europeanization by Default? Germany's EU Policy in Defense and Asylum

Since the end of the Cold War and unification, Germany's policy toward and within the European Union (EU) has undergone significant changes. Once a model "Europeanist," Germany has become increasingly reluctant to support the progressive implementation of key projects of European integration. Neither an instance of a planned strategic change nor a result of an inevitable adaptation to structural shifts at the systemic level, these changes in German foreign policy, incremental yet significant as they are, evade both deterministic and voluntaristic accounts of foreign policy change. Integrating insights from foreign policy analysis, integration theory, and social theory, the article develops an innovative framework for analysis that is applied to Germany's European asylum and refugee policy as well as its security and defense policy. The origins of both policy fields at the European level can be traced back to initiatives that were supported by or even originated in Germany. However, as the 1990s progressed Germany increasingly obstructed further institutionalization. While in the field of asylum and refugee policy the Amsterdam summit marks a clear turning point in Germany's position, the transformation of German policies on European security and defense proceeded rather as an incremental decrease in material support, aggravating substantive progress in the policy field more broadly. An unanticipated consequence of earlier initiatives, in both cases Germany has found it increasingly difficult to live up to the expectations it has helped to raise.     

The efficacy of ACH in mitigating serial position effects and confirmation bias in an intelligence analysis scenario

An experimental study was conducted to test whether the version of the structured analytical method Analysis of Competing Hypotheses (ACH) taught by the Cabinet Office to the United Kingdom’s intelligence community provides effective mitigation of the cognitive biases of serial position effects and confirmation bias in an intelligence analysis. ACH had no statistically significant mitigative impact on the proportion of participants that exhibited serial position effects or confirmation bias, or the impact of confirmation bias on the analytical process. The most significant factor that influenced participants’ judgements of the credibility of information was the possibility of deception or dishonesty.     

Correction to: Traditional Versus Internet Media in a Restricted Information Environment: How Trust in the Medium Matters

Political Behavior - The original version of this article unfortunately contained a mistake. The gender dummy variable was mistakenly coded in reverse order. The interpretation treated it as (0 =...     

Federalism and The Politics of Tobacco

Late in 1998, the United States acquired a new regime of tobaccocontrol engineered by the states' attorneys general. Nearlyall of them had filed lawsuits against the major cigarette manufacturers,allegedly with the aim of recouping Medicaid costs attributableto smoking. Despite latent differences of culture and interestin regard to tobacco control, all of the states eventually joinedin settlements with the industry that exacted large paymentsand restricted the industry's advertising and marketing practices.This article explains how it was possible for many differentpolities to agree on the settlement terms, and asks what thecase shows about the impact of federalism on tobacco policymaking.It concludes that tobacco policymaking in the 30 years priorto the lawsuits (1964–1994) was more consonant with constitutionalprinciples and not ineffective in achieving control.     

Guidelines for social services grants

Guidelines for spending federal grants to the states for social services changed repeatedly between 1962 and 1975. The process of preparing guidelines changed, and so did their content. These changes are described and explained. Guidelines at all stages failed to provide intelligible and useful instructions to federal and state administrators. In part this was because the contextual supports that normally help to give effect to grant-in-aid guidelines—explicit antecedents in the law, and implicit understandings among administrators at different levels of the federal system—were lacking or seriously defective. Beyond that, in each of their different phases the guidelines proved untenable because of dysfunctions that may have been peculiar to the respective processes by which they were prepared.The trustees, officers, and other staff members of The Brookings Institution have no responsibility for the contents of this paper.     

The Social Security Administration's 10-percent sample file of OASDI beneficiaries.

This is another in a series of technical articles describing Social Security Administration sample files and statistical systems. The focus of this article is the 10-percent sample file that provides program and demographic information on Social Security beneficiaries under the Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance program. The article explains the contents and availability of the 10-percent sample and presents several statistical tabulations as examples of the wide variety of data that can be developed from the file.     

Does involuntary outpatient commitment lead to more intensive treatment?

Studies of involuntary outpatient commitment (OPC) among persons with severe mental illness have concluded that OPC is only effective in improving treatment outcomes when it is sustained for 6 months or longer and is combined with frequent outpatient services. This article explores factors that influence the delivery of outpatient services to subjects in a randomized trial of OPC and finds 2 general patterns. Outpatient visits were more frequent among all subjects with apparent clinical need, regardless of study assignment, and among subjects whose OPC was sustained beyond an initial court order. These results suggest that, in practice, sustained OPC represents a consensual agreement between clinicians and the court to more intensively address the complex needs of persons with severe and persistent mental illness.