Italy and the Euro in the Global Economic Crisis

As Italian policymakers argue about the best way to respond to the global economic crisis, the importance of the euro to Italian economic stability seems to have dropped out of the debate. This is a problem for three reasons: it dulls the memory of Italian efforts to get into the single currency in the mid-to-late 1990s; it allows critics of the euro to shape perceptions of how eurozone membership affected Italy during the past decade; and it obscures the trade-offs that Italians would face if they were to make different choices in the future -- including the choice to leave. As a result, while it has been relatively easy to argue that Italian politicians would have to be crazy to try to take Italy out of the euro, it may become more difficult to make that case with the same level of confidence as time goes on. Italian perceptions of the merits of being in the euro are changing and the real possibilities available to Italian policymakers are changing as a result. Italy will pay a high price for opening up the possibility of leaving the eurozone whether or not Italian policymakers are serious about taking that step.     

Anglo-American relations after Suez,the rise and decline of the working group experiment,and the french challenge to NATO, 1957-59

This article explores the establishment of a number of Anglo-American working groups at the Washington Conference of October 1957, and explains how the British regarded the groups as an attempt to institutionalize the principle of consultation in Anglo-American relations. American and British officials were anxious that the existence of the groups be kept secret for fear that they would be a cause of resentment to other close allies. De Gaulle's attacks on an Anglo-American monopoly within NATO, and disruptive calls for institutionalizing tripartite cooperation following his assumption of power in June 1958 underlined this point, and helped to cool US attitudes to any notion of formal machinery that by-passed established alliance structures. Practical problems associated with the functioning of the groups, as well as the potential for political embarrassment they could represent, meant that their role had largely by the spring of 1959, yet their brief history was illustrative of the tensions that exclusivity in ANglo-American relations could bring to the Western alliance.     

First- and Third-World Newspapers on World Opinion: Imagined Communities in the Cold War and Post-Cold War Eras

This article considers the role of the "tabloid press" in Jordan's post-1989 liberalization process. Most studies of media in society and in processes of political transition have either ignored the role of tabloid media or derided them as examples of what is worst in media functioning. The present article seeks to compensate for this neglect by placing the tabloid press at the center of analyses of the media and democratization. In Jordan, the proliferation of such media after 1989 stands as one of the best indicators of the country's gradual, halting, but nonetheless real liberalization process. Tabloid performance was also perhaps the most prominent point of controversy, contention, and conflict between the Jordanian media and the regime in power. A brief comparative and theoretical analysis considers the role of the "yellow" press in transitions from authoritarianism to democracy worldwide. The article then turns to consider the Jordanian experience from the onset of liberalization in 1989 through to the present.     

Economic Voting Appeals in Congressional Campaigns

Although they agree that economics and elections are intertwined, theories of economic voting disagree on the policy focus (on positions taken or outcomes achieved) and time horizon (retrospective or prospective) that guides voters’ decisions. Most research on these debates looks at the considerations voters weigh. Instead, I explore the types of economic voting that candidates encourage through their campaign appeals. Content-coded advertising data from the 2004 congressional elections show that appeals focus more on policy positions than outcomes and more on the past than the future. Consistent with predictions from emphasis allocation theory, strategic incentives and electoral context shape the exact mix of economic appeals campaigns make. When promoting their own candidacy, politicians ask voters to think about (more unifying) future economic outcomes; when attacking their opponent’s candidacy, they ask voters to think about (more divisive) past policy positions. In districts experiencing worsening economic conditions, voters are exposed to more information about policy outcomes; in districts where the incumbent is ideologically “out of step,” they hear more about policy positions. Studies that seek to evaluate competing theories of economic voting are thus likely to draw misleading conclusions if they treat the information environment as a homogeneous constant: Campaigns in different districts, facing different strategic incentives, encourage significantly different types of economic voting.     

American Atrocity Revisited: National Identity,Cascading Frames,and the My Lai Massacre

This study draws on the “cascading activation” model of press-state relations to explore U.S. political and news discourse surrounding the 1968 My Lai Massacre. We systematically analyze White House, military, congressional, and news communications and draw upon scholarship in social psychology to assess why the press might challenge certain frames in response to My Lai but indiscriminately echo others. In particular, within these communications, we examine how serious and widespread the actions at My Lai were conveyed to be, how the circumstances were portrayed, how the actors involved in the incident were characterized, and the extent to which America’s core values were questioned. Our findings suggest that the Nixon administration employed frames designed to downplay the severity of the My Lai incident, highlight extenuating circumstances faced by those directly involved, denigrate the alleged low-level perpetrators, and bolster the national identity. These frames were then largely echoed in the press, despite consistent and forceful challenges by congressional Democrats. These findings, we argue, align with the cascading activation model, and we build on it by highlighting the underlying importance of “cultural resonance” in the framing process. We reflect on the theoretical and practical implications of these patterns and, in doing so, engage the broader scholarly debate over the process through which U.S. news coverage aligns with the communications of government officials, particularly in moments of national dissonance.     

The Electoral Connection and Legislative Committees

This article examines whether the career needs of legislators – to be re-elected or to move on to another political post – allow us to explain the rules governing committee structures and the committee assignments individual legislators obtain. It uses the institutional variations provided by Argentina, Costa Rica, and Venezuela to test hypotheses about committee assignments and committee assignment mechanisms. It finds that incentives created by candidate selection procedures and electoral rules show some relationship to committee assignments, but with a good deal of variation across national cases and individual careers.     

Great powers,ASEAN, and security: reason for optimism?

Abstract

The positive role that external powers can play in the creation and maintenance of security in regions has long been ignored; external interference is generally perceived as detrimental to the ability of a group of states to function as a community. However, this paper argues that in the case of ASEAN, the presence of external actors allows the group to function as a community that also provides and ensures security. This paper furthers the debate regarding ASEAN's security functions. With international attention focused on the Asia-Pacific, there is a need to understand the context in which security is maintained in Southeast Asia.     

Europeanisation and Its Discontents

Europeanisation is now a very prolific area of scholarly research in the social sciences, encompassing among other aspects examination of change in the polities, public policies and animating politics of states arising from engagement with the meta-organisation of the European Union. However, we argue that mainstream social science portrayals of categories of territory, identity and power remain comparatively neglected in existing analyses and the interrelations between these categories is undertheorised, preventing clarification of Europeanisation's underlying processes. We contend that a promising starting-point for resolving these discontents can be found in recent debates in geography focusing upon space and scale.