Is it Population or Personnel? The Effects of Diversity on Immigration Policy Implementation by Sheriff Offices

Abstract

The federal-local cooperative immigration removal program Secure Communities (S-Comm) has resulted in wide variation into how aggressively national interior immigration policy has been implemented locally. Some communities have removed thousands, but others have removed few if any. Community composition explains much of the variation, but representative bureaucracy tells us agency diversity also influences implementation. Focusing on county sheriff offices, a vital local partner in S-Comm, this study finds that agency personnel diversity (specifically, offices with larger percentages of Hispanics and African Americans) produce fewer removals and submissions to ICE for immigration background checks. Other agency-specific factors are also important. Both the agency’s total budget and whether it has a 287(g) agreement with federal immigration authorities increase removals. Despite recent efforts to blur the distinction between immigration and criminal justice policy, this study finds no relationship between local removals and local crime.     

Collective Action,Civil Society,and Public Policy in Turkey

Abstract

Understanding policy change mechanisms has been a key question for scholars of public policy and collective action. However, policy scholarship mostly ignores civil society-based explanations of policy processes. In order to address this gap, this study combines the Advocacy Coalition Framework with networked collective action perspectives and analyzes a successful case of mobilization of women’s rights organizations in Turkey to reverse a bill on child marriage. Study findings suggest that advocacy coalitions are not static entities. When different issues in a policy subsystem are invoked, the structure of inter-coalition networks can change substantially and these variations in inter-coalition interactions may have consequences for influencing policy change. Moreover, this paper argues that extensive street protests and online campaigns by civil society organizations have the capacity to boost the bargaining power of minority coalitions, especially in contexts that lack multiple formal venues for making policy claims.     

农村公共政策供给:时代特征、逻辑进路与批判性建构

农村公共政策供给呈现出典型的功能双重性、价值多重性和技术非均衡性时代特征并呈现出体系化趋向。民生政治、制度创新、解构并重构固化的社会结构,是农村公共政策供给的价值导向、技术导向和目标导向,三者共同构成了农村公共政策供给的逻辑进路。体制性传递与“泛政策化”、选择性供给与失真性执行、政策供给与制度创新的弱耦合性,是当前农村公共政策供给面临的现实挑战。农村公共政策供给带来的政策泡沫和信任危机降低了农民的政治效能感,引发潜在的政治认同危机;涉农政策“打架”现象根源于农村公共政策供给机制失调,导致制度性成本增加;制度创新热衷于制造概念并引致制度空转现象背离农村公共政策供给的逻辑要求。推动农村公共政策供给侧改革,健全完善农村公共政策社会监督体系,优化农村公共政策内部考核评估体系,是新时代优化农村公共政策供给的基本策略。     

技术权力、技术生命周期与大国的技术政策选择

大国技术竞争是指国家行为体综合运用各类政策手段争夺技术权力的过程。技术权力可分为强制性权力、网络性权力和制度性权力。技术竞争往往是一个长时段的互动过程,可能涵盖一个或多个技术生命周期。各类技术权力在一个技术生命周期内出现的时间有所不同,技术权力的积累在两个技术生命周期的交替期也可能呈现延续或中断的不同走向。这意味着在技术发展的不同阶段,竞争主体的政策选择将依据技术权力的变化而相应发生改变。美、俄、中、欧在全球卫星导航领域的博弈以及美、欧、日、中在移动通信领域的竞争,均鲜明体现了驱动国际政治行为体开展技术竞争的意愿因素(获取权力)以及它们在技术发展相应阶段的政策选择。前者仅涉及单个技术生命周期,后者则包含多个时间上紧密衔接的技术生命周期。中国是当前大国技术竞争的主要参与者。为了在竞争中立于不败之地,应注意把握技术发展的阶段性特征,因时制宜,选择与技术发展阶段匹配的技术政策,并针对下一阶段技术发展的重点方面提前进行布局,以坚持自主创新和扩大对外开放为基本原则,通过科技创新掌握技术权力,推进构建新发展格局。     

Trump and the End of an Era? The Liberal International Order in Perspective

ABSTRACT

The liberal international economic and political order which the United States created from the ashes of World War II and has since led is in trouble. To United States President Donald Trump, the order which provided the framework under which sovereign states agreed to follow a rules-based system of economic and political cooperation and shared multilateral governance, has not only allowed other nations (in particular, China) to take advantage of US ‘magnanimity’, but also weakened the United States economically, while asymmetric alliances compromised its military advantages. Given the sustained assault this cosmopolitan order is facing, many fear that it may not survive if Trump is re-elected in November 2020. Indeed, if the United States response to the COVID-19 pandemic is any guide, an ‘America First’ agenda, especially a hard-line approach to China, will shape US policy if Trump wins a second term.     

Domestic Contestation and Presidential Prerogative in Colombian Foreign Policy

The study of Colombian foreign policy emphasises external constraints and presidential prerogative in foreign policymaking. Drawing on insights from recent foreign policy analysis literature and evidence from several cases (Plan Colombia, US military bases, free trade talks with China, and ICJ arbitration of a maritime border with Nicaragua), this article challenges commonplace presidentialist assumptions. A novel model of ‘contested presidentialism’ better captures how Colombian domestic actors mobilise to raise political costs to block or modify presidential preferences. When the opposition fails to raise costs, presidentialist assumptions apply. Otherwise, presidents respond strategically by abandoning policies or substituting second-best alternatives.     

The West’s Policeman? Assessing Italy’s Status in Global Peacekeeping

ABSTRACT

Since the 1960s, and especially the 1980s, Italy has participated in and led numerous peace support operations (PSOs), predominantly under the aegis of international organisations. Italy’s participation in PSOs authorised by the UN, the EU, NATO and other multilateral agreements stems from a combination of national interest and humanitarianism/multilateralism. However, although acknowledged as a significant contributor, a clear assessment of its status in global peacekeeping is still missing. In fact, Italy plays a role that is comparatively greater than all Western nations in the international fora taken into account, and, as such, can be described as ‘the West’s policeman’, from both a quantitative (number of troops) and qualitative (role within the missions) perspective. This might be somewhat curbed in the future, however, due to some of the country’s limitations on foreign policy.     

Is the Chinese ‘entrepreneurial welfare state’ an industrial policy in disguise?

Abstract

What has driven China, a developing country that has only recently saved itself from nationwide poverty, to increase its investment in social welfare so rapidly and extensively in the past decade? Drawing on extensive field research in a prefecture-level district in southwest China between 2014 and 2017, the authors argue in this article that local governments in China provide welfare housing programmes as a veil for developmentalist industrial policies aimed at industrial upgrading and the improvement of dynamic efficiency. The article demonstrates the unique incentive structure behind the local Chinese governments’ role as the front-line investor in social welfare benefits, and how the local state has cunningly used the façade of welfare provision to (1) divert the earmarked budget to implement development-oriented industrial policy; and (2) fake a discursive congruence between the heavily interventionist local practice and the overall neoliberal central-level policy discourse that features deregulation, small government and a laissez-faire developmental pathway. Exploring this set of strategic dynamics underlining the manoeuvres of the Chinese welfare operation helps us understand the variability of welfare state forms and trajectories of developmental strategy in the Global South.     

Competing Visions of Japan’s International Engagement: Japan First vs Global Japan

ABSTRACT

The state and direction of Japan’s international engagement can best be understood as a competition between the ‘Japan first’ and ‘global Japan’ schools of thought. In light of the ever worsening security environment surrounding Japan, the gap between the Japan first school advocating a focus on the immediate needs of Japan’s territorial defence and the global Japan school arguing for more global engagement is widening. The competition between the two will continue to shape the direction of Japan’s foreign and security posture – and importantly, the global Japan school is far from winning, contrary to what Abe’s hyperactive diplomacy might suggest.     

Reassessment of the state role in the development of high-tech industry: A case study of Taiwan’s Hsinchu Science Park

This article reassesses the state role in the development of high-tech industries through a case study of one of the earliest science parks in Asia, Hsinchu Science Park. Taking a historical and public policy approach to this issue, the article argues that the state did play a positive role in the growth of hightech industries in Taiwan. However, not all positive outcomes were derived from rational political elites and state bureaucracy. There existed many unintended and path-dependent consequences. In addition, many planned goals have not been achieved and there were many side effects and negative outcomes neglected by previous studies, which give significant implications for the evaluation, of state's capability and limitation in pursuing economic development.