The War over Iraq: Selling War to the American Public

The Holocaust has become an important part of the everyday discourse of American life. Indeed, it has become one of the central historical analogies for thinking about U.S. foreign policy in the post-Cold War world. The received wisdom about the Holocaust among most Americans is that the United States and the rest of the civilized world turned away Jews seeking to escape Nazi Germany before World War II, and then sat idly by while the Third Reich murdered nearly 6 million of them during the course of the war. In light of this reprehensible indifference, the United States shares some responsibility for the Holocaust, and it must “never again” allow large numbers of people to be slaughtered because of their race, ethnicity, or religion. Historical analogies are ubiquitous in foreign policy debates. Not only do they routinely shape state behavior, they usually do so for the worse. Hence, we should be wary of all historical analogies and examine them carefully to make sure they are based on sound history and used wisely by policymakers. The widely accepted Holocaust analogy illustrates, in my view, both how analogies are frequently based on a faulty reading of history and that policies based on them have not always served U.S. interests.     

DETERRENCE AND MORAL PERSUASION EFFECTS ON CORPORATE TAX COMPLIANCE: FINDINGS FROM A RANDOMIZED CONTROLLED TRIAL*

Previous studies on tax compliance have focused primarily on the tax‐reporting behavior of individuals. This study reports results from a randomized field test of the effects of deterrence and moral persuasion on the tax‐reporting behavior of 4,395 corporations in Israel. Two experimental groups received tax letters, one conveying a deterrent message and the other a moral persuasion message. Three types of measures are used to evaluate compliance based on the magnitude of the difference‐in‐differences of means in 1) gross sales values reported to the authority, 2) tax dollars paid to the authority, and 3) tax deductions. Overall, both deterrence and moral persuasion approaches do not produce statistically significant greater compliance compared with control conditions. These results do not support the ability of a policy of sending tax letters to increase substantively the reporting of true tax liability or tax payments by corporations. However, these results also show that moral persuasion can be counterproductive: Corporations in this experimental group show an increase rather than a decrease in tax deductions, which translates into loss of state revenues. The implications for theory, research, and tax policy are discussed.     

Modeling Supreme Court Strategic Decision Making: The Congressional Constraint

This paper addresses the contradictory results obtained by Segal (1997) and Spiller and Gely (1992) concerning the impact of institutional constraints on the U.S. Supreme Court's decision making. By adapting the Spiller and Gely maximum likelihood model to the Segal dataset, we find support for the hypothesis that the Court adjusts its decisions to presidential and congressional preferences. Data from 1947 to 1992 indicate that the average probability of the Court being constrained has been approximately one‐third. Further, we show that the results obtained by Segal are the product of biases introduced by a misspecified econometric model. We also discuss how our estimation highlights the usefulness of Krehbiel's model of legislative decision making.     

We Can Work with Hamas

Just as the Arab Spring blossomed, the al‐Qaeda‐led era of terrorism came to an end with the killing of Osama Bin Laden in his Pakistani lair by American special forces. We asked two of the most contentious experts on all things Islamic—Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Tariq Ramadan—to assess the meaning of these historic moments on the future. Amr Moussa, the leading candidate for Egypt's presidency, and Ehud Barak, Israel's defense minister, also offer their views. Two top former intelligence agents from MI6 and the CIA look at the next turn of events—the Saudi counter‐revolution.