Showing papers in "Political Science Quarterly in 2001"

Rethinking Human Security

Abstract: In the 1990s, the two dominant strands of foreign policy-economic development and military security-became intertwined. The development and security establishments have also each undergone a period of conceptual turmoil with the end of the cold war, the recognition of highly uneven patterns of change in different components of development, and the technological and political changes often labeled globalization. One consequence has been the emergence of the concept of human security. As fostered by the United Nations Development Program, this term usually means "freedom from fear and want."' Human security has rapidly moved to occupy center stage in discussions of foreign policy; for example, the Group of Eight (G8) foreign ministers declared in June of 1999 that they are "determined to fight the underlying causes of multiple threats to human security... ."2 Despite articulated links to both the development and security fields, alternative definitions abound for human security, and the research and policy agenda for human security remains unclear. In this article, we propose a simple, rigorous, and measurable definition of human security: the number of years of future life spent outside a state of "generalized poverty." Generalized poverty occurs when an individual falls below the threshold of any key domain of human well-being. An agenda for research

Elections Online: Assessing Internet Voting in Light of the Arizona Democratic Primary

Abstract: The public furor surrounding the Florida vote count in the recent presidential election has focused attention on election administration and the need for reform. Mistakes by voters due to confusing butterfly ballots, along with difficulties in counting punch card ballots due to stubborn chads, led to legal challenges by both presidential candidates that made their way to the Supreme Court. The Court's opinion in Bush v. Gore condemns "arbitrary and disparate treatment" of voters and mandates "specific standards" and "uniform rules" for the exercise of the vote to ensure "that the rudimentary requirements of equal treatment and fundamental fairness are satisfied."' While the Court itself was not specific on what those specific standards should be, one potential response to the Court's mandate is a move to electronic voting. As a commentator in Wired remarked: "The 2000 election highlights the fact that American democracy hinges for the most part, on 1960s technology. ... So is electronic voting at precincts, if not Internet voting from remote locations the way to prevent further crises in our democracies?"2 Proponents claimed that, among other benefits, a move to electronic voting would have prevented ballot spoiling, allowed for immediate vote counts, and prevented the early guesswork by television networks that led to the misreporting of state results.3

Civil Society and the Consolidation of Democracy in Spain

Abstract: These are heady days for civil society. From Moscow to Montevideo, a vibrant and robust network of civic organizations is being celebrated as the cure to virtually all the ills of the contemporary world. Little appears to be beyond the reach of civil society's virtuous hands. In recent years, civil society has been posited as the preferred vehicle to replace corrupt and incompetent states, deliver social goods and services, fortify civil and political liberties, promote economic prosperity, restructure outmoded economies, and consolidate fragile and fledging democratic institutions.' Among these claims, the last one is the most trumpeted and widespread. Operating from the assumption that a vibrant and robust civil society is either a prerequisite or a requirement for charting a successful passage from dictatorship to democracy, the strengthening of civil society has become a priority for a large cast of actors engaged in the

Rethinking Media Politics and Public Opinion: Reactions to the Clinton‐Lewinsky Scandal

Abstract: In one of the great political ironies of modern times, Bill Clinton weathered a year-long sexual and obstruction of justice scandal and became only the second president in U.S. history to be impeached, while maintaining some of the most impressive public approval ratings of any modern president. In a phenomenon at first curious and then truly remarkable, public support for Clinton's performance steadfastly held in the mid-60 percent range and occasionally surpassed 70 percent in some polls even as the House of Representatives voted to impeach him and the Senate conducted an impeachment trial. This public response was not well predicted by dominant models of public opinion and political communication, leading to considerable scholarly headscratching. Ultimately, many political scientists have drawn two conclusions: the media coverage of the scandal did not matter to public opinion nearly as much as nonmedia influences; and the public responded to the scandal in relatively thoughtless ways, relying on simple heuristics like the state of the economy to decide whether the president should be impeached. For example, writing in the early months of the scandal, public opinion scholar John Zaller argued that the public's continued support for Clinton in the face of the Monica Lewinsky story could be accounted for by reference to three a priori variables not subject to media influence: peace (the lack of serious

What Went Wrong? The Collapse of the Israeli‐Palestinian Peace Process

Abstract: With the election of Ariel Sharon and the Palestinian turn from revolution to terrorism, the Israeli-Palestinian "peace process," which managed to go on for over ten years without producing peace, has degenerated into major violence. It is critically important that the reasons for this catastrophe be properly analyzed, for sooner or later there will be a resumption of negotiations, and the lessons of this failure must be understood. Contrary to the prevailing view, Israel rather than the Palestinians bears the greater share of the responsibility, not only for the latest breakdown of the peace process but for the entire course of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict since 1948. And U.S. economic and military assistance, along with America's nearly unconditional political and diplomatic support of Israel, has enabled Israel to disregard the legitimate interests and demands for moral justice of the Palestinians, as well as the potential constraints of regional power and international opinion. Well-intentioned but unwise U.S. support of Israel in its conflict with the Palestinians has also enabled Israel to disregard its own best interests.

Pivotal Deterrence and the Kosovo War: Why the Holbrooke Agreement Failed

Abstract: Debate rages over whether the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's (NATO) air war against Serbia was a success or failure.1 But one thing is certain: that war resulted from a prior failure of NATO policy. The goal was to prevent the escalation of conflict and to achieve a political settlement that got "Serbia out of Kosovo, not Kosovo out of Serbia," without having to use force.2 As intended, the Kosovo Liberation Army's (KLA) insurgency in Kosovo had provoked Belgrade's ham-fisted repression tactics. The Serb military police (MUP) and the Yugoslav National Army (VJ) killed innocent civilians and loosed a flood of refugees wherever they went: 42,000 by June 1998, 100,000 by August, and over 200,000 by October.3 The Racak massacre in January 1999 captured public attention and triggered a vigorous international response. At the Rambouillet (6-23 February) and Paris (15-19 March) conferences, NATO threatened to bomb Serbia if it did not accept the Contact Group's (composed of Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Russia, and the United States) interim polit-

Democratization and the Domestic Sources of Foreign Policy: Turkey in the 1974 Cyprus Crisis

Abstract: The claim that democracies do not go to war with one another has become one of the most widely accepted propositions in the field of international relations. This proposition may be true for stable and highly institutionalized democracies but to what extent is the claim generalizable to the full range of "democratic" regime types around the globe? Recent research that examines the relationship between democratization and war has argued that a number of boundary conditions must be placed on the general proposition that democracies do not fight each other. Since fully half of the new democracies in todays world can be classified as "illiberal" and most democratizing regimes are composed of a variety of democratic and undemocratic liberal and illiberal elements the relationship between domestic processes of democratization and their foreign policy outcomes is worth exploring in more detail through structured case studies. In this article I take up this task by examining Turkish foreign policy making during the 1974 Cyprus crisis. I argue that evidence from the Turkish case lends support to much of the causal logic of the democratization and war argument and it further demonstrates that both structural and normative explanations for the "democratic peace" may only be valid under limited sets of conditions. (excerpt)

A House and Senate Divided: The Clinton Legacy and the Congressional Elections of 2000

Abstract: Bill Clinton entered the White House in January 1993 with his fellow Democrats solidly in control of the House and Senate. When he moved out in January 2001, Republicans were in full control of the federal government for the first time since 1954. Yet the Republican majorities were, to say the least, exceedingly tenuous. Al Gore had actually won the popular plurality by a margin of nearly 540,000 votes, but George W. Bush eked out a 271-267 electoral college victory when, after more than five weeks of legal maneuvering, the U.S. Supreme Court settled the dispute over the Florida vote count in his favor.1 The election left the Senate split precisely in half, Republicans and Democrats each holding fifty seats; the Republicans retained control because the vice president, Republican Dick Cheney, casts tie-breaking votes. The Republicans held on to their slim majority in the House of Representatives, a net loss of two seats leaving them with a 221-212 margin.2 Table 1 summarizes the congressional results. The 2000 elections were as close to a dead heat across the board as we are ever likely to see. Yet they were not the least anomalous. They accurately represent the close partisan balance now prevailing in the United States. Because no discernable partisan tide was running in 2000 and the rate of party line voting was, according to the exit polls, the highest in decades, the outcomes reflect the underlying partisan balance in the electorate with unusual clarity. They re-

The Earned Income Tax Credit: Knowledge Is Money

Abstract: The federal Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) is the largest cash transfer program for low-income parents in the United States1 The refundable tax credit supplements wages and offsets taxes paid by low-income workers Research suggests that the EITC has not only been effective in moving families over the poverty line, but has also encouraged work among single mothers2 Recipients use money from the EITC for investments in education and savings as well as to help pay for daily living expenses and bills3 The EITC is administered through the federal income tax system To receive the credit, low-income workers must file a tax return, even if they are other-

Reagan and the Gorbachev Revolution: Perceiving the End of Threat

Abstract: The Reagan administration came into office in 1981 "with the most avowed anticommunist crusading policy in two decades."' For President Ronald Reagan, this policy reflected a profound sense of threat that was deeply rooted in his firm convictions about the nature of communism in general and the Soviet Union in particular. Yet by the end of his second term, Reagan had substantially revised his view of this threat and accepted the possibility of working with the Soviet Union in the interests of peace. He had been transformed from an "essentialist," who believed that the Soviet Union was governed by an ideology that put no limits on what it could justifiably do to gain its ends of "absolute power and a communist world," to an "interactionist," who saw the conflict between the Soviet Union and the United States in terms of mutual misperception. He was hopeful about the possibility of substantial change.2 This presents us with a puzzle, because the psychological literature strongly suggests that central beliefs are altered only with great difficulty, if at all.3 Since

Blairism Brazilian Style? Cardoso and the “Third Way” in Brazil

Abstract: The year 1994 was a fateful one for social democracy on both sides of the Atlantic. Only seven short years ago, the German SPD, the world's oldest and arguably most influential social democratic party, went down to its third consecutive electoral defeat at the hands of Helmut Kohl, leading many to despair about the fortunes of democratic socialism on the European continent. In 1994, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom all had entrenched conservative governments. This may seem like a century ago in political time, and in some ways it was. But 1994 also brought forth several intriguing developments. In the UK, the tragic death of John Smith sparked a leadership struggle in the Labour party, and when the dust cleared the new leader of the opposition was a previously little known 41-year-old member of Parliament (MP) named Tony Blair. In that same year, the British sociologist Anthony Giddens published an influential book called Beyond Left and Right,' a volume that would herald a series of publications proposing a major rethinking of social democracy.2 Meanwhile, in faraway Brazil, the crucial October 1994 presidential election was won by Fernando Henrique Cardoso, self-described social democrat who, quite unusually, exercised the professions of both Giddens and Blair. The stage was set for a critical debate over the renovation of European social democracy and the rapid diffusion of this debate to South America. Over the past seven years, political change in Western Europe has been quite substantial, both in terms of the partisan composition of key governments

Family Homelessness in New York City: A Case Study

Abstract: Much has been said of the prosperous times and unprecedented growth that our nation has enjoyed over the last few years. New York City was no stranger to these good times, surpassing the nation in job growth and benefitting from lower crime rates. Yet there is increasing inequality of incomes and a widening gap between the rich and the poor. This tale of two cities is nothing new. In New York City and other urban areas around the world, extreme poverty and extreme wealth have always coexisted. What has changed is the scope of the problem. As New York City approaches welfare time limits, family homelessness is exploding. Today, the city's family shelter system is at capacity. Over 16,000 men, women, and children spend their nights in shelters on a regular basis. Another 500 families crowd into the Department of Homeless Services' Emergency Assistance Unit (EAU) each evening awaiting placement in shelter. Sometimes, their wait can be days or even weeks. In light of these facts, the Institute for Children and Poverty performed a survey of 350 families, including over 600 children, living in shelters in New York City. What surfaces is not a story of two cities, but of two children-one with a prosperous and bright future, the other with poor health, sporadic education, and little social stability. With a rising number of families becoming homeless over the past twenty years-a 500 percent increase since 1980-the latter child's story has become the poverty standard (see Figure 1).

The Building of a Bifactional Structure: The Democrats in the 1940s

Abstract: Understanding the nature of social change is appropriately a central concern of historians and social scientists alike. Along these lines, the transformation of party systems is a subject that has occupied scholars for many years. Ordinarily, party system transformation has meant realignments, party decline, and changes in the functions that parties perform or fail to perform.' The present study aims to discuss a less familiar dimension of party system change: the cleavage structure within the major parties. To a great extent, a party is defined by its factional composition. From the fluid groupings of the U.S. Democratic party in the old south, to the highly institutionalized blocs of the postwar Italian and Japanese conservative parties, to the monolithic front of totalitarian parties, the very nature of a party is bound up in how it organizes and manages internal divisions. If it is divided, it matters greatly whether those blocs are based on ideology, patronage, personal ties, ethnicity, geography, or whatever. Moreover, how effectively a party carries out its functions in the broader political system may depend on how unified or divided it is and on what those divisions are based.2 More than half a century ago, the Democratic party in the United States underwent a transition from a party of relatively fluid factions to one with a fairly stable bifactional structure. The basis of that structure was sectional, with

The 2000 Presidential Election: Why Gore Lost

Abstract: The presidential election of 2000 stands at best as a paradox, at worst as a scandal, of American democracy. Democrat Albert Gore won the most votes, a half million more than his Republican opponent George W. Bush, but lost the presidency in the electoral college by a count of 271-267. Even this count was suspect, dependent on the tally in Florida, where many minority voters were denied the vote, ballots were confusing, and recounts were mishandled and manipulated. The choice of their leader came not from the citizens of the nation, but from lawyers battling for five weeks. The final decision was made not by 105 million voters, but by a 5-4 majority of the unelected U.S. Supreme Court, issuing a tainted and partisan verdict. That decision ended the presidential contest, and George W. Bush now heads the conservative restoration to power, buttressed by thin party control of both houses of Congress. The election of 2000, however, will not fade. It encapsulates the political forces shaping the United States at the end of the twentieth century. Its controversial results will affect the nation for many years of the new era.

Dissonant Politics in Iran and Indonesia

Abstract: The election of Mohammad Khatami in May 1997 surprised Westerners and Iranians alike. Khatami's assertion that Islam would be strengthened by getting the state out of the business of imposing religion defied the most sacred premises of the Islamic Revolution. That Iran's new president, himself a cleric, argued for the rule of the people while affirming the right of Khomeini's heir, Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamanei, to serve as the "Supreme Leader," suggested the sudden emergence of a profound ideological divide at the very pinnacle of the state. Yet such anomalies were hardly new, nor unique to Iran. In Teheran, as much as in Rabat, Amman, or Jakarta, politics pivots around the institutionalization and strategic manipulation of symbolic contradictions. That this dynamic has received so little attention reflects an abiding conviction, particularly among students of Islamic politics, that authority systems must ultimately be based on one dominant form of legitimacy or domination.1 Thus John Esposito and John Voll argue that by reinterpreting "core concepts ... central to the political positions of virtually all Muslims," Islamists have forged notions of "Islamic democracy" that are as coherent and legal-rational as any secular vision of democracy.2 Similarly, scholars who hold that Islam's quest to link politics

Radical Change in Israel: A Review Essay

Abstract: Few states have undergone more rapid and comprehensive change in the past fifty years than Israel, which evolved from a socialist-inspired mixed, centralized, highly planned, state-centered, protectionist economy to a much more decentralized and internationally-oriented, neoliberal one. From a political culture dominated by a collectivist version of hegemonic Zionism legitimating a Mapai (Labor-led) dominant party system, Israel passed through a phase in which two mass parties vied for power. Once hegemonic, Zionism is now under challenge and in a crisis. A change in the electoral system resulted in the election of the past three prime ministers independent of the parliament (Knesset). This reform intensified the dramatic decline of both mass parties and the concurrent rise of several parties based on identity politics. The substantial increase in the representation of previously marginal groups made the system more inclusive. However, it seriously undermined governability and led to the premature end of the governments of the first two directly elected prime ministers, Benjamin Netanyahu and Ehud Barak. Consequently, the Knesset recently restored the traditional parliamentary electoral system. Equally significant constitutional reforms entrenched a bill of rights enabling judicial review by the Supreme Court. The books under review analyze these changes, which many observers define as radical or even revolutionary. The essays in the collection edited by Gershon Shafir and Yoav Peled evaluate aspects of the liberalization of Israel's economy and how this influenced the peace process.1 Deborah Bernstein compares the unsuccessful joint action by Jewish and Arab workers in three Jewish-owned industries during the British Mandate in Palestine. The workers failed to overcome the intrusion of Is-

The 2000 Presidential Election in Historical Perspective

Abstract: The year 2000 presidential election was a unique historical event. With a very close popular vote, the outcome depended on Florida, where, whichever way the votes were counted, the outcome was the closest state election in memory, closer than if Florida voters were deciding by flipping fair coins.' Although Al Gore won the national popular vote, George W. Bush eventually won the contested Electoral College verdict with help from the U.S. Supreme Court. Continuing the Political Science Quarterly tradition of following each presidential election with an early analysis in the spring issue after the election,2 this article attempts to put the 2000 election in perspective-to understand the electorate's 2000 verdict within the context of what we know about elections past. Fortunately, several resources are available to help with this task. For a start, there are the Voter News Service (VNS) exit polls of voters as they left their polling places on election day. Both national and state exit polls, with their breakdowns of the vote by attitudes and social characteristics, became available to all on the web immediately after the election. Another data source available from the web is the trial-heat poll results reported throughout the cam-

Ending Welfare As We Know It: A Reform Still in Progress

Abstract: In August 1996, President William Jefferson Clinton signed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) (H.R. 3734) into law. This law ended the entitlement status of cash assistance to poor families with children, called Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), which began in 1935 with the passage of the original Social Security Act. Between 1996 and 1999, there occurred a massive drop of over five million or 40 percent from some twelve-and-a-half million in the average monthly number of cash assistance recipients.1 Based on such statistics, most political leaders on the federal and state levels of government including both the Democratic and Republican candidates for president in 2000 called the 1996 changes or "welfare reforms," a success. Yet just looking at the macronumbers of the millions who dropped from the cash assistance rolls doesn't tell the whole story. We do not know how many of these recipients would have left the rolls anyway during four years of unprecedented economic boom, even if PRWORA and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) hadn't been enacted, and how many will return in a recessionary economy. The gross numbers also do not reveal how many of these "welfare leavers"2 have new jobs and have been able to reach financial

The Cuban Missile Crisis and the Limits of Crisis Management

Abstract: Nowhere do the constitutional prerogatives of the president seem greater than in the midst of national security crises; nowhere do we invest in the president greater resources of command. Although in the past half century presidents have surrounded themselves with a vast national security apparatus, consisting of intelligence agencies and the National Security Council, it is not at all clear that presidents have been effective as crisis managers. They often lack crucial information, use incomplete or misleading analogies to understand crisis situations, find it difficult to micromanage events, and are unable to project force effectively. Even when they are successful, it is often in spite of, rather than because of, the resources of the institutionalized presidency at their disposal. The Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 provides a case study of how John F. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev almost blundered into a nuclear war through the crisis management approaches of their advisory systems, but then managed to extricate themselves using personal diplomacy and old-fashioned political horsetrading. They did so without revealing to the world how they had defused the crisis, a decision to maintain confidentiality with far reaching consequences for subsequent presidential crisis decision making. The illusion that presidential crisis management can compel an adversary to submit and that a nuclear crisis can be successfully managed left Kennedy's successors with impossible burdens of public expectations. The United States and the Soviet Union were on the brink of nuclear war between 22 October, the evening that President Kennedy announced a "quar-

Editor's Opinion: Why Americans Deserve a Constitutional Right to Vote for Presidential Electors

Abstract: Americans deserve the constitutional right to vote for president. We do not have it now. Last year's presidential election showed that our Constitution should be amended to declare explicitly that every citizen of requisite age has a constitutional right to vote for presidential electors and that the popular vote in each state determines the allocation of electoral votes. This kind of amendment would retain the electoral vote system of choosing the president and not alter the balance of power between large and small states, among regions, or between parties. Political scientists, constitutional law experts, and other careful readers were stunned to read in the U.S. Supreme Court's Bush v. Gore majority opinion the declaration that "the individual citizen has no federal constitutional right to vote for electors for President unless and until the state legislature chooses statewide election. "1 All of us knew that was literally true in the original 1787 constitutional language. But the actuality since Andrew Jackson's day was that state legislatures had enfranchised essentially all white, adult, male citizens to vote for presidential electors.2 Then various constitutional amendments prohibited discrimination in voting on the basis of race, gender, or age above eighteen. Most Americans who even thought about it thus assumed that the long-term de facto right to vote for presidential electors had become through custom and tradition a de jure right and was sufficient to make our

The Rehnquist Court and Contemporary American Federalism

Abstract: The Republican party took control of the U.S. Congress in 1995, promising to make dramatic changes in American government. Whole federal departments were scheduled for elimination; hundreds of federal grant-in-aid programs were slated for termination or reform; large reductions in federal spending were advocated; and sweeping regulatory reforms were proposed. As Newt Gingrich, the architect of the new Republican majority, put it: "We are going to rethink the entire structure of American society, and the entire structure of American government.... This is a real revolution."' Academic observers agreed that big changes were underway. Richard Nathan dubbed the Republican program a "devolution revolution," because of its proposed reductions in the size and power of the federal government and the anticipated return of governmental responsibilities to the states. Even President Bill Clinton conceded in early 1996 that "the era of big government is over." In the end, the Republican revolt stalled and its revolutionary changes were avoided. Bill Clinton was reelected president, while Newt Gingrich ultimately lost his leadership position and left office. Few federal programs and agencies were abolished during the aborted revolution, and federal spending growth resumed.