Gridlock in the Government of the United States: Influence of Divided Government and Veto Players

2009 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 587-607 ◽  
Author(s):  
Manabu Saeki

David Mayhew’s Divided We Govern significantly challenged the conventional wisdom of the adversarial effect of divided government on government effectiveness in the United States. While the post-Mayhewian literature has been centred on legislative productivity as a measure of gridlock, gridlock is here defined as an ‘inability to change policy’. In this study, the preferences of the legislators, such as the filibuster, override and House median veto players are plotted in Euclidean space. The analysis focuses on the influence of the area of the winset, which is an intersection overlapped by the veto players’ indifference curves. There is a substantial impact of the area of the winset on the change in policy output point, which is measured by the ADA scores and by Poole’s Mean Winning Coordinate. Yet divided government has marginal or no effect on policy swing. The conclusion is that the preferences of veto players, but not party control of the government, have a substantial impact on gridlock in the United States.

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 167-178
Author(s):  
Scott Williamson

AbstractMuslim Americans constitute one of the United States’ most vulnerable minority groups, facing frequent discrimination from both the public and the government. Despite this vulnerability, few studies evaluate interventions for reducing prejudice against Muslim Americans. Building from an insightful literature on the sources of prejudice against Muslim Americans, this paper tests whether attitudes can be improved with information countering misperceptions of the community as particularly foreign, threatening, and disloyal to the United States. The experimental treatment modestly improved attitudes, including among some subgroups predisposed to prejudice against Muslim Americans. However, the treatment struggled to change policy views, and it demonstrated some vulnerability to social desirability bias and priming on terrorism threats. The findings suggest that information campaigns addressing misperceptions can help to reduce prejudice on the margins, but primarily in less politicized contexts.


2019 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 255-281
Author(s):  
Sylvia Dümmer Scheel

El artículo analiza la diplomacia pública del gobierno de Lázaro Cárdenas centrándose en su opción por publicitar la pobreza nacional en el extranjero, especialmente en Estados Unidos. Se plantea que se trató de una estrategia inédita, que accedió a poner en riesgo el “prestigio nacional” con el fin de justificar ante la opinión pública estadounidense la necesidad de implementar las reformas contenidas en el Plan Sexenal. Aprovechando la inusual empatía hacia los pobres en tiempos del New Deal, se construyó una imagen específica de pobreza que fuera higiénica y redimible. Ésta, sin embargo, no generó consenso entre los mexicanos. This article analyzes the public diplomacy of the government of Lázaro Cárdenas, focusing on the administration’s decision to publicize the nation’s poverty internationally, especially in the United States. This study suggests that this was an unprecedented strategy, putting “national prestige” at risk in order to explain the importance of implementing the reforms contained in the Six Year Plan, in the face of public opinion in the United States. Taking advantage of the increased empathy felt towards the poor during the New Deal, a specific image of hygienic and redeemable poverty was constructed. However, this strategy did not generate agreement among Mexicans.


Author(s):  
D.S. Yurochkin ◽  
◽  
A.A. Leshkevich ◽  
Z.M. Golant ◽  
I.A. NarkevichSaint ◽  
...  

The article presents the results of a comparison of the Orphan Drugs Register approved for use in the United States and the 2020 Vital and Essential Drugs List approved on October 12, 2019 by Order of the Government of the Russian Federation No. 2406-r. The comparison identified 305 international non-proprietary names relating to the main and/or auxiliary therapy for rare diseases. The analysis of the market of drugs included in the Vital and Essential Drugs List, which can be used to treat rare (orphan) diseases in Russia was conducted.


Author(s):  
Michael C. Dorf ◽  
Michael S. Chu

Lawyers played a key role in challenging the Trump administration’s Travel Ban on entry into the United States of nationals from various majority-Muslim nations. Responding to calls from nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), which were amplified by social media, lawyers responded to the Travel Ban’s chaotic rollout by providing assistance to foreign travelers at airports. Their efforts led to initial court victories, which in turn led the government to soften the Ban somewhat in two superseding executive actions. The lawyers’ work also contributed to the broader resistance to the Trump administration by dramatizing its bigotry, callousness, cruelty, and lawlessness. The efficacy of the lawyers’ resistance to the Travel Ban shows that, contrary to strong claims about the limits of court action, litigation can promote social change. General lessons about lawyer activism in ordinary times are difficult to draw, however, because of the extraordinary threat Trump poses to civil rights and the rule of law.


2021 ◽  
pp. 089124162110218
Author(s):  
John R. Parsons

Every year, hundreds of U.S. citizens patrol the Mexican border dressed in camouflage and armed with pistols and assault rifles. Unsanctioned by the government, these militias aim to stop the movement of narcotics into the United States. Recent interest in the anthropology of ethics has focused on how individuals cultivate themselves toward a notion of the ethical. In contrast, within the militias, ethical self-cultivation was absent. I argue the volunteers derived the power to be ethical from the control of the dominant moral assemblage and the construction of an immoral “Other” which provided them the power to define a moral landscape that limited the potential for ethical conflicts. In the article, I discuss two instances Border Watch and its volunteers dismissed disruptions to their moral certainty and confirmed to themselves that their actions were not only the “right” thing to do, but the only ethical response available.


1991 ◽  
Vol 112 ◽  
pp. 174-175
Author(s):  
R. Marcus Price

ABSTRACTIn the United States, civil common carrier telecommunications are provided by private companies, not by any agency of the government. Regulation of these services and spectrum management oversight is provided by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), an agency of the government. Government telecommunications are operated by individual agencies, e.g. the Department of Defense, under the overall regulation of the Office of Spectrum Management of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), a government body separate from the FCC. In bands shared by the civil and government sectors, liaison and coordination is effected between the FCC and the NTIA.


2020 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marta N. Lukacovic

This study analyzes securitized discourses and counter narratives that surround the COVID-19 pandemic. Controversial cases of security related political communication, salient media enunciations, and social media reframing are explored through the theoretical lenses of securitization and cascading activation of framing in the contexts of Slovakia, Russia, and the United States. The first research question explores whether and how the frame element of moral evaluation factors into the conversations on the securitization of the pandemic. The analysis tracks the framing process through elite, media, and public levels of communication. The second research question focused on fairly controversial actors— “rogue actors” —such as individuals linked to far-leaning political factions or militias. The proliferation of digital media provides various actors with opportunities to join publicly visible conversations. The analysis demonstrates that the widely differing national contexts offer different trends and degrees in securitization of the pandemic during spring and summer of 2020. The studied rogue actors usually have something to say about the pandemic, and frequently make some reframing attempts based on idiosyncratic evaluations of how normatively appropriate is their government's “war” on COVID-19. In Slovakia, the rogue elite actors at first failed to have an impact but eventually managed to partially contest the dominant frame. Powerful Russian media influencers enjoy some conspiracy theories but prudently avoid direct challenges to the government's frame, and so far only marginal rogue actors openly advance dissenting frames. The polarized political and media environment in the US has shown to create a particularly fertile ground for rogue grassroots movements that utilize online platforms and social media, at times going as far as encouragement of violent acts to oppose the government and its pandemic response policy.


1997 ◽  
Vol 91 (3) ◽  
pp. 493-517
Author(s):  
Marian Nash (Leich)

On March 3,1997, President William J. Clinton transmitted to the Senate for its advice and consent to ratification as a treaty the Agreement Between the Government of the United States of America and the Government of Hong Kong for the Surrender of Fugitive Offenders, signed at Hong Kong on December 20,1996. In his letter of transmittal, President Clinton pointed out that, upon its entry into force, the Agreement would “enhance cooperation between the law enforcement communities of the United States and Hong Kong, and … provide a framework and basic protections for extraditions after the reversion of Hong Kong to the sovereignty of the People’s Republic of China on July 1, 1997.” The President continued: Given the absence of an extradition treaty with the People’s Republic of China, this Treaty would provide the means to continue an extradition relationship with Hong Kong after reversion and avoid a gap in law enforcement. It will thereby make a significant contribution to international law enforcement efforts.The provisions of this Agreement follow generally the form and content of extradition treaties recently concluded by the United States. In addition, the Agreement contains several provisions specially designed in light of the particular status of Hong Kong. The Agreement’s basic protections for fugitives are also made expressly applicable to fugitives surrendered by the two parties before the new treaty enters into force.


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