scholarly journals From Claiming Credit to Avoiding Blame: The Evolution of Congressional Strategy for Asbestos Management

1991 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 153-186 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charlotte Twight

ABSTRACTThis paper develops a theory synthesizing credit-claiming and blameavoidance explanations of congressional behavior and evaluates it against asbestos policy in the United States from the 1920s through the 1980s. Public policy is viewed as shaped by officeholders' ability to achieve political ends through augmenting information costs and other transaction costs facing the public. Public perceptions are seen both as the endogenous product of congressional information-cost manipulation and as an exogenous constraint that changes in identifiable ways over time. Different policy stances - open credit claiming, concealed credit claiming, early-stage blame avoidance, and full-scale blame avoidance – are predicted to emerge in response to specified conditions, yielding implications about the expected timing of public policy changes. Specific types of transaction-cost manipulation are predicted to accompany the identified policy stances. The US asbestos policy experience is shown to be consistent with the predictions of the model.

2019 ◽  
Vol 28 (7) ◽  
pp. 797-811 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brianne Suldovsky ◽  
Asheley Landrum ◽  
Natalie Jomini Stroud

In an era where expertise is increasingly critiqued, this study draws from the research on expertise and scientist stereotyping to explore who the public considers to be a scientist in the context of media coverage about climate change and genetically modified organisms. Using survey data from the United States, we find that political ideology and science knowledge affect who the US public believes is a scientist in these domains. Our results suggest important differences in the role of science media attention and science media selection in the publics “scientist” labeling. In addition, we replicate previous work and find that compared to other people who work in science, those with PhDs in Biology and Chemistry are most commonly seen as scientists.


Author(s):  
Halyna Shchyhelska

2018 marks the 100th anniversary of the proclamation of Ukrainian independence. OnJanuary 22, 1918, the Ukrainian People’s Republic proclaimed its independence by adopting the IV Universal of the Ukrainian Central Rada, although this significant event was «wiped out» from the public consciousness on the territory of Ukraine during the years of the Soviet totalitarian regime. At the same time, January 22 was a crucial event for the Ukrainian diaspora in the USA. This article examines how American Ukrainians interacted with the USA Government institutions regarding the celebration and recognition of the Ukrainian Independence day on January 22. The attention is focused on the activities of ethnic Ukrainians in the United States, directed at the organization of the special celebration of the Ukrainian Independence anniversaries in the US Congress and cities. Drawing from the diaspora press and Congressional Records, this article argues that many members of Congress participated in the observed celebration and expressed kind feelings to the Ukrainian people, recognised their fight for freedom, during the House of Representatives and Senate sessions. Several Congressmen submitted the resolutions in the US Congress urging the President of United States to designate January 22 as «Ukrainian lndependence Day». January 22 was proclaimed Ukrainian Day by the governors of fifteen States and mayors of many cities. Keywords: January 22, Ukrainian independence day, Ukrainian diaspora, USA, interaction, Congress


2008 ◽  
Vol 56 (4) ◽  
pp. 429-433 ◽  
Author(s):  
K. Harlander

Bioethanol is made from sugar- or starch-containing plants that are also used in food production. In the public perception this has led to an emotional resistance against biofuels, which in real terms is not substantiated. Generally biofuels are a political product. Triggered by the oil crisis in the 1970s, fuel ethanol programmes were first launched in Brazil and in the United States. Concerns regarding energy security and sustainability, together with the option of new markets for surplus agricultural production, have led to similar measures in the EU and other countries in recent years. Accordingly, the industry invested heavily in new bioethanol plants — especially in the US — and created an additional demand for maize and wheat, with some record-breaking prices noted in late 2007. A look back into statistics shows a drastic decline in real prices for decades, which have now simply returned to the level of 30 years ago. The grain used for bioethanol is currently only 1.6% in the EU and is therefore unlikely to be the real driver of price development. The European Commission concludes in its review of agricultural markets that Europe can do both: nutrition and biofuels.


2009 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 137-142
Author(s):  
Park Y. J.

Most stakeholders from Asia have not actively participated in the global Internet governance debate. This debate has been shaped by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers(ICANN) since 198 and the UN Internet Governance Forum (IGF) since 2006. Neither ICANN nor IGF are well received as global public policy negotiation platforms by stakeholders in Asia, but more and more stakeholders in Europe and the United States take both platforms seriously. Stakeholders in Internet governance come from the private sector and civil society as well as the public sector.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tao Hu ◽  
Siqin Wang ◽  
Wei Luo ◽  
Mengxi Zhang ◽  
Xiao Huang ◽  
...  

BACKGROUND The COVID-19 pandemic has imposed a large, initially uncontrollable, public health crisis both in the US and across the world, with experts looking to vaccines as the ultimate mechanism of defense. The development and deployment of COVID-19 vaccines have been rapidly advancing via global efforts. Hence, it is crucial for governments, public health officials, and policy makers to understand public attitudes and opinions towards vaccines, such that effective interventions and educational campaigns can be designed to promote vaccine acceptance OBJECTIVE The aim of this study is to investigate public opinion and perception on COVID-19 vaccines by investigating the spatiotemporal trends of their sentiment and emotion towards vaccines, as well as how such trends relate to popular topics on Twitter in the US METHODS We collected over 300,000 geotagged tweets in the US from March 1, 2020 to February 28, 2021. We examined the spatiotemporal patterns of public sentiment and emotion over time at both national and state scales and identified three phases along the pandemic timeline with the significant changes of public sentiment and emotion, further linking to eleven key events and major topics as the potential drivers to induce such changes via cloud mapping of keywords and topic modelling RESULTS An increasing trend of positive sentiment in parallel with the decrease of negative sentiment are generally observed in most states, reflecting the rising confidence and anticipation of the public towards vaccines. The overall tendency of the eight types of emotion implies the trustiness and anticipation of the public to vaccination, accompanied by the mixture of fear, sadness and anger. Critical social/international events and/or the announcements of political leaders and authorities may have potential impacts on the public opinion on vaccines. These factors, along with important topics and manual reading of popular posts on eleven key events, help identify underlying themes and validate insights from the analysis CONCLUSIONS The analyses of near real-time social media big data benefit public health authorities by enabling them to monitor public attitudes and opinions towards vaccine-related information in a geo-aware manner, address the concerns of vaccine skeptics and promote the confidence of individuals within a certain region or community, towards vaccines


Author(s):  
David Heald ◽  
Christopher Hood

This chapter conceives ‘fiscal squeeze’ as political effort to correct the public finances by raising taxes or cutting spending (or both), distinguishing different types of squeeze. It poses three questions about such squeezes, namely whether there is something special about the politics of austerity or retrenchment, whether fiscal squeeze presents credit-claiming opportunities or severe blame-avoidance challenges to elected governments, and how consequential the effects of fiscal squeezes are. It argues that to put fiscal squeezes into perspective we need to observe what else is happening in the relevant country and in the outside world, to examine what happened afterwards, and to compare fiscal squeezes with one another to see what, if any, common patterns they display. It introduces nine different cases of fiscal squeeze in democracies ranging from the early 1800s to the early 2000s. Each of those cases can be seen as puzzling or contested in some way.


2021 ◽  
pp. 98-118
Author(s):  
Sandro Galea

This chapter investigates how politics and power shape health outcomes, with special emphasis on how these forces intersect with economic inequality and the disproportionate burden of sickness experienced by low-income populations. During the spread of COVID-19, American political leadership faced a test of its ability to respond to sudden crisis. Rising to such a difficult occasion requires detailed plans for what to do in such a scenario, robust public health infrastructure, and leadership which takes decisive, data-informed action, listening to experts and communicating clearly and consistently with the public. Tragically, COVID-19 found the United States lacking in all these areas. Political leaders are in a position to mold public opinion, nudging the public mind towards new ways of thinking. The precise term for this is “shifting the Overton window.” By helping to mainstream a cavalier attitude towards COVID-19, the Trump administration shifted the Overton window towards greater acceptance of behaviors which create poorer health. The chapter then looks at the failure to adequately address race in the US. Among the factors that shape health, the area of race is particularly sensitive to political dynamics.


2020 ◽  
Vol 96 (5) ◽  
pp. 1281-1303 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carla Norrlöf

Abstract COVID-19 is the most invasive global crisis in the postwar era, jeopardizing all dimensions of human activity. By theorizing COVID-19 as a public bad, I shed light on one of the great debates of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries regarding the relationship between the United States and liberal international order (LIO). Conceptualizing the pandemic as a public bad, I analyze its consequences for US hegemony. Unlike other international public bads and many of the most important public goods that make up the LIO, the COVID-19 public bad not only has some degree of rivalry but can be made partially excludable, transforming it into more of a club good. Domestically, I demonstrate how the failure to effectively manage the COVID-19 public bad has compromised America's ability to secure the health of its citizens and the domestic economy, the very foundations for its international leadership. These failures jeopardize US provision of other global public goods. Internationally, I show how the US has already used the crisis strategically to reinforce its opposition to free international movement while abandoning the primary international institution tasked with fighting the public bad, the World Health Organization (WHO). While the only area where the United States has exercised leadership is in the monetary sphere, I argue this feat is more consequential for maintaining hegemony. However, even monetary hegemony could be at risk if the pandemic continues to be mismanaged.


1979 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 359-388 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Shonick

The “plight” of the public hospital in the United States is examined from the point of view of its relationship to the “plight” of the cities. Fifty-five large cities are examined and for 38 of these cities that have such hospitals the relationships of levels of public hospital services to local demographic, government fiscal, and tax structure conditions are analyzed. The principal findings point to the existence of some strong relationships and the implications for public policy of these associations are discussed.


2020 ◽  

This edited volume provides the reader with a concise and detailed overview of political developments in the United States since the beginning of the Trump administration. It critically analyses domestic and foreign politics as well as current events, and places them in the wider context of US politics. Its chapters present thorough analyses on domestic and foreign policy issues, for example environmental policy, media politics, economic reforms, transatlantic relations and security policy. The book discusses both the successes and failures of the Trump administration and explores how actors in Congress, the public and in political parties have influenced politics in the US. The aim is to allow for an in-depth analysis of US politics in an age dominated by incessant tweets and changing headlines. With contributions by Philipp Adorf, Florian Böller, Michael Dreyer, Christoph Haas, Steffen Hagemann, Jörg Hebenstreit, Lukas Herr, Curd Knüpfer, Simon Koschut, Christian Lammert, Betsy Leimbigler, Markus Müller, Ronja Ritthaler-Andree, Markus Siewert, David Sirakov, Oliver Thränert, Sarah Wagner, Iris Wurm.


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