scholarly journals “Soft” Factors in Pandemic Response: Comparative Intercountry Analysis

2020 ◽  
pp. 1770-1780
Author(s):  
Nataliya A. Kravchenko ◽  
Almira T. Yusupova
Keyword(s):  
Social Activity ◽  
The United States ◽  
Response Strategies ◽  
Pandemic Response ◽  
Cultural Code ◽  
Response Policy ◽  
Masculine Culture ◽  
Soft Factors

The article discusses the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic response that has engulfed most countries, highlights and analyses the response strategies adopted by governments. Using the example of the United States, Russia, Great Britain, Spain, Italy, Germany, Japan and China, the authors have analysed the adopted restrictive regimes, models of enforcement to comply with them, schemes and tools to support the economy. According to open sources, the authors estimated the duration and severity of the restrictive regimes for economic and social activity, the severity of punishments for violations of restrictive regimes, the scale of assistance to the population and business, and compliance with restrictive regimes. The article pays a special attention to identifying the role of “soft” factors, such as trust and national culture, in the implementation of the pandemic response policy. The authors used the index of ethnic fractionalization to characterize the homogeneity of society. The article confirms that more collectivist, long-term and less masculine cultures tend to strictly comply with restrictive regimes, but the penalties imposed in countries with such a cultural code have been more severe. The analysis showed that in countries with a more individualized and masculine culture, large packages of support for the population and business were allocated with a moderate severity of punishment for non-compliance with restrictions. In these countries, the tension and discontent of the population, which had accumulated during the period of the restrictive regimes, became more pronounced. The results obtained give grounds to assert that “soft” factors play an important role in shaping the policy of responding to the threat of a pandemic; the strategies chosen by countries in an explicit or implicit form reflect national, cultural and institutional characteristics

The Artist as Environmentalist: Ansel Adams, Policy Entrepreneurship, and the Growth of Environmentalism

Public Voices ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 9
Author(s):  
John C. Morris
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Policy Process ◽  
The United States ◽  
Policy Entrepreneur ◽  
Policy Entrepreneurship ◽  
Ansel Adams

The role of the policy entrepreneur in the policy process forms an integral part of our understanding of the formulation and implementation of policy in the United States. For all its theoretical importance, however, little work has been done to develop or test the propositions of entrepreneurship offered by Kingdon (1984). By examining the life of Ansel Adams (1902-1984), this paper explores more fully the concept of policy entrepreneurship and seeks to develop a more robust concept that accounts for the long-term, diffuse series of activities that precede Kingdon’s “stream coupling” in the policy process. The analysis suggests that such an approach offers some promise for capturing a broader spectrum of policy activity.

Reshaping the Economic Structure in Argentina: The Role of External Debt during the Macri Administration (2015–2019)

2021 ◽  
pp. 048661342097642
Author(s):  
Juan E. Santarcángelo ◽  
Juan Manuel Padín
Keyword(s):  
External Debt ◽  
Economic Structure ◽  
The United States ◽  
Jel Classification ◽  
Financial Capital ◽  
Economic Policies ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Long Term Effects

Argentina’s right-wing shift in the 2015 presidential election concluded twelve years of center-left rule. The elected president, Mauricio Macri, claimed that the economy would experience normalization of existing imbalances and recover its strength in a “new political era.” However, the new administration quickly restored the dominance of neoliberal economic policies through a comprehensive set of initiatives, which centrally included the return to international financial debt and equity markets and submission to the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) rules. This article analyzes Argentina’s external-debt-growth process and discusses its objectives and long-term effects. This paper posits that the indebtedness process carried out by the Macri administration—and its modality—not only increased the relevance of financial capital in the Argentine economy but also structurally conditioned any future nonorthodox alternative path of development. This outcome cannot be understood without taking into account the deliberate role of the United States, the IMF, and the top companies that operate in Argentina, as well as the complicity of many political sectors. JEL Classification: H63, F34, F63

Planning or Improvisation

2020 ◽  
pp. 116-120
Author(s):  
Alasdair Roberts
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
The United States ◽  
Unintended Consequences ◽  
Governance Strategies ◽  
The Face ◽  
Imperfect Knowledge

This chapter assesses the role of planning in the design of governance strategies. Enthusiasm for large-scale planning—also known as overall, comprehensive, long-term, economic, or social planning—boomed and collapsed in twentieth century. At the start of that century, progressive reformers seized on planning as the remedy for the United States' social and economic woes. By the end of the twentieth century, enthusiasm for large-scale planning had collapsed. Plans could be made, but they were unlikely to be obeyed, and even if they were obeyed, they were unlikely to work as predicted. The chapter then explains that leaders should make plans while being realistic about the limits of planning. It is necessary to exercise foresight, set priorities, and design policies that seem likely to accomplish those priorities. Simply by doing this, leaders encourage coordination among individuals and businesses, through conversation about goals and tactics. Neither is imperfect knowledge a total barrier to planning. There is no “law” of unintended consequences: it is not inevitable that government actions will produce entirely unexpected results. The more appropriate stance is modesty about what is known and what can be achieved. Plans that launch big schemes on brittle assumptions are more likely to fail. Plans that proceed more tentatively, that allow room for testing, learning, and adjustment, are less likely to collapse in the face of unexpected results.

Iran: Adversaries and Nuclear Reversal

2020 ◽  
pp. 152-179
Author(s):  
Rupal N. Mehta
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
International Community ◽  
Window Of Opportunity ◽  
Study Analysis ◽  
Nuclear Program ◽  
Case Study Analysis ◽  
Comprehensive Plan

This chapter presents an in-depth case study analysis of the Iranian nuclear program from its inception to the country’s ultimate decision to renounce its nuclear ambitions in 2015. The chapter begins by examining the trajectory of the Iranian nuclear program and some of the initial attempts by the international community to persuade Iran to end it. Using archival and interview-based data, this analysis demonstrates the powerful role of inducements offered by the United States and other members of the international community, in conjunction with the election of President Rouhani, that provided a window of opportunity that ultimately led to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). The chapter concludes with an update about the long-term viability of the Iran deal.

Property Rights in American Economic History

2018 ◽  
pp. 168-194
Author(s):  
Gary Libecap
Keyword(s):  
Property Rights ◽  
Economic History ◽  
Private Property ◽  
The United States ◽  
Equity And Efficiency ◽  
Mineral Rights ◽  
The Commons ◽  
Efficiency Effects

This chapter examines the development of private property rights to natural resources in the United States as a bottom-up or top-down process. Long-term equity and efficiency effects are highlighted. The role of property rights in avoiding the tragedy of the commons is illustrated. The property rights examined are those to farmland, timberland, as well as grazing rights and mineral rights. Each emerged or were constrained in different ways with important long-term economic and social effects in American economic development. The role of the rectangular survey in deliminating rights to surface land to reduce tenure uncertainty and to promote land and capital markets is described in detail.

Caring for Elder Parents: A Comparative Evaluation of Family Leave Laws

2013 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 501-513 ◽  
Author(s):  
Y. Tony Yang ◽  
Gilbert Gimm
Keyword(s):  
Life Expectancy ◽  
Comparative Evaluation ◽  
Long Term Care ◽  
The United States ◽  
Term Care ◽  
Medical Leave ◽  
Demographic Shifts ◽  
Depression Era

The call for family and medical leave reform in the United States was largely the result of sweeping demographic shifts that occurred in the workforce after the 1950s, coupled with an ever-increasing life expectancy and changing social norms concerning the role of women as caretakers. By the early 1990s, the number of women in the workforce had nearly tripled from 1950. During that same period, life expectancy increased by six years for males and seven for females. Meanwhile, the first wave of the Depression-era generation began to reach the age of retirement. In short, the parents of American workers were living longer and retiring in greater numbers while more women, who were more likely to be informal caregivers, decided to join the workforce. As a result, many families with ill or elder parents began to turn to institutional long-term care.

School Physical Education, Extracurricular Sports, and Lifelong Active Living

2008 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 155-166 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jason Bocarro ◽  
Michael A. Kanters ◽  
Jonathan Casper ◽  
Scott Forrester
Keyword(s):  
Physical Education ◽  
Positive Impact ◽  
The United States ◽  
After School ◽  
Active Living ◽  
Physically Active ◽  
Obesity Epidemic ◽  
Intramural Sports

The purpose of this article is to examine the role of school-based extracurricular initiatives in facilitating immediate and long-term positive impact on physical activity, healthy behavior, and obesity in children. A critique of the role of various sports-related initiatives that have been developed to address the obesity epidemic currently facing children within the United States is provided, with a specific emphasis on intramural sports as a preferred mechanism to encourage long-term involvement in sport and physically active pursuits. The article presents support for the notion that a physical education curriculum that includes intramurals before, during, and after school can help children learn the skills to enjoy participation in a variety of sports designed to facilitate lifelong active living.

Bereavement: An Incomplete Rite of Passage

2008 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 153-173 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Hunter
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
Rite Of Passage ◽  
Identity Change ◽  
Emotional Needs ◽  
Funeral Ritual ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
Funerary Rituals ◽  
Anthropological Fieldwork

A bereavement ritual observed during anthropological fieldwork in Peru gives basis to this article which asserts that bereavement has become an incomplete rite of passage. The article reviews the role of ritual and rites of passage, examines other anthropologic examples of death and bereavement rituals, and identifies the lack of post-funeral ritual for many bereaved individuals in the United States. While funerary rituals which end with the funeral and burial of the dead are helpful in providing immediate structure for the bereaved, they are not congruent with the long-term emotional needs and reconstruction of meaning within grief. The author acknowledges value of both private ritual and reunions of the community of mourners, and recommends that bereavement counselors and/or the funeral industry offer to help bereaved construct a “ritual of remembrance and new meaning” after time has allowed them to move along in meaning reconstruction processes of making sense, finding benefits, and identity change.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document