Governing by Polling Public Opinion: A Potentially Dangerous Idea for Our Healthcare System

Kaplan and Baron-Epel advanced the notion that findings from public surveys should inform health policy decision making with respect to funding allocation. This approach to governing can draw large support from the populace, legislators, and the academic community alike. Yet, it has the potential to undermine evidence-based health policy decision making. In this paper, I delineate six drawbacks and several related corollaries drawn from historical events that have occurred during the recent coronavirus pandemic. These examples illustrate the dire downstream consequences (e.g., disregard for the needs of minority groups; diminution of critical services not broadly supported by the public; promotion of fringe group or foreign actor agendas; advancement of poorly informed opinions; shift from a forward-thinking, proactive perspective to a retroactive one; and reliance on potentially biased estimates) that may follow if public surveys become embedded in healthcare policy decision making. Without solutions to the drawbacks delineated in this paper, health policy driven by public opinion is likely to cause more harm than good.

Government Agencies and Private Companies Undertake Actions to Limit the Impact of Foreign Influence and Interference in the 2020 U.S. Election

After Russia targeted the 2016 presidential election, U.S. government authorities repeatedly warned about the prospects of foreign interference in and influence on the 2020 election. Throughout the fall of 2020, government officials and private companies took a number of actions to address threats to the election, including issuing public warnings, imposing sanctions, and taking down foreign government-linked accounts. In a declassified report released in March 2021, the intelligence community concluded that although Russia and Iran carried out influence operations to affect the election, there are “no indications that any foreign actor attempted to alter any technical aspect of the voting process in the 2020 US elections, including voter registration, casting ballots, vote tabulation, or reporting results.” In December 2020, however, U.S. cybersecurity firm FireEye disclosed that it suffered a breach by a nation-state sponsored actor, and numerous U.S. government agencies soon revealed that they too had been breached in intrusions widely attributed to Russia.

Conflict Externalization and the Quest for Peace: Theory and Case Evidence from Colombia

I study the relationship between the likelihood of a violent domestic conflict and the risk that such a conflict “externalizes” (i.e. spreads to another country by creating an international dispute). I consider a situation in which a domestic conflict between a government and a rebel group has the potential to externalize. I show that the risk of externalization increases the likelihood of a peaceful outcome, but only if the government is sufficiently powerful relative to the rebels, the risk of externalization is sufficiently high, and the foreign actor who can intervene in the domestic conflict is sufficiently uninterested in material costs and benefits. I show how this model helps to understand the recent and successful peace process between the Colombian government and the country’s most powerful rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

Autocratic Stability in the Shadow of Foreign Threats

Autocrats confront a number of threats to their power, some from within the regime and others from foreign actors. To understand how these threats interact and affect autocratic survival, we build a model where an autocratic leader can be ousted by a domestic opposition and a foreign actor. We concentrate on the impact that foreign threats have on the stability of autocratic leadership and show that the presence of foreign threats increases the probability an autocrat retains power. Focusing on two cases, one where a foreign actor and the domestic opposition have aligned interests and one where their interests are misaligned, we elucidate two distinct mechanisms. First, when interests are aligned, autocrats are compelled to increase domestic security to alleviate international pressure. Second, when interests are misaligned, autocrats exploit the downstream threat of foreign intervention to deter domestic threats. We also show that autocrats have incentives to cultivate ideological views hostile to broader interests among politically influential domestic actors.

Policy Implications

Although today’s civil conflicts are very different from those of previous generations, it is not a foregone conclusion that today’s Western-affiliated rebel groups will suffer defeat. While with any new conflict the task becomes more and more difficult, it is still possible to outcompete other groups in the rebel bloc, at least right now. On the other hand, it is hard to imagine a victory of a Western-oriented, startup armed group without significant outside support, because they lack experience and resources. At the same time, international actors with a different agenda also don’t want to miss a chance to use their money, experience, and knowledge to increase their sphere of influence through proxy groups in war-torn countries. That, in sum, makes this generation’s civil wars a highly competitive market for outside supporters. I this chapter the author discusses how this knowledge can be used to terminate a conflict more quickly by making foreign government intervention more effective—in particular, how a foreign actor could (1) choose a group in the rebel bloc to support; (2) persuade the group to accept support; and (3) provide the proper help at the right time in order to empower one group at the expense of others within the rebel camp.

Promoting Successful and Sustainable Foreign Direct Investment through Political Risk Mitigation Strategies

Political risk is a critical component of international trade and it is often the source of concern for businesses willing to invest abroad in light of the limited ability of legal instruments to protect them against it. That is why further political risk minimization has traditionally been done through investor-oriented strategies that maximize the interests of the investor. These interests sometimes clash with the interests of the State: the State seeks to promote sustainable development interests while the private investor is pursuing its own interests. These are the situations where it is necessary to avoid conflict by aligning the interests of the foreign actor with the local polity, which can be done through mutually beneficial (i.e. both for states and for private trade actors) political risk mitigation strategies. In this regard, this paper demonstrates how such strategies can incentivize international trade actors to undertake commercial operations in a sustainable manner.

Cine, videoclip americano y videoclip japonés: la dirección de arte como hilo conductor. El caso de Not another teen movie

La relación entre cine y videoclip es una cuestión estudiada por los adeptos tanto de una como de otra parte de la ecuación. Estas relaciones suelen abarcar el sentido técnico de ambas materias en tanto que una se nutre de la otra (o la otra de la una); el sentido narrativo donde en ocasiones entra en juego también el propio teatro; el cultural de por qué estas interferencias que con frecuencia ocurren en el ámbito técnico se producen; y, cómo no, el estético.Sin embargo, se va a dar por sentada de antemano la relación entre el cine y el videoclip en todos estos sentidos al coger como caso un clip que, con motivos promocionales, se ha extraído a conciencia de una película. Este es, el caso del videoclip Tainted Love (2002), protagonizado por Marilyn Manson y dirigido por Phillip G. Atwell, y de la película No es otra estúpida película americana (Not another teen movie, Joel Gallen, 2001). De esta forma, el análisis se focalizará en cómo todos estos “puentes” (técnico, cultural, visual, narrativo) entre uno y otro terminan condensándose al servicio de la imagen y el simbolismo, para volverse a repetir con un motivo meramente artístico1 por un tercer actor promocional: el grupo de visual kei japonés The Gazette, con la canción que da nombre a su videoclip Inside Beast (Toshihiko Imai, 2013).Abstract:The relationship between film and video is a matter studied by adherents of both one and the other part of the equation. These relationships tend to cover the technical sense of both subjects while a thrives on the other (or another one); the narrative sense that sometimes enters the game also the theater itself; cultural sense of why these interferences that often occur in the technical field are produced; and, of course, aesthetic sense, also closely linked to the latter, among others.However, it is taken for granted in advance the relationship between film and video in all these respects to take as a clip case, for promotional purposes, has been extracted from a film confirmed conscience. This is the case of the video Tainted Love (2002), starring Marilyn Manson and directed by Phillip G. Atwell, and film Not Another Teen Movie (Not Another Teen Movie, Joel Gallen, 2001) which is extracts the first. Thus, the analysis will focus on how all these "bridges" (technical, cultural, visual, narrative) between the two end up condensing the service image and symbolism, to go to repeat with a purely artistic motif for Promotional third foreign actor visual kei group The Gazette, with the title track to his video Inside Beast (Toshihiko Imai, 2013).Palabras clave:cine; videoclip; dirección de arte; visual kei; publicidadKeywords:Cinema; Videoclip; Art Direction; Visual Kei; Advertising