Research Library

The Holocaust has been a constant presence and a pervasive influence in my life and work. In this chapter, I reflect on my personal experience in confronting the Holocaust as a social scientist – which is, of course, my particular way of confronting it as a human being. The Holocaust has had an impact – in both obvious and subtle ways – not only what I chose to study as a social scientist but also on my very choice of this profession as my lifelong career.

A Research Report from the Organizing Religious Work Project, Hartford Institute for Religion Research Hartford Seminary

The well–being of every community depends on harnessing the contributions of its citizens. Sustaining viable communities requires places where people can gather, work together, and learn to trust one another – where we generate what Robert Putnam has called "social capital."1 We depend on the neighborhood associations and political action groups, parent associations and leagues of civil rights activists, as well as the churches, synagogues, and mosques that provide places of concern, belonging and action. This is a report on the work being done by such religious organizations and their community partners in seven representative communities in the U.S..

In a hierarchical relationship, by definition, the superior is entitled to exert influence on the subordinate and the subordinate is obligated to accept the superior’s influence. These rights and duties, however, are not unlimited. Ethical use of influence presupposes certain intraorganizational and extraorganizational limits on the demands and requests that the superior is entitled to make and that the subordinate is expected – at times, in fact, permitted – to carry out. To set the stage for discussion of such limits, I first review some of the moral principles according to which influence attempts must be assessed and present a typology that distinguishes among different means of influence.

How are constitutional rules sustained? The general problem concerns how to structure the political game so that all the players – elected officials, the military, economic actors, and citizens – have incentives to respect the rules. In this paper, we investigate this problem in the context of how the institutions of federalism are sustained. A central design problem of federalism is how to create institutions that at once grant the central government enough authority to provide central goods and police the sub–units, but not so much that it usurps all of public authority. Using a game theoretic model of institutional choice, we show that, to survive, federal structures must be self–enforcing: the center and the states must have incentives to fulfill their obligations within the limits of federal bargains. Our model investigates the tradeoffs among the benefits from central goods provision, the ability of the center to impose penalties for non–compliance, and the costs of states to exit. We also show that federal constitutions can act as coordinating devices or focal solutions that allow the units to coordinate on trigger strategies in order to police the center. We apply our approach to a range of federations, including the United States under the Articles and the Constitution, modern China, and Russia.

While governments have access to multiple tax instruments, studies of the effect of tax policy on the location of multinational investment typically focus exclusively on host country corporate income tax rates and their interaction with home country tax rules. This paper examines the impact of indirect (non–income) taxes on foreign direct investment by American multinational firms, using confidential affiliate–level data that permit the introduction of controls for parent companies and host countries. Indirect tax burdens significantly exceed foreign income tax obligations for these firms and appear to influence strongly their behavior. Estimates imply that 10 percent higher indirect tax rates are associated with 1.3 percent lower assets, 3.1 percent lower property plant and equipment, and 1.6 percent smaller trade surpluses with parent companies. Corporate income tax rate differences have comparable effects. The estimated combined effects of indirect and income taxes are similar to earlier estimates of investment responses to income taxes, which raises the possibility that some of the effects commonly attributed to income taxes also reflect the impact of indirect taxes.

Most explanations of female under-representation in democratic polities emphasize either demand for female representatives (say, as a function of female labor force participation), the political mobilization of women, or overt or covert discrimination by male-dominated political organizations. We offer a different—though not necessarily competing—explanation based on an analysis of democratic politics as a particular type of career market. Because seniority is an important factor in legislative effectiveness in candidatecentered systems, career interruptions for the sake of childcare and other family work hurts female aspiring politicians more seriously in majoritarian systems than in PR systems where political parties control the policy platform and constituency service is a minor consideration in the careers of candidates. We find support for this explanation from several sources. First, we find that personalistic electoral systems penalize females (following the rank ordering technique provided by Carey and Shugart 1995). Second, we find that in countries with mixed electoral systems women do better in seats elected by PR than by SMP.

It is widely accepted, not least in the agreement establishing the World Trade Organization (WTO), that the purpose of the world trade regime is to raise living standards all around the world — rather than to maximize trade per se. Increasingly, however, the WTO and multilateral lending agencies have come to view these two goals — promoting development and maximizing trade — as synonymous, to the point where the latter easily substitutes for the former. The net result is a confounding of ends and means. Trade has become the lens through which development is perceived, rather than the other way around.

Imagine a trading regime in which trade rules are determined so as to maximize development potential, particularly that of the poorest nations in the world. Instead of asking, "How do we maximize trade and market access?" negotiators would ask, "How do we enable countries to grow out of poverty?" Would such a regime look different than the one that exists currently?

The answer depends on how one interprets recent economic history and the role that trade openness plays in the course of economic development. The prevailing view in G7 capitals and multilateral lending agencies is that economic growth is dependent upon integration into the global economy. Successful integration in turn requires both enhanced market access in the advanced industrial countries and a range of institutional reforms at home (ranging from legal and administrative reform to safety nets) to render economic openness viable and growth – promoting. This can be ca lled the "enlightened standard view" – enlightened because of its recognition that there is more to integration than simply lowering tariff and non–tariff barriers to trade, and standard because it represents the conventional wisdom.In this conception, the WTO ’s focus on expanding market access and deepening integration through the harmonization of a wide range of "trade–related" practices is precisely what development requires.

This paper presents an alternative account of economic development, one which questions the centrality of trade and trade policy and emphasizes instead the critical role of domestic institutional innovations. It argues that economic growth is rarely sparked by imported blueprints and opening up the economy is hardly ever critical at the outset. Initial reforms instead tend to combine unconventional institutional innovations with some elements from the orthodox recipe. They are country–specific, based on local knowledge and experimentation. They are targeted to domestic investors and tailored to domestic institutional realities.

To what extent has globalization been a factor in Indonesia's economic turmoil? This essay addresses the question by reviewing the experience of the Indonesian economy as it evolved in the decade before the crisis and since the crisis hit. It starts by reviewing the policies adopted by the Indonesian government as it sought to integrate the economy more closely into the global market place and reviews the outcome of this earlier policy shift. The paper then turns to assess the impact of the Asian financial crisis but broadens the scope to include a review of domestic political and social stability. It traces the country's slow and halting movement towards recovery highlighting the major reasons why the economic collapse was so severe and why the recovery process has been slower than in neighboring countries. It also briefly reviews "pro" and "con" globalization arguments, and assesses the role globalization played in Indonesia's economic collapse, before concluding with lessons that can be drawn from the Indonesian experience. The author also looks at the role of the IMF in managing the crisis drawing upon his own role negotiating with the IMF during the critical period in Indonesia's economic and political history.

This article introduces a theory of ethnic war. It argues that the likelihood of ethnic violence is largely a function of how the principal antagonists—a state and its dissatisfied ethnic minority—think about territory. Attempts to negotiate a resolution short of war will fail when: (1) the ethnic minority demands sovereignty over the territory it occupies, and (2) the state views that territory as indivisible. Ethnic war is less likely to break out if only one of these conditions is met, and very unlikely if neither condition is met. The article first introduces a theory to explain ethnic war. It then presents a statistical analysis of the theory's key variables and tests the theory's causal logic by comparing Moscow's interactions with Tatarstan and with Chechnya. The article concludes with three implications: ethnic groups are rational; that certain settlement patterns will not be amenable to outside intervention; and partition may not be a good policy option to end violence.

The answer to the question posed in the title is "yes." Using a total of 128,106 answers to a survey question about "happiness," we find that there is a large, negative and significant effect of inequality on happiness in Europe but not in the US. There are two potential explanations. First, Europeans prefer more equal societies (inequality belongs in the utility function for Europeans but not for Americans). Second, social mobility is (or is perceived to be) higher in the US so being poor is not seen as affecting future income. We test these hypotheses by partitioning the sample across income and ideological lines. There is evidence of "inequality–generated" unhappiness in the US only for a sub–group of rich leftists. In Europe inequality makes the poor unhappy, as well as the leftists. This favors the hypothesis that inequality affects European happiness because of their lower social mobility (since no preference for equality exists amongst the rich or the right). The results help explain the greater popular demand for government to fight inequality in Europe relative to the US.

One dimension of global income inequality swamps all others, the inequality due to differences in living standards among nations. This is primarily the result of differential rates of national economic growth. This paper examines current conditions, then looks at how global inequality has evolved over the past 50 years. After an examination of the causal factors that affect this inequality, it engages in a few speculative observations about what the next half–century might bring.

Is the political support for welfare policy higher or lower in less egalitarian societies? We answer the question using a model of welfare policy as publicly financed insurance that pays benefits in a redistributive manner. When voters have both redistributive and insurance motives for supporting welfare spending, the effect of inequality depends on how benefits are targeted. Greater inequality increases support for welfare expenditures when benefits are targeted to the employed but decreases support when benefits are targeted to those without earnings. With endogenous targeting, support for benefits to those without earnings declines as inequality increases, whereas support for aggregate spending is a V–shaped function of inequality. Statistical analysis of welfare expenditures in advanced industrial societies provides support for key empirical implications of the model.

We study the organization of federations – or international unions – which decide together the provision of certain public goods. The benefit of centralization depends on the internalization of the spillovers, that of decentralization on the adaptability to local differences. We individuate as an optimal institutional design a form of fiscal federalism based on decentralization of expenditures and a system of subsidies and transfers between countries. Since this solution can be politically unfeasible, we study institutional compromises between a centralized federation and a decentralized one. "Flexible unions" and federal mandates in which both the state and federal levels are involved in providing public goods are typically superior to complete centralization and politically feasible. Finally, we study the effects of a qualified majority voting rule in a centralized system: we find that it can be a useful device to correct a bias toward "excessive" union–level activism.

This essay presents what we believe to be the consensus among political scientists with regard to the analysis of the politics of international economic relations. The review we present is not intended to be exhaustive. We do not, for example, attempt to include the work of scholars who challenge the positivist approach that is assumed here. We believe that this survey does, nonetheless, reflect the principal focuses of North American scholarship in IPE. Most scholarship published in the principal journals of the profession and the sub–discipline, and most graduate training and research, are within the range of the theoretical and empirical topics and approaches presented here.

My primary focus is on the mechanisms that drive regulatory harmonization in international finance. Just as we would like to know whether firms have arrived at similar prices for a good through collusion or competition, we want to know whether harmonization occurs through political or market pressures. My argument also informs a discussion about whether international institutions will play a role in the process of harmonization, and if so, what that role will be. In short, the dependent variable of this study is primarily harmonization processes. By focusing on process mechanisms, I provide a theoretical and practical explanation of the relative roles of market incentives, political pressure, and multilateral institutions in the coordination of regulatory policies.

This paper, part of a multi–author project evaluating the evolution of theoretical paradigms in international relations (IR), evaluates the Liberal paradigm form a Lakatosian perspective. There is a distinct "Liberal" Scientific Research Program (SRP) in the study of international relations, based on three core assumptions. These Assumptions are shared by Ideational, Commercial and Republican variants of Liberal theory. The Liberal SRP is clearly progressive in the Lakatosian sense, that is, it explains a broad and expanding domain of empirical phenomena more accurately than competing research programs – and does so in such a way as to meet the specific Lakatosian criteria of "heuristic", "temporal" and "background theory" novelty. Liberal theory is thus among the most promising, perhaps the most fruitful and promising, of contemporary paradigms in IR theory. Yet legitimate doubts can be raised about the utility of Lakatosian theory as a means to evaluate research in IR. In particular, one might question its view that theories from competing paradigms are mutually excusive, which encourages one–on–one testing of unicausal theories, rather than estimation of the proper (and sometimes overlapping) scope of paradigms, or the construction of multi–paradigmatic syntheses. Given the current stage of IR theory, these two tasks may offer greater explanatory insight into world politics than unicausal theory testing. This conclusion does not undermine, however, the positive assessment of Liberal theory, which both supports clear empirical scope conditions and can play a foundational role in fruitful multi-theory syntheses.

In a comparative study of Japanese and European trade policy, this paper explains how the institutional context of negotiations affects political outcomes. I examine two pathways by which negotiation structure promotes liberalization: issue linkage and legal framing. Broadening stakes through issue linkage mobilizes domestic lobbying for liberalization. Use of GATT/WTO trade law in dispute settlement legitimizes arguments favoring liberalization. This study on international institutions addresses the theoretical debates in the field regarding how interdependence and the legalization of international affairs change the nature of state interaction.

I test my argument in the sensitive area of agricultural trade policy. Statistical analysis of U.S. negotiations with Japan and the EU from 1970 to 1999 indicates that an institutionalized issue linkage makes liberalization more likely for both Japan and Europe. This is the most important source of leverage for bringing major policy reform. However, the effect of GATT/WTO legal pressure interacts with the political context. I conclude that domestic political processes make Japan more responsive to pressure from trade rules than the European Union.

A straightforward extension of the standard Stigler–Peltzman model of regulation, coupled with the Taagepera–Shugart analysis of electoral–system effects, suggests: (a) that the greater the seat–vote elasticities of majoritarian electoral systems will tilt policy in favor of consumers, while proportional systems should strengthen producers; and (b)that the pro–consumer bias of majoritarian systems should be manifested in systematically lower prices. Empirical tests, controlling for structural determinants of national price levels established in the earlier "law of one price" literature, establish majoritarian electoral systems as a significant and robust predictor, lowering national price levels in the mean OECD country by between ten and seventeen percent.

Markets are so routinely regarded as fundamentally economic institutions that long–standing and quite varied anthropological perspectives on them are often overlooked. Anthropological attention focuses on patterns of individual and small–group exchange relationships within specific markets, on institutional structures that organize markets, and on the social, political, and spatial hierarchies through which markets link social classes, ethnic groups, or regional societies into larger systems. Anthropological studies of markets analyze them as nodes of complex social processes and generators of cultural activity as well as realms for economic exchange. Anthropologists' interests in markets, therefore, are partially distinct from – although certainly overlapping with – the concerns of economists.