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"Formed in 1947, the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) was the first postwar international organization dedicated to cooperation in Europe along the boundaries set by the Cold War. Linking the universalism of the UN to European regionalism, both Cold War superpowers, the USA and the Soviet Union, were founding members of the UNECE. This book provides a unique study of this important but hitherto under-researched international organization. Incorporating research on the Cold War, the history of internationalism and European integration, Stinsky weaves these different threads of historical enquiry into a single analytical narrative. Building on the League of Nations' difficult heritage, and in an increasingly challenging political environment, the UNECE's mission was to facilitate European cooperation across the Iron Curtain. With a number of competitor organizations set against it, the UNECE managed to carve out a niche for itself, setting norms and standards that still have an impact on the everyday lives of millions in Europe and beyond today. Working against an overwhelming geopolitical trend, UNECE succeeded in bridging the Cold War divide on several occasions, and maintained a broad system of contacts across the Iron Curtain."

Digital technology has often been heralded for its capacity to facilitate more interactive forms of political engagement. In the party context, many early studies found little evidence of this practice, but more recent citizen-focused interventions suggest the emergence of a more interactive approach. This article responds to such findings by asking whether party elites are embracing interactive digital tools and what explains current practices. This article conducts case studies of two parties within the United Kingdom – The Labour Party and the Green Party. Interviews are used to examine attitudes and practices in two different areas of party activity: electoral campaigning and internal governance. While there is little evidence of elite interest in the interactive potential of digital tools in the former, there is more evidence of interest in the latter area, even though barriers exist that frustrate the enactment of these ideas. Exploring the significance of parties' objectives and organizational traits, this article examines explanations for these outcomes and, in so doing, helps scholars and practitioners alike to understand, identify and tackle barriers to the adoption of interactive digital tools by party elites.

Parties in government prioritize issues that voters trust them to handle more than other parties. However, scholars disagree about whether this relationship exists because parties strategically prioritize issues that voters trust them to handle or whether voters first observe core party priorities while in government and then trust them to handle those issues. This article disentangles these two explanations, arguing that issue ownership is caused by the core priorities of elites. I evaluate this argument by leveraging the privately financed structure of US party-aligned think tanks, which provide important policy information to US political parties. I introduce new data on the policy content of 15,897 white papers published by the leading party-aligned think tanks in the United States. I find that think tanks aligned with both parties tend to distribute more policy attention to their owned issues, although the process works differently for Republicans and Democrats, and that these patterns are durable. I conclude that these results are strong evidence to support elite prioritization explanations for issue ownership, although they do not rule out other explanations.

AbstractThe United Nations has been an important forum for promoting women's rights, but women are still underrepresented at the most senior levels of its leadership. This points to persistent obstacles in reaching gender parity at the UN, despite the organization's overt commitment to this objective. Situated in feminist institutionalist insights, I argue that the institutionalization of gender inequality through practices in the UN as a gendered institution can account for continued barriers to women leadership. This makes contributions to feminist institutionalist literature in international relations by taking it to the individual microlevel. Gendered practices sustain, inform, and manifest themselves in four interconnected processes that reinforce gendered divisions of subordination: positional divides, symbols and imagery, everyday interactions, and individual identity (based on Acker 1990, 146–47; Scott 1986). These processes and their practices become accessible through the narrative analysis of semi-structured interviews conducted with senior women leaders at the UN. By recognizing their narratives as valid forms of insight into the study of the UN, this approach recognizes women leaders' agency as opposed to portraying them as numbers only.

Digital technology has often been heralded for its capacity to facilitate more interactive forms of political engagement. In the party context, many early studies found little evidence of this practice, but more recent citizen-focused interventions suggest the emergence of a more interactive approach. This article responds to such findings by asking whether party elites are embracing interactive digital tools and what explains current practices. This article conducts case studies of two parties within the United Kingdom – the Labour Party and the Green Party. Interviews are used to examine attitudes and practices in two different areas of party activity: electoral campaigning and internal governance. While there is little evidence of elite interest in the interactive potential of digital tools in the former, there is more evidence of interest in the latter area, even though barriers exist that frustrate the enactment of these ideas. Exploring the significance of parties' objectives and organizational traits, this article examines explanations for these outcomes and, in so doing, helps scholars and practitioners alike to understand, identify and tackle barriers to the adoption of interactive digital tools by party elites.

Developing the next generation of leaders in government is seen as a strategic challenge of national importance in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). This article examines the wicked nature of the UAE's leadership development challenge, identifying patterns of complexity, uncertainty, and divergence in the strategic intentions underlying current leadership development efforts. It then explores the potential impact of re-framing leadership development programmes for government employees using the concept of 'public leadership'. Responding to calls in the literature for situated and context-sensitive explorations of leadership, it draws upon recent empirical research and literature to conceptualise public leadership for the UAE before identifying three potential contributions: an orientation towards collective, public values; a connection into needed skills frameworks; and access to innovations in the design of public leadership development interventions. The article concludes that the re-framing of 'public leadership' has the potential to help make substantial progress on the UAE's strategic leadership development challenge, but is not a silver bullet. Further research on both the concept, and its impact if adopted for leadership development programmes, will be required.

In May of 2015, the European Commission released a package outlining the vision for its Better Regulation initiative, a program aimed at improving outcomes of European Union (EU) regulation. The move represents a step forward for regulatory reform in the EU, and signals a potential shift in world leadership roles among countries promoting evidence-based policy. The United States (US), once at the forefront of regulatory science and analysis, may now be lagging behind. If Better Regulation is implemented as its ambitious designers envision, this could signal a new role for the EU in advancing 21st century policymaking.Better Regulation seeks to improve the EU regulatory process in several ways. The initiative allows for more meaningful citizen and stakeholder participation at all stages of the policymaking process; it seeks to institutionalize the use of economic analysis throughout the lifecycle of a policy; and it sets up a process for reviewing the existing stock of regulations to ensure old rules do not become excessively burdensome or obsolete. All this is done in a manner intended to inform legislators as they periodically review funding levels for new and existing programs.

Debates around appropriate regulation of Internet content have become increasingly common in liberal democracies, despite the fact that relatively little is known about the actual processes of Internet content regulation. The following article studies the institutional development of content regulatory institutions in the United Kingdom and Germany to explore this phenomenon. It will be argued that the divergent paths of Internet filtering in both countries can be understood by looking at the development of the relevant regulatory institutions. As most Internet filtering and content regulation is implemented through private actors, the article will explore the relationship between public and private actors in both countries in the evolving regulatory debate. In this context it can be argued that the ability of the UK and Germany to enforce their own policy goals depends primarily on the ability of the state to make credible regulatory and legislative threats towards private actors. In conclusion it is suggested that the coercion of private sector actors is a key regulatory practice not just in online content regulation but in the wider field of Internet governance.

The October 2006 Secure Fence Act permitted the construction of over 700 miles of double reinforced fence along the United States-Mexico border. While perhaps not the one intended, the fence is having an impact: the death of migrants attempting to cross the border has increased and the construct of "illegality" is being reified, heightening the insecurity of individuals who live in the U.S. with illegal or undocumented status. In addition, the fence can be understood as a statement of exclusion that leads to the further erosion of societal unity among the people who live within the U.S. borders. This paper contextualizes the political discourse that presumes that the construction of a wall is a viable solution to national concerns about migration and security in the history of cross-border migration and legislation. In so doing it analyzes the fence by delineating its effects on undocumented migrants and the power imbalances already evident within the larger U.S. society. Finally, it concludes by asking social workers to act in accordance with their obligation to promote social justice.

This article describes the evolution of the image of China in the United States (US) during the Cold War. Aware that China–US bilateral relations have been influenced by periods of conflict and animosity, harmony and détente, the article argues that the image of China has always been embedded in a network of events—birth of the PRC (People's Republic of China [PRC], Korean War, Sino-Soviet alliance) that prevented American public opinion from developing an objective and unbiased picture of the PRC. Since 1950s, China has always been linked to the idea of the 'Yellow Peril'. Moreover, the lack of a direct contact between China and America further thwarted the opportunity of shaping a fair picture of the PRC. Although recognising that during the Cold War American political parties played a significant role in conveying a negative image of China, this article shows how media helped in strengthening Chinese stereotypes among the American public. Analysing all articles published by Time, National Geographic and Readers' Digest from 1949 to 1972, the article highlights both similarities and differences of the way in which these magazines introduced China to their readers.

The differing trajectory of agricultural policy reforms in the 1990s in the world's two most important agricultural powers, the United States and the European Community/Union (EC/EU), can only be fully understood by appreciating the role that ideas play in policy outcomes. The idea of agricultural exceptionalism underwrote a paradigm of state assistance in the US and the EC/EU. By the mid‐1980s, the state assistance paradigm was under stress, and subject to a number of anomalies in both the US and the EC. But while the paradigm was overthrown and replaced with a market liberal model in the US grain sector in the 1990s, it remained intact in the European Union. Explaining why agricultural exceptionalism and the state assistance paradigm has endured in the EU while it has withered in the US highlights three factors: the importance of the political institutional framework in locking in—or not—policy principles and instruments; the degree of fit of a sectoral policy paradigm with the broader societal ideational framework regarding appropriate relations between the state, the market, and the individual; and the capacity of a paradigm to adjust in the face of challenges and anomalies.