Suchergebnisse

What are the prospects for meaningful reform of U.S. health care? To answer this question requires understanding why previous reform efforts (and in particular the 1993 Clinton health plan) failed—the combination of deep structural biases against large-scale public provision and the inherited constraints posed by the rise of employment-based insurance. Generally, the context is more favorable today than it was fifteen years ago. But the prospects for change hinge on learning the right lesson of history: Politics comes first. Putting politics first means avoiding the overarching mistake of the Clinton reformers: envisioning a grand policy compromise rather than hammering out a real political compromise. It also means addressing the inevitable fears of those who believe they are well protected by our eroding employment-based framework. And it means premising political strategies on the contemporary realities of hyperpolarized politics, rather than wistfully recalled images of the bipartisan politics of old.

This article shows that Andrew Moravcsik's 'nonideological' formulation of a liberal theory of international relations is itself deeply ideological both in terms of his own criteria and in terms of a broader conception of ideology. The source of this outcome lies in Moravcsik's mistaken conception of ideology. While ideological knowledge is indeed particular rather than general, it shares this feature with all political knowledge. In the political sphere, it is therefore not general knowledge that transcends the limits of ideology but rather an explicit engagement with these limits. A nonideological study of liberalism would thus require an historical account of the origins and development of liberalism in the context of its struggle with internal and external competitors. While such a study would not constitute a liberal theory of international relations in general, it would provide a general theory of liberal international relations and would thus be highly relevant in the context of a liberal world order. Adapted from the source document.

This study focuses on the four stages of Chinese relations with Latin America between 1949 and mid-2008. Ties during the 1950s were limited but directed toward a broad cross-section of individual Latin Americans. This was abruptly reversed during the Sino-Soviet dispute of the 1960s by militant advocacy of guerrilla warfare in Latin America. From the early 1970s until the death of Mao Zedong, militant Maoism was blended with a renewed opening of relations, now to military and civilian Latin governments. The final period began with Deng Xiaoping and his reforms and continues to today. This study focuses on Sino-Latin political and economic relations in general and links to the radical governments of Cuba and Venezuela in particular and weighs the impact of this expansion on Sino-U.S. relations. It concludes with comments on how China's presence may affect political and economic developments in Latin America itself and how to hone productive cooperation among China, the United States, and Latin nations. Adapted from the source document.

What happens when developing countries can no longer grow by simply exploiting their existing comparative advantages in natural resources or cheap labor? When entering the 21st century Thailand was confronted with that question, but in comparison with other East Asian countries it was also a laggard in relation to industrial technology development. Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra placed industrial upgrading high on the policy agenda. This article combines a policy cycle analysis with a political analysis. It examines the ability and willingness of the Thaksin government to design and implement an adequate and coherent set of industrial upgrading policies with a particular emphasis on implementation issues. It is argued that although many initiatives were taken during the Thaksin era, they did not add up to an adequate and coherent set of industrial upgrading policies. This was partly due to institutional legacies in the bureaucratic system but mainly a result of the logic of politics, including the nature of political coalition-building. Adapted from the source document.

The article situates a lead poisoning epidemic in Uruguay within recent processes of neoliberal and environmental reform. It argues industrial contamination and its socio-political responses have become prevalent through neoliberal-inspired transformations in production and consumption, the dismantling of state services, and increased social vulnerability to affliction. Contrary to orthodox theories of neoliberal restructuring, however, environmental concerns have provoked state bureaucratic expansion, rather than contraction, bringing about new forms of environmental governance and enabling environmental politics across social scales. Neoliberal reforms in Uruguay have resulted in geographically uneven spatial arrangements, with ecology taking on central importance in both macro-level development strategies as well as in grassroots responses to intensified or newly recognized socio-environmental hazards. This article analytically draws together neoliberalism and environmentalism, or "neoliberal nature" in Uruguay. It shows how neoliberal engagements with nature and the environment structure risk for masses of people, providing the political tools for both environmental governance and the contestation of environmentally destructive practices.Keywords: lead poisoning, neoliberalism, environmentalism, sustainable development, Uruguay

Argues that the 9 April & 19 June 2009 Amazon uprisings in Peru have redrawn the political landscape & made the socially, politically, & culturally neglected Amazonian people visible. The uprising was a response to neoliberal policies, especially proposed legislation known as the "Law of the Jungle" which would subvert the collective property regime of both lowland Amazonians & highland Andean indigenous communities. The law would also yield "uncultivated" land to lumber companies; give private investors the rights to natural resources; & allow private interests to purchase indigenous lands. The proposed laws have resulted in an alliance between Amazonian & Andean indigenous peoples. Other matters discussed include formation of the Inter-Ethnic Association for the Development of Peruvian Amazon (AIDESEP); the national day of protest called by Peru's largest trade unions & social movement umbrella groups; & the August 2008 Amazonian strike that demanded the repeal of several decrees & government negotiations with AIDESEP. The government's response of criminalizing protests is seen as proof of the protest's political impact & its threat to predatory capitalism. Adapted from the source document.

Michael Walzer has argued that `distributive justice presupposes a bounded world', but what counts as a relevant boundary? The article criticizes two arguments holding that boundaries should not count at all: a negative argument that there is no relevant difference between human relationships within and across state borders and a positive argument that principles of justice must, as a matter of logic, be universal in scope. It then examines three rival accounts of the bounded scope of distributive justice: the cooperative practice view, the political coercion view, and the common identity view. Although each has plausible arguments to support it, none turns out to give necessary and sufficient conditions for principles of distributive justice to apply. Importantly, however, the idea of social justice has emerged within political units (nation-states) that to a large extent combine the three features in question. To the extent that this overlap breaks down, we will need to develop new theories of transnational justice.

As the author states, Inequity is a constant in political life, but its salience in political discourse rise and recedes. The article surveys and explores trends and factors around the world, which pertain to democratic values and economic inequalities, as studies indicate and suggest. The author then examines the process and prospects for reducing and/or reversing economic inequalities, keeping in mind the current financial crisis, and other barriers regarding redistributionist ideals. The article also discusses the idea and speculation behind reversing democracy and the new populist wave in Latin America, and Central and Southeastern Europe. The author finds that there is a strong association between economic development and democratic consolidation regarding the trajectories will have positive effects on regime legitimacy, before discussing democracy's self-defense mechanisms and the poor, i.e. via the current situations in Venezuela and Thailand. Though the author does conclude the ironic twist on reversing inequality may pose a bigger threat to democracy's durability than to economic inequality itself. Adapted from the source document.

James Madison argued in Federalist 10 that "rival political factions" work against the public good. In contrast to Madison's pessimistic account, I suggest that factional conflict can lead to more representative public policy, and thus further the will of the people. I theorize that elected officials often seek a safe political position—one that corresponds to the preferences of the public at large—during periods of high conflict. I assess this theory in one, salient policy area, medical malpractice. I measure conflict with contributions for state candidates given by (i) the health and insurance industries, which generally support malpractice laws, and (ii) lawyers, who frequently oppose the laws. I find that group conflict matters to policy outcomes. I also find evidence that, under conditions of elevated conflict, adopted policies are more likely to move toward the general ideological preferences of the public at large. These results suggest that group conflict affects both the quantity and character of policy in the American states.

This article seeks to explain the limits of critical discourses of `global war' and biopolitical framings of `global conflict' that have arisen in response to the globalization of security discourses in the post-Cold War era. The central theoretical insight offered is that `global war' should not be understood in the framework of contested struggles to reproduce and extend the power of regulatory control. `Global war' appears `unlimited' and unconstrained precisely because it lacks the instrumental, strategic framework of `war' understood as a political-military technique. For this reason, critical analytical framings of global conflict, which tend to rely on the `scaling up' of Michel Foucault's critique of biopolitics and upon Carl Schmitt's critique of universal claims to protect the `human', elide the specificity of the international today. Today's `wars of choice', fought under the banner of the `values' of humanitarian intervention or the `global war on terror', are distinguished precisely by the fact that they cannot be grasped as strategically framed political conflicts.