Suchergebnisse

Policing is a prominent but understudied part of American politics. This article asks: Why did some, but not all, American states adopt a state police force in the early twentieth century? The state police force—a statewide policing agency with general jurisdiction over crimes throughout a state—was a prized progressive policy reform for decades. Yet many states declined to adopt the innovation. That puzzle becomes even more interesting given that all forty-eight states adopted the closely related innovation of a state highway patrol during the same period. This article applies diffusion theory to explain the origins of a familiar feature of American policing. Using a multimethod research design, I found that labor-capital struggles and regional pressures for diffusion were most important in shaping the adoption of state police forces. By contrast, adoptions of highway patrols appear to have been influenced by factors such as urbanization and fiscal capacity.

Why do presidents link issues in some international negotiations but not others? Existing explanations stress the value of linkage to negotiating states, the role of interest groups, and the costs of linking. I argue that issue linkage can be driven by prospective benefits for the negotiator. In the context of U.S. negotiating practices, presidents will press for issue linkage in their own interests. Using archival documents and taped conversations, I demonstrate that presidential interest dictated U.S. adoption or rejection of linkage between economics and security during the Nixon administration's quest to secure voluntary export restrictions on textiles from Japan, Hong Kong, South Korea, and Taiwan during 1969–71.

AbstractMany observers have argued that social media such as Facebook and Twitter will help opposition activists coordinate and overcome authoritarian regimes; others believe that such tools will have little impact. Evidence from the "Arab Spring" is inconclusive, with advocates for each position finding support in the events in Tunisia, Egypt, and elsewhere. When does social media help political movements succeed? Motivated by an experience serving as a "campaign manager" for a colleague's bid to become the Washington Post's "Next Great Pundit," I argue that relying on Internet-based social networking tools (such as Facebook and Twitter) may lead campaigns to perform more poorly when the regime is able to change the election's rules in mid-campaign. Consequently, researchers observing only the messages broadcast by social media will miss the true coordination taking place, which happens through channels unobservable to the regime. Examples from Middle Eastern politics suggest that real-world political activists recognize these distinctions and adjust their messaging accordingly.