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Presidential rhetoric has always been an important element of presidential leadership, and political scholars have learned a great deal about the rhetorical strategies presidents have used over the years to communicate with the public. Often, this research focuses on verbal or written speech, which is clearly the most obvious and easily studied aspect of rhetoric, but in the field of presidential rhetoric this is where the examination often ends. In this paper I suggest that political scientists should look beyond the rhetoric of speech and look at the other strategies available to leaders, such as visual imagery. Visual imagery can be very powerful rhetorically, and this paper will examine how this strategy was useful to candidates during the presidential campaign of 2008. In fact, images can sometimes be more persuasive than words, because they can communicate messages that are not appropriate to put into words. In general, the study of presidential rhetoric would be enriched by expanding the prevailing understanding of rhetoric beyond speeches to include all types of persuasive behavior. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

President George W. Bush’s Management Agenda (PMA) for federal agencies has placed greater attention on improving performance and obtaining results. This paper examines the results of three different efforts to assess federal agencies' organizational attributes. The OMB Scorecard, the PART, and the BPTW survey all provide the public with valuable resources of agency performance and organizational orientation. Utilizing different methodological approaches, this papers attempts to answer three interrelated questions based on the results of those three assessment systems: (1) How do agency performance results differ when using top-down versus bottom-up assessment systems? (2) Are federal agencies and employees clustered and segmented by their performance patterns and orientation based on the three performance assessment systems? That is, what types of BPTW-PART-Scorecard groups or clusters will exist in federal agencies? And, finally (3) What are the strengths and weaknesses of each assessment system based on the results of (1) and (2)? The paper concludes by proposing a more integrated performance assessment system in U.S. federal agencies. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

President Woodrow Wilson and the Senate's conflict over the ratification of the 1919 Versailles Treaty has been a prolonged issue among scholars. Yet existing studies owe such debt to historians or judicial scholars rather than political scientists. On the other hand, this paper lays on the interest of mandate politics. It brings the conflict, later led to the national public tour, to enlighten the Senate's new feature of claiming the directly mandated power after changing its electoral system through the Seventeenth Amendment in 1913. By tracing how the direct election had influenced both Wilson and the Senate's recognition of their power, it offers a new linkage of explanation regarding institutions of the treaty fight. The paper draws to conclusion that: first, Wilson's choice of appealing to the American people was in fact based on his original perception of popular presidential mandate. Second, the Seventeenth Amendment which brought the direct election of the senators had enabled senators' claim of the directly mandated power and their anti-league speech tour following the President's. Third, Senators' direct claim of power had also influenced the President's perception of the Senate thus influencing Wilson's public tour strategy. By tracing how this change of election process had influenced mandate perceptions and understandings of popular support, it argues that the Amendment had increased conflict potentials between two branches regarding the League of Nations covenant. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Power Transition Theory postulates that peaceful transitions in the international order are a function of degrees of satisfaction. This paper assesses the likelihood of US-Sino conflict through an assessment of China’s satisfaction with the current international order. It explores first the political-military order, particularly the global balance of power, American military bases and influence in Asia, and China’s diplomatic position in Asia and the world. It also explores China’s satisfaction with the current economic order. While China has done extremely well under this system, experiencing rapid economic growth over close to three decades, its position in the latest Doha Round of trade talks brings its satisfaction into question. In addition to assessing convergence on security and economic satisfaction, this paper traces the rudiments of cultural satisfaction, assessing the degree that China and the US may share common cultural expectations of the coming world order. Exploring all these questions will provide insight on whether China will wish to dramatically change the world order in ways that are inimical to US interests. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Parents, once again, have been given a high-profile role in the 2008 electoral campaign by both the parties and the media. Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s status as a working mother seems to have reinvigorated the parties’ attempts to appeal to parents and portray themselves as the true champions of the American family. Reflecting the environment of the 2008 election, the ‘Soccer Moms’, ‘NASCAR Dads’, and ‘Security Moms’ have given way to ‘Mortgage Moms’ and ‘Hockey Moms’. In this paper, we will employ content and contextual analysis to examine the use of parent and family themes by the parties, their presidential nominees, and the media in the 2008 election. We will place the results in historical perspective by comparing them to our prior research in which we analyzed platforms, nomination speeches, and print election coverage, from 1952 through 2004â€"and revealed a dramatic politicization of parenthood over time. This paper will explore whether the politicization of parenthood reaches new heights in 2008 and whether elite rhetoric about mothers, fathers, and families represents change or continuity from previous elections. It will also provide insights into the theoretical issues of party and issue evolution. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our objective in this paper is to establish the relevance of informal networks in the diffusion of innovations among members of the U.S. House of Representatives. We do this through a cross sectional analysis of the variation of the quality of members' official Internet home pages, focusing in particular on the timeliness of the information each site makes available. We take timeliness as a good proxy for each office's organizational attention to using this form of communication technology. In this paper, we test for the diffusion of this attention to websites through communication among congressional state delegations. That is, we test whether a member is more (less) likely to attend to her website if others in her state delegation also are more (less) attentive. The inferential challenge in any spatial diffusion study is to distinguish between a spatial diffusion process from effects that merely result from spatial heterogeneity, or unmeasured confounding variables that are spatially correlated with the patterns of communication. We use nonlinear conditional autoregressive models to test for the presence of spatial heterogeneity by making use of district adjacency data, and exploit the (partially) ignorable state boundaries that separate some adjacent districts into different states to distinguish between diffusion and heterogeneity. Using this estimation strategy, and holding constant other determinants of website quality, we find that attention to websites is strongly driven by communication within state delegations, and especially so among co-partisans within states. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Oliver Wendell Holmes famously said '[e]very idea is an incitement,' and that, "[t]he only difference between the expression of an opinion and an incitement in the narrower sense is the speaker's enthusiasm for the result." Building off of Holmes, we suggest that the Court move away from incitement-based tests, including the Clear and Present Danger and Brandenburg standards, and create a new and more narrowly-tailored ex ante category to be beyond the reach of First Amendment protection. In order to do this the Court must move away from analyzing speech that is 'close to' crime as a matter of proximity, degree, or close temporal connection. Instead, the Court must focus on speech that is substantially and integrally related to the successful completion of a criminal enterprise. This category of speech is defined by UCLA Professor of Law, Eugene Volokh as crime-facilitating speech. In this paper, we argue that in order for speech to be a type of concrete advocacy that can be appropriately considered beyond the pale of First Amendment protection it must supply more than an underlying motivation for the commission of a crime. This requires that the speech take on a conduct-like character that facilitates or aids in a criminal enterprise.There is growing evidence that the courts have been heading in the direction of crime-facilitative speech standards. This paper draws from these experimentations in setting aside the Brandenburg standard, and suggests that the Court adopt the following standard: (1)The speech must rise to the level of facilitation/instruction of a crime serious enough to be categorized as a felony. Such facilitative/instructive speech must provide some 'essential' knowledge, beyond general knowledge widely accessible to the general public. (2)By providing this essential knowledge, the facilitative information provides the 'inextricable link' between the information that aids and abets the crime and the successful completion of the criminal enterprise, and; (3)The speaker/publisher must willfully provide the facilitative/instructional information to the principal with the purposeful intent of aiding and abetting a successful criminal enterprise. In the final section of this paper, we will address how our standard will stand up against potential challenges, including the special challenges related to published material, dual-use material, facilitative information that has entertainment value, severe harms related to terrorism and nuclear attacks, and finally the internet and 'dissemination-once-removed.' ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Observers as varied as Secretary of Defense Gates, academic analysts and presidential candidates have commented on the dysfunctional nature of the U.S. weapons acquisition process: massive cost overruns, performance shortfalls or complete program failure, and weaponry ill-suited to the national security challenges facing the United States. A similar debate occurred in the 1980s, followed by reforms to the process. This paper will analyze this previous debate, looking at specific reforms that were instituted. The paper will then examine the current criticisms of the weapons acquisition process, as well as specific examples of dysfunction, in order to evaluate the adequacy of the previous round of reform and to explain the persistent of major problems with the process. The paper will conclude with reflections concerning the possibility of new reforms in the acquisition process. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many scholars have devoted extensive efforts to studying elected officials' presentation of self, building on Fenno's 1978 study of members in their districts. Typically this is done through studying elected officials' speeches, websites, and campaign materials. In this paper, the authors examine a little-studied but telling element of United States Senators' presentation of self - the images they choose to display to their constituents who visit their senatorial offices in Washington, DC during the 110th Congress. In this paper we examine variations in senators' use of their front office to shape constituents' and visitors' perceptions. Analyzing variations in senators' focus on themselves and their state, and how they relate to factors including party affiliation, seniority, and previous attempts for higher office, sheds light upon how senators view themselves and wish to be viewed by the people to whom they owe their public office. We find that representing a western state, being a Republican, being the junior senator from the state, and having spent more time in the Senate all significantly increase the number of senator-focused items a senator displays and the total number of items a senator displays on his or her front office walls. Additionally, having previously run for president increases the total number of items a senator chooses to display on their front office wall. Our findings illustrate some interesting variation in the way that senators choose to present themselves to their constituents and suggest that senators use their Washington, D.C. offices to shape their constituents' and other visitors' perceptions of their personality and legislative records. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is well known in the literature that reputational concerns can cause experts to distort or hide their private information in order to appear competent. In this paper we consider the incentives of a career minded overseer to act in the public interest. The sequential nature of oversight means that once an overseer is called to act - either to accept or veto a proposal - it is already revealed what the executive making the proposal believes should be done. If the executive is thought to be competent, the overseer will be reluctant to reveal that they agreed with the executive's proposal, in which case oversight is useless. We show that a --partisan'' overseer -- i.e., one who cares not only about her own reputation but also seeks to damage the executive's -- would be more willing to block misguided proposals. This prevents the information of the overseer from being wasted and results in a better outcome. The paper can be dowloaded at http://pantheon.yale.edu/~jf398/partisanship.pdf ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increasing the homogeneity of a party’s support across the nationâ€"party nationalizationâ€"is a key concern to new democracies. This paper tests the impact historical development, intra-party and institutional variables in explaining party nationalization in Central America. During the 1990´s, five of the six Central American countries experienced transitions to democracy. Although there are similarities in the democratization trends, my data covering the years 1980-2008 show remarkable, inter- and intra-country differences in terms of geographic distribution of the parties’ vote. An important focus of the paper is to distinguish among factors that explain differences between parties, among countries, and across time. Specifically I hypothesize that historical development factors and institutional elements are associated with party nationalization. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I use an original set of roll call data from several state legislatures to evaluate existing theories of legislative polarization. Congressional theory presents party polarization as a function of legislative rules changes, changes in party strategy, electoral realignment, legislator replacement or redistricting. Although these theories provide leverage on the issue of polarization, the inferences that we can draw are somewhat limited because they are all generated from one series of data. Rather, to determine whether the causes of polarization are endogenous or exogenous to Congress, we need to test for polarization in different institutions but similar contexts. The American state legislatures provide such an opportunity, as shifts among the electorate are similar, while changes to legislative rules and redistricting differ. The findings from this paper provide a refinement of legislative theory while doing so in a novel way: using data from the legislatures of the American states. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I seek to understand the relationship between the objective and subjective indicators of the U.S. economy and the policy process. Specifically, I examine Congressional attention to --recession,'' a general economic constriction characterized by two consecutive quarters of negative growth in a given year. To best understand how Congress goes about tackling such a complex phenomenon as a recession, one must first determine what influences .x000d.Congressional attention, and second, describe the general content of that attention. In this paper, I do both by examining both economic data as well as debates in the Congressional Record, and I argue that citizen concerns about the U.S. economy drive the economic policy-making process in a recession. As a result, Congressional attention to major economic problems often lags market developments considerably, which raises serious questions about the efficacy of any Congressional policy to deal with the issue. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I offer an examination of original White House documents regarding the appearance of White House press secretary Ron Nessen as the guest host of Saturday Night Live in April, 1976; detail the impact of Saturday Night Live's treatment of the Ford Presidency on the campaign of 1976; and investigate the reasons for Saturday Night Live's producers' and writers' decision to treat Ford as they did. The paper includes an experimental study to measure the impact of Saturday Night Live's debate sketches on audience perceptions of the candidates' perfomances in the real 1976 debates, which were the first televised debates since 1960. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the beginning of the post-Cold War period, many observers regarded East Asia as being “ripe for rivalry.” Despite pessimistic views, many financial cooperative arrangements among ASEAN plus Three (China, Japan, and South Korea) countries has been formed to facilitate policy coordination and to prevent another crisis from negatively affecting East Asia. .x000d.This paper examines uneven developments of two regional cooperative arrangements--Chiang Mai Initiative (CMI) and regional surveillance cooperation--among East Asian countries. Why had some regional financial cooperative arrangements such as CMI been successful while others such as regional surveillance cooperation went nowhere? What determines the different levels of East Asian financial cooperation? Among others, this paper takes seriously two primary factors--domestic implementation capacity and costs of financial cooperation--to explain both initiation and development of regional cooperation. This paper argues that East Asian countries had difficulties to pursue deeper financial cooperation due to lack of strong demands, uneven distribution of policy implementation capacities, and high sovereignty costs. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the campaign literature, there are theories supporting very different conclusions concerning the candidates' issue emphasis strategies in general presidential elections. Issue ownership theory suggests that candidates usually address issues that are "owned" by their party. Other scholars question this rationale and argue that different party candidates address similar issues instead of different ones. This paper's argument is that partisan issue strength is a basic element that differentiates two party candidates' issue emphasis strategies, but it goes beyond a simple partisan issue ownership dichotomy to a continuum. I argue that the campaign practitioners gauge the partisan issue strength from the public opinion polls, and tailor their campaign messages accordingly. For example, when the Democratic Party is perceived to be more capable to handle a certain issue, it is more likely for the Democratic candidate to address that issue in her campaign. Developed from this conceptualization and built from previous studies, the main hypothesis of this paper is that partisan issue strength, issue salience and candidates' personal backgrounds are three important aspects in presidential candidates' issue emphasis strategy. This hypothesis is supported by data collected in the 1992 through 2004 presidential campaigns. The results have implications in our understanding about the supply-side of presidential campaigns: that is, how candidates select and construct their campaign messages. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the United States, economic inequality has been growing rapidly over the past several decades, with wealth accumulating at the top. Concerned with this trend, scholars have been exploring potential consequences of rising inequality for social and community life. This paper explores the connection between economic inequality and community involvement by focusing mainly on affluent citizens and how community context shapes their civic behavior. It hypothesizes that wealthy citizens living among inequality are likely to retreat from cross-cutting community life and exhibit less concern and empathy for citizens less fortunate. Using Hierarchical Linear Modeling (HLM), this paper analyzes individual-level data from the Social Capital Community Benchmark Survey, in addition to contextual information on income inequality (and other relevant control variables) derived from Census data. Results suggest a clear association between high economic inequality and low "bridging" civic involvement. Even when controlling for numerous individual-level and contextual-level factors, wealthy citizens living among economic equality exhibit higher levels of cross-cutting group involvement, diverse personal friendships, and a stronger support for helping the poor. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent decades moderates have steadily declined in Congress. This decline is often seen as an unusual matter, but there were few moderates in Congress from the 1870s until the late 1920s. They emerged in both houses within the Democratic Party, because of a developing split within the party. Southern Democrats were once the base of the party, but found themselves in opposition to the growing Northern wing of the party over cultural issues such as race, immigration and alcohol. These issues split the party and pushed the Southern Democrats into moderate voting records. In later years moderates also emerged within the Republican Party as a result of a split within that party, with the Northeast wing moving from the core to moderate as the party changed. In each case, therefore, the former core of the party shifted to being the moderate wing. The paper will present trends in the presence of moderates overall and by party from 1900-2006, and then review and analyze the type of legislation that created splits and the rise of moderates within each party over time. The paper will explain the emergence of moderates and it will also indicate how internal party conflicts declined, resulting in the decline of moderates. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In contemporary politics, power is a function of both military and economic capacities, which come from investments in science and technology. Furthermore, nuclear power explored by the advanced science and technology is the maximum condition of national achievement that many countries take advantage of to dominate international society as a recognized powerful country. When North Korea announced its nuclear program, U.S. had to reset its fundamental policy toward Asia just as Russia succeeded in its nuclear testing in 1949. Since World Wars I and II, the U.S. has confirmed its superpower position in international society from the Cold War up to present. However, Russia, China, Japan and Korea have recently challenged the U.S. position with speedy advances in science and technology. Despite international attempts to halt the North Korean nuclear program, North Korea conducted nuclear tests in 2006. As well, Japan loudly turns on the volume that it will develop nuclear program by itself, if North Korea is ratified as a nuclear country. If Japan and Korea in addition to Russia and China officially become nuclear countries, this will cause fatal policy transformation of U.S. These countries have already developed science and technology in such levels to upgrade their national potential. Furthermore, these four major powers would be willingly exposed to political ambition toward world power based on economic prosperity. In this paper, I discuss how the U.S. must rebuild its policy for regional powers with nuclear potential in Asia. Different from long-term alliance in Europe, these four major countries in Asia always stimulate U.S. position and challenge its overall policy. My paper investigates the proper solution to deal with the balance of power between the U.S. and regional powers in Asia. China, Russia, Japan and Korea are all competitive countries with the capacity to have nuclear weapons technology. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2008, Barack Obama and John McCain will not be the only candidates running for president. Prominent third party candidates (Bob Barr, Cynthia McKinney, Ralph Nader) as well as dozens of other less notable third party candidates will appear on some or all of the ballots across the fifty states and the District of Columbia. This begs the question, why do third parties nominate and run candidates for the presidency when they have little or no chance of winning? This paper looks at these candidates. Based on systematic research into the candidates, platforms, campaign organizations and finances, and voter support for these third party campaigns, this paper sheds light on the motivations of third parties, the campaigns they wage, and their ultimate "success" at the ballot box. Based on this descriptive analysis, this paper goes on to develop a broader typology of third party and independent candidacies, adding to existing theories about the role of political parties in representing interests in the electoral arena. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1995 the EPA recognized that Superfund legislation was over-regulating small, lightly polluted urban sites. The liability provisions of Superfund and the requirement that the reclaimed property be cleaned up to the level of residential use discouraged potential developers and lenders. Over the next decade national, state, and local governments developed policies to correct this situation. This paper uses a multi-method approach to examine policymakers' goals and to evaluate the success of the inter-governmental approach to brownfield policies. The research site is Charlotte, NC, one of a small number of cities chosen by EPA for brownfield pilot projects. The paper tests whether brownfield policies fit the fiscal federalism framework of Peterson, and it studies the effects of brownfields and their cleanup of urban neighborhoods using a longitudinal database that includes measures of social, environmental, and economic variables at the neighborhood level. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do party strength and activity affect women's political representation? In this paper, I use data from a new nationwide survey of county political party chairpersons to investigate this question. I first present an outline of existing literature on local parties and women's political representation. Then, I introduce the data used in this paper, including an original survey of county party elites across the U.S. and a new database containing demographic and political information for over 16,000 county candidates. Next, I evaluate competing claims about party strength and women's representation. Scholars have proposed many reasons why strong parties might increase or hinder women's emergence as political candidates. I evaluate the relationship between local party strength and women's representation as local candidates and officeholders, and examine particular components of party strength in greater detail in order to determine how specific party recruitment practices, campaign activities, interactions with community and interest groups, and other factors affect women's representation as political candidates at the county level. I find that party strength is positively related to women's political representation at the local level for Democratic party organizations. My results also suggest that party recruitment increases women's political representation, conditional on party leader beliefs about women's electability. Party gatekeeping is detrimental to women's political representation, while increased contact between Republican party organizations and community and interest groups is positively related to women's representation. In all, county political party characteristics and activities have a significant influence on who runs for county office. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Foreign aid appropriations are the one area where the U.S. House of Representatives can, theoretically, yield considerable influence over the White House’s ability to execute foreign policy. One prime example is the annual $2 billion aid package to Egypt which is meant to safeguard Egypt's ongoing support for U.S. policies toward the Middle East. Since the end of the Cold War, however, Congressional support for a conditioning of U.S. aid to Egypt based on human rights and democratization criteria has continually been rising. This paper tries to shed light on the most important drivers behind this development. It will do so by analyzing roll call votes on amendments that called for the political conditioning of foreign aid to Egypt. Since the foreign aid package to Egypt is not only deemed to serve U.S. strategic interests in the region, but also amounts to a significant indirect subsidy for U.S. agriculture, military industries and other commercial sectors, this paper will investigate possible correlations between the support for such conditioning and the individual member’s voting record on items deemed important by various lobbying organizations in the realm of U.S. Middle East, economic and general foreign policy. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following the neo-institutional theory of legislative control of public agencies, this paper examines the relationship between partisan control, procedures for legislative oversight of state agencies, and the stringency of regulation in the American states. Specifically, the analysis studies the interaction of interests and institutional arrangements with respect to state environmental protection by examining the Pollution Abatement Costs and Expenditures (PACE) data from the American states between the years of 1983 and 1994. The paper shows that while partisan control of state senates is associated with varying levels of stringency, this is not the case for the state lower houses. Also, the power to review proposed rules can lead to more stringent regulations. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the occasional corruption scandal or ethics violation, American state governors are increasingly professional and competent. They are younger, better educated, and better trained than the “good-time Charlies” of the past. For more than one-third of modern governors, the governorship is yet another rung on the career ladder. Consequently, governors are peppered throughout the national government, from the US Senate to cabinet positions to the presidency itself. From 1976 to 2004, each general election for president featured at least one candidate who had been governor. Of the governors who seek national office, nearly sixty percent are successful. However, nearly two-thirds of governors make no attempt to seek higher office, typically retiring to the private or nonprofit sectors. The purpose of this paper is to explain the conditions under which governors seek national office and the factors that contribute to success. This paper contributes to prior research, which focused primarily on candidate demographics and institutional experience, by examining the impact of election and campaign dynamics, state characteristics, and partisanship on governors who seek higher office. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite a lot of interest in how party primaries affect the characteristics of candidates, most work has focused on U.S. presidential candidates, limiting scholars’ ability to compare the effects of primaries across large numbers of candidates. The gap is understandable, as it is rare for parties to use different selection methods simultaneously across districts. In new democracies, more experimentation takes place. One such case is Mexico, where the two largest parties used a variety of selection procedures to choose their 2006 candidates for plurality district seats, from open primaries to designation by the national leadership. Since re-election is prohibited, there were no unopposed incumbents. This paper looks at how selection methods affect the candidates chosen, drawing on two surveys, of congressional candidates prior to the 2006 election and of congressional deputies in March 2008. Since the decision to hold a primary is separate from who wins the primary election, I use a Heckman two-stage model to control for selection sample bias. The paper analyzes whether candidates selected in primaries are systematically more moderate or more extreme than the median candidate for each party. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Considerable research has accumulated evidence of voter learning about candidate issue positions during the course of a political campaign. Presidential campaigns present a particularly information-rich environment that makes it easier for voters to learn about candidates and their policy positions. The evidence is less clear as to the extent to which the issue positions of voters influence the decisions they make at the ballot box. Previous research on these two topics, campaign learning and issue voting, has focused on measuring the extent to which such learning or voting occurs, but it has not thoroughly considered heterogeneity in these relationships. Do all voters learn about the same issues and learn about them equally? Do evaluations about issue voting turn on whose issues and which voters are considered? In this paper I will show how the interests of issue publics mediate both campaign learning and issue voting. Specifically, seniors and non-seniors are compared over the course of three campaigns on: 1) The levels and changes in knowledge of candidates' positions on social security over the course of a campaign; and 2) The levels and changes in the correlation between attitudes on this issue and vote choice. This paper utilizes multiple data sources, including the 2008 Associated Press-Yahoo News panel study as well as the rolling cross section and panel components of the 2000 and 2004 National Annenberg Election Surveys. The analysis finds that belonging to an issue public, rather than just general political knowledge, explains differences in knowledge and learning about candidate positions. The evidence for heterogeneity of issue voting is more mixed. In both cases, the relationships appear to depend in part upon the contexts of particular campaigns. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

And the War Continues: .x000d.A Comparative Study of Newspaper Coverage of the War in Iraq.x000d..x000d..x000d.This study compares the coverage of the Iraq war in American, British, Egyptian and French newspapers lending empirical evidence that the coverage of the war varies depending on the what media one follows. Based on an examination of 1,874 articles, and using framing as the theoretical underpinning, major differences were apparent in terms of support for the war, sources, other countries’ positions, the role of the United Nations, coverage of anti-war protests and references to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The most interesting finding were the differences revealed in the rationale for the war. The Egyptian and the French papers, countries which opposed the war, focused on U.S. interests in the conflict while the American and the British papers, countries which supported the war, focused on Iraqi interests. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A significant source of state income tax administrative strength lies in intergovernmental cooperation. The cornerstone of such cooperation is an active exchange of information between federal and state tax authorities. By adopting the tax structure in all relevant ways close to federal income tax structure, states may benefit from audit and other taxpayer return information generated by the federal government. The paper examines the federal-state cooperation in tax administration through the lens of several critical contingencies that determine the type of interorganizational relationships. The paper also attempts to evaluate the benefits of the joint federal-state program for the states and for the federal tax agency. Although there's a recent tendency to make the program a two-way street, benefits of cooperation accrue largely to the states. On the basis of information furnished to state revenue departments by the Internal Revenue Service states conduct piggyback audits thus saving considerable resources. In addition, such cooperation increases the efficiency of tax administration in general by reducing taxpayer compliance burden, and .by eliminating duplication of federal and state efforts in tax collection. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a general theory of how the interaction of state agents within a number of intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) leads to a convergence in member state interests over time. The theory is based on the notion that, all else being equal, IGOs that facilitate more interaction between state agents from various states are conducive to greater member state interest convergence over time because there are more opportunities for agents from one or more member states to persuade agents from other member states to accept new ideas that affect how they, and ultimately key decision-makers, define their states' interests. I argue that such persuasion does not necessarily have to involve a shift in state identities, but can also involve a diffusion of ideas about cause-and-effect relationships. Also, by focusing on IGOs as structures within which state agents interact, I argue against a narrow focus on socialization as the induction of new members into community norms. I present three hypotheses regarding which institutional attributes are conducive to member state interest convergence. However, due to current data limitations, only one of the hypotheses is tested in this paper. The test of whether joint membership in IGOs with six or fewer members is conducive to member state interest convergence provides preliminary support for that hypothesis. The paper concludes with a discussion of the larger project, including a brief description of the data that is currently being coded for testing of the other hypotheses. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is part of a much larger study that uses the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy as a window into understanding the influence of non-judicial and other non-governmental actors on the development of constitutional meaning. Using a de-centered or interpretive technique, the paper challenges the narrative that the rather drastic constitutional shifts that occurred in the areas of federalism in the mid-1990s can be attributed to President Ronald Reagan and an aggressive constitutional agenda pursued by his Counselor turned Attorney General Edwin Meese III. Using evidence drawn from an in-depth examination of the speeches and writings of actors associated with both the early Federalists and the Reagan Administration as well as data gathered from personal interviews, this paper presents a richer, more nuanced, and more complete narrative of the origins and real impacts of what many have referred to as the 'Reagan Revolution' in the law. In doing so, it makes a strong case for what I'll broadly refer to as an interpretive approach to the study of constitutional change. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates racial discrepancies in the distribution of FEMA-Trailers in greater New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. The numbers of trailers in neighborhoods of comparable flood-damage and current risk levels, but of different pre-Katrina racial compositions, are compared. An initial trailer count was conducted by a group of graduate students from University of Connecticut's Department of Public Policy during a home reconstruction project in New Orleans. Trailers were counted on a one mile stretch of road passing through two adjacent, racially segregated neighborhoods, the Lower 9th Ward (98 percent Black before Katrina), and Arabi (95 percent white before Katrina). The two neighborhoods were similarly affected by the breach of the Industrial Canal. The difference in the number of trailers was large and statistically significant (p<.01). Less than 19 percent of the counted trailers were located in the Lower 9th Ward, while 81 percent were located in Arabi, a 62 percentage point difference. To evaluate the possibility of bias from non random sampling a complete count of trailers was conducted using aerial photographs of 2006 provided by Google Earth. The complete count yielded a discrepancy of 73 percentage points. Since the Lower 9th Ward is located in Orleans Parish while Arabi is located in adjacent St. Bernhard Parish, administrative differences between Parishes may explain the observed discrepancy. To test this hypothesis, Lakeview and Pontchartrain Park in Orleans Parish were used as comparison areas. Prior to Hurricane Katrina Lakeview was 95 percent White, and Pontchartrain Park was 98% Black, but their low elevation, and their flood damage, and current risk levels make them comparable to the Lower 9th Ward. Even after controlling for Parish differences, the racial discrepancy remains large and substantial. Several factors may account for these observations: Differences in the number of residents applying for FEMA-trailers, the provision of alternative accommodations by FEMA, and/or the availability of non FEMA trailers in more affluent areas. Of course it is also possible that discriminatory practices by FEMA or other government agencies may account for the observed discrepancies. The paper discusses ways to distinguish between these alternative explanations. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper illustrates how the media to frames the debate surrounding No Child Left Behind (NCLB-federal education legislation) to enhance its efforts to construct social justice in terms of individual rather than collective needs. Calling for more accountability for teachers and schools, regular testing of students to ensure adequate yearly progress, research-based teaching methods in reading and math, and more choice for parents, NCLB is the culmination of more than 25 years of education and policy debate regarding how best to address bipartisan concerns regarding public education. Examining mass media campaigns, including the use of visual imagery, article structure, and word choice of digitized print media, this paper demonstrates the effective use of the media to frame and reinforce NCLB, while attacking teachers unions and individual teachers. Analysis reveals that framing the debate on an individual level so resonates with the public that even when individuals (or the public in general) are critical of certain aspects of NLCB, they still support NCLB's overall focus. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the potential a dedicated deterrence strategy offers as part of a broader cyber-security strategy. The paper finds that a deterrence strategy can play some role in an overall cyber-security strategy when developed within specific guidelines and with carefully delineated thresholds. This examination is rooted in the work of Richard J. Harknett, Lawrence Freedman, John Arquilla, David Ronfeldt, and Martin Libicki, as well as national security documents. Given the lack of theoretical and definitional rigor applied to the problem, the intent of this piece is to open a discussion of the varying strengths and weaknesses of offense-defense and deterrence approaches as they relate to the cyber realm, with a particular emphasis on the world's most cyber-capable and cyber-reliant power - the United States. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines US hegemonic endurance within the liberal international postwar order through an analysis of the impacts of the functioning of the World Trade Organization (WTO) into world politics. The analysis aims to determine whether the WTO contributes to locking in the US-centered postwar order or produces relative gains that implicate shifts in economic might that may eventually unsettle such order for changing the distribution of power within it. The findings indicate that the functioning of the WTO produces bases for relative economic gains unfavorable to the US, thus setting grounds for shifts in the distribution of power that may unsettle the existing international order. Such findings are consistent with neorealist approaches to hegemonic decline regarding the erosion of hegemony and with a neoliberal institutionalist reading of the endurance of the US-centered postwar order. Findings are inconsistent with the neorealist understanding that the international order mirrors the distribution of power and is prone to be challenged if the hegemon experiences relative decline. Contemplating the first stage of a four-stage framework of analysis, this paper sets the basis for continuing research by assessing whether the WTO distributes evenly the effects of its functioning. The analysis is based on WTO data on trade disputes. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that imperial expansion and governance drove antebellum federal state-building in the U.S. Drawing on insights from the historical-comparative literature on state-formation in Europe, the paper claims that the acquisition, control and incorporation of new territories and the need to finance these endeavors led to the build-up of significant state capacities on the national level. Government officials chose to pursue territorial expansion through the application of military force and the projection of governing authority to constantly westward moving peripheries. This could not be achieved without significant administrative and extractive capacities. The federal government had to generate sufficient revenue to finance a military, capable of overpowering and controlling the Native population, asserting U.S. expansionism against Spain, France, Britain, and Mexico, and projecting governing authority to frontier regions. The U.S. Constitution concentrated the authority, needed to organize and finance territorial expansion, in the hands of the newly created federal government. Drawing on the model of British imperial rule, the federal government built administrative capacities in the executive to effectively push its national boundaries westward and to integrate the newly acquired territory into the American political system. After discussing the relationship between territorial expansion and state-building, empirical evidence for the theoretical claims is presented and discussed. An analysis of the federal budget in the period from 1789 to 1859 underscores the importance of territorial expansion to antebellum state-building. Showing striking resemblances to the British "fiscal-military" state in the 18th and early 19th century, federal expenditures were mainly concentrated on the military, navy, and the retirement of war-related debt. In addition the federal government spent a large share of its budget on the acquisition and administration of western territory. The federal government relied on custom revenues and the sale of the public domain to finance the rising costs of imperial expansion. While the federal government tended to leave social and economic policies to state and local levels of governance, it developed important administrative and military capacities to finance, organize, and conduct territorial expansion across North America. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the question "what are the similarities and differences between U.S. trade frictions with China, Japan, and South Korea that account for different U.S. retaliation patterns?" This paper develops six independent variables and their relative measurements from U.S.-Japan and U.S.-South Korea cases and the literature, and examines their impact on U.S. retaliation to China. Our results indicate that four out of six independent variables have decreased the probability of U.S. retaliation since 2001. Furthermore, the U.S. has lost the necessary political, economic, and military leverage to retaliate to China, although it has had two of the three "motivations" to do so. This paper suggests that U.S. leverage over China has deteriorated for two major reasons: (1) U.S.' "illusion" of the latter party's ability/willingness for cooperation and of its own capabilities to retaliate; and (2) China's accumulation of relative gains at an unprecedented rate after 2001. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The shift in U.S.-Indian relations around the turn of the twenty-first century provides an ideal opportunity to test competing explanations of global power relations. Through examination of primary and secondary source materials, this paper investigates the timing of and justifications for the rapid changes in the relationship between the United States and India. This evidence is used to test the utility of explanations based on political regime type, extent of economic liberalization, global and local balance of power considerations, and nuclear proliferation concerns in light of changes in U.S.-Indian relations. Although the United States currently has friendly relations with China, this paper finds that the U.S. government is engaging India as a balancer against Chinese power. This suggests that the United States' role as a regional hegemon encourages it to promote a balance of power in Asia, even if the immediate threat of China is arguably minimal, implying that U.S. foreign policy decision-makers feel compelled to intervene in order to remain the sole regional hegemon. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper uses The Veterans Millennium Health Care Act of 1999 as a case study to assess and evaluate the viability of the role orientations model developed by Malcolm Jewell and Samuel Patterson. The paper treats the role orientations (e.g. facilitator, netural, indifferent, resister) of members of the 108th Congress during the formulation, deliberation and passage of the Veterans Millennium Health Care Act of 1999. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The great conflict of our times is fueled by hate media in the Middle East, and this anti-American vitriol can influence Muslim masses. The U.S. tries to mitigate this through public diplomacyâ??cultural exchanges, mass media campaigns, and good will visits. But America's public diplomacy is hamstrung by the lack of a decisive Presidential mandate, small staffs and budgets, and a back-burner Washington mentality. Critically, one of the greatest assets of the U.S. has been quiet on this issueâ??corporate America. Can business "sell" a positive view of the U.S. to the Middle East? The idea of corporate social responsibility (CSR) has been booming since the end of the twentieth century. Corporations also annually donate billions for charitable campaigns. Why can't those efforts be directed toward improving the image of the U.S. abroad? The central question of this paper asks to what degree corporations view, or do not view, public diplomacy as a natural extension of corporate citizenship. Part I reviews current public diplomacy efforts and the rise of CSR. In Part II, questions were put to a cross-section of opinion leaders to provide a snapshot of current thinking and attitudes about business as an instrument of public diplomacy. Members of academia, the U.S. government, industry, advertising and marketing firms, think tanks, and nongovernmental organizations share their views. There is a lack of published work on this subject. This paper fills a gap by clarifying the issue, framing and stimulating debate, and suggesting further in-depth research. Recommendations are provided to government decision makers, industry, and the wider public. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 1982 amendments in Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act determined that electoral structural features were significant determinants of minority representation. The research regarding electoral system structure and representation, however, has produced conflicting results. This paper seeks to address two puzzles that remain in understanding black representation. The first puzzle examines the impact of at-large elections on African American representation. The second puzzle examines the quality of representation in different electoral structures; at-large and single member districts. Quality in this sense is defined as African-American representatives' ability to generate higher levels of benefits for the African-American community (more administrative and teaching positions for African Americans). This paper first provides a formal argument that explains the connection between electoral structures and representation for African Americans. It then moves to an empirical study using the 1800 largest school districts in the United States (based on an original survey conducted in 2001). In addition to explaining these puzzles, this paper includes how region (North and South) affects representation for African Americans in different electoral structures. It also shows how Democratic competitive states and Republican dominant states are the underlying explanation of these regional differences. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research examining party polarization in Congress has concentrated on documenting the sources of polarization, but little work has been done regarding the consequences of polarization. This paper takes a step towards remedying this oversight by examining the affects of party polarization on the size and content of the legislative agenda. Using time series analysis, the study examined the affects of partisan polarization on the legislative agenda. As the parties in Congress become more ideologically distinct the majority party has more incentive to control the agenda. Additionally, members of the minority party should look to place more significant bills on the agenda to try to force the majority party into a negative voting record. Therefore, it is expected that higher polarization will lead to a larger number of significant issues being placed on the congressional agenda and to an increased effort by the majority party to control the floor agenda. This paper examined the number of significant issues on the agenda and percentage of bills on the House floor introduced by majority members. Time series models using data from the 80th (1947-48) through the 107th (2000-01) found evidence that polarization leads to an increase of majority party bills on the floor agenda, but found no evidence for any effect on the overall size of the significant issue agenda. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we investigate the important linkages between institutional choice and the issue dimensionality in three emergent democratic legislatures. We hypothesize that the adoption of party-centered versus candidate-centered electoral institutions had significant implications for the structure of the roll call behavior of legislators. We expect the roll call voting of legislators selected by party-centered systems to exhibit a lower dimensionality and greater structure than for legislators selected in candidate-centered systems. Using Lewis and Poole's (2004) W-NOMINATE procedure with bootstrapped standard errors, we compare the number of issue dimensions, the aggregate proportional reduction in error (APRE), and the percentage of variance explained by the 1st W-NOMINATE dimension across different electoral systems in the U. S. House of Representatives, the Ukranian Rada, and the Russian Duma. We found that the choice of electoral institutions has notable influences on the nature of roll call behavior, but that country-specific political context appeared to have important behavior implications as well.∗ Paper ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we study the role of political parties in a legislative environment that makesdecisions over both ideological and distributive policies. We develop a simple model inwhich the majority party leadership, seeking to achieve non-median policies as a means ofmaximizing the probability its party retains the majority, trades off distributive bene¯tsto obtain non-median ideological policy. The key prediction of the model is that moderatemembers of the majority party receive disproportionately large side-payments from the partyleader. This prediction receives support when tested against data from the 104th and 105thCongresses. In the second half of the paper, we demonstrate several important consequencesof a legislative environment with vote-buying: vote-buying biases ideal point estimates andgenerally causes researchers to overstate both the true level of polarization and the degreeof party homogeneity. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the face of substantial growth in the proportion of Latinos in the United States to become this nation's largest minority group, so too has their descriptive representation in the U.S. Congress risen from a handful of members to a number just over twenty in the most recent legislature. But what does this mean for the substantive representation of Latinos? Despite a general literature on Latinos in politics, surprisingly little scholarship exists on Latinos as members of Congress, and, quite naturally as a first important step, that scholarship focuses on substantive policy representation as measured by legislator roll call voting behavior. Focusing on the seven Latino legislators currently serving in and around the Los Angeles area of California, this paper takes a step toward broadening our understanding of substantive representation from policy representation inside the legislature to a consideration of what legislators do and how they portray themselves to their constituents. Building on the work of Richard Fenno on home styles, the paper seeks to understand substantive policy representation over and above the roll-call voting stage and to place that representation in the context of the wider set of legislative activities. Findings indicate that, at least for these seven legislators, the descriptive representation which has brought more Latino members of Congress certainly has translated to increased substantive representation. Additionally, a closer look at home styles of these members demonstrates a variety of styles legislators have used to represent Latino interests. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, several valuable analyses of the roles of U.S. Supreme Court clerks have furthered political science's understanding of these important quasi-judicial actors. This paper applies the institutional insights provided by these works to a case study of the controversial fourth section of Justice Anthony M. Kennedy's opinion in Gonzales v. Carhart (2007). The study considers whether both the theory and content of this section were largely the work of one of the crop of clerks who worked for the Justice during the October '06 Term.Justice Kennedy's vote and his authorship of the majority opinion were unsurprising. However, the content of the controversial Section IV might be considered unexpected; its paternalistic approach to abortion rights is inconsistent with the otherwise libertarian arguments that he has employed in previous abortion cases (this part of the paper draws on my forthcoming book about Kennedy's jurisprudence). I hypothesize that this might be explained by the presence, within the quartet of Kennedy's clerks, of an individual who successfully wrote these particular views into the Justice's opinion.At the end of the day, the name on the opinion in Carhart is Kennedy's. He bears the public burden of shouldering responsibility for the opinion's content. However, recent studies have told us never to underestimate the importance of the men and women who clerk for members of the U.S. Supreme Court. In order to understand Section IV, might we have to accept that it is a good example of clerkish control? ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I develop a conceptual understanding of the political potentials of 'the public', predicated upon the phantom character of the public that Lippman, Dewey, and Habermas cast as a problem, whereas I argue it is at the heart of an opportunity.This paper presents a conceptual analysis of the public's political character. It argues that this must be understood in three steps. First, one must look at the historically specific invitation to agency extended to the public. This invitation is found sedimented in law, institutions and culture. Secondly, it is necessary to accept that this invitation does not have a precise addressee in the sense of a 'true' public. It invites a disembodied public to act. The combination of these two aspects of the political public then conditions the third step that has to be analyzed to understand specific political consequences of the public. This concerns the ways in which the public is enacted. Conceptually, such enactments take the form rhetoric calls synecdoche, a part expressing a whole, and are characterized by five traits. Enactments of the public are (1) dependent on external recognition, (2) always contestable, (3) mutually constitutive of the part and the whole - the public - it attempts to enact, (4) either bringing the public to bear as an actual presence or a virtual shadow, and (5) necessarily normative operations predicated upon the substitution of an 'is' - that the public is disembodied - by an 'ought' - that someone should nonetheless be allowed to enact it 'as if' it was not. The argument thus rejects a notion common to the work of Habermas, Dewey, and Lippmann, that the public should be understood in terms of a true embodiment with specifiable normative consequences. Instead, the paper lay out a model of the political public that provides the possibility of analyzing the prospects of the public of today, and its contribution to social cohesion and social change, and not only lament its failures in the light of what it could potentially be in the future. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conventional wisdom holds that governments matter. That a new government, particularly one of a different political party, will make substantial changes to the policies of the state they were elected to lead. The focus of this paper is on whether party affiliation matters in determining Canada's priorities and policies in its trade relationship with the United States (US). It will compare policy statements and performances of Liberal, Progressive Conservative, and Conservative governments from 1968 to the present and it will argue that party affiliation has had little impact on Canada's US trade policy over this period. The analysis will proceed in four parts. In the first part, the role of political parties in Canada will be outlined briefly. This will be followed by an overview of Canada's exports to the US. The third section of the paper will examine the economic priorities of Canadian governments concerning the US from 1968 to present as gleaned from major policy statements (e.g. white papers and speeches). The final part of the paper will set out some of the reasons why party affiliation has had little substantive impact on Canada's trade policy with the US over the last forty years. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Airports serve as vital publicly financed infrastructure in the American transportation system. As publicly built and maintained infrastructure, airports were originally conceived as public enterprises that worked with cities, states, and even the federal government to provide a place for private airlines to do business, i.e. transport people. The increase of networked governance in operating airports along with the natural monopolistic environment in which airports operate, raise several concerns for public administrators in terms of public accountability, affordability of flights, and availability of flights. The accountability challenges present in airports reinforce the notion that government or a public entity must be centrally involved in governance networks to provide the "democratic anchorage" (Sorensen and Torfing, 2005) that is the stalwart of the public interest. This paper will evaluate and analyze the organizational structures (public ownership, airport authorities, private firms) utilized by airports in the United States in terms of the amount of public oversight that is allotted by each organizational arrangement. Additionally, this paper will build on Romzek and Dubnik's (1987) work to develop an accountability framework that can be used by public administrators to hold public and private sector partners accountable within networks. The main question that this paper explores is: In complex, governance networks like airports, how does the selection of an organizational structure affect public accountability? The case study format utilized in this study will provide a preliminary examination of this hypothesis, as three different U.S. airports utilizing three different organizational structures will be compared. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to economist Paul Krugman, Democrats are divided over U.S. policy regarding trade and globalization and both groups are correct. Some argue U.S. trade policy toward less developed countries (LDCs) drives down wages of less educated American workers. Krugman's research indicates that this is an increasingly important reason for this drop. Other Democrats contend that imports from LDCs make the U.S. richer. These politicians maintain that "making and honoring trade agreements is an essential to governing [the United States] responsibly." They believe introducing "labor standards" into U.S. trade policy will solve the problem of low American wages. Krugman contends that introducing labor standards will not change the fact that people in LDCs will continue to make much lower wages than American workers and that this will continue to depress U.S. wages. Nor will cheaper goods available to Americans compensate for these depressed wages. On the other hand, turning to outright protectionism to shield American jobs will have catastrophic effects on workers in LDCs. Krugman suggests there is no way to respond to this dilemma as long as we try to deal with it in terms of U.S. trade policy alone; he suggests we begin dealing with this issue by providing health care to all Americans, "paid for by taxing the economy's winners". My paper explores Krugman's suggestion with a view to assessing to what extent it would help resolve the dilemma his article raises. First, I explore economic arguments pertaining to "universal health coverage," showing that its introduction would probably make U.S. workers more competitive with workers in LDCs. This part of my assessment involves economic analysis. The second part of my paper will examine the ethical and social philosophical dimensions of making the move to universal health care in the U.S. This part of the paper will explore the ethical ramifications of this policy. My analysis places special emphasis on the concept of distributive justiceâ??especially as it involves major publically traded U.S. corporations. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]