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Foreign policymakers must grapple with complexity, uncertainty, and subjectivity. These challenges raise the possibility that "strategy is an illusion": that there is no reliable method for assessing skill at managing international politics. By contrast, we show that researchers can objectively evaluate a critical component of foreign policy competence using a standard we call "relative foresight," defined as decision-makers' ability to anticipate consequences of their choices as compared to alternative views based on similar information. Relative foresight can be measured without relying on value judgments or subjective probabilities. By contrast, other common frameworks for gauging foreign policy competence, such as comparing leaders' behavior to the rational actor model or assessing procedural rationality, almost always leave room for reasonable disagreement. We demonstrate that relative foresight provides a useful tool for evaluating major foreign policy choices through case studies of Barack Obama's decisions regarding the Afghan Surge and the raid on Osama bin Laden's compound. Our framework has broad implications for research on normative, prescriptive, and descriptive dimensions of foreign policy analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presidents Bush, Obama, and Trump have all used the language of "victory" and "defeat" in the War on Terror despite its ambiguous outcomes. This paper develops the concept of a "victory trap" to explain this phenomenon and its political consequences. On the one hand, the electoral consequences of "losing" wars lead presidents to make claims about "winning" and eventual "victory." On the other hand, strategic realities and public reluctance to bear the costs of total victory result in policymakers facing criticism for being unable to produce results proportionate to their rhetoric. As such, whilst scholarship is clear on the effects of both "losing" and "winning" wars, this paper provides the first exploration of how these dual dynamics play out in practice. In arguing that policymakers are oftentimes politically "trapped," this paper suggests the limits of a range of scholarship on effective (foreign) policy-related messaging that points toward ambiguity or accuracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Because of increasing political polarization in many democracies, politicians who try to make amends for past harms will often find that their reputation in the eyes of the other side is irredeemable. In such cases, publicly playing up rather than toning down those attributes that have made one an "archvillain" will often be a more effective way of making amends—whether by mobilizing an opposing camp with which one now secretly sympathizes, by increasing the chances of moderate candidates to win crucial elections, or by increasing the chance that the dangerous camp to which one pretends to belong will self-destruct. I explore several possible explanations for why repentant political wrongdoers might have a moral duty to "play the villain" to such ends. Drawing on the philosophy of punishment, and on the hypocrisy literature, I argue that the best explanation revolves around the inevitability of hypocrisy in democratic politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the challenges of addressing spatial inequalities and uneven development in the United States, specifically in rural and nonmetropolitan areas that have been left behind. It discusses the political obstacles and negative perceptions that hinder efforts to help these places. The article analyzes the approaches of former Presidents Obama and Trump towards these issues, emphasizing the need for investment and support in left-behind areas. It also explores the divide between rural and urban communities, the resentment felt by the rural population towards urban areas, and the role of media and racial attitudes in deepening this divide. The text suggests that investments in rural America, along with respectful engagement and empathy, are necessary to bridge this gap and strengthen democracy. [Extracted from the article]

In 2015, the Obama administration eased the rules regarding employment for accompanying spouses of some temporary foreign workers who hold an H-1B visa. The policy change allowed some spouses of H-1B visa holders who were in the queue for a permanent resident visa to work. This study uses data from the National Survey of College Graduates to examine the impact of the policy change on employment rates among dependent spouses of temporary visa holders. The results indicate that the policy change increased their employment rate substantially. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Utopian dreams of a fundamentally different world would seem to have little place in the de-radicalized political arena of the post-communist age. This article challenges this idea by ethnographically examining three cases of electoral politics in the contemporary United States, which can be seen as a "least likely" context for electoral utopianism. Evidence from these cases – the 2008 Obama campaign, 2016 Sanders campaign, and local organizing work of the Green Party – is used to make three claims: utopianism is present in the US electoral arena; utopianism and electoral instrumentalism are not incompatible and may "need" each other; and the relationship between utopianism and instrumentalism varies, resulting in multiple types of utopian politics. The article's key contribution is to theorize and illustrate three such types. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within the context of eliciting partner country cooperation and interests alignment, U.S. presidents and their administrations have a wide array of policy tools at their disposal to mitigate terrorist threats emanating from other countries. Yet, the factors that account for variation in American presidents' and their administrations' specific counterterrorism policy choices to influence target states' behavior remain underexplored. To understand the underlying factors that influence the adoption of different U.S. counterterrorism tools within a given country, and their variation across administrations in the post‐9/11 era, we examine the case of Pakistan—a challenging yet enduring partner in the U.S.‐led Global War on Terror. Categorizing the counterterrorism policies and tools adopted by Presidents Bush, Obama, and Trump as punitive or nonpunitive policy decisions, we explore the extent to which each president's policy choices during the Global War on Terror were largely a continuation of predecessors or responded to specific shifting patterns of terrorism within Pakistan. Our study yields important insights regarding the extent to which path dependency or evolving security environments shape choices of counterterrorism tools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Decentralized government is hypothesized to lead public service investments to better align with political preferences across geographical regions, yet there has been limited rigorous testing of this hypothesis. We examine how local public provision of hospital services varied according to political preferences between 2006 and 2016. We use state Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) as a source of exogenous variation. Consistent with the motivation for federalism, we find that areas less supportive of the ACA tended to convert the state expansion into lower property taxes with lower public hospital expenditures, whereas, in states that expanded Medicaid, local governments tended to increase public provision of healthcare. Key Takeaways: Local governments participate in the healthcare system as both patient‐care providers and third‐party payers, and account for over 50% of subnational US government expenditures on hospitals and public health services.The 2010 Affordable Care Act (ACA) represented a federal intervention that supplemented existing public health services while also making public health services less expensive to provide.States that expanded Medicaid under the 2010 ACA are treated as exogenous variation to local governments by providing healthcare reimbursements to previously uninsured pools of patients.Differences‐in‐differences demonstrate that local governments treated state Medicaid expansion heterogeneously, with local governments in areas that supported President Obama in the 2008 election increasing hospital expenditures, whereas those in Mitt Romney voting areas tended to maintain expenditures and reduce property tax levies.Findings are consistent with the view that local governments are responsive to the preferences of its voters, even in complex policy environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The US President Joe Biden redesignated Bears Ears National Monument in southeastern Utah after former President Barack Obama designated it and former President Donald Trump reduced it in size. The designation, reduction, and redesignation of the monument, designed to protect Indigenous archaeological sites, catalyzed debate covered by local news. Protected areas in the United States face increasing threat from resource development, which can accelerate climate change. Using the frame matrix method to qualitatively analyze language in local news articles, this study increases understanding of political and cultural meanings associated with the monument. Frames of failure, validation, and authoritarianism defined designation; frames of loss, remediation, and resistance defined reduction; and a stability frame defined redesignation. Results highlight how symbolic devices (e.g., metaphors, catchphrases) used by opponents to reject the monument's designation were then used by supporters to reject its reduction. This study gives insight into how local news reporting of conflict over public land protections can prioritize Settler over Indigenous metaphysics. By emphasizing subjugation of land to human control rather than interconnectedness between humans and nature, local news not only shapes perception of a protected area's significance but may also impede climate change mitigation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Terrorism and counterterrorism are often described as "ironic", but conceptual engagement with irony has been very limited. Building on the lifework of cultural anthropologist Joseba Zulaika, this article considers irony as an analytical meta-perspective in the critical study of (counter)terrorism. It draws on the life and work of German-American Christian ethicist Reinhold Niebuhr (1892–1971) to argue that the ironies of (counter)terrorism under U.S. president Barack Obama, who admired Niebuhr, point to an unconscious failure of collective self-understanding. Dissolving these ironies requires new narratives of American identity that cut across foreign and domestic politics, state and non-state actors, the "war on terror" and white supremacy in a long view of history. Facilitating this multidirectional process of self-reflection and -transcendence is a key task for critical scholars of (counter)terrorism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the implementation of the Materials Genome Project by the Obama administration in the United States, the development of various computational materials' databases has fundamentally expanded the choice of industries such as materials and energy. In the field of thermoelectric materials, the thermoelectric figure of merit (ZT) quantifies the performance of the material. From the viewpoint of calculations for vast materials, the ZT values are not easily obtained due to their computational complexity. Here, we show how to build a database of thermoelectric materials based on first-principle calculations for the electronic and heat transport of materials. Firstly, the initial structures are classified according to the values of bandgap and other basic properties using the clustering algorithm K-means in machine learning, and high-throughput first principle calculations are carried out for narrow-bandgap semiconductors which exhibit a potential thermoelectric application. The present framework of calculations mainly includes a deformation potential module, an electrical transport performance module, a mechanical and a thermodynamic properties module. We have also set up a search webpage for the calculated database of thermoelectric materials, providing search facilities and the ability to view the related physical properties of materials. Our work may inspire the construction of more computational databases of first-principle thermoelectric materials and accelerate research progress in the field of thermoelectrics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Coastal and ocean management in the United States is a complex issue requiring an equally complex management policy. Federal policy has historically been carried out in a siloed (sector-by-sector) fashion causing inefficient and bureaucratic management by federal agencies. The Obama administration took a novel approach to coastal and ocean management by signing an executive order that brought together federal agencies and empowered regional stakeholders, creating a first of its kind comprehensive National Ocean Policy. In 2018, former President Donald Trump rescinded the Obamaera policy and enacted his own version of National Ocean Policy that shifted authority to the states and focused on the economic potential of American waters. This research addresses a significant challenge in federal management of a complex natural resource. Here we identify common management strategies between different administrations to provide insights for future attempts at National Ocean Policy. We collect policy documents, press releases, and congressional testimony from high-level stakeholders and identified the most common themes over a 12-year period from 2009-2021. We find three common themes between the administrations even though their policies varied in strategy and scope: 1) the importance of a strong and enduring marine economy, 2) creating a strategic and efficient ocean policy, and 3) devolving authority from the federal government to state and regional decision-makers. We argue that coastal and ocean management via executive order is too easily rescinded to have a lasting impact. These novel findings highlight potential strategies for bipartisan cooperation in future attempts at National Ocean Policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article seeks to accomplish two things. First, I update the Index of Presidential Leverage (IPL) published in Presidential Leverage (Ponder 2018), which analyzed presidential action from Kennedy to the end of Obama's first term. This article brings the analysis through the end of the Trump administration and replicates the book's analysis of executive orders to determine if that measure still exhibits explanatory capacity. Second, I consider two alternative measures of presidential leverage that tap the same idea of the IPL, which is presidential approval in an institutional context (namely, public approval of Congress and public trust in Congress). The article employs these alternative measures in a preliminary attempt to determine the efficacy of the concept of presidential leverage across different measures. I find that the concept of presidential leverage operationalized in these various ways is not only robust, but as was the case in the original analysis, outperforms analyses using raw presidential approval in isolation. Thus, the concept of presidential leverage is shown to be applicable across various measurement strategies. The robustness of the presidential leverage measure is important because it undergirds the idea that presidential approval in context, rather than simply as a stand-alone indicator, provides nuance and explanatory power to the study of presidential action that may be missed otherwise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is part of a case study of U.S. federal leadership in special education from the perspective of those who served in the roles of Assistant Secretaries of the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitation Services and Directors of the Office of Special Education Programs or their equivalents in the former U.S. Office of Education and later U.S. Department of Education. This case study covers the time period from the George W. Bush administration and lasting through the first 4 years of President Barack Obama's administration (2000–2012). During this time, government intervention in education reached its zenith with the passage of No Child Left Behind in 2001 and the reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act of 2004. The participants detailed their (a) career and appointment, (b) vision for educating students with disabilities, (c) theory of change, (d) politics and financial constraints, (e) advocacy, and (f) views of the past, present, and future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The efficacy of Vibrio proteolyticus No. 442 as a probiotic in preventing opportunistic infections caused by Vibrionaceae in tiger puffer, Takifugu rubripes, was evaluated. Two strains of Listonella anguillarum, IFO 13266T and Obama 5, were used as target bacteria. The antimicrobial activity of V. proteolyticus No. 442 peaks at approximately 25°C and is absent at temperatures at 15°C or above 35°C. This activity is also most pronounced at an oxygen concentration of 21% and is undetectable under anaerobic conditions. Using these characteristics, V. proteolyticus No. 442 and L. anguillarum IFO 13266 were co-cultured under aerobic and anaerobic conditions. The findings indicated that under aerobic conditions, L. anguillarum IFO 13266 was eradicated following a 48-hour incubation at 25°C, while under anaerobic conditions, both species maintained high bacterial densities. Consequently, the oral administration of the diets supplemented with V. proteolyticus No. 442 to juvenile tiger puffers for seven days resulted in a decrease in the density of Vibrionaceae (excluding V. proteolyticus) by two to three orders of magnitude in the gut, and by one to two orders of magnitude in the rearing water. Future research needs to investigate the long-term efficacy of V. proteolyticus as a probiotic, and its pathogenicity, fish growth, administration methods, and storage strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Election skepticism has become a persistent feature of American politics since the Obama era. Such beliefs are most prevalent among White Americans and especially Republicans, and they are resistant to change. Conspiracy theory studies have shown that such beliefs are linked to feelings of ingroup victimization, at times associated with election loss. We draw on theories of White ingroup processes to argue that White grievance—the belief that Whites are victims of discrimination—is a key correlate of election skepticism among White Americans. White grievance was employed in the Obama era, but it was weaponized by Trump in the 2020 election. Our results based on four national datasets (2012–2020 ANES, 2021 YouGov) show that controlling for negative outgroup attitudes and other factors, White grievance is a significant predictor of election skepticism in all four studies. In 2020, the effect is stronger among White Republicans and independents. We also show that White identity/consciousness has the opposite effect, generally boosting trust in elections. Furthermore, a lagged dependent variable model using the 2016–2020 ANES panel shows that White grievance remains significant even after an LDV is included in the model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

India's economy is growing rapidly and is predicted to become the world's second-largest economy by 2075. The country's strength lies in its large middle class and domestic demand-driven economy. Efforts are being made to promote manufacturing through initiatives like "Make in India." India faces challenges such as poverty, inequality, and environmental issues, but the government is taking steps to address them. India's foreign policy is non-aligned, maintaining relationships with major powers while facing border disputes with China and conflicts with Pakistan. India is also emerging as a leader of the Global South, assuming the G20 presidency in 2023. Relations between India and Japan are strong, with increasing direct investment from Japan. However, there have been challenges for Japanese companies in India, such as intense competition and a lack of success stories from small and medium enterprises. Trade between Japan and India has been stagnant, but there has been an increase in the number of Indians living in Japan and Japanese interest in Indian culture. Japan has provided significant Official Development Assistance (ODA) to India, primarily in the form of yen loans. The Japan-India relationship has become more strategic, with regular bilateral talks. [Extracted from the article]

The article discusses John Gentry's book, "Neutering the CIA: Why U.S. Intelligence versus Trump Has Long-Term Consequences," which examines Donald Trump's relationship with the Intelligence Community (IC) and the CIA. Gentry argues that previous presidents, such as Reagan and Bush, have politicized intelligence, but Trump's open war against the IC is unprecedented. Gentry also claims that there is a "Deep State" within the IC that opposes Trump and that Obama and his appointees built this Deep State for political reasons. However, the article criticizes Gentry's lack of evidence to support these claims and highlights the importance of independent leadership and integrity within the intelligence community. [Extracted from the article]

This paper demonstrates how nonverbal communication may perform argumentative functions in television debates by acclaiming and defending the debater's own ethos and in attacking the opponent's ethos. We argue that studies of non-verbal communication in debates should not only study what is done nonverbally, but also how it is done. This informs our analyses of excerpts of television debates between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama in the 2008 primary election campaign. Our analyses establish two main types of nonverbal rhetoric, enacted actio and restrained actio, and show how these may be used argumentatively. We introduce the concept of the personal qualifier to signify how debaters nonverbally can express degrees of certainty and emotional involvement, similar to the function of qualifier in Stephen Toulmin's argument model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study analyzes President Obama electoral diplomacy during the 2015 Nigerian election in distinct sense: persuasive appeals, and describes its differential effects on electoral behavior in Nigeria. Obama's electoral diplomacy had counterintuitive effects – resulted to vote-switching and electoral misconduct. Based on qualitative research methods, the study revealed that the U.S. electoral diplomacy in Nigeria unwittingly undermined electoral credibility, even after effectively influencing peoples' electoral behavior and choices toward the directions/interests of US foreign policy objectives and priorities in Nigeria. The US should assist Nigeria in achieving the goal of strengthening electoral institutions and frameworks through inter-agency support and electoral aid. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on Toni Morrison's novel "A Mercy" within the context of Barack Obama's 2008 presidential election, exploring Morrison's critique of the notion of a postracial world and her emphasis on the novel's preracial setting. Topics include Morrison's criticism of the distracting function of racism, her portrayal of a period before racial hierarchy in America, and her ambition to free language from racially informed constraints through her work as a writer.

Racial-spillover theory proposes that salient associations between prominent racialized politicians and particular political objects—e.g., links between a party leader and her policy proposals—can generate associations between racial and political attitudes via the politician's perceived racial characteristics. Thus, opinion in relation to policies and other political objects with no manifest connection to race becomes infused with racial attitudes. While multiple studies of Barack Obama's influence on political attitudes uncover such effects, we test the generality of the phenomenon by examining the case of Jagmeet Singh, the first non-White leader of a major party in Canada. Using an experimental study of policy attitudes and an observational study of 31 years of party evaluations, we uncover clear evidence of racial spillover. The findings suggest racial spillover does not depend on peculiar features of U.S. politics or of the U.S. presidency, and may generalize to racialized political leaders in other contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars contend that presidents exert some influence over the implementation of national policy. Yet, prior research has overlooked the importance of local context, specifically socio-political conditions, and how it can shape an agency's response to executive-level guidance. We examine the effect of local context on county-level immigration removals by ICE agents from 2013 through 2018. We predict local removals starting with the Secure Communities program, continuing under Obama's two-year Priority Enforcement Program (PEP), and up through Trump's zero-tolerance policies. Obama-era executive guidance, which advised agents to target only dangerous criminal immigrants, did lead to a significant national decline in total removals. However, conservative localities continued to remove large numbers, even during PEP. Notably, the difference between conservative and liberal communities was largest for non-criminal immigrant removals. Despite Obama's guidance to focus on dangerous immigrants, ICE agents continued to remove undocumented immigrants without criminal records from conservative U.S. counties. Our analysis indicates street-level agents are most responsive to chief-executive direction in the absence of local-level opposition to top-down demands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Popular music was the most immediate way in which the cultural response to 9/11 manifested itself. Initially music offered a way of mourning and coping with grief. As the United States moved toward the invasion of Iraq, pop music also began to reflect the divisions in society between patriot-artists who supported the invasion, most notably in country music, and protest-artists who articulated critical attitudes to war. These anti-war songs did not attain the stature of those that characterized the era of protest during the Vietnam War, nor did they offer a musical accompaniment to a social movement with any enduring political significance. One little observed dissonance that a longitudinal survey of the musical response to political violence reveals, however, is that over time the attitudes of protest songwriters and the patriots transvalued. Ironically, interventionist "rednecks" became disillusioned with the endless wars of intervention, whilst the "protest" writers lost their voices after President Obama came to power. Ironically, icons of popular music instead turned their ire on those who voted for an anti-establishment President Trump who vowed not to involve the U.S. in further military adventures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) was signed into law by U.S. President Obama in 2010 and fully implemented in 2014. The ACA expanded health insurance by expanding the Medicaid program, creating health insurance exchanges (now called "marketplaces") in which people with incomes between 139% and 400% of the federal poverty level, could purchase subsidized insurance coverage, and by regulating health insurance to eliminate practices such as denying coverage to people with pre‐existing conditions, or basing premiums on health status. We investigate the effects of the ACA's implementation on access to ambulatory health services in New York City by comparing rates of hospitalizations for ambulatory care‐sensitive conditions (ACSC) before and after the full implementation of the law. Although the ACA was associated with a significant decrease in the rate of ACSC in NYC, we find that there continue to be systemic inequalities by gender, race, ethnicity, income, and insurance status. We argue that the broader social and economic inequalities at the national and state levels, including tax and spending policies that have led to increased income and wealth inequalities, help explain why we see persistent inequalities in hospitalizations for ACSC. Key Points: Advocates hoped that the full implementation of the Affordable Care Act would reduce inequalities in access to health care.We find that, after the implementation of the Affordable Care Act in New York City, there are still large inequalities in hospitalizations for ambulatory care‐sensitive conditions.Broader social and economic inequalities at the national and state levels help explain why we see persistent inequalities in hospitalizations for ambulatory care sensitive conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Extracts from Shakespeare's Hamlet are used to show how obstacles to mourning may arise from the persistent demands of melancholic internal objects demanding repair and revenge. It is only with the development of symbolic function as a result of separateness between self and object that reparation becomes possible and ghosts are turned into ancestors. Extracts from Shakespeare's Hamlet are used to show how obstacles to mourning may arise from the persistent demands of melancholic internal objects demanding repair and revenge. It is only with the development of symbolic function as a result of separateness between self and object that reparation becomes possible and ghosts are turned into ancestors. I begin these thoughts about mourning with a quote by the singer Bruce Springsteen from a podcast he shared with Barack Obama. The trick is you have to turn your ghosts into ancestors. Ghosts haunt you. Ancestors walk alongside you and provide you with comfort and a vision of life that's going to be your own. My father walks alongside me as my ancestor now. It took a long time for that to happen. (Springsteen and Obama, 2021). The phrase, "Turning ghosts into ancestors" was coined by the American psychoanalyst Hans Loewald, (1960), and used to describe a major achievement in analysis that can allow arrested development to be resumed. I think Loewald believed that progress became blocked through the presence of concrete internal objects that haunt the patient with their demands and that the patient can be freed up to resume development if the ghosts can be transformed into their symbolic counterparts and take their place in the past as ancestors. The process by which this is achieved involves mourning that is taken to its conclusion. One in which the object is accepted as irretrievably dead and buried. Eventually we have to be parted from our ghosts but first they must be brought alive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Your belief that Obama is a Democrat would not be the belief that it is if it did not represent Obama, nor would the pain in your ankle be the state that it is if, say, it felt like an itch. Accordingly, it is tempting to hold that phenomenal and representational properties are essential to the mental states that have them. But, as several theorists have forcefully argued (including Kripke (1980) and Burge (1979, 1982)) this attractive idea is seemingly in tension with another equally attractive thesis, namely, the token‐identity thesis; the thesis according to which every mental state token is identical with some or other token physical state. In this paper, we show that these seemingly incontrovertible essentialist intuitions are in fact compatible with "token physicalism" regarding the mental. Given a suitably plentitudinous ontology of objects, we argue that there are physical things with which our token mental states can be identified. This is preferable to existing views that give up the essentiality claims or simply reject the token‐identity thesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political leaders construct meanings for current events in support of their existing policy goals, but the constructed meanings do not change when policy goals change. Consequently, the established narrative of the past becomes part of the policymaking terrain, justifying existing policies and creating criteria for policy success. It must be navigated by leaders seeking to reach their policy objectives. References made by U.S. and Israeli political leaders to the event known as "9/11" from 2002 through 2019 reveal how they renegotiated its meaning as their policy goals evolved. Policy goals at the time of the event shaped the meanings made of the event. As policy goals changed, existing meanings could not be discarded or reshaped at will, nor could 9/11 simply be forgotten. Instead, leaders navigated and amended the inescapable public memory of 9/11 to support varying policy goals over a 20-year time span. For Israel, 9/11 made a chronic problem an international cause célèbre, offering potential to generate international response to a commonly marginalized threat, a narrative prime ministers sought to adapt as their policy goals changed. In the U.S. the George W. Bush Administration's narrative of 9/11 promoted and sustained the administration's policies and goals, making it difficult for Barack Obama's administration to change course unless it could tell a different story. Both cases demonstrate that arguments made for or against policies are contingent upon how the past is narrated. Collective remembrance can affect the contours of public policy, for the remembered past constitutes the terrain of policymaking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The election of President Obama, the first African American president of the United States, was an historic and symbolically important event that may have influenced the workplace attitudes of minority federal workers, although this question has yet to be tested empirically. Using difference-in-differences analyses of data from the 2008 and 2010 Federal Employee Viewpoint Surveys, this study explores the influence of Obama's election on minority employees' sense of inclusion and job satisfaction in the Department of Education (DoEd) and the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the two federal agencies with the largest proportion of African American employees. The findings suggest that minority employees in the DoEd and HUD experienced a net increase in their sense of inclusion and job satisfaction after the presidential election. The effect size is small, however, and we found little evidence of an Obama effect across other federal agencies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study examined individuals' perceived message and video fakeness of deepfake (versus real) videos and deepfake-described (versus non-described) videos, and the moderating effect of perceived deepfake targeted politicians' personality characteristics on the perceived fakeness of deepfake videos. Six hundred and one participants were randomly assigned to one of the four groups: deepfake-described deepfake videos (n = 148), non-described deepfake videos (n = 157), deepfake-described real videos (n = 143), and non-described real videos (n = 153). Participants in each group watched deepfake or real Trump and Obama videos, and then answered questions about their perceived fakeness of each video and the perceived dangerousness and trustworthiness of the video target. Results indicated that participants were able to make the correct decisions to perceive the deepfake and deepfake-described videos and messages as less realistic than real and non-described videos. As predicted by error management theory, participants were inclined to commit the less costly false positive error to perceive dangerous video targets' messages in real and non-described videos as fake as deepfake and deepfake-described videos. In contrast, they were prone to make the less costly false negative error to perceive trustworthy video targets' messages in deepfake videos, and the deepfake videos, as real as real videos. Theoretical and practical implications for deepfakes research were discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines attitudes toward property, government, access to housing, integration, and community identity as expressed in the discourse surrounding the struggle over fair housing in Westchester, New York surrounding the 2009 court-ordered settlement. Building on the 'new suburban history', this article argues that opposition to fair housing drew on long-term conservative trends in the national political culture after 1968, but also reflected the specific dynamics of the early Obama years. Fair housing opponents contend that housing 'choices,' rooted in the values of 'hard work,' meritocracy, private property, and the free market, exemplify the patriotic tradition of American individualism. But, in doing so, they ignore decades of state-sponsored housing discrimination that contradicted free market principles. Drawing heavily on what one scholar has called 'race-based neighborhood stereotyping', these ideas constitute an important starting point for understanding the crippling resistance to fair housing initiatives, since this discourse has proven remarkably durable and politically galvanizing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study provides a systematic assessment of U.S. differentials in self-rated health over the past five decades (1972–2018) at the intersection of race and gender (i.e., White men, White women, Black men, Black women). In so doing, we provide new evidence regarding racial and gender dynamics in well-being since the civil rights and women's rights legislations of the 1960s/1970s. We find that self-rated health differentials are converging. Black women experienced a discernable pattern of improvement. In contrast, Black men encountered a variable trend, experiencing self-rated health gains in some decades (i.e., 1990s and 2010s) although experiencing an intermittent reversal of previous gains during the pre-Obama/recession years (i.e., 2000s). While White women experienced self-rated health gains between the 1970s and 2000s, White men experienced little to no change in their health status across the first four decades of the survey. After the economic downturn (2010–2018), however, self-rated health gains among White women diminished, while White men encountered an unparalleled pattern of decline. Our findings contribute to a growing body of work in the United States indicating rapid declines in well-being across a broad range of social indicators of quality of life post-recession. Our findings also closely parallel scholarly work highlighting the well-documented declines in life expectancy and increases in "Deaths of Despair" that have disproportionately and adversely affected the White American (male) population in recent years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article brings an intimate perspective to bear upon the violence of economic sanctions, shifting attention away from an exclusive focus on state actors, in order to examine how "'wounds" enter politics'. In this research, I 'stretch' Berlant's notion of the intimate public, reconfiguring it as a decolonial analytic lens on subaltern suffering in conditions of endemic imperial violence. I focus on the Facebook page of the Iranian chief negotiator, Javad Zarif, during Iran's talks with the P5+1 powers over its nuclear programme, under the pressure of what the Obama administration itself termed 'crippling' economic sanctions. Examining Zarif's audience's readings of his back injury during the talks as representing the 'crippled' nation, I trace how subaltern injury is intimately narrated through a racialised framework of disablement and 'recovery', where 'recovery' signifies a desanctioned and deracialised national body. I firstly complicate the prevailing conception of the intimate public as oriented around a 'national fantasy', theorising it as an affective structure that simultaneously locates imperial power, as well as the nation-state, as sources of complaint and hope; secondly, I draw on a critical disability ('crip') lens to understand the intimate public as mediating both the debilitation of racialised underdevelopment, and the fantasy of a normative, 'developed' national body in a post-sanctions future. Through examining the intimate politics of economic sanctions, this study contributes to a decolonial perspective on the entanglements of affect, nationalism and imperial violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the dialectical relationship between continuity and change in the foreign policy of the United States, a hegemonic power. The article begins by exploring the agent–structure problem and the factors that affect changes in foreign policy and the legitimacy of hegemony. It compares the hegemonic leadership styles of three former United States Presidents: George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump. The article aims to contrast the foreign policy approaches of the three presidents and present two main arguments. In order to gain a comprehensive understanding of foreign policy, it is imperative to analyse dynamic components such as contextual factors and leadership. This includes the leaders' worldviews and their ability to adapt to unanticipated crises. The gradual decline of the United States' hegemony in the international order can be attributed to structural transformations within the international order and the erosion of its social capital and its role as hegemon. Yet, the leadership styles adopted by American presidents have a significant impact on the erosion of the nation's hegemonic leadership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2016, Russia escalated the scale of its electoral interference activities by interfering in the US presidential election. In doing so, it undermined American democracy and the authority of the Obama administration, which struggled to respond effectively. Despite the fact that the Obama administration faced certain domestic and systemic constraints, it was primarily the administration's own flawed assessment of the situation and the goals it set for itself that accounted for the weak response. Ultimately, what happened in 2016 holds important implications for the use of subversion as a tool of statecraft in the US-Russia rivalry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study aims to uncover language and power relationships by looking into hidden ideologies present in President Barack Obama's political speech at Cairo University. Language has a significant impact on what and how people speak, and others' perceptions of this use of language in political discourse can be either positive or negative. In any system, politicians frequently use language as a tool to establish their authority and persuade the public of their beliefs. The paper focus on Mr. Obama's spoken political discourse qualitatively in order to understand his word choices and determine how they represent his intentions in the political sphere. For this reason, the Fairclough three-dimensional model served as the theoretical foundation for an analysis of Mr. Barack Obama's "A New Beginning" speech at Cairo University. The Investigation demonstrates a number of conclusions, including Mr. Obama's use of language and rhetoric to influence the audience, forge strong ties with the Muslim community, and assert US dominance over global affairs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars, pundits, and politicians use opinion surveys to study citizen beliefs about political facts, such as the current unemployment rate, and more conspiratorial beliefs, such as whether Barack Obama was born abroad. Many studies, however, ignore acquiescence-response bias, the tendency for survey respondents to endorse any assertion made in a survey question regardless of content. With new surveys fielding questions asked in recent scholarship, we show that acquiescence bias inflates estimated incidence of conspiratorial beliefs and political misperceptions in the United States and China by up to 50%. Acquiescence bias is disproportionately prevalent among more ideological respondents, inflating correlations between political ideology such as conservatism and endorsement of conspiracies or misperception of facts. We propose and demonstrate two methods to correct for acquiescence bias. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigated whether political endorsements from in‐ versus out‐group political elites would influence likelihood of COVID‐19 vaccination. In March 2021, we ran an experiment with Democrats and Republicans in the United States to examine whether they would be more likely to get vaccinated following endorsements by former Presidents Obama or Trump. Participants reported greater likelihood of getting vaccinated if the vaccine was endorsed by an elite from their own rather than the opposing party. This effect was driven by Trump, who increased vaccination likelihood among Republicans but decreased it among Democrats. We also investigated the mechanisms underlying this persuasion effect and found that perceived bias and liking were plausible mediators, whereas perceived trustworthiness and expertise were not. This study highlights the potential of having endorsements from both Democrat and Republican political elites to increase support for health behaviors in a politically charged climate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A content analysis of over 1-year worth of online news coverage was undertaken to assess the impact of the election of Barack Obama, America's first Black President, on the overall portrayal of Blacks in the news. Specifically, we investigated whether the potential positive coverage of President Obama and his family displaced more stereotypic coverage of Blacks in the news than simply adding to existing stereotypical portrayals. Results indicate that Blacks achieved greater frequency in coverage compared with prior analyses. However, pervasive stereotyping and negative characterizations of Blacks persisted. Explanations for the minimal impact of the Obama family on the overall presentation of Blacks are discussed within the context of trait attribution and media stacking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]