Washington Administrative Research Articles

The Federalist Frontier: Settler Politics in the Old Northwest, 1783–1840

The Federalist Frontier: Settler Politics in the Old Northwest, 1783–1840

Cascading hazards and hazard mitigation plans: Preventing cascading events in the United States

AbstractThe concentration of people and commerce in densely packed megacities has created interconnections between engineered and human‐service systems that are susceptible to a single potentially hazardous event triggering others. We identify the interdependencies between engineered and human‐service systems as well as the progression of hazardous cascading effects in the US context. The three purposes of this paper are (1) to determine how much attention is paid to cascading events in state and local hazard mitigation plans in the United States; (2) evaluate findings in the context of other environmental health programs in these places, noting that the paper is based on reviews of recent state and selected local hazard mitigation plans; and (3) offer suggestions for jump‐starting focus on cascading events in hazard mitigation plans. Cascading events have not been a focus of US hazard mitigation plans, but we find a trend toward more attention, especially in states and cities that have a history of innovative environmental health and protection programs. Given a new administration in Washington, DC, we urge legislators and risk managers to be more aggressive about the challenge of cascading events.

Top Ten Resolutions for the Nation's Utilities in 2021

There is an old adage, “the more things change, the more they stay the same.” This couldn't be truer as the utility industry looks to the near‐ and long‐term future. On the one hand, it is fairly predictable what the utility industry will look like in 2021—much as it does today. On the other hand, given the continued pandemic, change in administration in Washington, various state and regulatory mandates, and profound technological changes confronting the industry, so much can change. The one constant will be the need to continue to reliably deliver service to customers.

Separation Anxiety: Recorded Dances from a Pandemic Year

Separation Anxiety: Recorded Dances from a Pandemic Year Jay Rogoff (bio) Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, well over a year has passed since most dance fans have enjoyed live ballet or modern dance, and many companies anxiously plan to flaunt the full vitality of flesh-and-blood dancing once again this fall before flesh-and-blood witnesses. Companies, such as the New York City Ballet, performed this summer with limited task forces for limited, socially distanced audiences. For the most part, however, dance lovers have continued to make do with online and streaming videos, some of them recordings of archival performances, others onstage presentations of new and repertory works captured in empty theaters, and still others experiments in designing dances expressly for the medium, whether recorded on smartphones, conducted by terpsichorean Zoom conference, or conceived as more ambitious films. Initially, as in one work I discussed last year by the L. A. Dance Project and others by members of the New York City and San Francisco Ballets, dancers devised new works, recorded themselves individually on their smartphones, and worked with editors to splice the results together into short dances. Soon choreographers realized that Zoom, the online meeting app, enabled them to teach new ballets to groups of dancers. The painstaking and frustrating process of Zoom choreography yielded necessarily brief works, of a few minutes. The modern dance choreographer Stephen Petronio released #GimmeShelter in June 2020, days after police killed George Floyd in Minneapolis. It runs four-and-a-half minutes, the length of the Rolling Stones song that became a pandemic anthem while we sheltered in place and mourned those dead of COVID-19. The song’s warnings of violence—“War, children [and later “Rape, murder”], it’s just a shot away”—acquired new urgency as the administration in Washington determined to battle some of its citizens, and its final fadeout, “Love, sister, it’s just a kiss away,” evoked the solidarity and kinship motivating protestors. The video opens with Petronio talking his company through part of the dance: “Gather up [lifts his arms up above his shoulders], cut across [hands sweep across his chest], leg [kicks forward], leg [kicks backward, while extending an arm forward].” The intro’s ticking guitar begins, and two dancers, Ryan Pliss and Mac Twining, ready themselves at home. A shot of a flowering bush, a body of water, then successive shots of Trump, computer animations of the COVID-19 virus, and a hospital ship heading for New York, initiate a Life Under Covid montage for the city and the company: fire escapes, hands lathering up, a man in the shower, Pliss applying glittery eye makeup, Larissa Asebedo and Petronio preparing, the COVID-19 animation, Anthony Fauci speaking. Petronio’s Zoom palette appears, showing all the dancers in the top right corner of each space, backs to the camera. As the Stones’ melody kicks in, they turn, one by one, to face us. Petronio’s choreography is highly formalist, with arms moving in precise geometry and quick cuts from dancer to dancer. The work’s political [End Page 468] attitude emerges not from the steps but from the images intercut with the performers, and via the dancers’ social segregation. The dancers turn and thrust their hips; Twining slowly turns and kicks; Asebedo plays her hands about her upper body. When the spinning virus reappears, we imagine Petronio has choreographed its solo as well. Petronio edits so gestures ripple like waves through his company. After Ernesto Breton gives dynamic flourishes to his arm and leg thrusts, Acebedo inherits his torque: a slow punch forward spins her body around, her long dark hair waving. Jaqlin Medlock’s hair continues the wave while she executes a slow turn, her extended leg adopted immediately by Breton. When Pliss hops in the air, his working leg extended, Twining lands in the same pose. Nicholas Sciscione, in a short blue robe, kicks toward the camera, and Breton follows the gesture through. Medlock, Twining, Tess Montoya, Breton, Sciscione, and Asebedo, each in turn, vogue cross-legged toward us, arms articulate in the air. Each dancer then approaches the camera, showing only eyes or lips, ready for a kiss. Petronio returns, doing...

Diplomacy Meets Migration: US Relations with Cuba during the Cold War by Hideaki Kami

Reviewed by: Diplomacy Meets Migration: US Relations with Cuba during the Cold War by Hideaki Kami Patrick Iber Hideaki Kami, Diplomacy Meets Migration: US Relations with Cuba during the Cold War. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. In recent years, some of the most innovative work in the history of Latin American international relations has moved away from analysis of bipolar relationships between Washington and other actors, and toward a multipolar consideration of the exercise of power. Tanya Harmer's Allende's Chile and the Inter-American Cold War, for example, argues forcefully for the importance of Brazil's foreign policy in the Chilean transition from socialism to military dictatorship. Renata Keller's Mexico's Cold War considers the covert and overt aspects of the triangular relationship of Mexico, Cuba, and the United States. Hideaki Kami's Diplomacy Meets Migration takes a similar approach, but with something of a twist: the third player in his analysis (to go along with the United States and Cuba) is not another country, but Miami. It is a decision that makes a good deal of sense. As Kami puts it, "Because Cuban emigres in Miami intervened in international politics at critical moments, relations between Washington and Havana also intermingled with the political dynamics of the Cuban-American community" (5). After the Cuban Revolution, Miami became the center of many a counterrevolutionary effort, some aided by the Central Intelligence Agency, others independent of it. Who Miami's Cubans were, what they did, and who might join them were matters of ongoing dispute. And of course, there was (and is) the importance of Miami's Cubans to Republican politics in a crucial state. [End Page 310] The book begins with a chapter on the origins of the Cuban émigré community in Miami in the years after the revolution and proceeds chronologically through to the end of the George H. W. Bush administration, at which point the paper trail ends, presumably on shelves of classified boxes. Kami makes use of a wide range of sources; beyond the US presidential libraries and those located in Miami, he has consulted records from the United Kingdom, Canada, Japan, and Mexico. Many of his most interesting discoveries come from Cuban diplomatic archives. The analysis here is unlikely to radically revise understandings of Cuban-US relations. Though full of sound judgments and based on prodigious research, parts of the book have a rather familiar feel. Perhaps one of the book's contributions is inherent in its methodology and borne out by its findings, which show all of the ways in which Cuban Miami was not identical to Washington in its interests or its actions. Émigrés were not puppets; they were frequently frustrating to various administrations in Washington. But nor were they, as US diplomat George Kennan wrote in 1977, a lobby capable of "bending us to their purposes." Consider, for example, the case of the Cuban American National Foundation (CANF), founded in 1981 by Jorge Mas Canosa. Mas Canosa was able to bring Reagan to Miami in 1983 and help lobby for the creation of Radio Martí, and later for the Cuban Democracy Act of 1992. In the 1980s, CANF acted both like a lobby and like a government-in-exile, drawing up plans for a postcommunist Cuba with the assistance of right-wing free-market economists like Arthur Laffer and Manuel Ayau. But even with these ideological points of contact and the background of shared anticommunism, CANF and Reagan were sometimes at odds, especially over issues of migration. The Mariel boatlift had drawn much negative attention in the United States to the issue of Cuban migration. (A 1982 poll showed that Cubans, remarkably, were the least welcome migrants in US history, and popular culture in the 1980s, from Scarface to Miami Vice frequently associated Cubans with criminality.) Kami shows remarkable evidence of harebrained schemes the Reagan administration considered, but never carried out, to dump Cubans deemed criminal or insane back on the island. CANF, by contrast, deemed resistance to migration a betrayal of the cause of freedom. All in all, Kami portrays the triangular dynamic generated by Washington-Havana-Miami as a kind of a trap. Miami's Cubans, at least...

Build Back Better: Leadership for US–Cuba Health Cooperation

As members of the global public health community, we thought the outgoing Trump administration in Washington could not do much else to shock us. But when President Biden revealed that his predecessor had left him not with a bad plan to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic—but with no plan at all—we were appalled, contemplating the nearly […]

Where will Japan's security policy go after the change of administrations in Tokyo and Washington?

Where will Japan's security policy go after the change of administrations in Tokyo and Washington?

Is Appropriate Administration of Antenatal Corticosteroids Associated with Maternal Race?

Antenatal corticosteroids (ACSs) improve outcomes for premature infants; however, not all pregnant women at risk for preterm delivery receive ACS. Racial minorities are less likely to receive adequate prenatal care and more likely to deliver preterm. The objective of this study was to determine if maternal race is associated with a lower rate of ACS administration in Washington for women at risk of preterm labor (between 23 and 34 weeks). This was a population-based retrospective cohort study of singleton, nonanomalous, premature deliveries in Washington state between 2007 and 2014. Descriptive data included maternal sociodemographics, pregnancy complications, facility of birth, and neonatal characteristics. The primary outcome was maternal receipt of ACS and the independent variable was maternal race/ethnicity. The secondary outcomes included neonatal need for assisted ventilation, both initially and for more than 6 hours, and administration of surfactant. Data were analyzed using chi-square tests and logistic regression models. A total of 8,530 nonanomalous, singleton neonates were born between 23 and 34 weeks' gestation. Of those, 55.8% of mothers were self-identified as white, 7.5% as black, 21.4% as Hispanic, 10.9% as Asian, and 4.3% as Native American. After adjusting for confounders, black woman-neonate dyads had significantly lower odds of receiving ACS, (adjusted odds ratio [aOR] = 0.62; 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.51-0.76), assisted ventilation immediately following delivery (aOR = 0.76; 95% CI: 0.61-0.94) and for more than 6 hours (aOR = 0.64; 95% CI: 0.49-0.84) and surfactant therapy (aOR = 0.62; 95% CI: 0.42-0.92) as compared with whites. These findings contribute to the current body of literature by describing racial disparities in ACS administration for pregnant women at risk for preterm delivery. To better understand the association between black race and administration of ACS, future studies should focus on differences within and between hospitals (including quality, location, resources), patient health literacy, social determinants of health, and exposure to systemic racism and discrimination. · Black women were less likely to receive antenatal steroids.. · Black neonates had lower odds of respiratory support.. · Black neonates had lower odds of receiving surfactant..

Curating the space race, celebrating cooperation: Exhibiting space technology during 1970s détente

During the 1960s, US and Soviet space efforts engaged in a surrogate space race at international expositions, displaying real and replica space hardware as a way of demonstrating their celestial achievements to an earthbound public. The following decade saw an uneasy détente between the Cold War superpowers that prompted a new rhetorical emphasis on space cooperation rather than competition that spilled over into transnational collaborations and exchanges between the curators of American and Soviet space exhibitions. Drawing on documents from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and Smithsonian Institution archives in Washington, DC, this article reveals how competitive displays of space technology were reconfigured to sell US–Soviet space cooperation. Official government-sponsored cooperative exhibits were spectacular and bombastic, but détente also fostered a quieter, transnational process of exchange between Soviet and American curators. American curators at the Smithsonian’s newly opened National Air and Space Museum were eager to build ties with their Soviet counterparts. However, the collaborations that resulted from these ties often ended up reinforcing their museum’s nationalistic narrative rather than subverting it. The 1970s saw the emergence of a transnational community of professional space curators dedicated to memorializing the early space age, but 1970s space exhibitions continued to reflect the previous decade’s nationalistic competition.

Public School Priorities in a Political Year: Findings from the 52nd annual PDK poll

The 2020 PDK Poll of the Public’s Attitude Toward the Public Schools finds that more than half of adults consider public education highly important in their choice for president. And regardless of political party, most Americans agree that the administration in Washington should focus on attracting and retaining good teachers to the profession and making college more affordable. Respondents were more divided in their views of the Trump administration’s performance. The poll also explores Americans’ views on diversity, charter schools, vouchers, testing, substance abuse, and approaches to reading instruction.

Putting Sovereignty Back in Global Order: An Indian View

Irrespective of who wins the US presidential elections in November, the next administration in Washington will have to confront major structural changes in the international system and cope with pr...

The Missing Indian Affairs Clause

Conflicting lines of precedent and philosophy are the defining characteristics of Federal Indian Affairs law. Scholarship and case law run the gamut from finding a pre-constitutional federal plenary power over Native Americans to narrow readings of the Indian Commerce Clause limiting Congressional power to trade only. All claim historical legitimacy, but none has been able to explain why the Indian Affairs Clause from the Articles of Confederation failed to appear in the Constitution, or, conversely, why the new federal government never limited themselves to regulating Indian trade. The combination of the unexplained textual shrinkage and disharmony between text and practice seems to suggest that the Framers made a mistake in drafting the Constitution. In fact, the Framers did make a mistake, or at least five of them did. This article examines the drafting history of the Constitution and suggests a startling explanation for the omission of an Indian Affairs Clause: at its heart is an innocent but consequential scrivener’s error. The five-member Committee of Detail, tasked by the Constitutional Convention to produce a working draft of a Constitution, seems to have accidentally omitted an Indian Affairs Clause. Inclusion of a Congressional power over Indian Trade and Affairs was compelled by its long pre-history and a unanimous vote by the Convention, and John Rutledge as Committee chair directed James Wilson to include it in a marginal note. The evidence indicates that Wilson meant to comply with the command: not only was he personally motivated to comply, but he placed a checkmark next to the Clause. However, he simply failed to include the power in his final draft. Thereafter, only Madison caught the mistake, the Committee of Detail deigned to address their lapse—over the Convention’s directive—by importing “Indians” into the Commerce Clause, thereby incorporating only part of pre-constitutional power over tribes, and none thereafter fixed the half-fix. The omission has thereafter caused a bicentennial of confusion to the detriment of the tribes. This history raises serious questions for constitutional theory, federal Native American policy, state-tribal relations, and Commerce Clause jurisprudence. This article addresses the question of whether the partially-fixed scrivener’s error should be fixed, and suggests some possible responses. These responses include judicial correction via statutory construction’s mistake doctrine, constitutional amendment, or re-implementation of the Washington Administration’s accord to treat with tribes as foreign nations, but with a textual twist: the United States would have to treat with a tribe before Congress could enact legislation to address subjects external to the Indian Commerce Clause. Though it does not provide a clean textual fix, the last option provides a practical one and affords the greatest normative benefits—it is consistent with the Constitution’s text, history, structure and precedent. Moreover, treating with tribes again would restore tribal sovereignty and dignity.

Did university act with deliberate indifference toward sexual harassment by rugby players?

A campus feminist group met with the University of Mary Washington administration in November 2014 about: (1) a videotape that allegedly depicted some UMW men's rugby players advocating violence against women and (2) anonymous threats against feminist students that were posted on a local social media site known as “Yik Yak.”

Соціально-економічні причини та наслідки пасивності адміністрації Б. Обами в глобальній політиці

The article examines the intra-American processes under the influence of which the B. Obama administration’s global policy course was formed and implemented. It is claimed that the passive global policy of the United States in 2009-2017 was formed in unfavorable for the adoption and implementation of ambitious foreign policy decisions conditions. Firstly, the psychological fatigue of American society from the «endless wars» of the previous administration of George W. Bush. Secondly, the negative effects of neoliberal economic globalization on the masses and industry of America. Thirdly, the impact of the global economic crisis of 2008 on the country. Solving the latter was the main task of the democratic administration in Washington, and the fight against this crisis determined the logic of B. Obama’s domestic and foreign behavior during the many years of his presidency, including identifying ways for America to address global environmental issues, its actions in intergovernmental organizations, responding to international social, including political crises. It is emphasized that due to the material and human losses caused by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the global economic crisis in the United States by the end of 2008 lost much of its potential «smart» power in the global arena – both military power and economic potential, the country was forced radically to limit the use of the military component of their «hard» force, instead, intensify the use of such components as sanctions, the role in the functioning of international regimes, until the potential of Washington’s force is restored. Along with the diminishing role of America’s «hard» power in the global arena, the importance of its «soft» power (bilateral and multilateral diplomacy, external attractiveness) has increased. The use of Washington’s material incentives to influence other capitals and non-state actors in the global arena has also been limited by the need to use them to overcome the effects of the economic crisis in America.

One Belt, One Road between Three Seas: China’s soft-power policy towards ‘new’ EU members

China’s soft-power practice in its international activity boils down to four areas: culture, education, diplomacy, and economy. The most important element of China’s soft-power policy seems to be the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Announced in 2013, the BRI is a complex, long-term and large-scale strategic political and economic project by the Chinese government with an infrastructure character. In this way, China is seeking to invest its capital surpluses in resurrecting the ancient Silk Road to create railroad and maritime networks with its most important trading partner – the European Union. In these circumstances, in September 2015, the presidents of Central and Eastern EU member states announced the establishment of the separate Three Seas Initiative (TSI), a political and economic project bringing together 12 EU states, including 11 ‘new’ members and Austria. These entities constitute an informal bloc of states between the Adriatic, Baltic and Black seas, though without a permanent secretariat but with rotating leadership. In addition to the lack of a formal structure, the TSI region, located mainly in the EU’s eastern part, is characterized by a weaker infrastructure network than Western Europe, lower GDP (except Austria), and high dependence on gas supplies from Russia (except Croatia). To overcome these disparities, the TSI has developed a catalogue of 48 investment priorities in three economic areas: energy, transport, and digitalisation. China’s soft-power policy towards the ‘new’ EU members may be decided by the American patronage of the TSI and the fact that one of the flagship projects is the North-South Gas Corridor, which will enable the sale of American LNG in Central Europe, which has been dependent on gas supplies from Russia, China’s partner in the BRI. In the context of the US-China trade war, White House planners recognise Central Europe as both a peripheral and key area for their policy and seek to strengthen the Three Seas project, which may lead to limiting areas of cooperation under the ‘17+1’ format, involving CEE countries and China. On the other hand, the development of better energy, transport and digital connections in the EU’s east clearly intersects with China’s idea of building a New Eurasian Land Bridge under the BRI to connect the most economically developed edges of Eurasia. The new US strategy towards the countries of the CEE seems to boil down to involvement in specific energy-related projects. Instead of blocking or diminishing BRI-related infrastructure projects in China, they seem in fact to complement the Chinese activity in the CEE. Increased investment by American enterprises in the region may allow the administration in Washington to maintain control of Chinese infrastructure investments, and the US involvement may even lead to the participation of American companies in projects originally started by Beijing.

Did university act with deliberate indifference toward sexual harassment by rugby players?

A campus feminist group met with the University of Mary Washington administration in November 2014 about: (1) a videotape that allegedly depicted some UMW men's rugby players advocating violence against women and (2) anonymous threats against feminist students that were posted on a local social media site known as “Yik Yak.”

Unpopular housing policies reflect deeper concerns over discrimination

Last week's issuance of a proposed federal rule that could make it harder for plaintiffs to prevail in discrimination claims under the Fair Housing Act caught the eye of some housing advocates nationally. But in the mental health advocacy community, the study of individual regulations in housing takes a back seat to much broader worries about how persons with mental illness are historically ill‐served in housing — concerns that have only grown deeper under the current administration in Washington.

Building a Conservative State: Partisan Polarization and the Redeployment of Administrative Power

It is commonplace to equate the arrival of a new conservative administration in Washington, DC, with the “rolling back” of the federal activities. We disagree with this conventional perspective, and seek to demonstrate that the equation of conservative Republicanism and retrenchment elides a critical change in the relationship between party politics and State power—a relationship that Donald Trump seems determined to nurture. Drawing on primary research, we argue that partisanship in the United States is no longer a struggle over the size of the State; rather it is a contest to control national administrative power. Since the late 1960s, conservative administrations have sought to redeploy rather than dismantle or roll back state power. Through “redeployment,” conservative presidents have sustained previous levels of State spending or State activity, but in a way reflecting a new administration’s ideology.

Trump power: Maximum pressure and China’s sanctions enforcement against North Korea

China has started choking off the flow of financial resources entering North Korea by blocking North Korea’s export of natural resources and other industrial products since early 2017. What has pushed Beijing to enforce sanctions strictly, in contrast with its loose administration of sanctions in the past? By employing principal-agent theory, this article shows that Beijing’s conformity to sanctions depends on China’s own need and the degree of pressure from Washington for sanctions enforcement. Until the end of the Obama administration, China did not act meaningfully for sanctions enforcement, as the pressure from Washington was weak and North Korea’s nuclear capabilities remained limited. Now, international contexts have dramatically changed. Beijing feels a need to discipline Pyongyang with sanctions as Pyongyang has become a de facto nuclear weapon state. The new Trump administration in Washington has also pushed Beijing to do more to rein in Pyongyang’s weapon programs.

Chinese Geopolitics in Southeast Asia: A New Pattern of Economic Power within ASEAN?

Abstract Southeast Asia is of highest geostrategic interest for China as a rising Great Power as well as for the U.S. and its ally Japan. Since the “Pivot to East Asia” of the Obama administration in Washington in 2011 observers are discussing a “New Great Game” in the region. But has China already established a “backyard” by its economic activities in Southeast Asia and in particular in ASEAN countries? What is the spatial pattern of China’s activities? As an analysis of FDI stocks as well as trade related data show ASEAN countries can be divided into several groups. (1) China’s small neighbour Laos dominated by Chinese FDI. (2) Countries like Cambodia and Myanmar partly dominated by Chinese FDI. (3) Countries with different trade ties to China but mostly strong military or diplomatic ties to the U.S. like Singapore, the Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, and (4) the independent Brunei Darussalam. Therefore, Southeast Asia and in particular ASEAN cannot be called a Chinese “backyard” yet. But if U.S. president Trump withdraws the U.S. attention from the region China could be able to achieve a hegemonic position in the region soon.