Carter Administration Research Articles

Falling Off the Talent Cliff: The Failing US Jobs Machine

© 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com). DOI 10.1002/ert.21427 The September 6, 2013, Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) “Employment Situation Report” for August raised an ominous red flag. Unemployment fell to 7.3 percent, but only because a record number of US workers (516,000) gave up looking for work and left the labor force.1 August was the fortieth consecutive month in which more unemployed workers left the US labor market than found jobs.2 Defying modern history, the percentage of the population either working or looking for work has been declining even during this so-called economic expansion. This percentage is termed the labor-participation rate. It essentially measures the share of workers who find it rewarding enough to look for or obtain a job. This labor-participation rate has dropped to its lowest point in 35 years—63.2 percent! It was in 1978 during the Carter administration that this same low figure was last recorded.3 (See Exhibit 1.) Much of this decline has been driven by a growing skills-job mismatch. Nearly a million US workers say they have given up looking for work because they don’t believe they can find a job, and many millions more say they want to work but aren’t actually searching because government benefits are more than what they can earn in a low-paying job. Yet it is growing ever clearer that all the money the Federal Reserve has poured into the bond market through Q.E. 1, 2, and 3 (i.e., quantitative easing) has failed to jolt the US labor market back to life. This monetary/ fiscal formula based on a cyclical economic analysis has ignored the underlying structural failure in the US education-to-employment system. We now need to face the possibility that the pool of over 30 million unemployed or underemployed in the United States will grow much larger over the remainder of this decade.

The "Pictures in Our Heads": Journalists, Human Rights, and U.S.-South Korean Relations, 1970-1976

American journalists radically changed the tenor of the media coverage about South Korea during the seventies. By reporting instances of human rights abuses perpetrated by South Korea’s Park Chung-hee government, they brought into question the longstanding U.S. support of the Park government. Their reporting played a central role in the 1976 congressional probe of the Korean Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA). The controversy that emerged from the investigation helped generate public skepticism for the Park government and create public support for the confrontational policies toward South Korea adopted by the Carter administration. Their role in the KCIA investigation suggests journalists were important actors in the emergence of human rights diplomacy during the seventies. Through their documentation of human rights abuses in places like South Korea, they contributed to wider efforts to halt U.S. support for authoritarian regimes and make human rights a factor in U.S. foreign policy.

American National Security and the Death of Space Sanctuary

At the beginning of the space age, the United States relied upon the general acceptance of a sanctuary narrative of outer space in order to help support its reconnaissance activities over the Soviet Union. The notion that space could be a sanctuary thus served as a diplomatic tactic, one designed to thwart Soviet opposition to American overflight. While the Soviets eventually achieved parity—having later acquired the ability to surveil the United States—the notion of sanctuary became untenable once the Soviet Union began to further leverage space power for the aim of attacking American satellites and naval assets. The crucial moment, as revealed in recently declassified documents, occurred in 1976 when the Ford Administration recognized the need for an American anti-satellite capability. Subsequently, while the Carter Administration appeared to pursue comprehensive space arms control, what was really in play was a gambit, one designed to eliminate the Soviet’s co-orbital anti-satellite capability and maintain strategic parity in space.

The Passage of the Civil Service Reforms Act of 1978, and the Business and the Union: A Non-Zero Sum Game

The paper seeks to use non-zero sum bargaining theory to analyze the Civil Service Reforms Act of 1978. President Carter believed that business practices can be used in federal bureaucracy to improve the efficiency and productivity in the government. The Carter Administration sought very actively the cooperation of the business and the labor union to pass the reforms. Both the labor union and the business groups bargained intensely to preserve and promote their interests in the reforms. Based on archival data from the President Jimmy Carter Library, this paper analyzes the bargaining position of the labor union and the business groups from the non-zero sum game theory to offer a different perspective on the passage of the Civil Service Reforms Act of 1978.

The Political Economy of Gasoline Taxes: Lessons from the Oil Embargo

From 1864 to 1972, the real price of oil fell by, on average, over 1% per year. This trend dramatically broke when prices for crude increased by over 650% from 1972 to 1980. Policymakers adopted several policies designed to keep oil prices in check and reduce consumption. Missing from these policies were taxes on either oil or gasoline, prompting a long economics literature documenting the inefficiencies of these alternative policies. In this chapter, I review the policy discussion related to the transportation sector that occurred during the time through the lens of the printed press. In doing so, I pay particular attention to whether gasoline taxes were “on the table,” as well as how consumers viewed the inefficient set of policies that were ultimately adopted. The discussions at the time suggest that meaningful changes in gasoline taxes were on the table; the public discussion seemed to be much greater than it is today. Some in Congress and many presidential advisors in the Nixon, Ford, and Carter administrations supported and proposed gasoline taxes. The main roadblocks for taxes were Congress and the American people. Polling evidence at the time suggests that consumers preferred price controls and rationing and vehicle taxes over higher gasoline taxes or letting gasoline prices clear the market. Given the saliency of rationing and vehicle taxes, it seems difficult to argue that these alternative policies were adopted because they hide their true costs.

Problems in the Intelligence-Policy Nexus: Rethinking Korea, Tet, and Afghanistan

Accusations of failure by elements of the US intelligence community (IC) have followed in the wake of nearly every war and terrorist bombing since Japan's successful strike on Pearl Harbor in 1941. This article will illustrate how some problems that exist inside the ‘intelligence-policy nexus’ are beyond the control of the IC. By investigating the dynamics and tensions that exist between producers of intelligence (the IC) and the consumers of those products (policy-makers), we review three different types of alleged failure. First, by revisiting the Chinese intervention in Korea, we show that a rarely listed case in the literature is in fact a classic example of producer-based failure generated from within the IC. However, in our study of the Tet Offensive during the Vietnam War (1968), we show that the alleged intelligence failure by producers should be more accurately described as a ‘failure of intelligence’ by consumers. Third, by revisiting the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (1979), we conclude that there existed neither a producer nor a consumer failure. The Carter Administration made a conscious policy choice to act surprised (when it was not).

United States Iran Policy 1979–1980: The Anatomy and Legacy of American Diplomacy

The confrontation between the United States and Iran may now appear so ideologically entrenched and vitriolic that it is easy to lose sight of the importance that the United States placed on reaching an accommodation with the nascent Islamic Republic in 1979. Contrary to the claims of the current Iranian leadership, there was no instinctive American hostility. Rather than conspiring to bring down the nascent Islamic Republic, Washington fretted over Iran's fragility and saw its destabilisation as a likely precursor to Soviet adventurism in the Persian Gulf. The Carter Administration went to significant lengths to engage the new regime, but its good intentions were not enough. This analysis explores the misperceptions and faulty thinking that characterised the development and execution of Washington's engagement strategy. It then goes beyond the collapse of engagement to show how American objectives were refashioned after the hostage crisis and Soviet intervention in Afghanistan.

Gender & Justice: Why Women in the Judiciary Really Matter. By Sally J. Kenney. New York and London, UK: Routledge, 2013. 310 pp. $35.95 paper.

Gender & Justice: Why Women in the Judiciary Really Matter. By Sally J. Kenney. New York and London, UK: Routledge, 2013. 310 pp. $35.95 paper.Political scientist Sally J. Kenney's recent book, Gender & Justice: Why Women in the Judiciary Really Matter, does more than simply make the case for a gender diverse judiciary. She also suggests how to accomplish this by using case studies from a variety of countries as examples of what has and has not worked. Ultimately relying on arguments used to diversify American juries, Kenney criticizes some feminists' strategies, including reliance on argu- ments that women will somehow judge cases differently. Instead, Kenney persuasively makes the case that using arguments that gender diversity strengthens the legitimacy of the judiciary is more effective and does not lead to the same essentialist pitfalls that result from arguments regarding differences between male and female judging.Kenney suggests that gender is best understood as a social process (p. 41). Arguments about differences between men and women are both essentialist and not supported by the work of political scientists who examine American judges' voting patterns. As Kenney's painstaking review of the literature shows, she is correct in this assessment. Aside from sex discrimination cases, there is little evidence that women decide cases differently than men. Yet, political scientists and other feminists continue to focus their efforts on this difference. Kenney acknowledges concerns that if women do not make a difference in case outcomes, why bother appointing them (p. 43)? It takes Kenney several chapters to address this question.Kenney takes the reader through some examples of attempts to diversify the bench, including the experience of state and federal court judges, and judges in the United Kingdom and European Court of Justice (ECJ). Kenney begins with Rosalie Wahl, the first woman justice appointed to the Supreme Court of Minnesota. Wahl's case marshaled the emotions of women in Minnesota, cre- ating a harmonic convergence whereby the governor, who was committed to appointing a woman, had the backing to make Wahl's appointment a reality. Kenney's reliance on emotions as a rallying point is somewhat ironic. While eschewing essentialism, Kenney suggests that women candidates are most successful when they emotionally connect with other women and feminist men. This plays into stereotypes that women are more emotional and less rational, a misperception (along with the myth that women are less qualified) often used to keep women off the bench.Using the Carter Administration as an example, Kenney's chapter on the federal bench is particularly edifying in identifying a successful strategy for appointing women. President Carter appointed a record number of non-traditional judges. The com- bination of an executive branch that was dedicated to diversity, including insiders within the administration who persistently pushed for women judges, along with pressure from outsider femi- nist groups, led to these successes. Kenney is clear that feminists who argue against becoming insiders, because the inside is inher- ently patriarchal, are wrongheaded. As the Carter example shows, insiders can act as valuable allies in bringing about feminist reforms, including diversifying the bench.In Chapters 5 and 6, Kenney moves to the experience of the United Kingdom and the ECJ. These chapters are somewhat con- fusing to read because Kenney jumps back and forth in time in describing various attempts to appoint female judges. …

Helmut Schmidt and the Shaping of Western Security in the Late 1970s: the Guadeloupe Summit of 1979

On 5 and 6 January 1979, US President Jimmy Carter, British Prime Minister James Callaghan, French President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, and German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt met on the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe. These secret talks à quatre were intended to be a relaxed frank and free exchange on the current state of global politics, though Western security issues lay at the discussions’ heart. As we now know, it had been Schmidt who, behind the scenes, had been pressing the Carter administration to pursue informal (transatlantic) summitry - the Chancellor's preferred modus operandi. In view of growing Euro-strategic imbalances due to Soviet arms build-up, he sought to achieve political co-ordination among the key North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) players on the theatre-nuclear-forces-modernisation-cum-arms-control issue. Schmidt's pushiness reflected West Germany's new political assertiveness, but also the Chancellor's desire to personally promote national interests in nuclear politics at the top table (similar to his approach as a shaper of international economic and energy policies). This article will explore why this ‘parley at the summit’ mattered, how within this intimate forum Schmidt pursued his goals, what diplomatic tactics and methods he employed, and to what extent he managed to control and shape proceedings and outcomes.

A Call to Conscience: The Anti-Contra War Campaign

The study of transnational solidarity movements is a relatively new field of historical inquiry. Roger Peace’s recent book is an important contribution to this endeavor. A Call to Conscience examines the US government’s secret war against Nicaragua and the debates within the United States over this policy. This is one of the few works that explores at length the opposition to the Contra War that developed within the United States and the effects that this movement had and did not have. (Disclaimer: I was an active participant in the anti – Contra War movement.)Following the Vietnam War, there was little support within the American public for new US military interventions. When Ronald Reagan came into the presidency he saw the world through the lens of the Cold War. However, the so-called “Vietnam Syndrome” put a limitation on the possible use of overt military force. The answer to this problem was covert wars, the backing of proxy armies to fight our enemies. Thus, from Afghanistan to Angola, secret wars were fought with US money, equipment, and advice but without US troops. However, it was in Nicaragua where this policy was exposed and hotly debated by the American people.While Peace’s book focuses on the 1980s, it does give a short background to the development of US-Nicaraguan relations. Peace briefly describes the Sandinista-led revolution and the response of the US government to it. As he states, “Reluctant acceptance . . . by the Carter administration gave way to vehement rejection” (p. 19). The new Reagan administration was determined to defeat the Sandinistas and supported the formation of the counterrevolutionary armed forces, nicknamed the contras.The main body of the book discusses the development of what Peace defines as the “anti – Contra War campaign” (ACWC). As he notes, the movement was not unified within one organization but “emerged out of progressive U.S. sectors with connections to Latin America along with the post – Vietnam War peace movement” (p. 53). Various organizations, from progressive religious networks like the American Friends Service Committee to peace groups such as the Coalition for a New Foreign and Military Policy, joined with newer organizations like the National Network in Solidarity with the Nicaraguan People (Nicaragua Network) to form the component building blocks of the very decentralized ACWC.Peace gives a year-by-year description of both the Reagan administration contra policies and the ACWC responses. He examines all aspects of the campaign, from the demonstrations and lobbying efforts in Washington to local actions across the United States, from 1981 to the end of the war in 1990. Thus the ACWC is presented with all its strengths and weakness. While it is clear that the ACWC was able to limit some of the US activities against Nicaragua, it was never able to stop the war.Another important point analyzed by Peace is the distinction between those who opposed the Contra War and those who actively supported the Sandinistas. While some organizations and individuals represented a more traditional opposition to war and US military intervention abroad, other organizations, such as the Nicaragua Network and its committees, were active supporters of and had close contacts with the Sandinistas. The Sandinistas worked to develop these ties and encouraged US citizens to visit Nicaragua. Thousands went there to work, to live in the war zones as witnesses, or just to briefly experience revolutionary Nicaragua. Many of these individuals became important activists.However, these political differences meant the existence of many, many different organizations, both on the national and local levels. Across the country hundreds of groups and committees developed. Despite the differences between all these organizations, Peace argues that “the loose construction of the ACWC allowed these networks to coexist and work in the same direction” (p. 116).While he mainly focuses on national organizations and national campaigns, Peace also examines several local committees and campaigns. The move to look beyond Washington is essential in order to show the deep roots this movement was developing. Committees from Florida as well as cities such as Buffalo, New York, and Portland, Oregon, are just a few of the cases he discusses. This is one area of the book that I feel could have been expanded, since local grassroots organizing was the base of the ACWC.A Call to Conscience is not heavy on theory, but it is an excellent narrative on one of the major social movements of the 1980s. It is very well researched and relies on an abundance of sources, ranging from government documents to interviews with over 80 different individuals. All readers, from specialists to the general public, will find it is a very useful book. It is certainly worth consideration for use in any appropriate undergraduate course.

Privatization, Devolution, and Jimmy Carter’s National Urban Policy

This article examines the role and influence of neighborhood organizations, state governments, and city officials in urban policy formation during the Carter Administration. In 1978, Jimmy Carter released the United States’ first comprehensive national urban policy, A New Partnership to Conserve America’s Communities. With its emphasis on voluntarism, decentralization, and public–private partnerships, the national urban policy accelerated the devolution of social policy begun under the Nixon Administration and laid the foundation for Reagan’s retrenchment. Looking beyond the urban policy deliberations to the activities of two other Carter initiatives, the National Commission on Neighborhoods and the White Conference on Balanced Growth and National Economic Development, demonstrates that state and local officials and neighborhood advocates were complicit in establishing and legitimating urban policies predicated on privatization and devolution.

The Champion of Human Rights Meets the King of Kings: Jimmy Carter, the Shah, and Iranian Illusions and Rage

Building on the recent re-discovery of the Iranian Revolution, this analysis examines the policies of the Carter Administration and their effects on Iran and the Iranian opposition. Starting with Jimmy Carter's election and hopes for a new era in American–Iranian relations, there occurred the progressive creation and expansion of a rift between the Carter Administration and the Iranian opposition. This rift was exacerbated by stubborn American support for an increasingly weak Shah, and by the complete unwillingness, both in Washington and at the American Embassy in Tehran, to meet with opposition members, let alone with Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. In this sense, the horizon of the analysis of the origins of the Iran hostage crisis is expanded with a longer-term perspective. The taking of the hostages represented the final act of a troubled relationship that had probably begun before Carter took office.

Historical dictionary of the Carter era

The Historical Dictionary of the Carter Era covers the history of the Carter presidency through a chronology, an introductory essay, appendixes, an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has several hundred cross-referenced entries on important personalities, including the president, his advisors, his family, his opponents, and his critics, as well as members of Congress, military leaders, and international leaders. This book is a vital reference tool for any researcher interested in the presidency of Jimmy Carter.

Does Swiss Bank Secrecy Violate International Human Rights?

Prof. Stephen Cohen, whose academic specialty is taxation, also has an interest in international human rights and served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights in the Carter Administration. In this comment, Prof. Cohen asks whether states like Switzerland, which provide bank secrecy for the offshore accounts of wealthy citizens of developing countries, violate internationally recognized human rights. The United Nations Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights explicitly recognizes rights to adequate food, clothing, housing, health care, clean water, sanitation, and education. Bank secrecy has a significant human rights impact if it deprives developing countries of tax revenues needed to meet basic rights guaranteed by the Covenant. The annual tax gap for developing countries caused by bank secrecy is estimated to range from over $100 billion to several times that amount. Thus, it seems indisputable that bank secrecy impedes the ability of developing countries to fulfill internationally recognized human rights.

The Carter Administration and the Promotion of Human Rights in the Soviet Union, 1977-1981

This article will examine the effectiveness of the Carter administration’s efforts to promote human rights in the Soviet Union. It will pay particular attention to how human rights promotion fit into a larger approach to transforming Superpower relations in ways favorable to U.S. interests called “reciprocal accommodation [détente].” The use of this framework provides an excellent way to tease out the complexities of how the administration balanced the promotion of human rights in the USSR with other important objectives such as concluding the SALT II treaty. It also helps reveal how executive branch worked to reduce Soviet human rights violations by citing the provisions of the Final Act and working with private citizens to raise international awareness about human rights issues. Without losing sight of his administration’s inability to protect Soviet dissenters from arrest and harassment, this article will demonstrate that Carter had every intention of making the issue of human rights an important element of Cold War competition and implementing a new approach to détente that at least in part aimed at transforming Soviet internal behavior.

All of a Piece Throughout: The Four Ages of U.S. International Taxation

This paper divides up the history of U.S. international taxation into four periods, on the basis of what was the basic theoretical principle underlying the major legislative enactments made in each period. The first period lasted from the adoption of the Foreign Tax Credit in 1918 to the end of the Eisenhower administration, and was dominated by the concept of the right to tax as flowing from benefits conferred by the taxing state. The second period lasted from 1960 until the end of the Carter administration and was dominated by the concept of capital export neutrality and an emphasis on residence-based taxation. The third period lasted from 1981 until 1997, and was driven by the need to preserve the competitiveness of the U.S. economy in an increasingly globalized marketplace, resulting in an emphasis on source-based taxation, albeit with significant exceptions. The last period began with the decision to cooperate with the OECD's harmful tax competition project in 1998, and is marked by a continuous attempt to coordinate residence and source taxation to prevent both double taxation and double non-taxation. Three general observations can be made on this evolution: 1. In some ways, surprisingly little has changed in the course of the last hundred years: U.S. international taxation is still dominated by the need to balance the desire to prevent both double taxation and complete tax avoidance with sustaining the competitive position of U.S. businesses. 2. Although it is possible to detect some measure of cyclicality, in that the emphasis shifts from source to residence to source and back to residence again, the underlying balance does not shift very significantly, and the various theories advanced appear more as convenient support for pre-existing policy preferences than the real reason for policy changes. 3. On the basis of the history, it seems unlikely that the U.S. will in the near future make a clean break with the past either by abandoning all source-based taxation of foreigners or all residence-based taxation of U.S. persons.

Formalizing the Ban: My Experience in the Reagan Administration

The repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell (DADT) is a success story. As of September 20, 2011, one of the most egregious cases of modern day government-sanctioned discrimination has been overturned. But my (Lawrence Korb) involvement with military policy toward gays and lesbians began early in our country's journey toward open service—18 years before the creation of DADT and 30 years before the Obama Administration successfully opened the armed forces to gay and lesbian service members. In 1981, I joined the Pentagon shortly after the Carter administration announced a new Pentagon policy stating that “homosexuality is incompatible with military service” (U.S. Naval Institute [USNI], 2011). As Assistant Secretary of Defense for Manpower, Reserve Affairs, Installations, and Logistics, the responsibility of writing the directive to implement this ban fell to my office. In this article, I detail my recollections from this period in American military history: the codification of the gay ban in U.S. Department of Defense policy.

Navigating Iran: from Carter to Obama

Introduction: Predicting Political Change in Iran:a History of Failure The Carter Administration Iran's Policy: Sowing a Revolution and Reaping a Whirlwind The Carter Administration and the Islamic Republic of Iran: Navigating the Uncharted Territory of Islamist Foreign Policy The Reagan Administration's Balancing Act:Confusion in Washington and Tehran The Bush 41 Administration: To Contain or not to Contain The Clinton Administration: The Politics of Reluctant Containment The Clinton Administration and Khatami's Iran: A New Era in Relations? The Bush 43 Administration's 'Axis of Evil': Back to Containment The Bush Administration and Ahmadinejad's Iran: The Limits of Containment The Obama Administration: The Rise and Fall of the Iran Outreach Project Reflections on American Politics and Intelligence in Iran: A Guide for the Perplexed Conclusion: Looking to Learn the Lessons of Failure

Does “Too Big Too Fail” Signal the Triumph of Business Power?

This essay explores the concern that in contemporary American Politics, business exercises outsized and historically unprecedented influence. Focusing on the largest sector of our economy, the banking industry, the analysis tracks the systematic, purposeful, and bipartisan deregulation of the financial services industry from the Carter Administration thorough the 2008 financial collapse. The claim of business hegemony is examined from an historical/institutional perspective and placed in the context of political science theory, and the conclusion is that while business, represented in this case by the “too big to fail” banks, enjoys significant organizational and structural advantages, business power remains both variable and contingent rather than fixed and hegemonic.

Unified and Attentive Publics Affect Foreign Policy Decisions

In this engaging, creative, and well-researched book, Thomas Knecht attempts to “develop and test a theory on the relationship between American public opinion and presidential foreign policy making” (p. 2). The thoughtfulness and insight demonstrated throughout Knecht's book outweigh some misgivings about whether the many fine parts of the work add up to a coherent and persuasive whole. The first chapter centers on five theoretical propositions, three of which concern the independent and joint effects of what Knecht terms the public's “unity” and “attentiveness” to foreign policy. Knecht illustrates these propositions via an excellent discussion of three mini cases concerning the Carter administration's policies toward Iran, Panama, and the Soviet Union. He argues that although Americans were extremely attentive to the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis, the fact that the public was divided (rather than unified) in its views about attempting a rescue left the administration free to pursue that rescue attempt as it wished. Public attentiveness to the issue of whether the United States should surrender control of the Panama Canal was far lower, and thus, despite the preference of 78% of Americans to maintain control, the administration was once again relatively unconstrained. Only in the case of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (to which 90% of Americans said they were attentive and to which 71% wanted to respond with a boycott of the Moscow Olympics) does Knecht argue that a public that was both attentive and unified influenced the Carter administration to abandon a preferred policy.