State Policy Choices Research Articles

Tailored engagement: Assessing Japan’s strategic culture and its impact on U.S. – China competition

The concept of “Strategic Culture” has enjoyed a resurgence in the last two decades as a method for understanding the behavior and decision making of potential adversaries. Strategic culture assessment methodologies offer a way to examine the policy choices of states, while accounting for ethnocentric biases. While these assessments have been used widely for analyzing adversaries, they are underutilized in assessing allies. The emergence of great power competition between the U.S. and China will increase pressure on the U.S.-Japan alliance. Increasing the understanding of Japan’s strategic culture will provide the United States insight into ways to engage with Japan to make strategies to compete with China more effective.

Reassessing the relationship between homophobia and political participation

AbstractGovernments around the world vary in their policies affecting lesbian and gay communities. While some states enshrine the rights of their minority citizens, others drum up and enforce oppressive policies toward these groups, termed political homophobia. We are interested in the role such policies play in shaping electoral and non‐electoral political participation. Existing research on this question is often optimistic that proponents of gay rights will steadily out‐participate their opposition, but anti‐gay mobilization remains ubiquitous in many states. Under what conditions might intolerant citizens out‐participate more socially progressive citizens? And how do state policies influence this participation? By engaging literature on sexual citizenship and political efficacy, we argue that a state's policy choices send important signals to citizens that influence their participation. Citizens who are intolerant of homosexuality may be more participatory in states that espouse political homophobia. This study conducts the first worldwide examination of tolerant and intolerant participation with data from the World Values Survey (2010–2020) and a novel application of gay rights measures. We find that outside of gay rights‐respecting states, intolerant individuals are more likely to vote than tolerant individuals. While tolerant individuals generally tend to engage more in non‐electoral participation across states, they nonetheless turn out to the ballot box less in states that are not respecting of gay rights.

The Legality of Unilateral Extra-territorial Sanctions under International Law

Abstract Following its withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the USA re-imposed economic and financial sanctions against Iran. Its current unilateral sanctions regime against the country contains extra-territorial sanctions which prohibit non-US nationals and non-US companies from trading with and investing in Iran. Foreign legal and natural persons who do not comply with the US extra-territorial legislation are faced with a variety of limitations, including access restrictions, fines and penalties. Thereby they not only put pressure on operators worldwide but also interfere with the sovereign foreign policy choices of states and international organisations such as the European Union (EU) who support legitimate trade with Iran. Equally problematic are the extra-territorial sanctions contained in the US sanctions regime against Cuba. The article examines the lawfulness of unilateral extra-territorial sanctions as a form of targeted sanction under international law in the relationship between the sanctioning state and other sovereign international actors affected by the extra-territorial legislation in light of the customary law on jurisdiction, the law on sanctions as well as the principle of non-intervention. The relationship between the US and the EU and its Member States will be taken as an example. It will be shown that unilateral extra-territorial sanctions may amount to an abuse of rights in case they are functionally connected to primary sanctions that violate jus cogens norms or that undermine the UN Charter system, irrespective of the strength of the exercised economic pressure.

THE GREEK NATIONAL EMPLOYMENT POLICY: THE EXPANDING INFLUENCE OF THE EUROPEAN UNION

European Union has adapted an employment strategy since the decade of the 1990s that has affected all its member states. This policy is referred in the European Employment Strategy as the set of microeconomic and social policies that affect the labor supply and demand, the functioning of the labor market and the organization of internal labor of businesses. In fact, the national employment policy choices of the member states are appreciably reduced over the years. Indeed, European Union has a special competence in employment affairs in accordance with European Union Treaties. However, European Union priorities and European Integration have shaped a broader framework within which the member states implement their national employment policies. The resulting conclusion is that the European Union actually directs the member states' employment policy choices and there is not a fundamental margin for them to plan national employment policy. Especially in the case of Greece, which came under the strong supervision of European institutions during the last years of economic crisis of 2008, the possibility of pursuing an autonomous national employment policy was more limited, due to the financial constraints and the policies it was obliged to follow during the memoranda and enhanced supervision period. Regardless of this, the conclusion that emerges is that the European Union essentially directs the member states' employment policy choices, especially those with fiscal problems such as Greece. Keywords: National employment policy, Greece, European Union, governance, Europeanization. &nbsp

Politics, Policy, and the Pandemic

Covid-19 represents the ultimate “black swan” of our time—a catastrophic event that has put the entire world in a tailspin. With no clear in sight, this devastating pandemic that has claimed lives, paralyzed economies, and literally stopped everyone and everything in suspended animation. Politics and policy, however, have been pushed to the frontlines of this global pandemic. Responses of states and international organizations have so far revealed a varying mix of political considerations and informed policy. Some governments, particularly those that are relatively more successful in mitigating the impact of the pandemic, faithfully resorted to past learnings as they were more prepared and informed. In contrast, a few governments continued to resort to politicking, repression, and denial despite the harrowing consequences of Covid-19 to the lives of their people. This variation in responses to this pandemic is clearly seen in Asia. In the coming months, we can expect that states will continue to swing in the pendulum of politics (bad policy) or policy (good politics) as they move forward in dealing with Covid-19. APP hopes to be a venue for discussions on what the repercussions of Covid-19 on politics and policy in Asia. In the meantime, this April issue contains a fascinating mix of relevant research topics and themes. On the surface, the theme of fostering strategic relations between small states as discussed by the articles authored by Nicole Jenne as well as Sofie Hamdi and Mohammad Salman. Jenne discusses the potential of Chile as a diplomatic bridge between Southeast Asia and Latin America while Hamdi and Salman problematized the foreign policy choices of small Gulf states as they balance their relations between two “elephants”—Iran and Saudi Arabia. Scholars focusing on small and middle power diplomacy is a breath of research fresh air since major powers continue to occupy the bulk of the international relations literature. It is a pleasure to feature these two articles as we expect that small states have and will continue to matter in the future. A second recurring theme for this issue is democratization and national identity. The rest of the original articles representing research from India, Indonesia, Korea, and the Philippines covered this broad area by examining different aspects of political reform, electoral politics, and national integration. These studies are ripe with significant recommendations for public policy that other countries can benefit and learn from. In future APP issues, these aspects of politics and public policy will necessarily have to be re-thought given the likely consequences of Covid-19. Finally, I write this Editor’s introduction with a heavy heart. For the past decade, APP has been under the caring and effective leadership of its editor-in-chief, Aileen San Pablo-Baviera. We lost Aileen due to complications from Covid-19 in March 21, 2020. As a tireless and diligent worker, she selflessly continued to work on the April issue until her last days. Known primarily as the preeminent Filipino Sinologist, the entire world lost a prolific scholar and an academic leader. In the Praxis issue, APP pays tribute to its editor-in-chief through a biographical essay. Janus Nolasco, a colleague of Aileen in the University of the Philippines Asian Center, was on point in titling the essay A World Without Fences. It truly represented Aileen’s life work—as a rare scholar who traversed the worlds of academe and policy with ease, grace, humility, and rigor. But it also exemplified her vision that guided her multiple roles: a longing for a peaceful, stable, and kinder world. This tribute to Aileen also re-publishes her last works. The two essays focused on how to improve Philippine foreign and security policy in the midst of strategic uncertainty. Until the end, there was no doubt that Aileen remained true to her devotion as a Filipino. We thank the original publishers of these pieces—the Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia-Pacific and the East Asia Forum—for generously allowing us to republish Aileen’s essays. The entire Editorial Team of APP dedicates this issue in the memory and honor of Aileen San Pablo-Baviera.

The ACA's Effect On The Individual Insurance Market.

The vision of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) for a reformed individual health insurance market included requirements and incentives for insurers to manage risk instead of avoiding it, minimum standards for coverage adequacy, income-related subsidies, managed competition through health insurance Marketplaces, and new programs to promote insurer competition. Against this vision, we assessed how insurance markets evolved between 2014 and 2019, using metrics such as premium changes, insurer participation, and enrollment. We also assessed how federal and state policy choices during the implementation of the ACA may have affected market performance. The article closes with an assessment of recent federal-level policy choices and the evidence to date about their effect on insurance markets, together with a discussion of how market experience under the ACA can inform policy makers who seek to further expand consumers' access to affordable, comprehensive coverage.

What to Expect When You're Expecting. . .TANF-Style Medicaid Waivers

Many health policy scholars believe that Medicaid, the federal-state coverage program for lower-income Americans, should remain free from welfare reform trappings such as work requirements that are extraneous to the program. It would seem such requirements would be both inappropriate and counterproductive to the goals of Medicaid. Given the high probability that such requirements will, at least at some level, go into effect during the Trump administration, it bears considering what to expect. What evidence, if any, suggests that imposing welfare reform-style requirements on certain Medicaid beneficiaries will yield harmful results to those beneficiaries, or harmful to Medicaid’s programmatic goal of ensuring health care access to lower-income Americans? While one might expect the last two decades to have yielded clear and substantial evidence of the consequences of state-implemented work requirements in the Temporary Aid for Needy Families (TANF) program, this is not quite the case. Inadequate collection of data, large loopholes, and some states’ widely differing implementation policies at the county level muddy a definitive determination of the impact that individual reforms such as work requirements had on TANF take-up and retention, let alone any applicability such data might have to Medicaid. That being said, existing data suggests that such requirements in TANF are associated with reduced cash welfare uptake and retention and reduced provision of cash benefits. The data from TANF would be more useful if the program were implemented uniformly across each state, and if the effects of state policy choices on beneficiary take-up, retention, and outcomes were tracked through careful data collection and analysis. If welfare reform requirements are imposed in Medicaid, CMS should insist on uniform program implementation and thorough, well-considered collection of data to better study their effects.

State policy and contraceptive choices: evidence from China 1979–2012

ABSTRACTThis study examines the relationship between China’s contraception policy and married women’s (20–49 years) choice between long-acting and short-acting contraceptive methods during two periods–1980–1994 and 1995–2012. The aim is to examine the link between strictness of the contraception policy and married women’s contraceptive choice. Using data from the 1988 and the 2006 National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Surveys, we estimated the effect of contraception policy in the tightened and the loosened policy periods using a permutation test. The results show that while contraception policy promoted long-acting contraceptive methods, many married women themselves preferred short-acting contraceptive methods. During the tightened policy period, we found married women on average were 2.7 times more likely to use long-acting methods. The effect was only 1.7 times during the loosened policy period. The effect was also parity dependent. The more stringent the contraception policy was, the more likely married women used a long-acting contraceptive method. This study provides the first ever proper estimation of China’s contraception policy effects during the two periods.

Unity and Diversity in the European Union’s Internal Market Case Law: Towards Unity in ‘Good Governance’?

<p class="p1">This article deals with an enduring challenge for the European Court of Justice: striking a balance between the EU market integration requirements and respecting the ‘fundamental structures’ that exist in the Member States through the recognition and accommodation of a range of regulatory options that may restrict trade. The challenge is finding unity in social diversity and many commentators consider that the Court has interpreted the constitutional foundation of the European Union as having turned market access rights into fundamental rights and social policy into an obstructive power that has to be limited. This article reflects on the adjudicative methods of the Court and revisits this debate. It argues that the Court has developed a proportionality assessment that is able to accommodate a plethora of Member State policy choices. Member States’ systems of protection need to be transparent, systematic and internally coherent. However, if these conditions are taken into account, then the level of protection and the means through which this level of protection is sought remain largely at the discretion of the Member States.

The self-defeating game: how state capacity and policy choice affect political survival

ABSTRACTPolitical science has dedicated extensive attention to the determinants of regime change as well as its relation to state capacity. Less work has focused on incumbent political survival and state capacity. Building on selectorate theory [Bueno De Mesquita et al. 2005. The Logic of Political Survival. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press], we suggest that the chance of the party of the incumbent remaining in office is partially a function of the capacity of the state they hold power over. However, we also hypothesize that state capacity volatility decreases an incumbent’s chances of winning elections. To empirically test these hypotheses, the article uses a cross country statistical analysis complemented by illustrative case studies of policy making from Armenia and Georgia. The analyses support the above two hypotheses, showing that if the incumbent increases state capacity, it increases their chances of staying in office. However, capacity volatility decreases their chances of survival. While Georgian state capacity developed in fits, jumps, and starts, in Armenia state capacity developed at a slow and steady pace for most of its independence. As the aphorism goes, slow and steady wins the race with politicians being thrown out of office in Georgia and the incumbent in Armenia maintaining its power. Based on the article’s analyses, we suggest that a self-defeating game is at work for reformers.

Foreign Aid: Policies, Institutions and the Dependency Culture

The book under review is a significant contribution to the study of political economy and culture in contemporary Africa. The book seeks to understand the impact of international development interventions on culture, politics and society in Tanzania. Drawing on scholarly traditions of critical discourse and ethnographical analysis, the book draws heavily on the author’s anthropological research of well over a decade and his work as a development consultant in Tanzania to interrogate contemporary development idioms, imageries, institutions and practices. It focuses on explaining how inordinate dependence on foreign aid impacts the ideology, policy and institutional choices of recipient states as wellas the cultural orientations of the broad masses. Within a tightly packed 182 pages.

Constraints on Local Welfare Discretion in an Era of Second‐Order Devolution

Under devolution, state and local governments are expected to use the greater authority granted to them to design new and innovative programs that are tailored to local needs. Existing research on the devolution of welfare programs has reported substantial variation in the policies adopted by states in the wake of welfare reform. However, under second‐order devolution, local governments also gained discretion over welfare services. Some have argued that, while devolution should increase flexibility, local governments face constraints that limit their functional discretion. Using California as an example, I assess whether there is variation in the service priorities adopted by local governments and whether these priorities translate to frontline practices. I show differences in the service priorities of local governments; however, these priorities are not associated with differences in sanctioning or time‐limit exemptions. Thus, while local governments may formally adopt different priorities, state and federal policy choices, as well as client characteristics, may restrict priorities from translating into differences in caseworker behavior.

Advocacy for the Poor

While a large body of research examines cross-state variation in social policy, few studies systematically examine the policy influence of organizations that advocate on behalf of people living in poverty. This article examines relationships between state advocacy communities and policy choices following the passage of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA), or welfare reform. Using an original data set of states’ advocacy communities, political and economic characteristics, and welfare policy choices, the article analyzes whether a state’s advocacy community is associated with its decisions to reduce the government’s commitment to low-income families on one hand and enact policies providing additional supports to families on the other. The analysis reveals that significant relationships exist for both types of policies, suggesting that organizational advocates may play a role in shaping state-level social policy decisions.

Special Education Funding in Pennsylvania: The Effects of a Policy of Neglect

The past 10 years have seen substantial changes in special education enrollments and funding in Pennsylvania. School district enrollments have been declining slightly, while the number of special education students in charter schools has been increasing. District expenditures for special education have steadily increased, while state subsidies for special education have stagnated for the past six years and the state share of support has declined. This state policy choice has resulted in an increase in districts’ costs of over $500 million to replace the lost state share. Along with the charter school enrollment increases have come substantial district tuition payments to charter schools, totaling over $1 billion from 2009–2010 through 2013–2014. Over half of these payments, $550 million, are in excess of the charter schools’ reported expenditures for special education, providing charter schools with a disguised subsidy for their general operations. The new special education funding formula from the legislature, while a step in the right direction, has not yet provided enough new money to make any substantial difference for district budgets.

Explaining State Differences in the Implementation of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act: A South/Non‐South Comparison*

ObjectiveThe passage of the Affordable Care Act of 2010 has been one of the most hotly debated policy issues in recent memory. Southern state politicians seem particularly opposed to the law, but data suggest that citizens of southern states would benefit from the law. This article explores the choices made by states in terms of their acceptance and implementation of the Patient Protection and Affordable Healthcare Act (PPACA).MethodsEmploying standard explanators of state policy choices, coupled with common indicators of public health, we examine a cross‐sectional, 50‐state regression model to determine whether southern states are different from other states in their policy choices in this arena.ResultsWe find that southern state choices are driven by control of the governor's mansion, while other factors drive non‐South state choices.ConclusionOur findings lend support to the notion of southern distinctiveness—southern states are driven more by politics, while non‐South states are driven more by state circumstances.

Correcting Federalism Mistakes in Statutory Interpretation: The Supreme Court and the Federal Arbitration Act

The current judicial treatment of the Federal Arbitration Act1 (FAA) is an embarrassment to Court whose majority is supposed to be leading federalism revival. The Court's 1984 decision in Southland Corp. v. Keating, held that the FAA is substantive federal law that preempts state laws regulating arbitration agreements. The Court thereby transformed quaint, sixty-year-old procedural statute into a permanent, unauthorized eviction of state-court power to adjudicate potentially large class of disputes, as well as an eviction of state lawmaking power over the traditional state domain of contract law. Ignoring contrary congressional intent, the Southland decision is wrong as matter of black-letter preemption doctrine, and it imposes very high cost to the federalism values espoused by the Court in its recent federalism jurisprudence. Moreover, there is no significant federal interest at stake in state's policy choice between opening its courts to litigants or compelling them to arbitrate pursuant to private contracts. The article argues that Southland cannot be justified on alternative theories, such as dynamic statutory interpretation or statutory stare decisis, and should be overruled.

State Policy Choices and Responsiveness of the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families Program During the Great Recession

ABSTRACTThe Great Recession that officially began in December 2007 and ended in June 2009 was the most severe recession since the Depression of the 1930s. To accurately explain the number of families and children receiving cash assistance from Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) during the 2007 recession, it is important to capture state-level variations in recessionary periods, economies, and TANF policies. This study breaks ground by using multiple regression to explain the number of families enrolled in the TANF program when the TANF caseload peaked in each of the 51 jurisdictions’ recessions as a function of their severe TANF policies while controlling for benefit levels, unemployment rates, and size of populations. Key findings strongly suggest that all else constant, TANF did not grow as much as it would have in the 2007 recession partially due to shorter lifetime limits (less than 60 months) or temporary time limits, multiple severe policies, or benefit cuts witnessed in some states. This study is important to policy makers and academics concerned with the effect of severe policies on the enrollment of needy families with children in the TANF program. The federal government should encourage states to relax some of their requirements during recessions. Future research should examine the consequences of severe TANF policies on the well-being of families with children during recessions.

State Retrenchment and Administrative Reform in Ireland: Probing Comparative Policy Paradigms

Policy choices in response to crisis may carry consequences both for distributive outcomes and for the future policy capacity of the state itself. This paper uses conceptual heuristics to interpret policy practice. It examines the underlying policy paradigms shaping Irish government decisions in the aftermath of the European financial and economic crisis. Drawing on comparative political economy literature, it distinguishes between two such paradigms – market-conforming and social equity – and applies them to three reform themes: reconfiguration of public budgets, the public service pay bargain, and the organizational profile of state competences. The findings entail lessons for understanding the malleability of policy choice, and how state policy choices in response to crisis are framed and implemented.

Investment Promotive Effects of Mega-FTAs on the Cooperative Game for Eurasia Initiative

The policy choices of Eurasian states whether to form a coalition along with the “Eurasia Initiative” can be explained by the cooperative game theory. While the each bilateral relationship before making a binding agreement seems to be a non-cooperative game, the coalitions with many other states through a binding agreement of Mega-FTA would be a cooperative game. Despite the lack of numerical data, this study at least tries to show the possibility of applying the game theory to analyze the “Eurasia Initiative” and it’s the impacts of Mega-FTAs on this ambition. While the Eurasia Initiative necessarily involves some economic projects requiring enough investment promotion, Korea can strategically set up the policies linked with the development of Mega-FTAs. To utilize the investment promotive effect of Mega-FTAs, Korea has to assure that the core of the cooperation game would be the grand coalition of a Mega-FTA. If it continues to search for the best policies to maximize the superadditivity of this cooperative game, Korea will finally be able to achieve the co-promotion of Mega-FTAs and the Eurasia Initiative.

Investment Promotive Effects of Mega-FTAs on the Cooperative Game for Eurasia Initiative

The policy choices of Eurasian states whether to form a coalition along with the “Eurasia Initiative” can be explained by the cooperative game theory. While the each bilateral relationship before making a binding agreement seems to be a non-cooperative game, the coalitions with many other states through a binding agreement of Mega-FTA would be a cooperative game. Despite the lack of numerical data, this study at least tries to show the possibility of applying the game theory to analyze the “Eurasia Initiative” and it’s the impacts of Mega-FTAs on this ambition. While the Eurasia Initiative necessarily involves some economic projects requiring enough investment promotion, Korea can strategically set up the policies linked with the development of Mega-FTAs. To utilize the investment promotive effect of Mega-FTAs, Korea has to assure that the core of the cooperation game would be the grand coalition of a Mega-FTA. If it continues to search for the best policies to maximize the superadditivity of this cooperative game, Korea will finally be able to achieve the co-promotion of Mega-FTAs and the Eurasia Initiative.