US Policymakers Research Articles

Making the invisible visible: Using a qualitative system dynamics model to map disparities in cumulative environmental stressors and children's neurodevelopment

BackgroundThe combined effects of multiple environmental toxicants and social stressor exposures are widely recognized as important public health problems, likely contributing to health inequities. However, US policy makers at state and federal levels typically focus on one stressor exposure at a time and have failed to develop comprehensive strategies to reduce multiple co-occurring exposures, mitigate cumulative risks and prevent harm. This research aimed to move from considering disparate environmental stressors in isolation to mapping the links between environmental, economic, social and health outcomes as a dynamic complex system using children's exposure to neurodevelopmental toxicants as an illustrative example. Such a model can be used to support a broad range of child developmental and environmental health policy stakeholders in improving their understanding of cumulative effects of multiple chemical, physical, biological and social environmental stressors as a complex system through a collaborative learning process. MethodsWe used system dynamics (SD) group model building to develop a qualitative causal theory linking multiple interacting streams of social stressors and environmental neurotoxicants impacting children's neurodevelopment. A 2 1/2-day interactive system dynamics workshop involving experts across multiple disciplines was convened to develop the model followed by qualitative survey on system insights. ResultsThe SD causal map covered seven interconnected themes: environmental exposures, social environment, health status, education, employment, housing and advocacy. Potential high leverage intervention points for reducing disparities in children's cumulative neurotoxicant exposures and effects were identified. Workshop participants developed deeper level of understanding about the complexity of cumulative environmental health risks, increased their agreement about underlying causes, and enhanced their capabilities for integrating diverse forms of knowledge about the complex multi-level problem of cumulative chemical and non-chemical exposures. ConclusionGroup model building using SD can lead to important insights to into the sociological, policy, and institutional mechanisms through which disparities in cumulative impacts are transmitted, resisted, and understood.

US perspectives on the power shift in the Indo-Pacific

This essay examines four schools of thought about US strategy in Asia, particularly regarding China. These four viewpoints—here termed the responsible stakeholder, communist collapse, constructive cooperation, and managed competition schools—are determined largely by the answers to two questions. First, to what degree should US policies focus on integrating China into the international order, versus mitigating the consequences of China’s rise? Second, should US policy makers seek a specified end state with China, or simply focus on achieving a stable steady state? Based on a detailed analysis of existing commentary, we assert that most debates about US objectives vis-à-vis China revolve around these questions. This essay concludes that US policies are likely to incorporate aspects of all four theories, which will make it difficult—if not impossible—for the United States to adopt any clear and sustained strategy across administrations. Barring a major breakthrough or breakdown in US–China relations, Washington is destined for a muddled debate on China that will make it difficult to achieve strategic consensus. And this strategic confusion on China will have substantial implications for US regional strategy more broadly.

Role of hydroelectricity and natural gas consumption on environmental sustainability in the United States: Evidence from novel time-frequency approaches

This study analyzes time- and frequency-varying impacts of hydroelectricity energy consumption, natural gas energy consumption, and economic growth on environmental sustainability proxied by carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in the United States of America (the US) for the period 1965/Q1 to 2020/Q4. This study is the first of its kind to contribute to the current literature by analyzing dynamic relationships among these variables in the short-, medium-, and long-term at different time frequencies in the framework of a multivariate correlation, hence providing a more comprehensive picture about the impacts of these effective factors on CO2 emissions. To meet the objectives of the study, Wavelet local multiple local (WLMC), which is a recent novel methodology developed by Polanco-Martínez et al. (2020), is applied. Moreover, the Wavelet coherence (WTC) approach is used for robustness check. The outcomes provide fresh insights into the long-term dynamic correlations among hydroelectricity energy consumption, natural gas energy consumption, economic growth, and CO2 emissions. The study discovers a robust positive co-movement between natural gas energy consumption and CO2 emissions and a negative correlation between hydro energy consumption and CO2 emissions that is the most intense on the long-term frequencies. Furthermore, economic growth causes CO2 emissions, which is evidenced by a positive relationship between both factors at short- and long-term time-frequencies. Supported by the outcomes of the study, the authors urge to suggest crucial insights and policy points for the US policymakers to shift from fossil energy to renewable energy sources to meet Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), especially SDG-7 and SDG-13, since they induce lower emissions.

Covid-19 vaccine supply chains and the Defense Production Act

Abstract In response to the Covid-19 pandemic, the US government used novel policies to accelerate research, development, and production of a diversified portfolio of new vaccines. This article begins by describing the Defense Production Act (DPA) of 1950 and the initial ‘priority-rated’ contracts agreed to under Operation Warp Speed in 2020 to expedite manufacturing and achieve scale, which succeeded in producing hundreds of millions of doses of Covid-19 vaccines by early 2021. However, a puzzle soon emerged, as the scale of US vaccine production was shortly thereafter overtaken by plants in the European Union and India. The paper investigates the trade-offs US policy-makers faced in early 2021—once much of the initial uncertainty about the safety and effectiveness of many Covid-19 vaccines had been resolved—about whether to recalibrate contracts to expand production capacity to help meet global, instead of US, vaccine demand. It also examines the emergence of input shortages and assesses whether both the price constraints implicit in the 2020 DPA contracts and business decisions made to quicken the process of bringing new vaccine plants online globally inadvertently exacerbated them. It also explores the potential need for complementary, input capacity-enhancing policies in the face of highly fragmented, cross-border Covid-19 vaccine supply chains.

What Should US Policymakers Learn From International Drug Pricing Transparency Strategies?

This article analyzes differences in prescription drug pricing transparency practices among 3 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development member nations: the United Kingdom, Germany, and Canada. Specifically, this article compares these countries' policies on list and net price disclosures and on how international reference pricing is used to evaluate merits and drawbacks of different pricing transparency approaches. Finally, the article summarizes what policymakers in the United States should learn from these comparisons.

Bodies on the Border: Rematerializing and Decolonizing Ecologies of Mobility in the Mexico-US Borderlands

Current human migrations and nonhuman extinctions on massive scales compel us to more carefully apply interspecies concepts of mobility to understanding the roles played by geopolitical borders, as well as the various, ongoing forms of colonialism that have produced and continue to perpetuate these borders. This essay applies bioregional, material, decolonial, and borderlands ecocriticism to historicize prevention through deterrence enforcement measures in the Mexico-US border region, and discusses several significant entanglements of interspecies actors in migratory contexts, exploring a range of ways that nonhuman nature has been and continues to be deployed materially against migrants. In historicizing US enforcement tactics, the essay tracks the distribution of human agency from settler colonial, ethnonationalist, and neoliberal US policy makers, to armed paramilitary human bodies, then into structures of the built environment, and, finally, to the ways that agency is further diffused across complex webs of multiple kinds of human and nonhuman actors—plants, animals, landforms, watercourses, climate and weather conditions, and so on. While in some instances, nonhuman animals are deployed against migrant and other indigenous and mestizo people, in other multispecies entanglements, animals participate in the revelation and denunciation of state sponsored violence, leading to larger questions of the status of other nonhuman animals in the borderlands. The essay’s primary focus is on illustrating the practical untenability of, and the severe harm done in, continuing to regard the borderlands from settler colonialist or human exceptionalist positionalities.

Exporting Capitalism: Private Enterprise and US Foreign Policy

In the post-World War II era, the United States took a key role in promoting economic development in the global South. When formulating policies and mapping out development strategies, the United States has consistently emphasized the key role of the private sector. In US policymakers’ view, development through private sector investment offered the best path to economic reform. Ethan B. Kapstein provides a magisterial overview of US efforts to promote development in Taiwan, South Korea, Latin America, Eastern Europe, Iraq, and Afghanistan in ‘Exporting Capitalism’. Throughout, Kapstein emphasizes the role of ideological beliefs that drove US policymakers to emphasize private sector development. Kapstein argues that ideological beliefs among US policymakers pointed to the role of private enterprise as key to economic development. These beliefs emphasized the notion that entrepreneurial spirit and the development of domestic enterprises, combined with large-scale private investment from abroad would transform economies of developing countries around the world and thus represent best-practice standards to be exported to other states. These beliefs played a fundamental role in shaping the views of US officials concerning effective development strategies. In five chapters, Kapstein provides evidence for this argument through a series of case studies. These case studies show that US officials consistently pushed for private sector involvement and were reluctant to use direct transfers of funds, as through foreign aid. Efforts to rely on private sector investment to stimulate development often resulted in failure. These failures stemmed both from a reluctance of the US industry to spearhead development programs, and unwillingness on the part of developing states to implement the necessary reforms that would stimulate private sector development. The track record for private sector development thus remains mixed: while Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea are success stories, this strategy failed to produce results in Latin America, Russia, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

Sketch of a New World: US Occupation and the Politics of Childhood in Postwar Austria

Abstract Between 1945 and 1955, US policymakers targeted Austrian children with a sweeping propaganda campaign intended to cultivate democratic, free-market sensibilities. Coordinated in the 1950s by the US Department of State’s Information Agency, US occupation authorities used subtle, Austrian-ized propaganda to develop educational and extracurricular programming at a moment of sociopolitical and economic transformation in postwar Austria. Responding to concerns about the moral degradation of children after Nazism and rising instances of youth delinquency, this campaign sought to address the ongoing youth problem by inscribing a set of behaviors—empathy, cooperation, and respect for others—that were amenable to the broader US democratizing mission in Central Europe. This paper examines a series of articles from Eine neue Welt für unsere Jugend (1953), a German-language anthology written by authors from both sides of the Atlantic. The text exposed Austrian young people to the richness of life in the United States by flaunting sociopolitical and cultural achievements that aligned with the aims of postwar reorientation initiatives, including articles on the Boy Scouts, transatlantic pen pal programs, and after-school clubs. By broaching these topics, US policymakers hoped to cultivate democratic sensibilities in Austrian youth—to build a new Austria supportive of Western-style liberalism. Works by prominent historians in the field, including Jaimey Fisher and Reinhold Wagnleitner, help frame this article that explores the transnational dynamics of democratic rehabilitation in miniature as US policymakers grappled with the aftermath of Nazism on the one hand and an escalating Cold War on the other.

Sketch of a New World: US Occupation and the Politics of Childhood in Postwar Austria

Abstract Between 1945 and 1955, US policymakers targeted Austrian children with a sweeping propaganda campaign intended to cultivate democratic, free-market sensibilities. Coordinated in the 1950s by the US Department of State’s Information Agency, US occupation authorities used subtle, Austrian-ized propaganda to develop educational and extracurricular programming at a moment of sociopolitical and economic transformation in postwar Austria. Responding to concerns about the moral degradation of children after Nazism and rising instances of youth delinquency, this campaign sought to address the ongoing youth problem by inscribing a set of behaviors—empathy, cooperation, and respect for others—that were amenable to the broader US democratizing mission in Central Europe. This paper examines a series of articles from Eine neue Welt für unsere Jugend (1953), a German-language anthology written by authors from both sides of the Atlantic. The text exposed Austrian young people to the richness of life in the United States by flaunting sociopolitical and cultural achievements that aligned with the aims of postwar reorientation initiatives, including articles on the Boy Scouts, transatlantic pen pal programs, and after-school clubs. By broaching these topics, US policymakers hoped to cultivate democratic sensibilities in Austrian youth—to build a new Austria supportive of Western-style liberalism. Works by prominent historians in the field, including Jaimey Fisher and Reinhold Wagnleitner, help frame this article that explores the transnational dynamics of democratic rehabilitation in miniature as US policymakers grappled with the aftermath of Nazism on the one hand and an escalating Cold War on the other.

How not to deal with a rising China: a US perspective

Abstract Will China displace the United States as the world's leading power by the centenary of Communist rule in 2049? The outcome will depend on many unknowns including what the two countries do over the next three decades. US leaders are likely to rely on their mental maps of how the world works. The primary sources of their mental maps tend to come from historical analogies and from international relations theories. Both are highly imperfect representations of reality. Historical metaphors and analogies are rife in the debate over how to understand the current rise of China, but three are particularly salient: a Thucydides trap; a new Cold War; and 1914 sleepwalkers. This article discusses the merits and demerits of relying on each of these analogies in turn, and assesses the strengths and weaknesses of prior mental maps that guided US policy-makers during the post-Cold War era. Chinese elites expect to replace the US as the leading global power by 2049. How should the US respond? Two prevalent historical analogies are misleading: a Thucydides trap about power transition, and a new Cold War that ignores the three-dimensional nature of US–China interdependence. More promising is the cautionary narrative of sleepwalking into the First World War. A successful strategy must lay out conditions for a cooperative rivalry starting with a careful net assessment of power resources and the formulation of feasible goals.

‘If You Can’t Beat ’em, Join ’em’: An Argument for US Support of and Participation in INSTEX

US policymakers have said little in response to the Instrument in Support of Trade Exchanges (INSTEX) and its efforts to seemingly undermine US economic sanctions by downplaying its significance and making a single threat of severing European access to the US financial system. Should INSTEX be feared? INSTEX, which currently has ten European members, has been marketed as a humanitarian mechanism largely directed toward Iran to preserve the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action and mitigate the impact of US economic sanctions by helping to facilitate trade in medicines, medical devices, food, and other humanitarian goods. I argue that US efforts to quash or undermine INSTEX are counterproductive to US interests and US foreign policy and that the US should work collaboratively with Europe in both the development of INSTEX and, ultimately, through participation in it. I discuss how INSTEX’s commitment to Financial Action Task Force (FATF) principles makes it an important outlet through which the US can not only shape its development and implementation but also in helping to generate goodwill throughout the international community by permitting trade in humanitarian goods through reliable channels. Failure to address the development of this nascent special purpose vehicle has long-term implications for US foreign policy by weakening the effectiveness of economic sanctions and US financial dominance.

Beyond the New Deal Order: U.S. Politics from the Great Depression to the Great RecessionCapitalism Contested: The New Deal and Its Legacies

Beyond the New Deal Order: U.S. Politics from the Great Depression to the Great RecessionCapitalism Contested: The New Deal and Its Legacies

Characterization of partnerships and collaborations in US cities' urban resilience plans

Purpose The United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (UN SDG) number 13 calls for urgent action to combat climate change impacts. Urban resilience planning documents often articulate partnerships and collaborations (P&Cs) as critical strategies. This study aims to identify the actors, the topics, processes, and visions of collaboration. Design/methodology/approach This paper explores the characterization of urban resilience partnerships via a thematic content analysis of resilience strategy documents produced in US cities through the 100 Resilient Cities Project. Findings P&Cs are defined broadly, taking several forms to meet various objectives. They act as boundary objects engaging across social groups, but the details of the P&Cs are rarely articulated, which is problematic for their implementation. P&Cs are commonly discussed in relation to the focus of the work; therefore, they less often define the specific actors, processes or transformative visions involved. Research limitations/implications This research focuses only on the resilience plans written in US cities, showing the perspective of US policymakers. Documents analyzed were produced via the Rockefeller Foundation's 100 Resilient Cities Project. Practical implications Understanding and categorizing the who, what, when and why of P&Cs for urban resilience provide a deeper understanding of how these strategies are being described and offer a starting point for tangibly actualizing partnerships and collaborations outside planning documents. Social implications To reach vital urban resilience goals, P&Cs must be designed and managed appropriately. Understanding the shortcoming of current P&C policies can help managers mitigate problems and find better approaches. Originality/value To the best of the author’s knowledge, this paper is the first to analyze how P&Cs are being articulated and described in urban resilience plans. The United Nations Sustainable Development Goal number 13 calls for urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts. As urbanization continues and the effects of climate change escalate, city governments are finding themselves responsible for the resilience of large populations. To cope, increasing numbers of municipalities are developing urban resilience plans. These documents often articulate partnerships and collaborations (P&Cs) as critical strategies for enhancing resilience capacity and implementing resilience policies. Although specific case studies of resilience-related collaborative practices are well documented in urban resilience literature, little is known about the proliferation of P&C strategies collectively. Furthermore, questions remain regarding the characterization of resilience P&Cs by practitioners, including who is involved and what types of projects they undertake. Therefore, this analysis explores urban resilience P&Cs via a thematic content analysis of resilience strategy documents produced in 16 US cities through the 100 Resilient Cities Project. Results indicate that cities prioritize P&Cs in resilience policy implementation, but they often fall short in defining the key components of P&Cs that are vital to their success. The analysis exposes the most common actors, topics, processes and visions described in resilience P&Cs and makes recommendations for how urban resilience P&Cs can be improved in the future.

Where's the Transmission?

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) recently released two Notices of Proposed Rulemaking (NOPR), on April 21 and June 16, 2022, on national electricity transmission and related matters. The NOPRs ostensibly deal with the issues that I wrote about in March 2022 regarding the failures of US policy makers to identify the unique geographic problems of what I label “Transmission III.” However, the NOPRs are immensely frustrating documents, both in their form and in their thin—and essentially retrograde—substance in the context of the largest problem facing US electricity transmission today: the failure to define a pathway for speeding the entry of renewable electricity generation on to the larger US transmission grid.

Phantom Networks Prevent Children And Adolescents From Obtaining The Mental Health Care They Need.

In October 2021, the American Academy of Pediatrics and other groups declared a national emergency in child and adolescent mental health. Despite this, pediatric mental health services remain largely inaccessible for many families. A major factor contributing to the lack of access is phantom networks, which are insurance company rosters of in-network mental health providers who, in reality, don't see patients in the network. Phantom networks compound barriers to mental health care for children and adolescents. This is particularly problematic for youth, many of whom use Medicaid, who seek time-sensitive care for severe psychiatric conditions such as psychosis or suicidality. We call on US policy makers to support nationwide legislation that establishes high-quality oversight processes for in-network provider lists.

Ad hoc government payments impact on non-real estate farm debt

PurposeThe authors examined the impact of the Market Facilitation Program (MFP) and Coronavirus Food Assistance Program (CFAP) payments to United States agricultural producers on non-real estate agricultural loans.Design/methodology/approachThe authors used quarterly, state-level commercial bank data from 2016–2020 to estimate dynamic panel models.FindingsThe authors found MFP and CFAP payments not associated with the percentage of non-real estate agricultural loans with payments over 90 days late. However, these payments associated with the percentage of non-real estate agricultural loans with payments between 30 and 89 days late. The available data utilized cannot consider when producers received the actual payment and what they specifically did with those funds.Originality/valueThe contribution of this study is for US policymakers and agricultural lenders. The findings could be helpful in designing and implementing future ad hoc payment programs and provide an understanding of potential shortcomings of the current safety net for agricultural producers in the Farm Bill. Additionally, findings can assist agricultural lenders in predicting the impact of ad hoc payments on their distressed loan portfolios.

Divergence Across the Atlantic? US Skepticism Meets the EU and the WTO’s Appellate Body

In 2019, the Appellate Body (AB) of the World Trade Organization’s Dispute Settlement System (WTO-DSS) lost its quorum. Instead of the required minimum number of three members, the AB’s membership fell to one member only as the US under Donald Trump blocked the appointment of new members upon the expiry of the terms of two incumbent ones. The AB’s paralysis produced a high level of shock in the EU. In this article, we take a closer look at the US’s decision to paralyze the WTO’s AB and the EU’s reaction to it. Its point is that it will not be easy to get the US back on board as the factors that drove its decision predate the Trump era. Long before Trump, the tradeoff upon which the US based its acceptance of the WTO-DSS unraveled. For US policy makers, the EU is partly to blame for this as it undermined the system’s prompt compliance assumption. More important even is the claim that the system’s AB created new obligations for the WTO members to the point where the acceptance of some WTO rules—notably regarding trade remedies—became politically unsustainable in the US itself.

Between détente and the shock of the global. The late Franco regime and its meaning for transatlantic relations (1975)

This article examines how the Franco regime influenced transatlantic relations in 1975. The imminent death of General Francisco Franco, seen as part of the transnational Southern Flank crisis, represented an intellectual challenge for the West. As such, it forced US and Western European policymakers to test their divergent understandings of détente. Yet this new divide did not strain transatlantic relations. Happening in parallel to the world recession and the international energy crisis, it instead served to highlight transatlantic interdependency during a time of major global transformations. Thus, the Spanish dictatorship contributed to moving Western countries towards new forms of multilateralism.

How Much of a New Agenda? International Structures, Agency, and Transatlantic Order

This article focuses on the links between transatlantic relations—a structured array of markets, hierarchies, networks, ideas, and institutions—and broader elements of international structure and world order. It argues that the changing state of transatlantic relations reflects changes in the structure of the relations themselves, but also structural change in the global and domestic arenas and how such change shapes or reflects the actions of a wide variety of agents. The first part of the article briefly explores the importance of international structure in order to identify the global forces that shape the context for transatlantic relations. The article then examines the key mechanisms in transatlantic relations which interact to create forms of transatlantic order; these create spaces for a wide variety of agents, operating within broader elements of international and domestic structure, and the article illustrates this through the ways in which the EU’s “new agenda for EU–US relations” sought to shape transatlantic interactions during the first year of the Biden presidency. The article examines the implications of transatlantic responses to the Russian attack on Ukraine in February 2022, and concludes that despite the move to enhanced EU–US cooperation in the short term, the interaction of structures, mechanisms, and actors will contribute to continuing differentiation of transatlantic relations, at least in the medium term, whatever the preferences of US and EU policy-makers.

US Sanctions and Foreign Lobbying of the US Government

Previous research has explored how US sanctions affect subsequent behavior by sanctioned states as well as third parties, with particular attention to whether states change the policies that led to US sanctions. In this paper, we argue that US sanctions also affect lobbying of the US government. States experiencing US sanctions over security and political issues will lobby the US government less than other states because this scenario suggests that lobbying is unlikely to influence US policies. States experiencing sanctions over economic issues, on the other hand, will lobby the US more as these targets would see a negotiated settlement as more feasible. We also maintain that third-party states that are similar to US sanction targets will lobby the US government more than dissimilar third parties, as lobbying in this scenario could be aimed at preempting future episodes of US sanctions—regardless of the issue that led to sanctions. We find support for our expectations in auto-regressive models spanning 1975–2005. Our findings suggest that sanctions in some cases lead states to find means other than policy concessions by which to satisfy US policy-makers.