Washington Politics Research Articles

Fishing for Oil: Natural-Resource Management between the United States and Maritime East Asia in the 1970s

The possibility of oil reserves under the seabed of the East China Sea created competition between Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan to claim ownership of these natural resources. The dispute marked the start of international cooperation in maritime East Asia and introduced the United States into this power game due to its exploration techniques and financial power. While Taibei, Tokyo, and Seoul put sovereignty-related disputes aside in an attempt to explore resources jointly, the change in international politics in East Asia and Washington’s perception of the western Pacific rim led to the failure of cooperation. This article argues that this international power game over natural resources management epitomized the dynamic politics between the United States and its East Asian allies. The roles of sovereignty, local interests, and U.S. international security created a dynamic scenario revealing how oil reserves were never the issue, but instead the embodiment of the actual concerns of these players behind their diplomatic language. Situating the 1970s oil exploration in the context of the Cold War, this article provides a historical lens to understand the contours of the shifting geopolitical structure in maritime East Asia.

Brad Snyder, The House of Truth. A Washington Political Salon and the Foundations of American Liberalism. Oxford, Oxford University Press 2017

Brad Snyder, The House of Truth. A Washington Political Salon and the Foundations of American Liberalism. Oxford, Oxford University Press 2017

The Politics of Choice Reconsidered: Partisanship, Ideology, and Minority Politics in Washington's Charter School Initiative

AbstractCharter schools enjoy support among Republican and Democratic lawmakers in states and Congress, but little research has examined their support among the electorate. We take advantage of Washington's 2012 charter school ballot initiative—the first voter-approved charter initiative in the United States—to shed light on the politics of school choice at the mass level. Because in-depth, individual-level voter data are often unavailable in state-level elections, we leverage extensive precinct- and district-level data to examine patterns of support and opposition toward the charter school initiative, focusing on how partisanship, ideology, and demographic factors serve to unify or divide voters. Our analysis reveals that the coalition of supporters cut across usual partisan and demographic cleavages, producing somewhat strange bedfellows. This finding has important implications for the strategies advocacy groups may consider as they seek to expand or limit school choice programs via ballot initiatives as opposed to the statehouse, and provides suggestive evidence regarding the evolving shapers of voter support for school choice and ballot initiatives more generally.

How American Media Serves as a Transmission Belt for Wars of Choice

With the end of the U.S-Soviet Cold War in 1991 a fundamental shift occurred in global behavior of the United States with respect to “wars of choice” unconnected to vital national security interests. Parallel with that shift, American media increasingly have operated uncritically in conjunction with the bipartisan Washington political establishment to “sell” such wars to the American public. Among the key features of such cooperation discernable in successive conflicts are deficiency of geographic and historical knowledge as the American norm (the less people know the more likely they are to believe what they are told, with the least informed most persuaded of the need to “do something”); reliance on government sources, “ventriloquism,” and “information incest” (unknown to the public, much media “information” comes from government sources); centralized corporate ownership (official policy imperatives interface with ratings dollars for six giant corporate conglomerates); “para-journalism,” “infotainment,” and “atrocity porn” as a war trigger (atrocities appear seemingly on cue and then receive saturation coverage); demonization “Hitler” memes and “weaponization” of media (compromise and negotiation have no role in confronting absolute evil: war is the default option); America and the “international community,” the “Free World,” and American “exceptionalism” and “leadership”; disregarding “alternative” media, American samizdat (accurate information is available in “alternative” media, but the major still decide if it exists or not); “we never make mistakes,” “stay the course,” and “MoveOn-ism” (U.S. policy has no rearview mirror; authors of past blunders are not discredited, while those who said “tolya so” are ignored). In turn, media themselves are an integral part of a multifaceted, hybrid public-private entity with broad range and depth. Variously known as the Establishment, the Oligarchy, or the Deep State, this entity includes elements within all three branches of the U.S. government (especially in the military, intelligence, and financial sectors), private business (the financial industry, government contractors, information technology), think tanks, NGOs, the “Demintern,” both political parties and campaign operatives, and an army of lobbyists and PR professionals. Looking into the future in light of 2016 anti-Establishment challenges from Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, the shortcomings of Barack Obama’s policies in Libya, Syria, and Ukraine on top of those of George W. Bush in Iraq and Afghanistan, shrinkage of the American Middle Class, and increasing public skepticism of the “MSM” in favor of digital “alternative media,” both the Washington-based oligarchy and its media component show signs of losing their grip. The possibility exists for a peaceful evolution to a less warlike posture (impacting media as well) that would refocus on America’s domestic needs. Alternatively, the existing order could risk a major war in a desperate bid to save its wealth, power, and privileges – with unforeseeable consequences for America and the world.

Realism, Modernism, and the Future: An Interview with Kim Stanley Robinson

Realism, Modernism, and the Future:An Interview with Kim Stanley Robinson Ursula K. Heise (bio) and Kim Stanley Robinson (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution Most current attempts to envision the commons of the future in fiction and film are relentlessly dystopian. From cormac mccarthy’s The Road (2006) to paolo bacigalupi’s The Windup Girl (2009) and from roland emmerich’s The Day After Tomorrow (2004) to neill blomkamp’s District 9 (2009), speculative fiction and film tend to envision future breakdowns of democratic governance, justice, education, health systems, and civic awareness far more often than societies that are improved over present ones in any but a narrow technological sense. Even margaret atwood’s well-known MaddAddam trilogy—Oryx and Crake (2003), The Year of the Flood (2009), and MaddAddam (2013)—which ends on a reconciliation between two genetically different human species and a biologically evolved pig species with human-like intelligence, can only envision such a peaceful future after global genocide, pervasive violence, and the breakdown of [End Page 17] civil society. In this vast field of dystopian imaginings, the work of kim stanley robinson stands out for its steadfast commitment to utopian possibilities, or, as he likes to call them referencing joanna russ, “optopian” visions that seek out the best rather than the worst scenarios, given particular historical conditions. After completing, in the 1980s, a doctorate in English under the direction of Fredric Jameson and concerning the novels of Philip K. Dick, Robinson went on to write numerous science fiction novels and short stories of his own. His Three Californias trilogy of The Wild Shore (1984), The Gold Coast (1988), and Pacific Edge (1990) juxtaposes three different visions of California’s future: the neo-primitivist aftermath of a nuclear war, capitalist business-as-usual, and an embattled ecotopia. The Science in the Capital trilogy—Forty Signs of Rain (2004), Fifty Degrees Below (2005), and Sixty Days and Counting (2007)—portrays the world-wide consequences of climate change as well as the struggles that accompany the translation of science into meaningful public policy—struggles that in this set of novels end on a moderately hopeful vision of progressive politics in Washington. But Robinson is best known for Red Mars (1992), Green Mars (1994), and Blue Mars (1996), a trilogy that traces the terraforming of Mars and the development of a multicultural, conflictive, and ambiguously utopian society on the Red Planet, even as Earth remains prone to military conflict, corporate exploitation, and ecological degradation. To what extent can and should Earth provide the templates for how to design a biosphere and organize the social sphere in a brand-new society? In what way might models developed on Mars be applied back to Earth’s histories and conflicts? In playing Martian and Terran societies against each other, the Mars Trilogy develops an extraordinarily complex and nuanced engagement with current ecological, economic, and social crises. The Mars Trilogy not only traces a detailed outline of the ecological and eco-political challenges of terraforming that obliquely reflects on current debates about environmental politics on Earth; it also seeks to portray the social, cultural, and political turmoil and compromises that arise in the colonization of another planet not so much by humans understood as a homogeneous group, but by Americans, Arabs, Japanese, Russians, Swiss and many other groups that bring [End Page 18] very different histories and traditions of how to organize society to bear on the emergent Martian communities. The novel 2312 (2012) expands the scenario of the Mars Trilogy to the solar system, and Aurora (2015) even to other star systems. But in Aurora, the biological, chemical, and physical challenges of multi-generational travel ultimately overwhelm the ambition to colonize other planets, and they force a return to the home planet and a more limited project of ecological restoration that ultimately foregrounds the conceptual difficulties in any detachment of human histories from the planet on which the species has evolved. Robinson’s imaginations of the future focus above all on two dimensions: the future of nature and the future of the socio-economic order. While his utopias are always dynamic, embattled, and heterogeneous, they seek to outline what an...

The Japan-South Korea Identity Clash: East Asian Security and the United States by Brad Glosserman and Scott A. Snyder

Reviewed by: The Japan-South Korea Identity Clash: East Asian Security and the United States by Brad Glosserman and Scott A. Snyder Ria Chae The Japan-South Korea Identity Clash: East Asian Security and the United States by Brad Glosserman and Scott A. Snyder. New York: Columbia University Press, 2015. 218pp. In-between the Christmas chimes and sounds of wooden mallets pounding rice for New Year festivities to usher in 2016, citizens of Japan and South Korea seemed to have been given a Christmas-New Year present by their governments—a surprise announcement that the two countries had reached an agreement with regard to the “comfort women” issue. The agreement was designed as a step toward improving a bilateral relationship that has been consistently undermined by historical and territorial disputes. Yet far from being pleased with the gift, many Japanese and Korean political leaders and intellectuals expressed their strong opposition to the deal. Now, several months after the announcement, though there are no visible signs of further souring in South Korean-Japanese relations—which in itself is progress—the two countries are still a galaxy away from developing amicable ties, to say nothing of becoming allies. The Japan-South Korea Identity Clash is an attempt to resolve the longstanding puzzle of what prevents Japan and South Korea from building an alliance relationship. The approach selected—looking at the issue through the prism of differing, or “clashing,” identities—may raise some eyebrows, for no two countries, even those having a friendly or alliance relationship, can be said to have “highly compatible” identities. Take a look at France and England or Germany, for example. But on second thought, it is difficult to find another pair of countries that have such mutual animosity as South Korea and Japan, despite their being in the same camp, joined by so many links, sharing geographic and geopolitical positioning, and having so many commonalities in their worldview, including their perceptions of threats and interests. On the other hand, the intention to build a trilateral alliance by having South [End Page 232] Korea and Japan come closer to each other is an American desire, conceived by and benefitting most apparently the US, even though the book’s authors go to great lengths to pinpoint the advantages of the arrangement to South Korea, Japan, and other regional players. In this light, the second major contribution of the book is bringing the American dimension to the discussion of the issue. The result is a comprehensive study that masterfully weaves in a wide range of related topics. Chapter 1 delineates the puzzle from the positions of policy-makers and theorists of international relations. Chapters 2 and 3 reconstruct the current identities of Japan and South Korea, respectively, based on interviews with elites and data from public opinion surveys over the last two decades. Given the objective of the study, it is natural that the chapters do not examine cultural or ethnic identities, but focus on political and outward-oriented identities, such as elite and public visions of their country’s standing in the world, attitudes to neighboring countries, and perceptions of foreign policy choices. It is here that the reader can most benefit from the expertise of the two authors—both of whom are leading analysts of Japanese and Korean politics in prominent Washington think tanks, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (Brad Glosserman) and the Council on Foreign Relations (Scott Snyder)—although scholars of Korea may find the discussion of Korean identity less comprehensive and historically grounded as that of Japanese identity. Chapter 4 provides an overview of existing studies on the US-Japan-South Korea trilateral coordination and puts forth the main argument, that “the threat-based and alliance-based evaluations of conditions for Japan-ROK cooperation cannot overcome the psychological and emotional gaps in perspective on Japan-ROK relations” (p. 95). The argument is supported by an analysis of the development of South Korean-Japanese relations since the early 1990s and the concurrent evolution of public opinion in the two countries. Chapter 5 starts with an overview of the development of bilateral alliances between the US and Japan and South Korea in the post-Cold War period...

Breach Avoidance or Treaty Avoidance?: The Problem of Over-compliance and U.S. Ratification of the Basel Convention on Hazardous Wastes

Over the past two decades, the failure of the United States to ratify a string of global multilateral environmental agreements has become a significant source of frustration for environmentalists and diplomats. Delay has been uniquely serious, however, with respect to the 1989 Basel Convention on Hazardous Wastes. Signed under the elder President Bush and approved by the Senate in 1992, the agreement has remained stuck in legal limbo for almost a quarter of a century - unratified and thus without U.S. membership. The common perception is that Washington politics is to blame. Our article, however, explains that instead a legal issue, which has received little attention, has proven to be the more significant impediment - whether U.S. law provides adequate authority for domestic agencies to carry out treaty obligations. With respect to Basel Convention ratification, it has been commonly believed that further implementing legislation is necessary. Similar assessments of inadequate domestic implementing authority apply to other pending MEAs.Based on a careful review of existing legal authorities, our article argues that the Executive Branch already has, at this point in time, sufficient authority to implement Convention obligations. Given the negative consequences of ongoing delay and the closing time window for avoiding ratification complications associated with the Ban Amendment, the Convention’s controversial amendment that has yet to enter into force, we believe that ratification of the Convention can and should move forward without delay.

Breach Avoidance or Treaty Avoidance?: The Problem of Over-Compliance and U.S. Ratification of the Basel Convention on Hazardous Wastes

Over the past two decades, the failure of the United States to ratify a string of global multilateral environmental agreements has become a significant source of frustration for environmentalists and diplomats. The common perception is that Washington politics is to blame. The problem has even led to scholarly suggestions that any new climate agreement coming out of the Paris negotiations later this year could be entered into by the U.S. as an Executive Agreement rather than a Senate-approved treaty. Delay has been uniquely serious, however, with respect to the 1989 Basel Convention on Hazardous Wastes. Signed under the elder President Bush and approved by the Senate in 1992, the agreement has remained stuck in legal limbo for almost a quarter of a century – unratified and thus without U.S. membership. In this article, we dispute the common perception that politics is the sole reason for ratification delays. Rather, a legal issue, which has received little attention, has proven to be an equally significant impediment whether U.S. law provides adequate authority for domestic agencies to carry out treaty obligations. With respect to Basel Convention ratification, it has been commonly believed that further implementing legislation is necessary. Similar assessments of inadequate domestic implementing authority apply to other pending MEAs. We make two central points in this article. First, with respect to the Basel Convention specifically, a careful review of existing legal authorities reveals that the Executive Branch already has, at this point in time, sufficient authority to implement Convention obligations. Second, we argue that the Executive Branch needs to reconsider the underlying premises for ratification. Instead of conditioning ratification on the ability to achieve perfect compliance or “over-compliance,” we argue that a more appropriate standard is “substantial compliance.” The relaxed standard would ease ratification not only for Basel but other MEAs as well. It would also ensure that breach avoidance, the purpose of over-compliance, does not simply become treaty avoidance. Ultimately, the promise that multilateral environmental agreements hold for helping our global environment lies both in the specific rules and obligations that they create for immediate action as well as in their development of institutions and entrenchment of environmental norms and values necessary for long-term behavior change. Effective realization of that promise, however, will require the full commitment of the U.S., which can only come with full membership.

Marvin Miller, baseball revolutionary

Marvin Miller changed major league baseball and the business of sports. Drawing on research and interviews with Miller and others, Marvin Miller, Baseball Revolutionary offers the first biography covering the pivotal labor leader's entire life and career. Baseball historian Robert F. Burk follows Miller's formative encounters with Depression-era hard times, racial and religious bigotry, and bare-knuckle Washington politics to a successful career in labor that prepared Miller for his biggest professional challenge--running the moribund Major League Baseball Players Association. Educating and uniting the players as a workforce, Miller embarked on a long campaign to win the concessions that defined his legacy: decent workplace conditions, a pension system, outside mediation of player grievances and salary disputes, a system of profit sharing, and the long-sought dismantling of the reserve clause that opened the door to free agency. Through it all, allies and adversaries alike praised Miller's hardnosed attitude, work ethic, and honesty. Comprehensive and illuminating, Marvin Miller, Baseball Revolutionary tells the inside story of a time of change in sports and labor relations, and of the contentious process that gave athletes in baseball and across the sporting world a powerful voice in their own games.

Democratic Aspirations and Destabilizing Outcomes in Afghanistan

The United States and its allies, in control of Afghanistan since October 2001, failed to support the development of an inclusive, legitimate and accountable political system. This paper examines how the imposition of an inappropriate model of democracy, the prioritization of American interests over those of Afghans, and a pattern of expedient political decisions have contributed to the destabilization of the country. The democracy and state-building model imposed on Afghanistan was stymied from the outset by critical foundational flaws. These include the return to power of discredited warlords reviled by most Afghans, the marginalization of particular groups including the remnants of the Taliban movement, and the concentration of power in an executive Presidency at the expense of a weak parliamentary structure. In 2014, along with the drawdown of US and NATO troops, Afghanistan’s disputed election saga ended in a no-victor deal that effectively discarded the (as yet unknown) results of the ballot box. Once again, Washington politics reinforced the grip of a warlord-dominated elite on the machinery of the state and exposed the hollowness of the US-led and UN-supported state building project.

The athletic trap: how college sports corrupted the academy

The unrivaled amount of cash poured into college athletic system has made sports programs breeding grounds for corruption while diverting crucial resources from academic mission of universities. Like money in Washington politics, influence bought by a complex set of self-interested actors seriously undermines movement toward reform while trapping universities in a cycle of escalating competition. Longtime sport sociologist Howard L. Nixon II approaches issue from perspective of college presidents - how they are seduced by prestige or pressured by economics into building programs that move schools toward a commercial model of athletics. Nixon situates his analysis in context of what he calls the intercollegiate golden triangle, a powerful social network of athletic, media, and private corporate commercial interests. This network lures presidents and other university leaders into an athletic arms race with promises of institutional enhancements, increased enrollments, better student morale, improved alumni loyalty, more financial contributions, and higher prestige. These promises can cloud judgment of college presidents and governing boards, entangling them in an athletic trap that restricts their influence. Unable to control spending, inequalities, and deviance within commercialized athletic programs, universities are ensnared in financial, political, and social obligations that are difficult to sustain - or escape. Nixon clarifies structure of this trap, describes how higher education institutions fall into it, and explores what it means for institutions and presidents caught in it. This timely analysis also has relevance to debates about role of NCAA and ongoing reform efforts in college sports. The Athletic Trap will be of interest to university presidents, board members, and administrators, sport sociologists concerned with balance of power between academics and athletics, and anyone else with a serious interest in college sports and its future.

The Lonely Congressmen: Gender and Politics in Early Washington, D.C.

This article analyzes the construction and experience of masculinity in the correspondence of early national congressmen. Focusing on the years after the removal of the national capital to Washington, the article examines a number of married congressmen who usually served their terms separate from their wives and families. These men wrote home obsessively, in letters filled with pathos, vulnerability, and loneliness. Contrasting the bliss of life at home with the privations of political life, such correspondence anticipated antebellum distinctions between public and private and the middle-class cult of domesticity. These sentiments of male longing stood in marked contrast to Washington political society, in which women, as Catherine Allgor and others have argued, played a decisive public role. Lonely congressmen often criticized women in Washington society, while emphasizing the importance of the private realm and the love and affection men found at home. The tensions between these different models of gender relations point to the significance of marriage and romantic longing in the construction of early national manhood. By privileging marriage and the home over political life, congressmen defined male political power as a burden and elevated private domesticity over a civil society in which men and women mixed freely. They did all this, finally, in the language of vulnerability and need, rendering male power opaque, both in national politics and in the institution of marriage. In emphasizing their emotional dependence on their wives, congressmen sustained romantic and institutional relationships that perpetuated the political dependence of women.

Bending Toword Justice: The Voting Rights Act and the Transformation of American Democracy by Gary May (review)

Reviewed by: Bending Toword Justice: The Voting Rights Act and the Transformation of American Democracy by Gary May Mark Oromaner Bending Toword Justice: The Voting Rights Act and the Transformation of American Democracy. By Gary May. New York: Basic Books. 2013. In this extremely compelling narrative, historian Gary May does a masterful job of connecting the actions of blacks in the south who wished to exercise their political rights and broader local, regional, and national developments. He also makes judicious [End Page 231] use of data to demonstrate the changes in participation in the electoral system of blacks as both voters and office holders. With the passage of the 14th and 15th Amendments during the period of Radical Reconstruction after the Civil War, “as many as two thousand (blacks) served as state legislators, city councilmen, tax assessors, justices of the peace, jurors, sheriffs and U.S. marshals; fourteen black politicians entered the House of Representatives; and two became U.S. senators” (xi). However, “by 1877 southern white Democrats had overthrown every new state government and established state constitutions that stripped black citizens of their political rights” (xi). For approximately 80 years southern states employed a number of devices to exclude blacks from registering and voting. These well-known tactics include poll taxes, literacy and “understanding” tests, and residency and property requirements. The significance of the ballot was best stated by Thurgood Marshall, who opined that without it “you have no citizenship, no status, no power in this country” (xiii). May details back- and front-stage developments leading to the 1965 Voting Rights Act (VRA). Perhaps the most infamous of these was the march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama on March 7, 1965 (“Bloody Sunday”). Although Dr. King was in Atlanta, he was aware of the brutality at the march and believed that images of the event would arouse the American people. Executives at ABC television decided to run its fifteen-minute footage of the beatings at the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Americans demonstrated across the nation, thousands travelled to Selma, and numerous religious leaders came in response to Dr. King’s call for a march from Selma to Montgomery. Throughout this period President Johnson refused to intervene to protect the voting rights of blacks. However, a tipping point was reached at which he directed his staff to work on a draft of a voting rights bill. He addressed a joint session of Congress and announced that a voting bill would be forthcoming. At the same time and in spite of criticism, Dr. King organized the march from Selma to Montgomery. May devotes an informative chapter to the Washington politics that transformed the bill into the VRA of 1965. A bill with bipartisan support was passed by the Senate and by the House, and the version that emerged from Conference received support in both houses (House: 328–74; Senate: 79–18). On Friday, August 6, 1965, President Johnson signed the bill, and the VRA became law. A major limitation of the VRA was that it called for a reconsideration of the “trigger” and “preclearance” sections in five years. The Act survived criticism in each house of congress, and was signed, not always enthusiastically, by presidents Nixon, Ford, Reagan, and by G. W. Bush for a 25 year extension in 2006. Recent attempts to limit voter registration and the June 25, 2013 Supreme Court Decision (Shelby County v. Holder) attacking a portion of the VRA (See John Paul Stevens, “The Court & the Right to Vote: A Dissent,” The New York Review of Books, August 15, 2013) make evident that the battle is not over and that “‘Voter Suppression’ is as American as cherry pie” (253). [End Page 232] Mark Oromaner Independent Scholar, New York Copyright © 2014 Mid-America American Studies Association

Freedom’s Cap: The United States Capitol and the Coming of the Civil War by Guy Gugliotta (review)

Reviewed by: Freedom’s Cap: The United States Capitol and the Coming of the Civil War by Guy Gugliotta William L. Barney Freedom’s Cap: The United States Capitol and the Coming of the Civil War. Guy Gugliotta. New York: Hill and Wang, 2012. ISBN 978-0-8090-4681-2, 350 pp., cloth $35.00. In one of the overlooked ironies in American history, the key figure in the 1850s in driving forward the magnificent renovations of the U.S. Capitol that transformed it into the preeminent symbol of the power and prestige of the Federal Union was Jefferson Davis, soon to be president of the Confederate States of America, dedicated to the destruction of that very Union. Freedom’s Cap focuses on this irony in a narrative filled with clashing personalities: army captain Montgomery C. Meigs, the engineer in charge of the Capitol Extension whose control of the project was carefully guarded by Davis, first while he was secretary of war under President Pierce and then while he served as chair of the Senate’s Military Affairs Committee; Thomas U. Walter, the architect President Millard Fillmore chose in 1851 to design the new Capitol, who feuded constantly with Meigs over who should garner the lion’s share of credit for the success of the project; John B. Floyd, who used his position as secretary of war in President Buchanan’s cabinet to peddle his influence to the highest bidder and, much to the delight of Walter, to undermine Meigs; and a host of contractors, artists, schemers, and patronage seekers. Quite apart from its painstaking attention to the structural and artistic features of the project as it unfolded, the story is a complicated one, but Gugliotta is a sure-footed guide. A six-year stint covering Congress for the Washington Post familiarized him with insider politics in Washington. By circulating back to the critical triangular relationship between Davis, Meigs, and Walter, he underpins his narrative with a thematic core that pulls together his multiple storylines. His early chapters on the social and economic history of pre-1850 Washington lend weight to the classic put-down on the city’s pretensions that Charles Dickens registered in 1842 in his American Notes. Nothing better indicated the gap between pretensions and accomplishments than the condition of the early U.S. Capitol: the acoustics in the House chambers were comically inadequate, and the woefully inadequate ventilation system in the Senate chambers left the senators shivering in the winter and baking in the warmer months. The dome, designed by Boston’s Charles Bullfinch and in place since 1829, was an awkward wooden structure covered with copper sheathing that, as it rotted and leaked, worsened the mildew that set in as the exterior sandstone eroded in Washington’s damp climate. The narrative picks up momentum in 1851, the year Fillmore committed to the Capitol Extension and the cornerstone was laid. By 1854, its basic lines, shape, and visual impact were coming into focus. This was not to be another exercise in an architectural rendition of republican simplicity but an imposing structure worthy of the greatness of the nation. In accordance with what Davis had always wanted, the new Capitol would spread out from its north and south ends. Following through on Daniel Webster’s suggestion, Walter designed covered corridors to connect the new wings to the old Capitol and to grace the new Capitol with one uncluttered line of continuity. Meigs supervised the installation of a hundred new monolithic columns [End Page 250] of marble to create the impression that the Capitol had never been in three pieces. And, in the crowning glory of the project, Walter came up with a brilliant design for a new dome based on cast iron, a relatively new construction material, which was much lighter and easier to shape than masonry. As a result, the new dome would be light enough to be supported by the old rotunda and large enough to harmonize the vertical and horizontal elements of the additions with the entire building. When the House moved into its new quarters in 1857, what amounted to a series of engineering experiments orchestrated by Meigs turned out to be a...

So Who Has Time to Read? Social Class and Crime Writing, Part 1

September–October 2013 • 9 A piece of fiction is often said to “find its audience,” meaning that certain elements of the piece appeal to a particular set of readers that has some characteristic or set of characteristics in common. Sometimes the characteristics define a large audience that will sustain a regular production of books written and edited to appeal to this audience. These books share common elements that create guidelines for the genres and subgenres of commercial publishing . Many of the elements are general. “Cozy” mysteries are light on sex and violence, for example, without being too specific about what “light” means, but the readership knows it when it sees it. Some characteristics are very particular to a specific audience. Author Eve K. Sandstrom, who lives near Lawton, Oklahoma, has described how an editor demanded that Satanists in one of her novels not sacrifice a cat. Never mind the fact that Satanists often do such things, as her research proved. Readers who like “cozy” mysteries are generally cat fanciers. A novelist who murders the entire church choir is merely providing corpses, but one who murders a cat deserves an eternity of languishing unread on the ice of the ninth circle. Under the pseudonym Joanna Carl, Sandstrom has also written a successful “chocoholic mystery” series, initiated in 2006 by the title The Chocolate Cat Caper. The title not only panders to the appeal of cats to this audience but also evokes the old joke about a pandering publisher who creates the can’t-fail novel Lincoln’s Doctor’s Dog. Some people like shredded wheat; others religiously masticate their bran cereal. Still others like their corn flakes and can’t get enough of sugar and corn. For all its artistic qualities and pretensions, fiction is entertainment for the audience , which has no practical need to read it unless trying to understand a particular culture or pick up a literature degree. Like motion picture companies, brewers, automobile manufacturers, and everyone else in So Who Has Time to Read? Social Class and Crime Writing, Part 1 Crime&Mystery international j. madison davis photo : ronald grant archive / mary evans 10 worldliteraturetoday.org the business of selling consumer products, publishers (if not authors themselves) directly target defined audiences catering to their likes and dislikes and exploiting their interests. One of the clichés of publishing is that women read fiction and men don’t; however, surveys confirm the anecdotal truism. In an NPR interview, Carla Cohen, owner of the Politics & Prose bookstore in Washington, DC, said, “We see it every time in our store. Women head straight for the fiction section and men head for nonfiction.” Ian McEwan has said that without women, the novel would be extinct. The Harry Potter series is credited with having caused an uptick in boys reading, but many surveys show more women readers in every category of book except history and biography.* Even among the aging group of Western readers, there are more women than men. Naturally, then, publishers tend to seek novels that appeal to women in ways similar to the movie moguls who avoided scripts lacking female characters and romantic subplots. According to Hollywood legend, an executive once shouted out, “Where’s da goil?” at the end of an MGM prescreening , and a “goil” in love with the hero was spliced into the film. A novel manuscript perceived as having “goil” appeal is far more likely to get a contract. Some subgenres of the mystery (like the cozy) are pitched almost entirely to a female readership. But now even “tough guy” detective novels tend to have female sidekicks or other active female characters. Making the tough guy protagonist into a tough woman (in Sara Paretsky’s, Sue Grafton’s, and Marcia Muller’s novels, for example) has been said to have saved the hardboiled novel from its severe decline in the 1970s. Gender appeal is so commonly discussed as an aspect of different mystery genres’ marketability that it is almost taken for granted. Social class, however, is discussed much less often, although it is an obvious characteristic of the various subgenres of crime writing. Take the traditional, so-called “British” mystery. Who is more preoccupied with class issues than...

The Canada-US Relationship One Decade after 9/11

The decade since the events of n September 2001 was difficult for the United States. The nation endured its worst recession since the Great Depression during the period from December 2007 to June 2009. Many Americans suffered through a lost decade, with fewer non-farm payroll jobs in November 2011 than at the beginning of 2001.1 Median real household income was also higher in 2001 than in 2011.Meanwhile, most Americans consider that Beltway politics in Washington have deteriorated to the point of being dysfunctional.2 Approval ratings of Congress have plummeted to an all-time low in the single digits. On 28 December 2000 President Bill Clinton stated that if the US economy continued its trajectory of solid growth and Washington continued to run budget surpluses, the US government would be able to pay off all its public debt within a dozen years. Sadly, the total federal government debt grew from US$5.8 trillion on 10 September 2001 to more than US$15 trillion at the beginning of 2012. Three quarters of Americans consider that their country is headed in the wrong direction, and they are evenly divided when asked whether later in the 21st century the most dominant nation in the world will be the United States or China.Canada also endured tough times in the decade following 9/11, but Canada has generally performed much better than the United States, Japan, and the major nation-states in Europe. It had a much milder recession and avoided altogether the sub-prime crisis that helped provoke the Great Recession. Its economy has grown more rapidly than that of the US, its fiscal policy has been much sounder, and its unemployment rate was significantly lower at the end of 2011. Canada has also become less dependent on exporting to the US and is diversifying its trade and investment partners: Ottawa is currently engaged in over 50 trade negotiations with nations scattered around the globe.3 In marked contrast to the gloom-and-doom expressed by many Americans, almost two thirds of Canadians consider that their country is headed in the right direction.4This article will document some of the significant changes that have transpired in the Canada-US relationship since 9/11, and will also assert that developments at the global level will require that these two North American countries forge even stronger economic and commercial linkages in the decades ahead.DOMESTIC AND CROSS-BORDER DEVELOPMENTS SINCE 9/11On 10 September 2001, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) promoting freer trade and investment ties among Canada, the United States, and Mexico had been in effect for more than seven years. Canada had a population of 30 million, and its 2001 gross domestic product (GDP) would reach $1.1 trillion. The United States had a population of 285 million, and its GDP for the full year was US$10.2 trillion. Annual trade in goods between the countries was valued at US$410 billion in 2000. On the day before 9/11, the loonie traded at about 64 US cents. The 49th parallel separating the two neighbours had long been considered the world's longest undefended border. Neither Americans nor Canadians needed passports to visit one another's country. In some rural border checkpoints, officials went home at night and would place orange cones in the road to let travelers know that they were crossing from one country to the other.Fast forward to the tenth anniversary of the events of 9/11. Canada had a population base of 34 million and the United States, 312 million. Canadian GDP in 2010 had reached $1.6 trillion and the US GDP US$14.5 trillion. The Canadian loonie was worth US$1.02. Two-way trade in goods recovered significantly from a huge plunge in 2009 and equaled US$526 billion for the 2010 calendar year. When measured in Canadian dollars, however, exports from Canada were actually $50 billion lower than in 2001. The US share of total Canadian exports had also dropped from 87 percent in 2000 to 75 percent in 2010. …

The Komen–Planned Parenthood Controversy: Bringing the Politics of Breast Cancer Advocacy to the Forefront

In the midst of the many political attacks against Planned Parenthood and abortion rights over the past year (Guttmacher Institute, 2012b), the news that Komen for the Cure was halting future funding to Planned Parenthood for breast cancer screening and breast health education still managed to create shock waves among women’s health advocates and the general public. Within hours of the news breaking, social media sites erupted with the sounds of outrage and significant pressure was placed on Komen to reverse its decision (Gates, 2012; Lynch, 2012b; Preston & Harris, 2012). As the national interest in the controversy grew, news outlets began to focus on the socially conservative employee within Komen who was seen as engineering a new policy to provide cover for the defunding of Planned Parenthood (Lynch, 2012a). Unable to withstand the pressure or fearful of growing public backlash, Komen reversed its decisions and amended its policy to allow Planned Parenthood to continue to be eligible for new awards (Belluck, Preston, & Harris, 2012). Soon the media coverage declined and the world of online pundits turned to trying to assess the damage done to the Komen brand and the implications of the debate for Washington politics (Cohen, 2012; Sauer, 2012; Sutton, 2012). What remained unaddressed in the media frenzy surrounding the Komen–Planned Parenthood faceoff was the reality that breast cancer, and Komen’s approach to breast cancer advocacy, have a history of politicization (King, 2006;

Book review: Behind the development banks: Washington politics, world poverty and the wealth of nations

Book review: Behind the development banks: Washington politics, world poverty and the wealth of nations

Dire consequences: the conservative recapture of America's political narrative?

The severity of the financial meltdown in September 2008 was such as to trigger major innovations in US public policy, including the Troubled Assets Relief Program, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, Quantitative Easing, the Home Affordable Mortgage Program, the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, and the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The greater public spending associated with many of these changes was initially widely supported, but has now become the subject of sustained criticism from conservative economists and politicians whose self-confidence has rapidly recovered from the blow initially rendered to it by the financial meltdown. After the 2010 midterm elections, with control of the House of Representatives returned to fiscally conservative Republican legislators, deficit reduction emerged as the dominant issue in Washington politics, constraining the capacity of the White House to effectively pursue further stimulus spending. Copyright The Author 2012. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Cambridge Political Economy Society. All rights reserved., Oxford University Press.

Messmates' Union: Friendship, Politics, and Living Arrangements in the Capital City, 1845-1861

Messmates' Union:Friendship, Politics, and Living Arrangements in the Capital City, 1845-1861 Rachel A. Shelden (bio) For generations, political historians and other scholars have considered antebellum Washington a place of division and violence. Reading through the annals of the Congressional Globe, one can find it difficult to see how federal politicians from the two sections or parties could come together on any major issue, let alone solve problems involving slavery and race. The language is frequently combative, insulting, even threatening. When combined with the images of Preston Brooks's caning of Charles Sumner in 1856 or the heated speakership battle of 1859, when members carried guns and bowie knives in their pockets on the floor of the House, our picture of Washington in the mid-nineteenth century has been of a downright vicious place.1 Yet, in a substantial way, this picture of Washington has obscured our understanding of federal politics in the mid-nineteenth century. Digging deeper into the social environment in which congressmen operated illustrates that intersectional sociability in the capital was actually a critical element of the normal political process. Ultimately, the key to understanding this normal political process is to look beyond the debates in the Senate and House of Representatives and toward the day-to-day activities of men who lived in the capital.2 Significant changes in American political history over the past fifty years have made a new examination of Washington politics possible. Scholars such as Joanne Freeman, Steven Hahn, and Stephanie McCurry have expanded the boundaries and definitions of American politics, creating an entirely new arena for political study. Scholars such as Lori Ginzburg, Jean Baker, and Catherine Allgor have used social and cultural history to better understand the context of political engagement. Together they demonstrate that the social and cultural environments (cities, towns, neighborhoods, or other small communities) in which Americans operated helped shape the ways political actors—men, women, and even children— [End Page 453] behaved. These studies help provide a roadmap for rethinking the normal political atmosphere of Washington.3 This essay reexamines Washington politics from the perspective of the social and cultural environment in which legislators operated. While in Washington, politicians from different sections of the country could hardly avoid interacting in a variety of day-to-day activities outside the halls of Congress. Some met each other for religious worship. Others met in local philanthropic organizations, clubs, or chapters like the Washington, D.C. Freemasons. Fancy parties, state dinners, and especially more intimate parties, like those given by local banker William Corcoran, provided other opportunities for cross-sectional interaction. At taverns and temperance meetings, concert halls and gambling houses, federal politicians found themselves interacting with men who hailed from states all over the Union.4 Perhaps the most intimate setting in which politicians formed cross-sectional relationships was their living arrangements. Congressmen came to Washington as temporary residents and therefore typically found temporary housing. Their living quarters generally fell into three categories: boardinghouses, hotels, and private residences. Each of these options offered numerous opportunities to actively engage with fellow boarders and neighbors. A large number chose to spend the session at one of the city's many boardinghouses. Run by local proprietors, these houses typically consisted of a smaller number of congressmen and occasionally other federal employees, providing a more intimate experience. Politicians who brought their families with them to Washington, or who wanted live a more public lifestyle in the city, often chose to live in hotels instead. Generally situated along Pennsylvania Avenue between the White House and the Capitol, many hotels held up to fifty or sixty members, in addition to the city's numerous lobbyists, office-seekers, and other visitors. Congressmen who had means or job security might choose to rent or buy a private house situated in one of the city's fashionable neighborhoods. Members who lived in these small communities made frequent visits to their neighbors' houses for dinners (both formal and informal) as well as for evening entertainments such as the popular card game whist or friendly political discussion over a glass of Madeira. Although each of these arrangements offered a slightly different experience, congressmen could find one thing in...