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771. Digital Broadcasting and the Public Interest

Author:
Amy Korzick Garmer, Anthony Corrado, Angela Campbell, Henry Geller, Tracy Westen, Charles Firestone, Robert Corn-Revere, Monroe E. Price, Forrest P. Chisman, Andrew Graham, Steven S. Wildman, D. Karen Frazer, and Andrew L. Shapiro
Publication Date:
12-1998
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Aspen Institute
Abstract:
In January, 1998, the Aspen Institute's Communications and Society Program convened the first in a series of meetings to examine the public interest in the United States' communications system. With funding provided by the John and Mary R. Markle Foundation, the Program hosted the initial session of the Aspen Institute Working Group on Digital Broadcasting and the Public Interest on January 25–27, 1998, at the Institute's Wye River Conference Center. The conference brought together twenty-three legal scholars, lawyers, economists, and policy advocates, representing a variety of experiences and perspectives, to consider two issues: (1) the theoretical and legal bases for the imposition of public interest obligations on those using the electromagnetic spectrum for broadcasting purposes, and (2) other public interest implications of the move to digital broadcasting. It is the hope of the Working Group that the ideas generated at this and subsequent meetings will add to the ongoing public dialogue on broadcasting and the public interest, and will prove useful to the ongoing debate over the public interest responsibilities that should accompany broadcasters' receipt of new digital television licenses.
Topic:
Economics, Government, and Science and Technology
Political Geography:
United States

772. International Capital Mobility and Monetary Politics in the U.S. Congress, 1960–1997

Author:
J. Lawrence Broz
Publication Date:
10-1998
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
Prevailing approaches to the politics of monetary policy in the United States are based on closed economy assumptions, which is appropriate for analyzing the period before about 1980. However, the opening of U.S. and foreign financial markets since the early 1980s has had a profound effect on domestic monetary policy and domestic monetary politics. The major policy effect is that the transmission channels of monetary policy now include the exchange rate. The major political effect is that the exchange rate has become a focus of concern for well-organized industries in the traded goods sector and, by extension, for Congress. This paper presents statistical evidence showing that the forces driving congressional activity on monetary policy have changed dramatically with the international financial integration of the U.S. economy. Exchange rates, as opposed to interest rates, now largely determine congressional attentiveness to monetary policy and the Federal Reserve.
Topic:
Economics, Government, and International Political Economy
Political Geography:
United States

773. Right Makes Might: Freedom and Power in the Information Age

Author:
David C. Gompert
Publication Date:
05-1998
Content Type:
Working Paper
Abstract:
China's emergence begs a fresh look at power in world affairs—more precisely, at how the spread of freedom and the integration of the global economy, due to the information revolution, are affecting the nature, concentration, and purpose of power. Perhaps such a look could improve the odds of responding wisely to China's rise.
Topic:
Security, Defense Policy, Government, and International Law
Political Geography:
United States, China, and Soviet Union

774. Ideas, Culture and Political Analysis Workshop

Author:
Thomas Risse, Sarah Mendelson, Neil Fligstein, Jan Kubik, Jeffrey T. Checkel, Consuelo Cruz, Kathleen McNamara, Sheri Berman, Frank Dobbin, Mark Blyth, Ken Pollack, George Steinmetz, Daniel Philpott, Gideon Rose, Martha Finnemore, Kathryn Skikkink, Marie Gottschalk, John Kurt Jacobsen, and Anna Seleny
Publication Date:
05-1998
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Social Science Research Council
Abstract:
The last decade or so has witnessed a resurgence in scholarship employing ideational and cultural factors in the analysis of political life. This scholarship has addressed political phenomena across a variety of national and international settings, with studies of European politics being particularly well represented. For example, the work of scholars like Peter Hall (1993), Peter Katzenstein (1996), Ronald Inglehart (1997), Robert Putnam (1994) and Daniel Jonah Goldhagen (1995) has improved our understandings of European polities, societies and economies. Yet despite a recent rise in interest, ideational and cultural explanations still meet with skepticism in many quarters of the discipline. Some scholars doubt whether non-material factors like ideas or culture have independent causal effects, and others, who accept that such factors might matter, despair of devising viable ways of analyzing their impact on political life.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, International Relations, Security, Democratization, Economics, Government, Human Rights, International Cooperation, Nationalism, and Politics
Political Geography:
United States, Middle East, France, and Latin America

775. Reproductive Health: New Directions and New Technologies

Author:
Rodney W. Nichols, Susan U. Raymond, Margaret Catley-Carlson, Allan Rosenfield, and Michael E. Kafrissen
Publication Date:
09-1998
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
New York Academy of Sciences
Abstract:
Surely one of the oddest of all recent debates is well underway in the United States. At issue is whether, in the year 2000 the population of the nation should be counted nose-by-nose, on foot, by an phalanx of freshly minted, part-time, house visiting census-takers (who evidently missed 8.4 million residents the last time they tried in 1990) or whether a technique should be used that would employ statistical sampling methods to reach census conclusions. The majority of those most heatedly engaged in the public debate probably did not even like math in school; many would not be able to explain the likely accuracy of either method. But debate they do, in the time-honored tradition of policy making in democracies—largely because the coveted prize is not merely an accurate count of the number of individuals, but more importantly an advantageous decision on the number of voters in electoral districts.
Topic:
Government, Health, Politics, and Science and Technology
Political Geography:
United States

776. Science, Technology, and the Law

Author:
Peter Huber, Susan Raymond, Rodney W. Nichols, Kenneth Dam, Kenneth R. Foster, George Ehrlich, Debra Miller, Alan Charles Raul, Ronald Bailey, and Alex Kozinski
Publication Date:
08-1998
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
New York Academy of Sciences
Abstract:
As science and technology push the edges of understanding, innovation makes the once unimaginable merely quotidian. The flow—the torrent—of change inevitably meets the stock of laws and regulations that structure society. And, often, the legal system and the judiciary must cope with the resulting swirls, eddies, and, at times, whirlpools of ethical controversy and economic and societal choice.
Topic:
Economics, Government, International Law, and Science and Technology
Political Geography:
United States, New York, and America

777. Science and Technology for African Development: Partnerships in a Global Economy

Author:
Soodursun Jugessur, Susan U. Raymond, Stephen Chandiwana, Clive Shiff, Pieter J.D. Drenth, D. N. Tarpeh, Iba Kone, Jacques Gaillard, and Roland Waast
Publication Date:
03-1998
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
New York Academy of Sciences
Abstract:
This paper examines the eureka factor in science based development and underscores the increasing concern that Africa lags behind in S due to political and social instability coupled by low investments in technologies. The paper emphasises that African science should come up with a decisive policy for investment in new style education and capacity building for S that is relevant to the African experience and addresses problems of real concern to the community. Science led development in Africa should reduce replication of foreign technologies and invest in social capital of its scientists and its R institutions for sustainable economic development. The aim of the paper is not to offer prescriptive solutions but to highlight areas which should stimulate debate in small working groups examining how Africa can learn from its own experience as well as that of other nations in developing an appropriate system of innovation for science led development.
Topic:
Economics, Education, Emerging Markets, Government, Industrial Policy, International Cooperation, and Science and Technology
Political Geography:
Africa and United States

778. Review and Analysis of the Report of The President's Commission on Critical Infrastructure Protection

Author:
Stephen J. Lukasik
Publication Date:
01-1998
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for International Security and Cooperation
Abstract:
The Commission's Report speaks to a wide range of physical and cyber attacks on the nation's critical infrastructure systems. It reaches six major conclusions: That while the potential for interference with critical infrastructure from cyber threats is growing, both by the proliferation of tools that attackers might employ and by the increasing electronic connectivity of infrastructure control systems, there is little immediate threat of severe national-level attack. There is, however, reason to believe that the threat in the longer term is significant. In view of the substantial private ownership of infrastructure systems, effective action to counter what is believed to be a growing threat requires a partnership between the public and private sectors. The basis for a public-private partnership is the sharing of information related to current infrastructure operations, threats, vulnerabilities of hardware, software, and communications, and risk management methodologies. The threat to infrastructure systems is exacerbated by the tendency for failures in one part of an infrastructure system to spread, thus impacting a greater part of the system than that initially attacked. The Report outlines in general terms the need for certain organizational actions by the federal government for all of the infrastructures to which its attention was directed in its implementing directive. These include: A coordinating office within the National Security Council structure A support office in the Department of Commerce A Presidentially-appointed National Infrastructure Assurance Council Seven lead agencies to structure public-private information sharing Sector coordinators for each of the identified infrastructures An Analysis Center to receive and analyze attack information A national attack warning capability Enhanced federal R expenditures in infrastructure assurance The Report calls for other long range programs to increase national awareness of the problem, to lead by example by improving the security of infrastructure systems under its direct control, and to review current legislation to determine where it is inadequate to deal with infrastructure threats from a law enforcement standpoint.
Topic:
Government
Political Geography:
United States

779. The Role of the Private Sector in the Evolution of US Technology Policy

Author:
Judith Mariscal and John B. Horrigan
Publication Date:
01-1998
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas
Abstract:
Technology policy in the United States has undergone a dramatic transformation in the past ten to twelve years, as the government has increasingly played an active role in the high-tech sector and as the sector itself has faced growing competition from foreign competitors. Truths (or apparent truths) which once were unquestioned—that the U.S. government should only intervene in technology for national security reasons, that entrepreneurial high-tech firms operate best as "lone rangers" in the marketplace—have been closely scrutinized. The result of such scrutiny is that government and industry have changed their perceptions about their roles in a world in which the economic and competitive environment shifts rapidly. Another outcome is that technology policy has taken on increasing importance in U.S. policy circles. We see in the Clinton Administration plans to promote the information superhighway, proposals to overhaul the way in which the telecommunications industry is regulated, support for government-industry research consortia, closer linkage of trade and technology policy, and in general a much closer industry government relationship with the high-tech sector.
Topic:
Economics, Government, and Science and Technology
Political Geography:
United States

780. Baltic Sea, America Eurasia: Vision and Action for the 21st Century

Publication Date:
10-1998
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
EastWest Institute
Abstract:
Interdependence, both political and economic, between the different parts of the Baltic Sea region is growing. This means that there is a strong case for cooperative strategies rather than policies based on zero-sum thinking. The positive outcome of the Latvian referendum should be regarded as a crucial building element to promote this cooperation.
Topic:
International Relations and Government
Political Geography:
Russia, United States, America, Europe, Eurasia, Eastern Europe, and Maryland