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1. The California Voting Rights Act and Local Governments

Author:
David C. Powell
Publication Date:
12-2018
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
California Journal of Politics and Policy
Institution:
Institute of Governmental Studies, UC Berkeley
Abstract:
On July 9, 2002, Governor Gray Davis signed the California Voting Rights Act (CVRA) into law. The intent of the CVRA was to build upon the voting rights protections embodied in the Federal Voting Rights Act (FVRA) by enhancing the influence of minority populations in local government elections. The CVRA has led to multiple legal challenges of at-large electoral systems in dozens of governments in California. This paper explores the impacts of the CVRA on local governments as well as potential impacts of recent changes to the CVRA.
Topic:
Government, Elections, Democracy, Voting, and voting rights
Political Geography:
United States and California

2. Categorizing and Assessing the Severity of Disruptive Cyber Events

Author:
Nancy Gallagher and Charles Harry
Publication Date:
04-2017
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland (CISSM)
Abstract:
Faced with a rapidly growing volume and range of cyber attacks, policymakers and organizational leaders have had difficulty setting priorities, allocating resources, and responding effectively without a standard way to categorize cyber events and estimate their consequences. Presidential Policy Directive 41 laid out the Obama administration’s principles for executive branch responses to significant cyber incidents in the public or private sector. But it neither drew important distinctions between different types of cyber incidents, nor gave a standard way to determine where a particular incident falls on its 0-5 point severity scale. This policy brief demonstrates how an analytical framework developed at the Center for International and Security Studies at the University of Maryland (CISSM) can help address these problems. It first differentiates between low-level incidents and more significant cyber events that result in either exploitation of information and/or disruption of operations. It categorizes five types of disruptive events and analyzes 2,030 cyber events in a dataset developed from media sources, showing that cyber exploitation remains more common than disruption, and that most disruptive activity fits into two categories: message manipulation and external denial of service attacks. Finally, the brief offers a standard method to assess the severity of different categories of disruptive attacks against different kinds of organizations based on the scope, magnitude, and duration of the event. This Cyber Disruption Index (CDI) is then applied to survey data on Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks in the private sector to assess severity within a common category of disruptive events. Of 3,900 cases reported, only 5 events (less than 1% of the DDoS cases) had a combined scope, magnitude, and duration severe enough to be a priority for prevention and potentially warrant government involvement.
Topic:
Government, Cybersecurity, and Media
Political Geography:
United States, Washington, and D.C.

3. Why America Misunderstands the World: National Experience and Roots of Misperception

Author:
Paul R. Pillar
Publication Date:
02-2016
Content Type:
Book
Institution:
Columbia University Press
Abstract:
Drawing a line from colonial events to America's handling of modern international terrorism, Pillar shows how presumption and misperception bolstered the "with us or against us" attitude of the George W. Bush administration. Fundamental misunderstandings have created a cycle in which threats are underestimated before an attack occurs and then are overestimated after they happen. By exposing this longstanding tradition of misperception, Pillar hopes the United States can develop policies that better address international realities rather than biased beliefs.
Topic:
International Relations, Foreign Policy, Diplomacy, Government, and United States
Political Geography:
United States and Global Focus
Publication Identifier:
9780231540353
Publication Identifier Type:
ISBN

4. Financing Medicaid: Federalism and the Growth of America's Health Care Safety Net, Shanna Rose

Author:
Frank J. Thompson
Publication Date:
01-2015
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Political Science Quarterly
Institution:
Academy of Political Science
Abstract:
In a well-written and insightful volume, Shanna Rose has joined a growing number of scholars in assessing the remarkable rise of Medicaid in the Ameri­can health care system. Thought to be subject to erosion because of the forces of interstate economic competition and because a “program for the poor is a poor program,” Medicaid has instead expanded. The program now insures more than 70 million people and costs federal and state governments well over $400 billion annually. Viewed by many in 1965 as a down-at-the-heels second cousin to Medicare that would fade away with the coming of national health insurance, Medicaid instead became a key plank in Obamacare in 2010. - See more at: http://www.psqonline.org/article.cfm?IDArticle=19321#sthash.ALrrwILZ.dpuf
Topic:
Government
Political Geography:
United States

5. America Inc? Innovation and Enterprise in the National Security State, Linda Weiss

Author:
Mark Zachary Taylor
Publication Date:
01-2015
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Political Science Quarterly
Institution:
Academy of Political Science
Abstract:
This dense, powerful volume offers profound insights into the U.S. innovation system and its driving forces. The driving forces are Americans' twin desires for technology-based military supremacy (which demands government action) and small government (which militates against it). These twin forces have produced a highly successful, ever-evolving, and unique set of federal institutions and policies, which Linda Weiss calls the “national security state” (NSS). The NSS is the secret to American innovation. Since World War II, it has dominated high-risk innovation, revolutionary technological change, and the formation of new S industries. Weiss's book also reveals that the NSS is not static, but changes in response to changes in perceived geopolitical threats and to shifts in popular anti-statist sentiments. The book explains why the NSS came about, how it works, and glimpses its future. - See more at: http://www.psqonline.org/article.cfm?IDArticle=19346#sthash.kIPIPtW6.dpuf
Topic:
Security and Government
Political Geography:
United States and America

6. Old Habits, New Consequences: Pakistan's Posture toward Afghanistan since 2001

Author:
Khalid Homayun Nadiri
Publication Date:
01-2015
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Security
Institution:
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
Since September 11, 2001, Pakistan has pursued seemingly incongruous courses of action in Afghanistan. It has participated in the U.S. and international intervention in Afghanistan at the same time as it has permitted much of the Afghan Taliban's political leadership and many of its military commanders to visit or reside in Pakistani urban centers. This incongruence is all the more puzzling in light of the expansion of indiscriminate and costly violence directed against Islamabad by Pakistani groups affiliated with the Afghan Taliban. Pakistan's policy is the result not only of its enduring rivalry with India but also of historically rooted domestic imbalances and antagonistic relations with successive governments in Afghanistan. Three critical features of the Pakistani political system—the militarized nature of foreign policy making, ties between military institutions and Islamist networks, and the more recent rise of grassroots violence—have contributed to Pakistan's accommodation of the Afghan Taliban. Additionally, mutual suspicion surrounding the contentious Afghanistan-Pakistan border and Islamabad's long record of interference in Afghan politics have continued to divide Kabul and Islamabad, diminishing the prospect of cooperation between the two capitals. These determinants of Pakistan's foreign policy behavior reveal the prospects of and obstacles to resolving the numerous issues of contention that characterize the Afghanistan-Pakistan relationship today.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Government, and Politics
Political Geography:
Pakistan, Afghanistan, United States, and Taliban

7. Thomas Piketty's Capital and the Developing World

Author:
Nancy Birdsall
Publication Date:
02-2015
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Carnegie Council
Abstract:
Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century is a tour de force—a compelling and accessible read that presents an eloquent and convincing warning about the future of capitalism.* Capitalism, Piketty argues, suffers from an inherent tendency to generate an explosive spiral of increasing inequality of wealth and income. This inegalitarian dynamic of capitalism is not due to textbook failures of capitalist markets (for example, natural monopolies) or failures of economic institutions (such as the failure to regulate these monopolies), but to the way capitalism fundamentally works. Unless the spiral is controlled by far more progressive taxation than is now the norm, the political fallout could undermine the viability of the successful “social state” (p. 471) in the advanced economies, putting the democratic state itself at risk.
Topic:
Economics, Government, and Politics
Political Geography:
United States, United Kingdom, and France

8. Saving Congress from Itself: Emancipating the States Empowering Their People

Author:
James L. Buckley
Publication Date:
02-2015
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Cato Journal
Institution:
The Cato Institute
Abstract:
“The United States faces two major problems today,” writes James L. Buckley: “runaway spending that threatens to bankrupt us and a Congress that appears unable to deal with long-term problems of any consequence.” Contributing significantly to both, he argues, are the more than 1,100 federal grants-in-aid programs Congress has enacted—federal grants to state and local governments, constituting 17 percent of the federal budget, the third-largest spending category after entitlements and defense, with costs that have risen from $24.1 billion in 1970 to $640.8 billion in fiscal 2015. His “modest proposal”? Do away with them entirely, thereby saving Congress from itself while emancipating the states and empowering their people. If that sounds like a program for revising constitutional federalism, it is.
Topic:
Government
Political Geography:
United States

9. TSG IntelBrief: Iran Deal Remains Elusive

Publication Date:
04-2015
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
The Soufan Group
Abstract:
Iran and the P5+1 countries are expected to issue a joint statement today that outlines most aspects of a comprehensive nuclear deal, but defers some still thorny issues to further talks A key remaining sticking point is Iran's demand for immediate and comprehensive lifting of sanctions, which the P5+1 cannot accept The United States is attempting to reassure nervous regional partners, such as Israel and Arab Gulf states, that the U.S. is not making too many concessions for the sake of a deal U.S. allies in the region are concerned that lifting sanctions, even if done gradually, will enable Iran to provide even more military and financial aid to the Assad regime in Syria, Shi'a militias in Iraq, and the Houthi movement in Yemen.
Topic:
Government
Political Geography:
United States, Iraq, Yemen, and Syria

10. Preserving Ukraine's Independence, Resisting Russian Aggression: What the United States and NATO Must Do

Publication Date:
02-2015
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Atlantic Council
Abstract:
We face a critical juncture in Ukraine. There is no real ceasefire; indeed, there was a significant increase in fighting along the line of contact in eastern Ukraine in mid-January, with Russian/separatist forces launching attacks on the Donetsk airport and other areas. Instead of a political settlement, Moscow currently seeks to create a frozen conflict in eastern Ukraine as a means to pressure and destabilize the Ukrainian government. Russians continue to be present in the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts in substantial numbers and have introduced significant amounts of heavy weapons. This could be preparation for another major Russian/ separatist offensive.
Topic:
NATO and Government
Political Geography:
Russia, United States, Ukraine, and Moscow