Processes of identification on the U.S.-Mexico border

This article reviews relevant literature on border identity issues written on both sides of the border in the past 15 years. First, approaches taken by theorists like Gloria Anzaldúa, Renato Rosaldo, and others who advanced important ideas such as hybridity and “border crossing,” are criticized. Second, the work of empirically oriented U.S. and Mexican scholars, such as Oscar Martinez, Carlos Vélez-Ibáñez, Jorge Bustamante, is examined critically. Finally, the author, relying on more than 6 years of ethnographic research in the border area, advances his own understanding of how best to conduct research on identity construction issues on the U.S.-Mexico border. The author discusses the importance of the narrative plots of border inhabitants, the role played by certain Master Signifiers and hegemonic narrative plots in the “quilting” of coherent identity discourses, and the like. The author concludes by calling for research on how different locally available discursive formations on the border are introduces into narratives through the actions (as accounted by the plot) of particular characters.     

Perceptions of abusive police practices in a U.S.-Mexico border community

Although research has examined relations between minorities and the police, there is a paucity or recent or systematic evidence concerning abusive police practices. This investigation contributes to our knowledge of the issue by comparing perceptions of abusive police practices held by Anglos and Hispanics in a U.S.-Mexico border community. The study was based on a telephone/personal interview survey designed to yield a representative sample of the adult population of El Paso, Texas, a city which ranks among the poorest in the U.S. A four-item abusive police practices index was analyzed using OLS multiple regression. The findings show that the young, males, Hispanics and those residing in the barrio locale were more likely to report having seen abusive police practives, after controlling for general beliefs about police brutality and for various types of contact with the police.     

Voting for president in the U.S.-Mexico border region

Reasoning that life in the U.S.-Mexico border region is sufficiently different from life in non-border regions this paper asks whether proximity to the border has a significant impact on presidential voting. County level data from four border states, California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas, over five presidential elections, 1992-2008, are examined using a both cross-sectional and panel data analysis. The authors conclude that there is a border effect that favors Democratic candidates and that fades as distance from the border increases.     

Agricultural policies and migration in a U.S.-Mexico free trade area: A computable general equilibrium analysis

A United States-Mexico agreement to form a free trade area (FTA) is analyzed using an 11-sector, three-country, computable general equilibrium model that explicity models farm programs and labor migration. The model incorporates both rural-urban migration within Mexico and international migration between Mexico and the United States. In the model, sectoral import demands are specified with a flexible functional form, an empirical improvement over earlier specifications, which use a constant elasticity of substitution function. Using the model, we identify trade-offs among bilateral trade growth, labor migration, and agricultural program expenditures under alternative FTA scenarios. Trade liberalization in agriculture greatly increases rural- urban migration within Mexico and migration from Mexico to the United States. Migration is reduced if Mexico grows relative to the United States and also if Mexico retains farm support programs. However, the more support that is provided to the Mexican agricultural sector, the smaller is bilateral trade growth. The results indicate a policy trade-off between rapidly achieving gains from trade liberalization and providing a transition period long enough to assimilate displaced labor in Mexico without undue strain.     

New directions in binational water resource management in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands

The onset of the 21st century sees the U.S.-Mexico border facing numerous challenges in meeting demand for water resources across a diverse set of interests, while also protecting water quality and providing for in-stream uses. This chapter surveys ongoing water resource management efforts in the border region and also examines a broad transboundary water resource management literature to identify existing innovations of note and also to offer ideas for future research. The increasing role of public participation and a democratic decision and policy making process, watershed-based approaches to transboundary water resource management, and the role of water markets are useful areas of investigation uncovered. I suggest that these concepts can form the foundation for future research efforts that may be fruitful in examining the many water resource management challenges that the region will face in the future.     

国会与美国国家导弹防御系统

在介绍和分析美国国家导弹防御系统 (NMD)和克林顿政府的有关计划之后 ,作者重点研究了国会对此的考虑和反应。     

The U.S. Pollution Prevention Act: A policy implementation analysis

Over a decade after enactment, this paper examines the implementation of the U.S. Pollution Prevention Act to identify those factors related to implementation that contributed to, or detracted from, the achievement of policy success. Implementation is analyzed in the context of a conceptual framework which builds on existing policy implementation literature by merging top-down and bottom-up considerations [Najam, A. (1995). Learning from the literature on policy implementation: A synthesis perspective (Working Paper WP-95-61). Laxenburg: International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis]. This model connects the variables affecting implementation, allowing them to be analyzed in relation to each other. Strategic use of these linkages may also help overcome the policy “implementation gap.” The nature of the case study and findings are examined in relation to one another towards refinement of the model and conceptual generalizations based on use of the analytical framework.     

Agriculture,trade, and macroeconomics: The U.S. case

The persistent appreciation of the U.S. dollar from 1980 through 1984 raise the issue of macroeconomic impacts on trade sectors as a critical policy concern. In this article a six-variable vector autoregressive model is utilized to evaluate the dynamic effects of macroeconomic shocks on U.S. agriculture, a key trade sector. The results suggest that the impacts are substantial. Expansion of the money supply or a decline in the real interest rate or the real value of the dollar has a positive effect on agricultural exports and relative prices, whereas autonomous inflationary shocks have negative effects.     

Automobile prices and protection: The U.S.-Japan trade restraint

We examine the effects of the U.S.-Japan trade restraint on automobile prices and quality upgrading, for both Japanese imports and American small cars. From April 1981 to April 1984 the suggested retail price of all Japanese models increased by 15.8 percent, or 5.3 percent per year. We find that nearly the entire amount of this rise can be explained by the upgrading of individual models. This upgrading may benefit consumers who would purchase a luxury import in any case, but harms those who desire the basic imports. In addition to upgrading, we conclude that a second cost of the trade restraint has been to prevent the yen depreciation from being passed onto American consumers, in terms of lower imported auto prices. For U.S. small cars we find a 9.1 percent rise in the suggested retail price, or 3 percent per year, with a fraction of this amount due to model upgrading. If the yen depreciation had led to lower import prices without the trade restraint, then we expect that U.S. auto prices would have been lower, too.     

Social disorganizations and crime rates in U.S. central cities: Toward an explanation of urban economic change

Little attention has been paid to the simultaneous impacts of urban economic change, in particular the effects of industrial restructuring from manufacturing to service industries in central cities and the suburbanization of employment, on both central-city social disorganizations and crime rates in central cities. This study first assumes that urban economic decline aggravates central-city social disorganizations (family disruption, and population mobility). Second, this study proposes that urban economic decline increases central-city crime rates (seven index crime rates). This study used four predictors of economic transformations in an intrametropolitan area between 1980 and 1990 to measure urban economic change. Three of these measures were indicators of central-city economic change (changes in central-city employment ratio of service to manufacturing sectors, unemployment rate, and poverty rate), and one was an indicator of suburban economic change (suburban employment rate). Results from a sample of 153 central cities confirmed that a rise in the central-city employment ratio accelerated suburban population mobility. After including two measures of social disorganizations, urban economic change had a significant effect on central-city crime rates, in which a decline in manufacturing employment, relative to service employment, increased three central-city crime rates: aggravated assault, larceny, and burglary rates. Two central-city crime rates, rape and larceny, increased with a rise in central-city poverty rate, as well. In contrast, suburban employment growth was related to a decrease in central-city violent crime rates.     

Office of Economic Opportunity: U.S.A.

The Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO), was created at the height of Lyndon Johnson's “Great Society” anti-poverty programmes. It represented a degree of radical activism that reached its culmination in the 89th Congress (1965-66) and indeed has never been repeated: that Congress was perhaps the only genuinely left-liberal one this century (outside the New Deal era, at any rate). The OEO's social policies were tied to a particular theory of public and social administration: that a “rival” federal agency to the existing ones (Health, Education and Welfare, now Health and Human Services; Housing, and Urban Development, et al) could escape their conservative norms. Both at the federal level and in the “field” agencies it spanned to implement its programmes, the new approach to social administration was to by-pass traditional channels. This short, illustrative rather than definitive article, examines how such an approach was undermined by both the U.S. political structure and by traditional “politics as usual”. It is but a snapshot of the era. However, it hints at the general problems that such approaches to “by-passing” traditional agencies and attempting to develop a new autonomy in social reform may have in many countries, especially those with decentralized political structures. For, while decentralized politics provides opportunities as well as barriers to reformers seeking to by-pass traditional elites (which themselves tend to be decentralized, mirroring political structures), it is suggested here that the balance sheet will tend to be negative from the viewpoint of reformist social administration.     

美国与印度的反恐合作：内容、问题与前景

九一一事件后美国和印度加强了在反恐方面的合作。双方的合作在一系列机制的基础上取得了进展,充实了美印战略伙伴关系。但是,美印反恐合作仍然存在诸多制约因素,主要表现为：双方在反恐问题上的利益和战略不同;双方对一些安全问题的看法不同以及印度国内反恐体系存在弊端等。2008年11月的孟买恐怖袭击案发生后,虽然美印双方都表示应加强反恐合作,但仍有一些不确定性因素将会影响合作的有效开展。     

The impact of a Tax-Based Incomes Policy on U.S. macroeconomic performance: An optimal control study

This study attempts to estimate the potential impact of a Tax-Based Incomes Policy (TIP) on macroeconomic performance by applying an optimal control algorithm to the Wharton Quarterly Econometric Model. A TIP is any tax incentive that would induce firms and/or workers to reduce wage increases. Our study is applicable to any version of TIP. To isolate TIP's potential impact, we compare the optimal path of the economy without TIP to the optimal path of the economy with TIP. Our conclusion is that a TIP may be able to significantly improve the path of inflation, unemployment, and real GNP simultaneously.     

美国重返亚太背景下的美澳同盟

在美国重返亚太的背景下,美澳同盟得到了进一步强化,其原因包括:从美国的角度看,澳大利亚拥有极佳的战略地理位置,美军急需加强亚太二三线基地群的建设以拓展自己的战略纵深,通过驻军的方式减少澳大利亚"变节"的可能性;从澳大利亚的角度看,出于对中国崛起的不适应,在大幅削减国防预算的情况下需搭美国"便车"以更好地寻求安全庇护,迎合其国内军事战略转移——实施"印-太"战略的需要。本文认为,美澳同盟在美国重返亚太的过程中,虽起到了非常重要的基石、通道、支撑和补充作用,但美澳间依然存在着难以克服的同盟困境。     

美国的印度洋战略

冷战期间美国印度洋战略的主要目的是应对苏联,冷战后美国成为印度洋的主导力量,开始在印度洋地区进行军事前沿部署。近年来,随着印度洋战略地位的提高,美国提出了“印度-太平洋”概念,并强化其在印度洋的战略利益：保持主导地位、保护海上交通线安全、控制战略要冲等。美国在意识形态和经济因素的驱使下,通过军事部署和制度安排在印度洋取得霸权地位,但与英国相比,美国的印度洋霸权是“弱势”霸权。     

The Social Psychology of the 2004 U.S. Presidential Election

The 2004 U.S. presidential election was determined not by simple demographics and the power of incumbency, but by emotions such as fear and shame, aspects of the self-concept such as moralism and religiosity, and other psychological phenomena ranging from the self-deception of voters to the linguistic styles of the candidates. In introducing the papers in this special issue of ASAP on the social psychology of the election, I examine the effect sizes for psychological constructs such as religiosity, moralism, and terror. I suggest that pride and shame are likely determinants of the widely reported exit poll discrepancies, and argue that outgroup homogeneity was critical in determining the outcome of the election.     

美国霸权的历史成因及其现实问题

美国霸权的获得是一个历史演进过程,它既根源于美国超强的国家实力和持续的创新能力,也离不开在国际战略方面对世界霸权的追求和谋划,这其中包括对实力的崇尚、对世界大战的利用、倡导"国际规范"、保持对地缘政治的关注、掌控联盟体系及对潜在竞争者的遏制和打击等。当前,随着美国国内力量基础生变、国际战略调整失误和外部环境的演变,美国霸权正在步入结构性式微阶段,有可能成为影响世界和平与发展的一个风险因素,其何去何从引人关注。