Assessing Transboundary Governance Capacity in the Great Lakes Areas of Concern

This case evaluates transboundary governance across the Great Lakes “Areas of Concern”(AOC). Designed with an emphasis on decentralization to sub-national institutions and theactivation of citizen-led groups, the AOCs represent a unique approach to environmentalgovernance.Traditionally examined with case study research, the individual AOCs areidiosyncratic with environmental and political challenges that are not always germane toother AOCs or broader theoretical concepts surrounding environmental governance. However, by examining the AOCs underlying transboundary governance architecture interms of functional intensity, nature of compliance mechanisms, stability and resilience, and legitimacy a more comprehensive theoretical understanding ofthe successful governance processes used, as well as the gaps in governance responses observed,can be realized. The results presented here show that the AOCs can have significant transboundarygovernance weaknesses in terms of compliance mechanisms and notions of stability and resilience,but noteworthy strengths in terms of functional intensity and legitimacy. As a result, transboundarygovernance has a tendency to degrade over time in the AOCs, even though initial governanceresponses are initially effectively designed with high levels of stakeholder input

Facing Forward: Policy for Automated Facial Expression Analysis

The human face is a powerful tool for nonverbal communication. Technological advances have enabled widespread and low-cost deployment of video capture and facial recognition systems, opening the door for automated facial expression analysis (AFEA). This paper summarizes current challenges to the reliability of AFEA systems and challenges that could arise as a result of reliable AFEA systems. The potential benefits of AFEA are considerable, but developers, prospective users, and policy makers should proceed with caution

The qualitative transparency deliberations: insights and implications

In recent years, a variety of efforts have been made in political science to enable, encourage, or require scholars to be more open and explicit about the bases of their empirical claims and, in turn, make those claims more readily evaluable by others. While qualitative scholars have long taken an interest in making their research open, reflexive, and systematic, the recent push for overarching transparency norms and requirements has provoked serious concern within qualitative research communities and raised fundamental questions about the meaning, value, costs, and intellectual relevance of transparency for qualitative inquiry. In this Perspectives Reflection, we crystallize the central findings of a three-year deliberative process—the Qualitative Transparency Deliberations (QTD)—involving hundreds of political scientists in a broad discussion of these issues. Following an overview of the process and the key insights that emerged, we present summaries of the QTD Working Groups’ final reports. Drawing on a series of public, online conversations that unfolded at www.qualtd.net, the reports unpack transparency’s promise, practicalities, risks, and limitations in relation to different qualitative methodologies, forms of evidence, and research contexts. Taken as a whole, these reports—the full versions of which can be found in the Supplementary Materials—offer practical guidance to scholars designing and implementing qualitative research, and to editors, reviewers, and funders seeking to develop criteria of evaluation that are appropriate—as understood by relevant research communities—to the forms of inquiry being assessed. We dedicate this Reflection to the memory of our coauthor and QTD working group leader Kendra Koivu

Schumpeter and Venture Finance: Radical Theorist, Broke Investor and Enigmatic Teacher

Schumpeter's relation to venture finance constitutes a fascinating yet so far unacknowledged chapter of his biography and financial history. Presenting new historical evidence and pointing out connections that have so far escaped attention, we first discuss Schumpeter's venture theory of money and banking, then his personal history as a broke investor in Vienna, and finally his influence on the emerging venture industry during his later years at Harvard. We show how the theoretical vision inspired his failed effort as a venture investor in the 1920s, and provided a powerful intellectual frame for the later development of venture finance in the 1940s

Bargaining of beliefs : agencies, advocacy groups, and the evolution of pesticide regulatory reform

The policy beliefs of advocacy groups, policymakers, and other interested individuals help to shape public policy. Yet, policy beliefs are rarely used in policy analyses. This dissertation changes that by examining the role of policy beliefs in pesticide regulatory reform in the 1980s and 1990s. Important concepts explored in this analysis of pesticide regulatory reform include: a determination of whether the policy core beliefs of like-minded advocacy groups possess enough uniformity to justify categorization of these groups into larger advocacy coalitions, an identification of the process by which an advocacy coalition’s secondary policy beliefs toward pesticide regulations change over time, an examination of whether compromises in secondary policy beliefs among advocacy coalitions are associated with policy change, and an investigation into whether stronger advocacy coalitions influence compromises in secondary policy beliefs among weaker advocacy coalitions. Examining these concepts reveals the role of policy beliefs in shaping public policy. In addition, the answers to these questions help to compare two policy theories: the Advocacy Coalition Framework and Punctuated Equilibrium. The findings help integrate key concepts from the Advocacy Coalition Framework and Punctuated Equilibrium to forge a new level of policy analysis that explores how the policy beliefs of advocacy groups change. By analyzing the debates over pesticide regulatory reform in the 1980s and 1990s, this dissertation finds that the policy beliefs of consumer-environmental advocacy groups exhibit a punctuated equilibrium pattern. In essence, these groups incorporate pro-agribusiness beliefs when a change in pesticide regulations seems imminent. This suggests that proenvironmental groups bargain with their beliefs in attempts to influence pesticide regulations. Other findings examine key tenets of both the Advocacy Coalition Framework and the Punctuated Equilibrium model through time-series analyses, group comparison tests, and interviews with agency personnel and advocacy groups. Overall, these findings indicate that the need for policy reform often drives compromises in policy beliefs and that advocacy groups often use policy beliefs to directly influence other advocacy groups