We examine the roles of subnational and national governments in Canada and the USA vis-à-vis protective public health response in the onset phase of the global COVID-19 pandemic. This period was characterized in both countries by incomplete and incorrect information as well as the uncertainty regarding which level of government should be responsible for which policies. The crisis represents an opportunity to study how national and subnational governments respond to such policy challenges. In this paper, we present a unique dataset which catalogues the policy responses of US states and Canadian provinces as well as those of the respective federal governments: the Protective Policy Index (PPI). We then compare the US and Canada along several dimensions including: the absolute values of subnational levels of the index relative to the total protections enjoyed by citizens, the relationship between "early threat" (as measured by the mortality rate near the start of the public health crisis) and the evolution of the PPI, and finally, the institutional/legislative origins of the protective health policies. We find that the subnational contribution to policy is more important for both the US and Canada as compared to their national-level policies, and is unrelated in scope to our "early threat" measure. We also show that the institutional origin of the policies as evidenced by COVID-19 response differs greatly between the two countries and has implications for the evolution of federalism in each.
We analyze how the deployment of US troops affects host-state defense spending. We test this relationship, from 1951 to 2003, by examining how the deployment of US military forces impacts defense spending in different types of states, including US allies, NATO members, non-allies of the United States, and all states. We also utilize spatial measures of US troop deployments to analyze how regional and neighborhood concentrations of forces shape host-state policies. Using both traditional panel methodology, and incorporating a simultaneous equation model for the deployment of troops, we find that non-allied states tend to decrease their defense burden when the United States places troops within their borders. However, NATO allies consistently increase their defense burden in response to the presence of US troops within their borders. Additionally, most states tend to increase spending when the United States places troops near their borders
This article takes a novel approach to the question of how bicameralism matters by asking not how it shapes policy outcomes, but rather how it shapes political parties. Bicameralism uniquely challenges political parties because party leaders have few tools for disciplining copartisans in separate legislative chambers. As long as party members do not share identical policy preferences, or strategic contexts across chambers differ, copartisan cohorts in each chamber are likely to favor distinct policy positions. To the extent that parties value clear, consistent party labels, it is in their best interests to find ways to keep intraparty disagreements out of the public eye. We argue that parties in bicameral systems do this by centralizing candidate selection, so that members in both chambers are accountable to the same master. We test our argument using data from 66 political parties in 11 advanced parliamentary democracies.
Recent work has begun exploring the effects of foreign military deployments on hoststate foreign policies. However, research mostly focuses on dyadic relationships between major powers and host-states, ignoring the broader regional security environment of host-states. We develop a theory of spatial hierarchies to understand how security relationships throughout the region surrounding the host-state affect hoststate foreign policy. Using data on US military deployments from 1950-2005, we show that regional security considerations condition how host-states respond to the deployment of military forces to their territory. Consequently, regional analyses are fundamental in understanding monadic and dyadic decisions about security, alliance behavior, and conflict.Major powers have a history of deploying their military forces to project power. In spite of their importance, international relations research contains little work on the consequences of such deployments. However, scholars have begun examining a range of issues associated with US military deployments, including economic growth, trade, investment, security policy, conflict behavior, and crime (Martinez Machain and Morgan 2013). While this research area has grown, the role that such deployments play in the regional security environment remains under-explored. Accordingly, interpretations of causality in existing studies is incomplete as the regional context exerts a conditioning effect upon the relationships of interest. Fundamentally, regional security contexts should affect how states respond to the presence of foreign military forces.Herein we examine how US military deployments affect foreign policy decisions. We build upon previous studies by incorporating regional security factors into our theoretical argument and analysis. Using data on US military deployments since 1950, we analyze how US military deployments to a host-state, as well as deployments to third-party states in the region, affect these states' defense spending decisions. Studies typically focus on the host-state's response to US troop deployments in a dyadic fashion, evaluating how US deployments affect the host-state's military spending or conflict propensity (e.g. Allen, Flynn and VanDusky-Allen 2014; Lake 2009a; Martinez Machain and Morgan 2013). This approach assumes that the effects of US military deployments on a particular state are independent of military deployments in neighboring states and the regional security environment. * The authors would like to thank David Lake, Pat Shea, Carla Martinez Machain, Chad Clay, the editorial team at International Interactions, and two anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions. Replication files can be found at the International Interactions Dataverse page: http://dvn.iq.harvard.edu/dvn/dv/internationalinteractions. Questions regarding replication materials can be directed to meflynn@ksu.edu. 2This variable is the sum of the CINC scores for pairs of states with an S score that is less than the global median S score, calculated for al...
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