The forest ranger (and the legislator): How local congressional politics shape policy implementation in agency field offices

Research on political control over government bureaucracy has primarily focused on direct exercises of power such as appointments, funding, agency design, and procedural rules. In this analysis we extend this literature to consider politicians who leverage their institutional standing to influence the decisions of local field officials over whom they have no explicit authority. Using the case of the U.S. Forest Service (USFS), we investigate whether field-level decisions are associated with the political preferences of individual congressional representatives. Our sample encompasses 7,681 resource extraction actions initiated and analyzed by 107 USFS field offices between 2005 and 2018. Using hierarchical Bayesian regression, we show that under periods of economic growth and stability, field offices situated in the districts of congressional representatives who oppose environmental regulation initiate more extractive actions (timber harvest, oil and gas drilling, grazing) and conduct less rigorous environmental reviews than field offices in the districts of representatives who favor environmental regulation. By extending existing theories about interactions between politicians and bureaucrats to consider informal means of influence, this work speaks to: (1) the role of local political interests in shaping agency-wide policy outcomes; and (2) the importance of considering informal and implicit means of influence that operate in concert with explicit control mechanisms to shape bureaucratic behavior.

Suggestive potential of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s presidential speech ‘Annual Address to the US Congress’

The article deals with suggestive potential in Franklin D. Roosevelt’s speech devoted to the issues of confronting World War II threats and proposing aid to those European countries where it broke out. The speech was addressed to the United States Congress. The rally of congressional representatives opposed the government to propose assistance to the countries in need having faced the consequences of the Great Depression. Thus, the politicians considered the war on another continent was unlikely to have а detrimental effect on the country’s interests. Suggestive influence is based on the inculcation of information to affect an interlocutor’s uncritical perception to alter their attitudes and actions. Implementation of such a phenomenon in Roosevelt’s speech is realized through variative repetitive information about the potential threat from the aggressor to US liberty and confrontation of the New Order Hitler wants to impose on democratic societies. Moreover, Roosevelt appeals to the congressional representatives’ awareness through the system of images that makes it possible to describe actions and regimes of those who put the world order under threat. It goes in contrast with the USA’s system, order, and democracy. Suggestive influence in Roosevelt’s speech presented by linguistic units at different levels to indicate the potential threat to America. Discourse strategies in the analyzed speech are expressed with the help of tactics of opposition and tactics of sacralization. They are implemented by multilevel linguistic units of evaluative semantics, units that bear sacred meaning, as well as epithets, metaphors, comparisons, and truisms.

Can we detect conditioned variation in political speech? two kinds of discussion and types of conversation

Previous work has demonstrated that certain speech patterns vary systematically between sociodemographic groups, so that in some cases the way a person speaks is a valid cue to group membership. Our work addresses whether or not participants use these linguistic cues when assessing a speaker’s likely political identity. We use a database of speeches by U.S. Congressional representatives to isolate words that are statistically diagnostic of a speaker’s party identity. In a series of four studies, we demonstrate that participants’ judgments track variation in word usage between the two parties more often than chance, and that this effect persists even when potentially interfering cues such as the meaning of the word are controlled for. Our results are consistent with a body of literature suggesting that humans’ language-related judgments reflect the statistical distributions of our environment.

Funding the fiscal commons: does a larger share of rich citizens hasten or delay the trip to default?

In recent decades, the US fiscal condition has been characterised by high and rising debt. On a fiscal commons in which citizen-voters attempt, through their congressional representatives, to minimise tax payments, this is the expected outcome. In this article, we examine the effects of a tax policy that has concentrated tax liability on the upper end of the income distribution in light of another important trend: rapid growth in the higher-income segment of the income distribution. We find that growth in the higher-income segment of the income distribution – more people paying higher taxes – has made the tragedy of the fiscal commons less severe and slowed the pace to a possible ultimate default.

“The Citizen Complains”: Federal Compensation for Property Lost in the War of 1812

This article describes the federal government's little-known effort to remunerate civilians who lost private property during the War of 1812. It shows how wartime “sufferers” pressured their congressional representatives for redress. In response, their representatives created a new federal office to adjudicate claims for lost property. But this office quickly came under scrutiny for making allegedly erroneous disbursements. Although Congress curtailed the office's power, representatives of the claimants continued to push for a more generous policy. To garner more free state support, they pointed out that officials had sought indemnities for the slaves the British had liberated during the war, but not for other forms of lost property. To remedy this preferential treatment, most northern congressmen began to support enacting a more generous compensation policy. In response, southerners demanded payment for slaves who had been lost in the war. Ultimately, northerners joined with the representatives of the sufferers from the South to pass a new law. However, this law only offered remuneration for buildings, which, in effect, tabled the discussion over slavery. This article therefore reveals how legislators employed the politics of slavery to build a coalition to create a law, which, in turn, was limited by those same politics.

Alliances may determine Colombia’s 2018 election

Significance President Juan Manuel Santos accepted Pinzon’s resignation last week, reportedly telling the media that he wished to step down “before being disqualified” from running -- May 24 is the cut-off date for public officials to resign if they wish to run in the 2018 election. While former Vice-President German Vargas Lleras had been considered a favourite for the presidency, a recent slip in his poll ratings has left the election without a clear front runner. Santos is ineligible to stand for re-election and the parties of his governing coalition, and the opposition Democratic Centre (CD) party, are in disagreement over candidate selection. Impacts Political campaigning will slow the pace of legislation, as congressional representatives shift focus to re-election efforts. The new government may become embroiled in disputes with local authorities, newly empowered under the FARC peace deal. The FARC’s political party will likely exert little influence over national policymaking during the next congressional term.

Religious Identity and Descriptive Representation

Drawing on the descriptive representation literature, we argue that religious identity is a social identity similar to gender or race, which leads a person to feel represented by someone who shares their religious identity. We argue that religious identity motivates approbation for public officials that is distinct from partisanship. We find that constituents who share the religious identity of their congressional representatives are significantly more likely to approve of their representative's performance in office. In addition, those who share a religious identity with President Obama are more trusting of him; particularly among those for whom religion is important. Finally, we find that shared religious identity moderates the relationship between partisanship and trust in the President. All else equal, Republicans who share a religious identity with President Obama are 500% more likely to trust him than a Republican who does not.