Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: The present paper is part of a larger research project that studies policy ideas as a source of economic policy change, in relation to the Peruvian case of neoliberal economic reform implemented during the early 1990s. As such, it belongs to the ideas-based research arena that in contrast to mainstream approaches in the political economy literature - that establish that power, interests, and international economic structures determine policy change ? considers that policy ideas may determine the content and direction of states? policies. Concretely, with respect to the paper I am proposing for the ISA conference, its main thesis is that the language used by the promoters of market-oriented policy ideas during the late 1980s in Peru helped to build a pro-market discourse that mobilized both: opposition against the prevailing inward-oriented economic policy framework, and the approval by the civil society of the application of market-oriented reforms. In other words, I note that the promoters of market-oriented policy ideas discursively constructed during the late 1980s the support for the economic reform program applied during the 1990s.The objective of my paper is to define how pro-market ideas became more persuasive than others and could resonate against widely held domestic understandings and beliefs about the role of the state and social actors in the economy, and the state?s economic foreign policy. One of the accurate criticisms made to the idea-based research program is that noted by Mark Blyth who claims that various studies in this area do not explain the mechanism of translation of policy ideas from academic debate to popular consciousness. In an attempt to set an explanation in this regard, I pay attention to the diffusion of economic ideas, concretely to the language utilized to promote these ideas. I study the discourse of non-state actors: think tanks, academics, politicians and technocrats that supported these ideas before the government issued market-oriented reforms. The paper analyzes the representational images ? metaphors, analogies, myths, and symbols - that the promoters of market-oriented policy ideas used in their attempt to get supporters for their own way of defining Peru?s economic problems and solutions. I pay special attention to the language tools inserted in the press documents texts through which the ?pro-market discourse? was constructed and promoted. I operate a discourse analysis of the news corresponding to the period 1987-1992. Analyzing the news texts through which the pro-market message was publicized in the Peruvian arena has allowed me to collect more than mere information about the events occurred prior to and during the application of market oriented reforms. The study of the language tools ? metaphors, analogies, myths, and symbols - inserted in these texts has permitted me to observe how these language tools have contributed to carefully construct and promote a pro-market rhetoric, to coin terms and images which after being repeatedly exposed through various venues ? especially the news - become part of the political discourse. I am interested in observing not only the way in which the pro-market discourse was constructed but also how it was effectively ?communicated? and thus, how this was ?receipted? by societal actors and consolidated in the Peruvian arena. Therefore instead of doing text analysis in abstraction of social context here I supplement the basic semiotic analysis of press documents with a further inquiry, taking into consideration the context within and the venues through which market-oriented policy ideas were described/supported in the news.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Social movement actors are generally depicted as non-state actors whose advocacy is directed at the state, or who have an adversarial relationship with state actors. The recent history of activism to pass federal nondiscrimination legislation is a case that challenges this understanding of social movement actors as non-state, non-elite actors. Since 1993, the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), the federal genome agency, has led advocacy efforts with the National Breast Cancer Coalition, genetic activists, legal scholars, and industry, to persuade Congress to pass federal nondiscrimination legislation. Their lobbying and education efforts succeeded in May 2008, when President George W. Bush signed the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA) into law, banning health insurers and employers from using genetic information in their decision-making. One of the sites at which this coalition of federal scientists and genetic activists made their case that the nation needed a federal law banning genetic discrimination was the public hearings of a federal advisory committee, the Secretary’s Advisory Committee on Genetics, Health and Society (SACGHS), from 2003 to 2005. At the SACGHS hearings, the Committee adopted the role of advocate for GINA. It worked to legitimize genetic discrimination as a significant policy problem for the nation’s health, and a civil rights problem affecting all Americans. In this talk, I describe how a federal advisory committee became an advocate of GINA in its own proceedings and produced lobbying tools (and what sort) for genetic discrimination activists.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Event data were originally developed in the 1960s to code interstate actors, although even the early system such as WEIS and COPDAB included a small number of non-state actors such as the UN, IRA, and PLO. With the decline of interstate conflict and the increase in the importance of a variety of non-state and sub-state actors in global behavior, there is increasing interest in applying event data coding methods to the analysis of the activities of these actors. Because almost all contemporary conflicts transcend the traditional focus on state actors, featuring instead significant involvement of both sub-state and non-state actors, the state-centered coding schemes used in older data sets such as WEIS and COPDAB have proven inadequate for coding current events. In their place, we have established a systematic method of hierarchically creating codes that allow for the identification of states, sub-state actors, ethnic groups, geographical regions, IGOs and NGOs. This system has proven sufficient to code a wide range of relevant actors involved in inter- and intra-state protracted conflicts in Africa, the Balkans, Central Asia and the Middle East.

Supporting Publications:
Supporting Document

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: The paper discusses factors critical for effectiveness of violent non-state actors (VNSAs). Building on existing IR and organizational literatures, this paper argues that VNSA effectiveness is best explained by a combination of two approaches. The first approach emphasizes importance of adequate human and material resources for VNSA effectiveness. The second approach emphasizes importance of adequate organization and strategy (or “resilience” of VNSAs). Despite proliferation of networked-VNSAs and network-centered arguments that emphasize importance of structure and strategy over resources, it appears that effective organizations possess a combination of both effective structure and strategy as well as adequate/relevant human and material resources. The argument draws on British experiences during the Indian Mutiny and Boer Wars, its encounters with Mediterranean piracy, and its efforts to combat the IRA in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript