Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This paper examines the emergence of the Department of Homeland Security in a comparative historical perspective, and argues for the utility of using a “second-image reversed” framework to analyze the impact that systemic level changes have on domestic institutional development. The paper thus brings together literatures from international relations and American political development to explain the origins of institutional change in domestic security institutions. A punctuated equilibrium model is used to understand critical junctures in the emergence of new “homeland defense” policies in the United States. The paper briefly examines several historical cases in which exogenous shocks provided an impetus for the development of a US internal security apparatus, before examining in more detail the expansion of a national security state in the aftermath of World War II during the early Cold War period. Finally, we examine the emergence of a Department of Homeland Security bureaucracy, and employ Lowi and Hacker’s work on policy layering to understand the nature of the bureaucratic apparatus that is currently materializing. In the conclusion of the paper, we discuss the theoretical and policy implications of our case studies – arguing for the necessity of integrating international systemic and domestic institutional perspectives for understanding the nature of US internal security responses, and, from a historical comparative perspective, discussing the efficacy of current policies as responses to the post-9/11 international security environment.

Publication Type: Proceeding

Publication Type: Proceeding

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Survey experiments help establish causality, but scholars do not know how closely the treatments mimic natural phenomena. This study compares survey experiments and a natural experiment on the same topic. In two survey experiments providing information about Medicare, we observe double-digit learning effects. In contrast, most respondents in our contemporaneous natural experiment show little evidence of learning. Consistent with our expectations, the only people who showed comparable levels of learning to respondents in our survey experiment were individuals exposed to Medicare facts in their media source of choice as well as people who were uncertain about the facts from the very beginning. Our conclusion is that the effects of survey experiments, at least on this topic, only generalize to parts of the population that are likely to be exposed or to accept the treatment messages.