Earned Income Tax Credit: Path Dependence and the Blessing of Undertheorization

Some commentators have lamented that the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) is undertheorized—that its purpose is unclear—and that its design is therefore suboptimal. This Note explores the credit’s path-dependent past, which has resulted in a present-day EITC that manifests a diverse, uncoordinated assortment of policy purposes. Although the EITC’s ambiguity of purpose may yield policy inefficiencies, this Note argues that it also produces significant political benefits that would-be reformers who value the EITC’s many societal benefits should take into account before they attempt to enact any major overhaul

The Global City as a Space for Transnational Identity Politics

Global Cities are key nodes in circuits of transnational political activity. As dense spaces of political interaction, cities provide bundles of material, political and ideational resources that allow for the generation of new identities and frames of meaning, shifts in tactical and strategic alliances, and network brokerage activities. The key function of cities in facilitating transnationalism has not been adequately explored in the existing International Relations literature on transnationalism. In this paper, we use the case of London as a Global City to examine how its features as a dense institutional context; a node in multiple global networks; and as a resource-rich environment creates a creative space for innovations in transnational politics. We focus on the strategies employed by identity-based transnational political entrepreneurs and discuss four mechanisms of mobilization: brokerage (the linking of disparate networks), strategic framing (the use of symbolic politics), coalition-building (the forging of alliances between organizations) and social learning or mediated diffusion (the adoption of new ideas and practices). Our analysis challenges both standard state-centric and single-case study accounts of transnational activity, suggesting a novel site of investigation for IR scholars

The 3 micron spectrum of NGC 4565

Researchers spectrum of NGC 4565 is essentially featureless. The absence of the 3.0 micron feature (Tau 3.0 less than 0.05) implies that the extinction to the nucleus does not arise to a significant degree in molecular clouds. Researchers deduce Tau 3.0/A sub V less than 0.01, compared with approx. 0.022 for GC-IRS7. These results support the conclusion (McFadzean et al. 1989) that the 3.0 micron absorption in the GC-IR sources is due to the presence of ice in a (probably single) foreground molecular cloud. The 3.4 micron feature is also weak or absent in the researchers spectrum of NGC 4565 (Tau 3.4 less than or equal to 0.07), hence, Tau 3.4/A sub V less than or equal to 0.016, compared with approx. 0.008 towards GC-IRS7. The absence of the feature in NGC 4565 at the signal-to-noise level of the current observations is consistent with a probable moderate degree of extinction towards the nucleus. The observations of NGC 4565 provide a useful comparison for studies of dust in the Galaxy. Limits have been set on the strengths of the 3.0 and 3.4 micron features in NGC 4565. The absence of 3.0 micron absorption is significant, and supports the view that the feature at this wavelength in the Galactic Centre is due to water-ice absorption in a foreground molecular cloud. The non-detection of the 3.4 micron absorption is less surprising and provides indirect support for the association between this feature and the diffuse interstellar medium. The current spectrum probably represents the best that can be achieved with a single-detector instrument within reasonable integration times. It will clearly be of interest in the future to obtain spectra of higher signal-to-noise, as a positive detection of the 3.4 micron feature in an external galaxy, even at a low level, would be of considerable astrophysical significance

Pushing the Boundaries: Can We “Decolonize” Security Studies?

This essay reflects on the approaches to inclusion and exclusion put forward in this special issue and suggests a more radical alternative: the project of “decolonizing” the field of security studies. Drawing on work in decolonial thought and critical security studies, I discuss systemic-level structures of inclusion and exclusion such as global racial hierarchies, imperial and colonial legacies, and North-South inequities. Such structures both shape the material reality of the global security order, and affect knowledge production in the field of security studies itself, including the definition of what is and is not viewed as a legitimate “security issue.” I conclude by asking what a “decolonized” security studies might look like