Bending the Rules

Potter, Rachel Augustine

doi:10.7208/chicago/9780226621883.001.0001

Cited by 91 publications

References 56 publications

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Do fake online comments pose a threat to regulatory policymaking? Evidence from Internet regulation in the United States

Handan-Nader

2022

Policy & Internet

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Broad stakeholder participation in regulatory policymaking via online commenting platforms has become the norm in many advanced democracies around the world. In recent years, a policy debate has emerged over the dangers posed to the process by fake comments that impersonate ordinary citizens. This paper helps to clarify the terms of this debate by evaluating a contentious and prominent case in the United States, the nearly 24 million comments from the Federal Communications Commission's 2017 Restoring Internet Freedom proceeding. Using a two‐step methodology that combines a computationally efficient search algorithm and a neural network language model, I show that regulators were able to cite much of the relevant information submitted in public comments by relying on longstanding methods of information gathering through interest groups, despite the fact that fake comments outnumbered others 3 to 1. The results suggest that fake comments did not impede regulators' ability to extract specialized information from the public consultation process, but may have distorted signals from mass comment campaigns about constituent mobilization.

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Do fake online comments pose a threat to regulatory policymaking? Evidence from Internet regulation in the United States

Handan-Nader

2022

Policy & Internet

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The Federal Bureaucracy

Rockman

2022

Developments in American Politics 9

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The life cycle of international cooperation: Introduction to the special issue

Gray

2024

Rev Int Organ

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International organizations’ lives often extend far beyond the moment of their initial contracting. How IOs do adapt to shifting circumstances in their member states global geopolitical changes, and even internal dynamics within the IO itself? This special issue on the life cycle of international cooperation explores the ebbs and flows of the IOs that underpin the international system. Firm theory, organizational sociology, and agency theory all have incorporated life cycles perspectives into the study of organizations, but IR has yet to fully harness these frameworks. A life cycles approach centers on, first, incorporating the IO itself as the core unit of analysis and, second, the dynamic processes within IOs — including life stages such as false starts, consolidation, inertia, growth, revitalization, death, and succession. Incorporating these dynamic processes into our understanding of IOs reminds us that historically, IOs have always experienced periods of both flourishing and faltering. Grasping the mechanisms that drive these changes is indispensable for a thorough understanding of the international system’s vitality and resilience. Articles in this issue explore the durability of IOs in the face of crises; the measures that IOs deploy to legitimize their existence; the role of individual leaders’ rhetoric in IO vitality; the tradeoffs that member states face between pulling the plug on an IO versus creating a new institution; the effect of member-state IO withdrawal on the international system overall; and the mass public’s perceptions of such withdrawals.

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Bending the Rules

Cited by 91 publications

References 56 publications

Do fake online comments pose a threat to regulatory policymaking? Evidence from Internet regulation in the United States

Do fake online comments pose a threat to regulatory policymaking? Evidence from Internet regulation in the United States

The Federal Bureaucracy

The life cycle of international cooperation: Introduction to the special issue

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