e) Engagement we dont exclude the K but policy relevance is key to change

Campbell, 02 John L., Department of Sociology, Dartmouth College (Ideas, Politics, and Public Policy, Annual Review of Sociology, vol.
28, no. 1, 2002, JSTOR)RK

As noted above, one of the most important problems with the literature on ideas and policy making is
that the causal mechanisms whereby different types of ideas affect policy making are often poorly
specified (Yee 1996). However, scholars have made some progress. Actors and Epistemic Communities One way to explain how ideas affect
policy making is to show through careful process tracing how specific actors carried certain ideas into the policy-making
fray and used them effectively. These actors are often academics and other intellectuals whose
claim to knowledge and expertise enables their voice to be heard above others (Brint 1994a). For example,
Skowronek (1982) argued that an intellectual vanguard of university-trained professionals, economists, and
other progressive thinkers were among America's most valuable state-building resources during
the early twentieth century.They played key roles in the development of a more professional,
bureaucratic U.S. state by providing all sorts of new ideas about how to better organize the state and exercise state power. Intellectuals
were also important in advancing various programmatic ideas about how tobuild welfare states in Europe
and North America (Rueschemeyer & Skocpol 1996). Similarly, think tanks, research institutes, and university academics-notably economists have
affected industrial and macroeconomic policy making (Domhoff 1998:ch. 4; Ricci 1993; Stone 1996; Smith 1991, 1989). At the international level
"epistemic communities" are responsible for generating new ideas and disseminating them
among national policy makers as well as others in the international community. Epistemic communities are networks
of professionals and experts with an authoritative claim to policy-relevant knowledge, who
share a set of normative beliefs, causal models, notions of empirical validity, and a common policy enterprise (Haas 1992). Keck & Sikkink (1998)
argued that these networks are especially important because their members are often responsible for
generating the very ideas that constitute the world culture, discussed earlier, to which sociologists
attribute isomorphic effects at the national level. Moreover, Keck & Sikkink specified more carefully than most world
culture researchers how these transnational networks mobilize and frame information, and how they convince powerful international actors, such as
the World Bank and U.S. government, to press nation states that are reluctant to adopt internationally accepted human rights, environmental, and
other policies (see also Risse et al. 1999). As such, their contribution is threefold. First, they delineated several causal mechanisms through which world
culture affects national policy makers, thereby injecting a degree of agency into the otherwise structuralist world culture literature. Second, they
addressed the important debate over whether a few centralized hegemonic organizations (e.g., McNamara1 998, Pauly 1997) or decentralized networks
of organizations and individuals, each of which is rather weak on its own (e.g., Boli & Thomas 1999), are responsible for the diffusion of world culture.
For Keck & Sikkink, both matter. Third, they showed that the diffusion of world culture often involves much struggle, conflict, and even repression.
Indeed, diffusion is a much more uneven and contested process than much of the literature suggests (see also Mittelman 2000). Institutional Filters
and Embeddedness Of course, actors do not operate in a vacuum. Many researchers have argued that the formal rules and
procedures governing policy making affect which ideas penetrate the policy-making process and
are adopted and implemented as policy. In other words, institutions influence the degree to which academics,
other intellectuals, and thus new policy ideas can access policy-making arenas. This sort of institutional filtering
has affected economic policy (P. Hall 1989a,b), welfare policy (Weir & Skocpol 1985), energy policy (Campbell 1988, Jasper 1990), and national security
policy (Risse-Kappan 1994). Studies have paid less attention to the informal channels through which this occurs, but insofar as intellectuals and policy
makers travel in the same social circles, social as well as political institutions can act as filters in this sense (Domhoff 1974, Rueschemeyer & Skocpol
1996). For instance, one reason why national unemployment insurance was passed in Britain was that liberal social scientists from Oxford University,
who favored such a program, mingled in the same clubs, associations, and other social venues as London's political elite and urged them to adopt this
idea. As a result, when the Liberal Party came to power in the early twentieth century, many of these intellectuals were appointed to key administrative
posts where they helped formulate the program, which was passed in 1911 (Schwebber 1996). Indeed, the ways in which idea-
producing institutions, such as the professions and universities, are linked to the state helps
determine which ideas affect policy making (Ziegler 1997).



Fixation with representation is worse than pragmatic ecological policy
Paul WAPNER Prf. And Director of the Global Environmental Policy Program @ American 3Leftist Criticism of Nature
Dissent Winter p. 74-75
The third response to eco-criticism would require critics to acknowledge the ways in which they
themselves silence natureand then to respect the sheer otherness of the nonhuman world. Postmodernism prides
itself on criticizing the urge toward mastery that characterizes modernity. But isnt mastery
exactly what postmodernism is exerting as it captures the nonhuman world within its own
conceptual domain? Doesnt postmodern cultural criticism deepen the modernist urge toward
mastery by eliminating the ontological weight of the nonhuman world? What else could it mean
to assert that there is no such thing as nature? I have already suggested the postmodernist response: yes,
recognizing the social construction of nature does deny the self-expression of the nonhuman world, but how would we know what
such self-expression means? Indeed, nature doesnt speak; rather, some person always speaks on natures behalf, and whatever that
person says is, as we all know, a social construction. All attempts to listen to nature are social constructions
except one. Even the most radical postmodernist must acknowledge the distinction between physical existence
and nonexistence. As I have said, postmodernists accept that there is a physical substratum to the phenomenal world even if
they argue about the different meanings we ascribe to it. This acknowledgment of physical existence is crucial. We cant ascribe
meaning to that which doesnt appear. What doesnt exist can manifest no character. Put differently, yes, the postmodernist should
rightly worry about interpreting natures expressions. And all of us should be wary of those who claim to speak
on natures behalf (including environmentalists who do that). But we need not doubt the simple idea that a
prerequisite of expression is existence. This in turn suggests that preserving the nonhuman worldin
all its diverse embodimentsmust beseen by eco-critics as a fundamental good. Eco-critics must be
supporters, in some fashion, of environmental preservation. Postmodernists reject the idea of a universal good. They rightly
acknowledge the difficulty of identifying a common value given the multiple contexts of our value-producing activity. In fact, if there
is one thing they vehemently scorn, it is the idea that there can be a value that stands above the individual contexts of human
experience. Such a value would present itself as a metanarrative and, as Jean- Franois Lyotard has explained, postmodernism is
characterized fundamentally by its incredulity toward meta-narratives. Nonetheless, I cant see how postmodern critics can do
otherwise than accept the value of preserving the nonhuman world. The nonhuman is the extreme other; it stands in
contradistinction to humans as a species. In understanding the constructed quality of human experience and the dangers of
reification, postmodernism inherently advances an ethic of respecting the other. At the very least, respect must involve
ensuring that the other actually continues to exist. In our day and age, this requires us to take
responsibility for protecting the actuality of the nonhuman. Instead, however, we are running
roughshod over the earths diversity of plants, animals, and ecosystems. Postmodern critics should find
this particularly disturbing. If they dont, they deny their own intellectual insights and compromise their fundamental moral
commitment. Now, what does this mean for politics and policy, and the future of the environmental movement? Society is constantly
being asked to address questions of environmental quality for which there are no easy answers. As we wrestle with challenges
of global climate change, ozone depletion, loss of biological diversity, and so forth, we need to consider the
economic, political, cultural, and aesthetic values at stake. These considerations have traditionally marked the politics of
environmental protection. A sensitivity to eco-criticism requires that we go further and include an ethic of otherness in our
deliberations. That is, we need to be moved by our concern to make room for the other and hence fold a commitment to the
nonhuman world into our policy discussions. I dont mean that this argument should drive all our actions or that respect for the
other should always carry the day. But it must be a central part of our reflections and calculations. For example, as we estimate the
number of people that a certain area can sustain, consider what to do about climate change, debate restrictions on ocean fishing, or
otherwise assess the effects of a particular course of action, we must think about the lives of other creatures on
the earthand also the continued existence of the nonliving physical world. We must do so not because
we wish to maintain what is natural but because we wish to act in a morally respectable manner. I have been using postmodern
cultural criticism against itself. Yes, the postmodernists are right: we can do what we want with the nonhuman world. There is
nothing essential about the realm of rocks, trees, fish, and climate that calls for a certain type of action. But postmodernists are also
right that the only ethical way to act in a world that is socially constructed is to respect the voices of the others of those with whom
we share the planet but with whom we may not share a common language or outlook. There is, in other words, a limit or guiding
principle to our actions. As political theorist Leslie Thiele puts it, One cant argue for the diversity of views of
nature without taking a stand for the diversity of nature.


Their root cause claims are false no moncausality and goes the other way
Goldstein 2
Joshua S., Professor Emeritus of International Relations, American University (Washington, DC) Research Scholar, University of Massachusetts and
Nonresident Sadat Senior Fellow, CIDCM, University of Maryland War and Gender , P. 412 2k2
First, peace activists face a dilemma in thinking about causes of war and working for
peace. Many peace scholars and activists support the approach, if you want peace, work for justice. Then if one believes that
sexism contributes to war, one can work for gender justice specifically (perhaps among others) in
orde2r to pursue peace. Thisapproach brings strategic allies to the peace movement (women, labor, minorities), but rests on the
assumption that injustices causewar. The evidence in this book suggests that causality runs at least as
strongly the other way. War is not a product of capitalism, imperialism, gender, innate
aggression, or any other single cause, although all of these influences wars outbreaks and outcomes. Rather, war
has in part fueledand sustained these and other injustices. So, if you want peace, work
for peace. Indeed, if you want justice (gener and others), work for peace. Causality does not run just upward through the levels of analysis from
types of individuals, societies, and governments up to war. It runs downward too. Enloe suggests that changes in attitudes toward war and the military
may be the most important way to reverse womens oppression/ The dilemma is that peace work focused on justice brings to the peace movement
energy, allies and moral grounding, yet, in light of this books evidence, the emphasis on injustice as the main cause of
war seems to be empirically inadequate

China CP

Balancing is false Chinese engagement is bad for Latin American nations
Myers 12 (Margaret, program director of the Inter-American dialogue, written for the Inter-
American dialogue, April 10, China's engagement with Latin America: More of the same?
http://www.opeal.net/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=10729:chinas-engagement-
with-latin-america-more-of-the-same?&Itemid=123)
For more than a decade, China has maintained the upper hand in its burgeoning relationship with Latin America. As the engager,
the investor, and the lender, China has had a transformative effect on certain economies in the region. Latin America
countries, on the other hand, have assumed a more passive -- or even reactionary -- role in their
relations with China. There is a tendency now to view increasing cooperation and exchanges
between China and certain Latin American countries as a balancing of these lop-sided bilateral
relationships. Cooperation between China and Latin America and especially that of the high-tech and/or scientifically-focused
variety -- has expanded considerably in recent years. Costa Rica and China are preparing to work together on the installation of new
carbon emissions technologies, for example. Argentina has worked with China on developing innovative agricultural methods.
Scientific, social, and educational cooperation are all major features of ongoing Brazil-China High Level Coordination and
Cooperation Commission (COSBAN) meetings. I would argue, however, that deepening cooperation between China
and Latin America is not indicative of a balancing of relations or of genuinely horizontal
engagement. In many cases, the cooperation itself is limited, or is merely a short-term effort to secure
access to new technologies or scientific methods. In other cases, cooperative engagement should be thought of not
as a leveling of the playing field, but as an element of Chinas ever-evolving economic statecraft. Chinas cooperative endeavors in
Latin America and elsewhere are often seen as intervention in the affairs of Chinas commercial actors to ensure a degree of mutual
benefit in overseas dealings. Mutual benefit, a guiding principle of Chinas external engagement philosophy, is thought to secure
access to and postive relationships with countries and markets in the region.

Relations are one-sided and serve to benefit only China
Myers 12 (Margaret, program director of the Inter-American dialogue, written for the Inter-
American dialogue, April 10, China's engagement with Latin America: More of the same?
http://www.opeal.net/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=10729:chinas-engagement-
with-latin-america-more-of-the-same?&Itemid=123)
More of the Same? Chinas Ya-Fei-La or Asia-Africa-Latin America construct was conceived during the Mao-era in a
movement to promote developing country solidarity. At that time, China saw itself as a spokesperson for what it
termed the struggle of third world countries. Thirty years after implementing its policy of reform and opening-
up, China sees its role among developing nations in much the same way. Though always willing to study other
countries -- their economic and political systems, development challenges, social policy, etc. --,
its leaders still operate under the assumption that China has more to offer developing nations
than the other way around -- especially in terms of development assistance and a as model for economic growth. Once
more, China is establishing its role as a leader among developing nations -- formal references to aid and developing country
assistance have increased significantly over the course of the 11th Five Year and 12th Five Year periods. Chinas academic
literature on Latin America further illuminates its dominant view toward Latin America. Of the
existing Chinese-language literature on the China-Latin America relationship, the vast majority
seeks to derive jiaoxun or lessons from Latin Americas failed experiments in economic and social
development. These lessons frequently are taught in Chinas top universities, where students encounter numerous charts
documenting Chinas and Latin Americas divergent paths toward economic development. The economic demise of Latin America
often linked to import substitution and/or failed neo-liberal policy -- is explained alongside Chinas post-1979 growth miracle. Only
one widely-published Chinese-language article looks to Latin America (and Brazil, in particular) for a viable development model.
The article,lingyizhongjueqi, or Another kind of rise, considers Brazils approaches to dealing with rampant inflation and social
inequality over the past three decades, suggesting that China might benefit from similar reforms. Although China goes to some effort
to promote mutually beneficial and win-win arrangments, Chinas motivations for engaging the region remain firmly linked to its
domestic interests. The premise of Chinas going-out strategy, as described during the 17th Party
Congress is to realize Chinas long-term economic and social development. Chinas global
engagement remains driven by its leaders plans for domestic development as prescribed in 12th
Five-Year Plan and, more recently, in Wen Jiabaos 2012 Government Work Report -- albeit
with consideration for the common development of other nations. Assuming the leadership makes
incremental progress toward the objectives highlighted in its 12th Five-Year Plan, China is very likely to continue engaging Latin
America as it has over the past decade. Latin America should anticipate relations with China that are still
dominated by trade, as well as by an overwhelming interest in natural resources and agricultural
commodities. This dynamic will produce ongoing challenges for Latin American policy-makers
in terms of export primarization, extractive sector-related environmental degradation,
competitiveness, intra-industry trade, and other issues stemming from Chinas engagement with
the region over the past decade.

Consults cps are a voting issue - Consult CPs lack real world applicability, use
evidence out of context, and destroy aff ground to answer them back. Gutting both
fairness and education in debate.
Harrigan 9 (Casey, Associate Director of Debate at the University of Georgia and former NDT
champion. http://www.georgiadebate.org/2009/10/goodbye-consult-cp)
Second, absence of specific literature has made it difficult, if not impossible for Aff teams to
produce specific answers. News to the world: the consult CP does not exist. It is made up. The
USFG would not, and will not, give another country veto-power over our actions, foreign or
domestic. Ever. Bush wouldnt. Early signs suggest Obama wont, either. Why? Because it is absurd. Multilateralism
and cooperation are one thing. Clearly subordinating the interests of one state to another,
especially when the consulting state is populated by politicians who have been elected to serve
the interests of their own country, is something entirely different. So, why is consultation an
argument at all, if no evidence has been written about it? Well, Neg teams have been playing
fast-and-loose with their interpretation of terms like prior, binding, genuine, in evidence about
consulting.

Framework
DA
Privileging representations locks in violence --- policy analysis is the best way to
challenge power
Taft-Kaufman 95 (Jill, Professor of Speech CMU, Southern Communication Journal, Vol. 60, Issue 3, Spring)
The postmodern passwords of "polyvocality," "Otherness," and "difference," unsupported by substantial analysis of
the concrete contexts of subjects, creates a solipsistic quagmire. The political sympathies of the new cultural critics,
with their ostensible concern for the lack of power experienced by marginalized people, aligns them with the political
left. Yet, despite their adversarial posture and talk of opposition, their discourses on intertextuality and inter-
referentiality isolate them from and ignore the conditions that have produced leftist politics--conflict, racism,
poverty, and injustice. In short, as Clarke (1991) asserts, postmodern emphasis on new subjects conceals the old
subjects, those who have limited access to good jobs, food, housing, health care, and transportation, as well as to the
media that depict them. Merod (1987) decries this situation as one which leaves no vision, will, or commitment to
activism. He notes that academic lip service to the oppositional is underscored by the absence of focused
collective or politically active intellectual communities. Provoked by the academic manifestations of this problem
Di Leonardo (1990) echoes Merod and laments: Has there ever been a historical era characterized by as little radical
analysis or activism and as much radical-chic writing as ours? Maundering on about Otherness: phallocentrism or
Eurocentric tropes has become a lazy academic substitute for actual engagement with the detailed
histories and contemporary realities of Western racial minorities, white women, or any Third World population. (p.
530) Clarke's assessment of the postmodern elevation of language to the "sine qua non" of critical discussion is an
even stronger indictment against the trend. Clarke examines Lyotard's (1984) The Postmodern Condition in
which Lyotard maintains that virtually all social relations are linguistic, and, therefore, it is through the coercion that
threatens speech that we enter the "realm of terror" and society falls apart. To this assertion, Clarke replies: I can
think of few more striking indicators of the political and intellectual impoverishment of a view of society
that can only recognize the discursive. If the worst terror we can envisage is the threat not to be allowed to speak,
we are appallingly ignorant of terror in its elaborate contemporary forms. It may be the intellectual's conception of
terror (what else do we do but speak?), but its projection onto the rest of the world would be calamitous....(pp. 2-27)
The realm of the discursive is derived from the requisites for human life, which are in the physical world, rather than
in a world of ideas or symbols.(4) Nutrition, shelter, and protection are basic human needs that require collective
activity for their fulfillment. Postmodern emphasis on the discursive without an accompanying analysis of how
the discursive emerges from material circumstances hides the complex task of envisioning and working towards
concrete social goals (Merod, 1987). Although the material conditions that create the situation of marginality
escape the purview of the postmodernist, the situation and its consequences are not overlooked by scholars from
marginalized groups. Robinson (1990) for example, argues that "the justice that working people deserve is
economic, not just textual" (p. 571). Lopez (1992) states that "the starting point for organizing the program content
of education or political action must be the present existential, concrete situation" (p. 299). West (1988) asserts that
borrowing French post-structuralist discourses about "Otherness" blinds us to realities of American difference going
on in front of us (p. 170). Unlike postmodern "textual radicals" who Rabinow (1986) acknowledges are "fuzzy
about power and the realities of socioeconomic constraints" (p. 255), most writers from marginalized groups are
clear about how discourse interweaves with the concrete circumstances that create lived experience. People whose
lives form the material for postmodern counter-hegemonic discourse do not share the optimism over the new
recognition of their discursive subjectivities, because such an acknowledgment does not address sufficiently
their collective historical and current struggles against racism, sexism, homophobia, and economic injustice.
They do not appreciate being told they are living in a world in which there are no more real subjects. Ideas have
consequences. Emphasizing the discursive self when a person is hungry and homeless represents both a
cultural and humane failure. The need to look beyond texts to the perception and attainment of concrete social goals
keeps writers from marginalized groups ever-mindful of the specifics of how power works through political agendas,
institutions, agencies, and the budgets that fuel them.


Do not evaluate their value system without first assessing the consequences of its
actual implementation. Viewing ethics in isolation is irresponsible & complicit
with the evil they criticize calculative thought process is key
Issac 2002.,( Jeffery C. Professor of political science at Indiana-Bloomington & Director of the Center for the Study of Democracy and Public Life. PhD Yale
University. From Ends, Means, and Politics. Dissent Magazine. Volume 49. Issue # 2. Available online @ subscribing institutions using Proquest. Herm

As a result, the most important political questions are simply not asked. It is assumed that U.S. military intervention is an act of
"aggression," but no consideration is given to the aggression to which intervention is a response.
The status quo ante in Afghanistan is not, as peace activists would have it, peace, but rather terrorist violence abetted by a regime--the Taliban--that rose to power through
brutality and repression. This requires us to ask a question that most "peace" activists would prefer not to ask: What should be done to respond to the violence of a Saddam
Hussein, or a Milosevic, or a Taliban regime? What means are likely to stop violence and bring criminals to justice? Calls for diplomacy and international law are
well intended and important; they implicate a decent and civilized ethic of global order. But they are also vague and empty, because they are not accompanied
by any account of how diplomacy or international law can work effectively to address the problem at hand. The campus left offers no such account. To do so would require it to
contemplate tragic choices in which moral goodness is of limited utility. Here what matters is not purity of intention but the intelligent exercise of power. Power is not a dirty
word or an unfortunate feature of the world. It is the core of politics. Power is the ability to effect outcomes in the world. Politics, in large part, involves contests over the
distribution and use of power. To accomplish anything in the political world, one must attend to the means
that are necessary to bring it about. And to develop such means is to develop, and to exercise, power. To say this is not to say that power is beyond
morality. It is to say that power is not reducible to morality. As writers such as Niccolo Machiavelli, Max Weber, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Hannah Arendt have taught, an
unyielding concern with moral goodness undercuts political responsibility. The concern may be morally laudable,
reflecting a kind of personal integrity, but it suffers from three fatal flaws: (1) It fails to see that the purity of one's intention does
not ensure the achievement of what one intends. Abjuring violence or refusing to make common cause with morally compromised
parties may seem like the right thing; but if such tactics entail impotence, then it is hard to view them as serving any moral good beyond the clean conscience of their supporters;
(2) it fails to see that in a world of real violence and injustice, moral purity is not simply a form of
powerlessness; it is often a form of complicity in injustice. This is why, from the standpoint of politics--as opposed to religion--
pacifism is always a potentially immoral stand. In categorically repudiating violence, it refuses in principle to
oppose certain violent injustices with any effect; and (3) it fails to see that politics is as much about
unintended consequences as it is about intentions; it is the effects of action, rather than the
motives of action, that is most significant. Just as the alignment with "good" may engender impotence, it is often the pursuit of "good" that
generates evil. This is the lesson of communism in the twentieth century: it is not enough that one's goals be sincere or idealistic;
it is equally important, always, to ask about the effects of pursuing these goals and to judge these
effects in pragmatic and historically contextualized ways. Moral absolutism inhibits this
judgment. It alienates those who are not true believers. It promotes arrogance. And it
undermines political effectiveness