Policy Studies Journal articles from August 2006

Policy Studies Journal archives from August 2006

Editors' notes.
August 1, 2006... This issue of the Policy Studies Journal includes a number of path-breaking and provocative articles that will be required reading for policy scholars. The articles reflect the breadth of concerns for policy scholars. One such concern is the...

Efficient nonprofits?
August 1, 2006... Introduction There are several reasons why we might expect nonprofits to appear "inefficient." First, many nonprofits create public goods and services--arts, education, social services--which people want, but have limited incentive to pay...

Potential focusing projects and policy change.
August 1, 2006... Why do policies change dramatically? Most prominent theories and many empirical studies of policy change address that question by asserting a triggering role for focusing events such as natural disasters (Birkland, 1997) or external shocks such...

Breathless: schools, air toxics, and environmental justice in California.
August 1, 2006... Introduction In recent years, the intersection between environmental justice, children's health, and schools has attracted the interest of many researchers and activists. Part of the concern is caused by a growing body of scientific...

Punctuated equilibria and budgets in the American states.
August 1, 2006... Introduction Public budgeting is both a conflict over scarce resources and a reflection of expressed preferences at a legislative level. Similar to other democratic public budgeting arenas, state budgets contain the outcomes of extensive...

Policy coherence and policy domains.
August 1, 2006... Introduction A casual observer of the popular and academic characterizations of public policy could easily conclude that policymaking institutions in the United States are incapable of producing coherent policies. Discussions of policy...

Punctuated equilibrium in limbo: the tobacco lobby and U.S. State policymaking from 1990 to 2003.
August 1, 2006... Introduction During the 1990s, tobacco use came under increasingly intense political opposition by antitobacco advocates who advocated for increased tobacco taxes and stronger tobacco-use regulations (Givel & Glantz, 2001a; Studlar, 2002)....

Tobacco's tipping point: the Master Settlement Agreement as a focusing event.
August 1, 2006... At first glance, the concept of a focusing event is intuitive, even simple. The connections between the Great Depression and the New Deal, for instance, or between 9/11 and the War on Terror are obvious to even the casual observer. Indeed, this...

Up in smoke: mapping subsystem dynamics in tobacco policy.
August 1, 2006... Any attempt to understand the course of public policy must, inevitably, consider the manner in which institutions frame and constrain who gets what, when they get it, and how it is delivered. An especially promising line of inquiry in this...

Failure to change through multiple policy instruments and venues the tobacco industry policy subsystem in the states from 1990 to 2003.
August 1, 2006... My article in this issue of Policy Studies Journal provides a historical overview from 1990 to 2003 of state tobacco control policy outputs and outcomes that occurred in tandem with a vigorous challenge in this same period by health advocates...