Policy Studies Journal articles from August 2007

Policy Studies Journal archives from August 2007

Editors' notes.(Editorial)
August 1, 2007... Whether your interest is in the processes by which policies change, the institutions that guide or condition policy change, or the theories that underlie typologies of politics, you will find this issue of Policy Studies Journal has content of...

Noah and Joseph effects in government budgets: analyzing long-term memory.(Essay)
August 1, 2007... Noah and Joseph in Government Budgets: Path Dependence or Long-Term Memory? In the broadest sense, path dependence implies that "history matters." At one level, this seems obvious, but at another, it is anything but obvious. Many analysts,...

Public and private policy change: pension reform in four countries.(United States, Canada, Britain, and Japan)(Report)
August 1, 2007... Introduction Since the 1980s, much has been written about the impact of fiscal austerity and free market ideas on social policy reform in advanced industrial societies. One of the most central issues debated in that comparative policy...

Stability and change in public policy: a longitudinal study of comparative subsystem dynamics.(Essay)
August 1, 2007... In 1993, Baumgartner and Jones introduced the punctuated equilibrium model of public policymaking. By integrating insights from the agenda-setting literature with elements from incrementalism and institutional theory, the punctuated equilibrium...

European Union external trade policy: multilevel principal-agent relationships.(Report)
August 1, 2007... Trade policy throughout the developed countries is increasingly characterized as an area of contentious politics. One need only think of the numerous antiglobalization protests and vociferous calls for more transparent policy to see that there...

How political support influences red tape through developmental culture.(Report)
August 1, 2007... When citizens accuse government of having too much red tape, they often mean excessive rules and regulations, waste of scarce resources, and inefficiency (Bozeman, 2000). The exact meaning of red tape is often unclear. Nevertheless, much of the...

Constitutional blemishes: American alcohol prohibition and repeal as policy punctuation.(Report)
August 1, 2007... The American experience with alcohol prohibition in the early twentieth century has always been considered something of an enigma, embodying a series of apparent historical anomalies: a successful antiprogressive initiative in the middle of the...

Policy characteristics, patterns of politics, and the minimum wage: toward a typology of redistributive policies.(Report)
August 1, 2007... While the incredibly diverse patterns of political activity we find across different issues cannot be captured by any single model of the policy process, it does not follow that each issue is idiosyncratic. To the contrary, the central...

Local institutions and environmental outcomes: evidence from wetlands protection in Massachusetts.(Report)
August 1, 2007... 1. Introduction Local environmental institutions (LEIs) include a broad array of community-based efforts aimed at increasing local participation in environmental decision making. (1) We define LEIs broadly to include any organized effort...

Letter from the editors.(Editorial)
August 1, 2007... The Roosevelt Institution is founded and thrives on the passion and intellectual capital of undergraduate and graduate students. Along with energy and higher education, the problems facing working families were selected by our student...

Predatory payday lending reform.(Report)
August 1, 2007... Payday lending undermines the economic security of working individuals and families. Many low-income workers, lacking the credit history and collateral needed to obtain a traditional loan but still in need of quick cash, turn to payday lenders...

Expanding access to services to combat child poverty in New York State.(Report)
August 1, 2007... It is necessary to modify our conception of poverty and those in need because our current standards are hopelessly inadequate in estimating the number of children in poverty. Current government service eligibility standards disenfranchise many...

State Earned Income Tax Credits.(Report)
August 1, 2007... Nationwide, America's working families are struggling. The national poverty rate for 2003 was 12.5 percent and purchasing power parity continues to decline. The federal Earned Income Tax Credit already serves as a major federal program to...

Partnerships for minority empowerment: restructuring the Current Population Survey.
August 1, 2007... The Census Bureau administers the Current Population Survey (CPS) with the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The less well-known CPS tracks monthly fluctuations in the American population between each major decennial census and provides data about...

Indexing the Massachusetts minimum wage.
August 1, 2007... Income inequality has grown more in Massachusetts than in forty-seven other states over the past two decades. Earnings for the highest income families in Massachusetts have grown almost five times as fast as those for low-income families....

Tax-based automatic enrollment in SCHIP.(State Children's Health Insurance Program)
August 1, 2007... In 1997, the federal government created SCHIP to ensure healthcare coverage for America's children living in poverty. Ten years later, over 34 million children are enrolled under Medicaid and SCHIP. Yet nine million children still lack health...

Increasing healthcare insurance enrollment in the District of Columbia.
August 1, 2007... The District of Columbia (D.C.) already has the necessary programs in place to provide healthcare insurance to many of the 50,000 residents who are uninsured. However, D.C.'s health insurance programs are underutilized because many of the...

Certificate-of-Need laws: barriers to lower costs and higher quality.
August 1, 2007... Certificate-of-Need (CON) laws require providers to receive state approval before offering a number of healthcare services. The laws reflect a belief that limiting the number of providers reduces healthcare spending. This basic premise runs...

Single-payer healthcare.
August 1, 2007... Single payer health insurance is a system like Medicare, in which people pay for their coverage through taxes to the federal government, which then distributes it to hospitals and clinics based upon their particular needs. Not only is a single...

Primary Adult Care: pulling Maryland citizens out of the uninsured trap.
August 1, 2007... Primary health care, though often disregarded, provides essential screening and management for many of the chronic and costly ailments that affect more and more Americans, including diabetes and cancer. Access to inexpensive primary care could...

Expanding the Family Medical Leave Act.
August 1, 2007... With most parents today working outside the home and the imminent retirement of the baby boomer generation, care giving will impact more working families than ever before. The FMLA must be amended to address the concerns of working parents. Any...

Crafting state health policies to cover the uninsured.
August 1, 2007... With nearly 47 million Americans aged 18 to 64 lacking health insurance coverage, providing access to healthcare services is the focus of many political debates. This is a crisis that affects all Americans, including those who are insured,...

Strengthen paternity leave by encouraging voluntary standards for businesses.
August 1, 2007... Much ink has been spilled over gender disparities in the workforce. Despite decades of increased educational opportunity for women and strict anti-discrimination legislation, the landscape of today's workplace leaves much to be desired. Yet...

Empowering families to choose quality childcare in New York City.
August 1, 2007... Past economic analysis has identified an information asymmetry in the childcare market. Therefore one likely explanation for parents' difficulties in finding quality care is general confusion over how to best determine quality. Information...

Community partnerships to curb domestic violence against immigrant women.
August 1, 2007... Due to language barriers, inexperience with U.S. law, and fear of deportation, immigrant women are underserved by the U.S. government, underrepresented in policy making, and vulnerable to basic human rights violations, especially domestic...

Support effective programs to reduce the number of child support enforcement cases.
August 1, 2007... Teenagers who are not parents are not typically included in the outreach efforts of the Office of Child Support Enforcement. But this group is at risk of becoming young parents, and evidence suggests that these students have little knowledge of...

Helping working families with children under five.
August 1, 2007... With the growing number of women in the workforce and two-career households, American families have an ever-pressing need for quality, affordable childcare. Over one third of families with children under six have two parents working full-time,...

Inclusionary Zoning for increased access to affordable housing in Los Angeles.
August 1, 2007... The extensive unmet housing need in Los Angeles necessitates movement toward affordable housing. Los Angeles has made monetary commitments to affordable housing with the Los Angeles Housing Trust Fund and with Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's...

A home for the working poor.
August 1, 2007... Athens-Clarke County (ACC), Georgia, boasts historical architecture, vibrant nightlife, and the state's flagship educational institution, the University of Georgia. However, ACC is also home to extreme poverty. Twenty-eight percent of Athenians...

Stemming the tide of the uninsured.
August 1, 2007... State Farm recently stopped offering insurance coverage for the entire state of Mississippi, and Allstate has significantly cut its policies. This represents a growing problem for flood-prone areas in our increasingly disaster-conscious world....

Social capital block grants.
August 1, 2007... Social capital is the networking of individuals within and across communities along the grounds of trust, connectedness, and reciprocity. Incorporating social capital block grants (SCBG) into existing community block grant programs will...

Federal farm subsidies limitations proposal.
August 1, 2007... The 2002 Farm Bill's commodity title did not distribute agriculture subsidy payments equitably, thus hurting small family farmers. Between 2003 and 2005, the majority of the $50 billion in federal subsidies was distributed to only a few farming...

National guard readiness certification requirements.
August 1, 2007... National Guard troops who expected to serve for months are now finding their overseas deployments and extended tours lasting for years. Some signed up in response to ads promising, "One weekend a month, two weeks a year. Earn money for college...

Improving accessibility to art museums.
August 1, 2007... Broad-based accessibility to museums has been shown to play a significant role in the growth and economic development of urban areas and to foster civic engagement, volunteerism, and cohesion among differing socioeconomic groups. However, many...

Welfare reform: focus on community service.
August 1, 2007... Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) is the nation's primary welfare program, federally funded yet implemented uniquely by each state. It aims to move welfare recipients into work and build strong families. However, recent reforms to...