A space for safety: the transformation of automobile safety advertising in response to NHTSA crash test implementation, 1977 and 1981

Automobile safety became an issue of increased public concern during the 1960s. These concerns were institutionalized in the creation of a national regulatory administration charged with overseeing automobile safety. This article examines the impact of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s 1979 mandated federal automobile crash testing program (FMVSS 208) on the content of automakers’ advertising. Automakers’ advertisements were not directly responsive to mandated safety testing, though references to safety features increased.     

Assessing the influence of regional Environmental Protection Agency offices on state hazardous waste enforcement decisions

In assessing the influence of regional Environmental Protection Agency EPA offices on the state management of hazardous waste programs, we focused on the extent to which federal administrative decisions affect levels of enforcement activity by state environmental agencies and whether these effects vary over time. Our results indicated that state enforcement actions were affected by state program capacity variables such as primacy and the strength of existing hazardous waste policies as well as one federal-level factor—the distribution of grant monies. The impact of federal oversight decisions was minimal.     

The smell of distance: Wallace Stegner’s definition of western non-fiction

Wallace Stegner has argued that land, scale, and aridness are defining characteristics of both the American West and writings about the West. Stegner’s definition is analyzed using his own works and Mark Twain’s Roughing It.     

A policy perspective on elder justice through APS and law enforcement collaboration

The policy issues involved in the social problem of elder victimization could fill volumes. Even the policy issues involved in the new concept of elder justice are multi-faceted. Through the lens of a policy analysis perspective, the history, ideologies, politics, social movements, and economics of policies that promote the collaboration between adult protective services and law enforcement are examined. The analysis of state and local policies as well as a promising federal legislative initiative will, hopefully, help policy advocates understand from where the movement toward collaboration between adult protective services and law enforcement has come as well as where it may be headed.     

Crime,correction, education and welfare in the U.S. – What role does the government play?

As federal, state and local governments continue to allocate a significant share of their resources to law enforcement and correctional spending, concerns have risen that spending in education and welfare is declining. With fiscal pressure in the United States mounting, it is important to determine the effectiveness of public spending in deterring crime. This paper compares the effectiveness of the impact of government spending on welfare and education with that of law enforcement and correction on crime. Using panel data from 50 U.S. states over a time period of 1994–2014, results of linear regression with panel corrected standard errors as well as GMM estimation reveals that public welfare and education spending can potentially lower violent and property crime rates but law enforcement spending can only deter property crime. However, correctional spending can exacerbate both types of crimes. There is little to no evidence of the presence of crowding out of one category of spending by another. This results in the policy implication that more resources be allocated towards welfare and education programs.     

Return migration predictors for undocumented Mexican immigrants living in Dallas

This study uses a survey of undocumented Mexican immigrants living in Dallas to identify variables that predict the likelihood of return migration of undocumented Mexican immigrants. Male immigrants and immigrants under age 25 are more likely to intend to return to Mexico. Surprisingly, length of US residence is not a significant predictor of intended return. In contrast, prior immigrant experience is a significant predictor of intent to return to Mexico. Highly educated immigrants are likely to intend to return to Mexico, probably because the relative skill benefit is greater in the origin country. Immigrants from the Mexican state of Guanajuato are likely to intend to return to Mexico, while those from San Luis Potosi are likely to intend to remain in the US. Immigrants who own a home in Dallas are likely to remain in the US, while those who own land in Mexico are likely to return to Mexico.     

“Health and Wealth” and the World Wide Web: Leading renewalist ministries’ use of Web to communicate social order

Renewalist Christian ministries espouse a “Health and Wealth” theology that is embraced by increasing numbers of believers. This study investigated leading renewalist ministries’ World Wide Web sites to assess their application of visual, operational, and informational enhancements to communicate social order. A content analysis revealed a communication of social order that is consistent with prosperity theology. Much emphasis is placed on the appearance and personality of the ministry leader. Almost no attention is paid to traditional Christian symbolism. Web sites claimed the value of inclusiveness, but offered little visual representation of children, senior adults, the poor, and people of color. Sites communicated the importance of regular financial donations and product purchases, but offered no encouragement for local church attendance. This research provides limited insight into some key unanswered scholarly questions about use of the Web by religious organizations, but more work is needed to investigate these issues in a broader context.     

Indigenous water rights in Australia

Indigenous rights in Australia have undergone enormous transition since the groundbreaking decision in Mabo vs. Queensland in the Australian High Court. This paper explores these changes with a particular emphasis on Aboriginal water rights—an important, and more complicated, corollary to land rights. Mabo opened many possibilities that Aboriginals could claim water rights for everything from irrigation to fishing and spiritual uses. Since 2000 claims of this nature have been made in the federal court system and have challenged the total scope of water law on this the driest inhabited continent on earth. Water law in Australia is primarily a function of state government and these policies have had differential impact on Aboriginal rights which will be explored in this paper.     

Testing a “Push–Pull” theory of work commitment among organizational professionals

Writers have suggested that the current trend toward decreased job security requires employees to commit more strongly to newly “professionalized” occupations to compensate for social and resource support no longer received from their employers. And it has sometimes been implied that such a shift toward increased professional commitment will arise naturally as organizational commitment is whittled away by perceived job insecurity. We propose that job insecurity does not automatically push the employee toward professional commitment, but rather that such commitment stems from the pull of perceived occupational professionalization. We construct a nonrecursive model proposing relationships between job insecurity, perceived professionalization, and both organizational and professional commitment. This model is supported (using structural equation modeling) in a study of 622 employees in 3 occupations: corporate law, human resource management, and computer programming, all of which can be considered professions or semiprofessions. Finally, we suggest how occupations can be fashioned better to support employees when faced with job insecurity and job loss.     

The time frame problem: the law, social construction, and the sciences

Among our official noblest virtues are truth and justice. In the sciences, officially, truth overrides every other virtue. In the law, officially, justice likewise overrides. That is neither to deny that justice should be tempered by mercy, nor that truth should be qualified by wisdom. Any discussion of law and the sciences is potentially high philosophy, the meeting ground of truth and justice. But there are also more practical concerns. How should scientific information and advice be used in the law courts? There is now a rather staid but thoroughly solid assessment of the current state of play in the United States Federal Court systems, Foster and Huber’s(1997) Judging Science: Scientific Knowledge and the Federal Courts. Far more challenging to the philosopher, the scientist and the student of jurisprudence is Sheila Jasanoff’s(1995) Science at the Bar because she enters current debates as a professed social constructionist, with a distinguished career of investigating science and public policy (Jasanoff and Jasanoff).     

Using the institutional analysis and development (IAD) framework to analyze the acequias of El Río de las Gallinas,New Mexico

As population and economic growth increase urban water demands, and traditional irrigation plays a smaller role in direct subsistence in New Mexico, irrigators on small, traditional systems often feel threatened. This paper uses the Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework to analyze the irrigation ditches of the Gallinas River, in San Miguel County, and aims to facilitate understanding of the persistent distrust some Gallinas irrigators feel toward city, state, and federal agencies. This distrust, sometimes due to a perception of differing property rights structures that result in what many irrigators feel is unfair treatment by various agencies, and sometimes to a simple lack of understanding, is often perpetuated by recounted stories of malfeasance. Degree of social capital, knowledge of water law, and technology vary greatly. While there are not many problems with outsiders, some of the larger ditches report very poor social capital.     

Protective legislation: The “third pillar” of the welfare state

Welfare states are built upon three central social policy pillars: (1) income programs, including an assortment of income maintenance and security benefits; (2) social services, comprising a diverse constellation of provisions, which furnish care such as health care and education, and “in kind” benefits; and (3) protective legislation, encompassing a dense web of proactive and preventative laws, rights, and entitlements, such as health and safety legislation, minimum wage laws, child protection acts, rent controls, and laws governing evictions and foreclosures. Despite its centrality to the welfare state and to our well‐being, this third pillar has received considerably less attention in comparative social policy research. The dominant welfare state typologies have focused almost exclusively upon income measures and, more recently, on social services, to construct their welfare state categories or “worlds” of welfare while largely neglecting this crucial third pillar. A greater focus on protective welfare legislation can help sharpen the distinctions among welfare states within and across the welfare worlds, which is particularly valuable in light of the ongoing erosion of the other two pillars over the past few decades.     

侠气与民情：19世纪中叶地方军事化演变中的社会转型

太平天国运动对晚清帝国的冲击不仅体现在财政税收、人口、土地关系等社会结构要素上,更重要的是人心与世风之变以及由此形成的新的社会民情基础。这一世风丕变特别体现在：地方为应对太平军冲击而进行的军事化运动中伴生的失范型暴力,是以“任侠之气”的精神伦理作为军事动员的内在组织原则而导致的后果。“侠气”这一精神伦理以“力”的无限扩张为法则,与传统帝国政治结构中的宗法、乡礼、师道以及凝结在地权上的依附关系形成巨大张力,由此造成军事化组织与国家政治的背离。“力”的无限扩张法则打碎了帝国政治所依赖的身份与等级结构,导致了夷平化的社会形态出现,从而对传统政治治理构成挑战,并最终召唤了用现代革命的方式推进政治和社会变迁的时代的到来。     

‘‘With the greatest respect and fidelity:’ a Cherokee vision of the ‘Trust’ doctrine”

The trust relationship is the conceptual/philosophical framework against which all relations between the federal government and indigenous groups are conducted. Yet despite the centrality of this concept, federal policymakers have no consistent or agreed upon definition of what the trust relationship actually entails (Wilkins, 1997). And, more importantly, indigenous conceptions of trust have rarely been assessed. This article analyzes and advances one tribe's—the Cherokee—perspective on trust. In focusing on how the Cherokee perceive trust, this section emphasizes that from an indigenous viewpoint the trust relationship embodies a complex and sophisticated understanding that both the tribe and the United States have reciprocal responsibilities to maintain positive relations towards one another. The leaders of the Cherokee people—one of the more diverse indigenous groups— understood in the federal government's actions, whether these were expressed in treaties, policy statements, congressional laws, or court decisions, that the federal government was pledged to protect Cherokee property and sovereignty, would act with utmost integrity in its legal and political dealings with the people, and would insure that the United States political and judicial representatives would act in a moral manner regarding the tribe's rights. Notwithstanding the federal government's tremendous variety of treaty and trust violations, the Cherokee conception of trust is regenerative from generation to generation. This breathes new life into a seasoned concept and offers hope for the often difficult political/legal relations between the federal, state, and tribal governments. And here we beg leave to ask of our father that, in future transactions of a public nature between the United States and our nation, the American Government will not require of our nation any thing which, as our protectors and guardians, they will not, after due deliberation, advise us to comply with; and having no doubt of the magnanimity and benignity of the Government, we shall return home satisfied, and report to our nation the result of our mission to this. With the greatest respect and fidelity, we subscribe our names (Going Snake, et al., 1817, p. 147)     

Breaking the Stability Pact: Was it predictable?

We show analytically that the credibility problem which has affected the European Stability Pact originates from the insufficient distinction between two reasons for having binding fiscal constraints. The first reason deals with the governments’ tendency to neglect the effects of their fiscal policy on foreign governments (fiscal free-riding). The second reason follows from the governments’ tendency to raise debt by lowering taxes or increasing expenditures, and then to leave it to their successors (fiscal short-termism). An enforcement mechanism relying on governments’ collusion works if the fiscal constraints are not calibrated for curing fiscal short-termism but only for preventing fiscal free-riding.     

The “Exceptional”United States: First New Nation or Last Welfare State?

The author discusses the American welfare state in the context of Lash and Urry's thesis on ‘disorganized capitalism’. Attention is directed to the claim that the US welfare state has been the laggard of organized capitalism but is becoming the pathbreaker in defining patterns of public welfare provision under an increasingly disorganized capitalism. In this context the US may be “showing the way” to the welfare states of Western Europe. A number of claims about the “exceptional” nature of US development are reviewed and a number of reservations are entered against the “disorganization” thesis as applied to the welfare state. It is suggested that attention should be focussed upon contemporary patterns of welfare state re-organization rather than dis-organization.     

The Roots of “Radical Interactionism”

A plea has been made for replacing the perspective of “symbolic interactionism” with a new interactionist's perspective—“radical interactionism.” Unlike in symbolic interactionism, where Mead's and Blumer's ideas play the most prominent roles, in radical interactionism's, Park's ideas play a more prominent role than either Mead's or Blumer's ideas. On the one hand, according to Mead, the general principle behind the organization of human group life was once dominance, but it is now “sociality.” On the other hand, according to Park, this general principle is now and has always been dominance. Blumer takes a position much closer to Mead's than Park's arguing that the general principle underlying the organization of human group life is sociality. Under certain special conditions, however, it can become dominance. Although like radical interactionism, symbolic interactionism is rooted in pragmatism, unlike in radical interactionism, symbolic interactionism is still plagued with strains of utopian thought, among which the notion of sociality is the most virulent. Sociality may be the principle on which human group life is organized in heaven, but, down here on earth, it remains organized on the basis of domination. Thus, radical interactionism provides a much‐needed antidote to the idealistic overtones still found in symbolic interactionism.     

The politics of water scarcity in the western states

Water is a scarce and highly prized commodity in the arid Western states. Not surprisingly, water policy creation is very much a challenge for a number of reasons. Citizens hold multiple water values such as economic development and the protection of wildlife which are often contradictory. State prior appropriation laws are not easily reconciled with federal reserve rights and the public trust doctrine. There are multiple governmental and nongovernmental actors who work to influence and implement policy in a decentralized political system. If actors lose a policy battle in one decisionmaking arena (such as a legislature), they often try to influence policy at another venue (a court, Congress or an agency). Policymaking involves water issues that are dynamic over time. Furthermore, there are several types of water policy (distributive, allocative, redistributive and cooperative) that vary according to who pays costs and receives benefits, the level of conflict, the openness of decisionmaking to interested parties, and the level of government which dominates. Long ago, Mark Twain was correct when he said “Whiskey’s for drinking, water’s for fighting about.”     

Interstate Competition and Environmental Regulation: A Test of the Race‐to‐the‐Bottom Thesis*

Objective. This study assesses the effect of interstate competition on the stringency with which states enforce environmental regulations. Method. Pooled cross‐sectional time‐series analysis of state surface‐mining regulation is used to determine if the enforcement gap between a state and competitor states affects the stringency of state enforcement. Results. The results suggest that state enforcement is systematically affected by the behavior of regional competitors. States adjust their enforcement in response to competitor states when their enforcement stringency exceeds that of their competitors. When competitors' enforcement is more stringent, however, their behavior does not have a significant effect. Conclusion. This study provides empirical evidence for a race to the bottom in state environmental regulation.