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.”     

Needs Assessment, Street-level Bureaucracy and the New Community Care

In the wake of the Seebohm reforms of the personal social services, a number of studies were carried out in the 1970s to explore the role of frontline professionals in identifying and meeting social need. A common finding was that social workers behaved like "street-level bureaucrats", using their discretionary authority defensively to manage an otherwise overwhelming workload. In the 1990s, top-down assessment and care management systems were put in place as part of community care reforms. Their aim was to reduce the scope of professional discretion so as to standardize responses to need and control demand according to resources available. In this paper, the authors consider the success of new systems in controlling "bottom-up" decision-making by drawing on a recent empirical study of needs assessment practice in three types of social work team. They point out that the assessment practice of those teams facing the highest bombardment rates was most obviously criteria-driven, reinforced by the use of new technology. Rather than creating informal stereotypes to manage demand, social workers could mobilize legitimate forms of rationing to protect their time and other resources. Yet the sense of professional identity, the level of frontline autonomy, and the ways in which this was exercised, varied across the different types of team. The authors conclude, therefore, that the scope of discretionary space available to frontline staff in social services departments, and the practices to which it gives rise, are empirical questions only adequately addressed by methodologies able to connect with "bottom-up" decision-making.     

Responsible Conduct of Research Measure: initial development and pilot study

Although much discussion has been focused on research misconduct (RM) and questionable research practices, to date no self-report measures exist to examine this phenomenon. To help fill this void, the authors developed the Responsible Conduct of Research Measure (RCRM) through multiple pilot study waves involving researchers in the social and behavioral sciences. Preliminary results reveal adequate validity and reliability. The authors discuss limitations of the study as well as some possible directions for future research on this topic.     

Outsider and Insider Expertise: The Response of Residents of Deprived Neighbourhoods to an Academic Definition of Social Exclusion

The aim of this paper is to compare academic interpretations of the term social exclusion with the understanding of people with direct experience of the phenomenon. A preselected group of residents of deprived neighbourhoods were asked about various aspects of the concept and their responses compared with the definitions of social exclusion used by Burchardt, Le Grand and Piachaud in this Journal in 1999. In general, the residents' understanding of the term corresponded well with the more academic definitions; however, in one or two key areas there were significant differences, suggesting that it might be useful for more academic concepts to be tested against the views of those with experience of the phenomenon which the concept is trying to capture.     

Book reviews

Qualitative Sociology -     

Double vision: reply to Freese and Powell

Freese and Powell make a number of critiques of the theoretical assumptions, statistical methods, and use of variables in our paper, which raises questions about the typical use of the equal environments assumption in twin research. We do not find that any of their critiques modify our conclusion that the equal environments assumption cannot be taken for granted but must be subjected to empirical testing. We hope that our paper and the resulting exchange will lead sociologists to become more actively involved in the debate regarding the extent of genetic and environmental influences on social behaviors.