Is Local Office a Springboard for Women to Dáil Éireann?

Previous research has found the single transferable vote electoral system is relatively friendly to women candidates. Despite this, female representation in the Irish Parliament remains substantially lower than in most other democracies. Drawing on pipeline theory and localism, we assess the impact of local officeholding on the success of male and female major party candidates in the 2007 and 2011 Irish general elections. We find previous experience in local office is a key springboard to higher office for men and women, and when women serve in local government, the likelihood of election increases significantly.     

Institutional Fads and the Medicalization of Drug Addiction

The purpose of this article is to historically review biologically based explanations of drug addiction to demonstrate the increased utility of the institutional fads approach in understanding modern medicalization. Our examination reveals that the medicalization of drug addiction has been long in the making, traveling through numerous fads that have attributed drug addiction to various biological matter, including body type or constitution, genetics, psychopathology, and neuroscience or brain imaging. These explanations follow a common trajectory (emerging, surging, and purging) in institutional fad research. Moreover, our analysis indicates that while scientific and technological developments have shaped these approaches’ influence and pathways, so too have political actors and institutional agendas. We begin by discussing how an institutional fads approach enables an improved understanding of the medicalization of drug addiction – a form of deviance – followed by a critique of four main biological explanations: body constitution, genetics, psychopathology, and brain chemistry/imaging. Our review pinpoints the specific narratives advanced and the academic and political interests at work. In doing so, it exposes the limitations of medicalizing one of the nation’s oldest social problems.     

The smallest user campaign to decrease energy consumption in two Mid-South neighborhoods: A field experiment

This report describes a partnership and campaign to build awareness and support for energy conservation in a Mid-South community. The partners included a state university, the local power company, and two neighborhoods in the local community. This partnership led to a field experiment that built community esprit along with increased knowledge of and attitudes toward energy conservation. It did not result in lower electricity and gas consumption. This attempt to influence citizen behavior featured extremely powerful pre-and post-test measures of unit electric and gas consumption.     

The Importance of Multiple Performance Criteria for Understanding Trust in Risk Managers

Effective risk management requires balancing several, sometimes competing, goals, such as protecting public health and ensuring cost control. Research examining public trust of risk managers has largely focused on trust that is unspecified or for a single goal. Yet it can be reasonable to have a high level of trust in one aspect of a target's performance but not another. Two studies involving redevelopment of contaminated land (Study 1) and drinking water standards (Study 2) present preliminary evidence on the value of distinguishing between performance criteria for understanding of trust. Study 1 assessed perceptions of several trust targets (councilors, developers, scientists, residents) on their competence (capacity to achieve goals) and willingness to take action under uncertainty for four criteria. Study 2 assessed competence, willingness, and trust for five criteria regarding a single government agency. In both studies overall trust in each target was significantly better explained by considering perceptions of their performance on multiple criteria than on the single criterion of public health. In Study 1, the influence of criteria also varied plausibly across trust targets (e.g., willingness to act under uncertainty increased trust in developers on cost control and councilors on local economic improvement, but decreased it for both targets on environmental protection). Study 2 showed that explained variance in trust increased with both dimension‐ and trust‐based measures of criteria. Further conceptual and methodological development of the notion of multiple trust criteria could benefit our understanding of stated trust judgments.     

Health Status of Temporary Migrants in Urban Areas in Vietnam1

The rapid economic growth after economic reform, known in Viet Nam as “Doi Moi”, and the growing scope of urban migration raise specific questions for social policy, including migration and health policies. This paper compares issues of health status and its determinants as they affect temporary urban migrants versus permanent urban migrants and non‐migrants. The analyses utilize multivariate logistic regression and data from the 1997 Vietnam Migration and Health Survey. The results show that temporary migrants staying in guest houses are most vulnerable to health problems. Though most of them are initially healthier, their reported health deteriorates faster than other groups of urban residents. The findings also present important implications for the current migration and health policies in Vietnam: 1) A special attention should be given to temporary migrants in guest houses; 2) Different priorities in health policy should be applied to different groups of migrants and non‐migrants; 3) The current population management policy by registration system needs to be reviewed; 4) Providing clean water is one of the most important ways to improve health of temporary migrants; 5) Targeting educational investments and reducing unemployment would likely to improve overall health; 6) A higher priority on health policies targeting women would likely pay dividends, and; 7) Improving management and collaboration between government offices and interested partners is important to improving health status and reducing inequity.     

CLINICAL ISSUES WITH AFRICAN-AMERICAN AND WHITE WOMEN WISHING TO MARRY IN MID-LIFE

This article reviews the literature on the conflicts and presenting problems of mid-life single women wishing to marry and addresses the clinical issues in their treatment. Methodology and findings of a research project conducted by the authors with 49 African-American and White women who married after the age of 35 are reported. There is a review of the sociological and historical context for African-American women, which accounts for the different findings for the two subgroups studied. The paper concludes with recommendations to the clinician working with this population.