Re-Thinking Legislative Productivity: Commemorative Legislation and Policy Gridlock

This research charts the levels of commemorative legislation passed in Congress in the postwar era and assesses the conditions generating such legislation. Utilizing a statistical model of stalemate developed by Sarah Binder, it demonstrates that conditions hypothesized to produce gridlock on salient legislation also generate (even more statistically robust) activism on commemoratives. ¹ Our joint appreciation to Paulina Burdge-Small and Michael Williams for their help in collecting the data analyzed in this paper. In addition, Dodd expresses appreciation to the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars for support that aided his contributions to the paper.      

Clintoncare and Obamacare: Lessons for Gridlock Theory

Abstract

The passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in 2010 marked a significant achievement for congressional health reform. Despite increased partisanship, decreased productivity, and increased polarization of Congress, major health reform legislation was passed. We compare the ACA’s passage to the failure of Clinton-era health reform, emphasizing gridlock theory, which some scholars interpreted to predict that major health reform would not be possible in 2010. We identify several ways in which the different outcomes for the ACA and the Clinton reform effort can be explained by gridlock theory: pivotal actors, the gridlock window, and the status quo. However, factors not included in gridlock theory, such as the role of parties and institutional change, appear to also have contributed to the success of the ACA relative to the failure of Clinton health reform. Lessons learned from health reform suggest an opportunity to expand gridlock theory to account for these additional factors.     

State Expenditures and Policy Outcomes in Environmental Program Management

Comparative state environmental research seeks to explain the factors contributing to intergovernmental environmental management. In pursuing the answer to this query, researchers have relied on either fiscal (expenditures) or nonfiscal (ranking) measures of state environmental effort. Respecting the debate surrounding state policy outputs and fiscal versus nonfiscal measures, we evaluate comprehensive state environmental management comparing spending and ranking measures in our analysis. Though pronounced differences do exist between the two models, we find pollution and state size to be the primary factors affecting a state's environmental effort no matter which measure is used.     

An Evolutionary View of Policy Network Management

This paper examines successful policy network (henceforth PN) practices in the Basque Country over an 18-year period, in relation to Cluster Associations, Quality Promotion and Local Agenda 21 Promotion. Basing our work on the Basque experience and on previous multi-disciplinary knowledge regarding learning processes, networking management and marketing, we contribute new insights that help to understand how PN management evolves. The need to analyse PN from an evolutionary perspective has been pinpointed by the various traditions of network research as one of the main gaps in the study of networking. Our research shows that expertise in PN management is generated through a long, performance-oriented dilemma-solving process that takes place in time and space. The first experiences provide initial knowledge and absorptive capacity, both of which improve through new and diverse experiences of increasing complexity. Step by step, a quantity of tacit and codified knowledge is created and shared, mainly through face-to-face contact, within the territory. Finally, the knowledge achieved is substantially similar to the normative knowledge that, though sparse, can be found in various networking literatures and needs to be brought together. But we also suggest that more emphasis on PN marketing is needed.     

Constructing a Gender Policy for Joint Forest Management in India

Policy makers and advocates of joint forest management (JFM) agree that women should be full participants and that their involvement is especially important because of the nature of women's work. This article examines how JFM policy has addressed gender in India. It argues that policy has been informed by instrumentalist positions in the debate over women's relationship to the environment. Consequently, gender planning in JFM has focused on two issues: formal representation for women in local institutions, and identifying women's ‘special’ values, knowledge and uses of forest resources. The scant evidence suggests that the impact of JFM on women has generally been negative. Finally, the article suggests that gender policy in JFM needs to be based on a more sophisticated understanding of gender relations and a wider examination of the gendered context of JFM processes.     

1930年代的北平城市污物管理改革

1930年代,北平城市污物管理混乱,问题丛生。粪夫被冠以“粪阀”之名,其勒索霸道行径给市民的日常生活带来诸多不便,双方关系恶劣。此外,简陋的粪具导致污秽淋漓、臭气四溢,严重影响到市容。为解决上述问题,卫生部门最初采取了若干措施整顿污物处理,但效果不彰。为彻底解决问题,市政当局又拟将之收归市办,由于事关行业的经济利益及相当数量粪夫的生计,受到粪商及粪工的联合抵制,计划未能实施。此后,政府改变策略,实行官商合办,历时2年9个月勉力完成粪道登记和粪具更换,改革初见成效。     

英国考古的政策、管理和操作

(编者按 :中山大学人类学系为庆祝该系于 2 0 0 1年复办 2 0周年 ,举行了系列学术讲座。 2 0 0 1年 6月 6日 ,香港古物古迹办事处考古学家李浪林先生应邀作了题为“英国考古的政策、管理和操作”的演讲 ,演讲之后回答了该系师生的提问。李浪林先生早年就读于伦敦大学考古学院 ,获硕士学位 ,最近又受香港政府的派遣 ,到英国伦敦博物馆、肯特郡政府和英格兰文物局等机构进修和考察 ,系统地了解了英国最新的考古政策、管理 ,田野考古发掘的方法和技术。今将李浪林先生演讲和回答问题的内容整理出来 ,以飨读者 ,相信该文对国内的考古政策、发掘管理和研究 ,都会有一定的借鉴意义。因该文未经本人审阅 ,疏漏由整理者负责。)     

Sustainable Water Management Policy: Lessons from Amsterdam

This article focuses on the identification of critical water policy instruments, and opportunities and barriers to transforming urban water use in a sustainable and efficient direction in Amsterdam (The Netherlands). The main lessons that can be inferred from past and current water policies and management practices in Amsterdam show (1) the relevance of common action for increasing the quality of or general control over water resources when shared interests of different actors using the same water resource are present; (2) that the effectiveness and applicability of water policy instruments are strongly conditional upon receiving the support of both water users and suppliers; (3) that the governance structure of water provision plays a crucial role in increasing the efficiency of water use.     

Controversial Cleanup: Superfund and the Implementation of U.S. Hazardous Waste Policy

While there is widespread public and political support for cleaning up the nation's hazardous waste sites, Superfund has been fraught with dissension and controversy since its inception. Some criticisms of the program focus on deriding an all-too-expensive program run amuck with litigation and federal heavy-handedness. Other critics complain of an inefficient and ineffective program that has made painfully slow and inconsistent progress. Detractors do not disagree with the fundamental goal of the program—cleaning up hazardous waste sites. Rather, they focus on the fairness of Superfund's liability provisions and the Environmental Protection Agency's record of cleanup competency. This paper discusses these major issues at the core of the controversy over Superfund. The policy implications of Superfund program reform efforts and the ramifications for future hazardous waste policy are considered.     

Policy Design and the Acceptability of Environmental Risks: Nuclear Waste Disposal in Canada and the United States

This article examines the controversial process of developing high-level nuclear waste disposal policy in Canada, with some comparison to experience in the United States. It argues that a policy design perspective can assist in understanding the difficult social and political issues associated with waste disposal and the environmental and health risks that it poses. I examine several critical questions related to such an endeavor and link them to long-term goals of building a sustainable society. Success in formulating and implementing a nuclear waste policy in Canada will depend on the nation's capacity to create requisite processes of public participation. Particularly important are those actions that can help the public understand and assess environmental risks, including related ethical and social issues, and build public trust and confidence in the siting processes and the implementing agencies.     

Policy Instrument Choices for Growth Management and Land Use Regulation

What factors account for local government land use practices and their choices among specific growth management policy instruments? We apply the political market framework to examine how land use policy choices in Florida are shaped by institutional features of county governments and the demands of organizations and interests in a community. Local policy decisions reflect a balance of the conflicting interests and responses to economic and political pressures. The results demonstrate that county government structure and election rules play critical roles in the adoption of urban service boundaries, incentive zoning, and transfer of development rights programs. We report evidence consistent with the argument that these “second‐generation” growth management policies are motivated by exclusionary goals.     

Disaster Management in the United States: Examining Key Political and Policy Challenges

The failures associated with the Hurricane Katrina response call attention to the challenges of, and the need to better understand disaster management practices in the United States. This article reviews several recent contributions to the field of disaster research and considers four key issues: the concept of disaster vulnerability, how individuals respond to hazard risks, challenges associated with effective hazard mitigation, and the idea of policy learning in the area of disasters. Beyond a review of these aspects of disaster management, future directions in disaster research is discussed.     

Measuring Efficiency in Local Government: An Analysis of New South Wales Municipalities' Domestic Waste Management Function

Data envelopment analysis is used to measure the technical and scale efficiency of the domestic waste management function in 103 New South Wales local governments. After allowance is made for nondiscretionary environmental factors that may affect the provision of these local public services, such as congestion and the inability to operate machinery in densely populated urban areas, comparison of efficiency across geographic/demographic criteria is made. The results suggest that, on average, waste management inputs could be reduced to just over 65% of the current level based upon observable best-practice, while productivity losses due to scale effects account for slightly over 15% of total inputs. The results also indicate that inefficiency in urban developed councils is largely the result of congestion and other collection difficulties encountered in densely populated areas, while inefficiency in regional and rural councils stems from an inability to attain an optimal scale of operations.     

Fish Stories: Science, Advocacy, and Policy Change in New England Fishery Management

Once the poster child for government-sponsored overfishing, New England by 2005 had become a fishery conservation success story. This article develops and deploys a problem-definition framework to explain the dramatic shift from a permissive to a protective fishery management regime in New England. I argue that neither new and improved scientific information nor pressure from powerful commercial interests caused government officials to modify their approach to fishery management. Instead, environmentalists used lawsuits to threaten fishery managers' autonomy and thereby forced them to replace fishers' risk-tolerant definition of the problem with environmentalists' more precautionary one as the basis for management. Environmentalists had legal leverage because they were able to demonstrate convincingly a substantial discrepancy between what the agency's governing statute required and what managers actually did. Two factors were critical to environmentalists' success: a compelling and credible scientific story about the relationship between fishing and the health of fish stocks, and an explicit conservation requirement in the language governing fishery management.