On the Case: Method in Public and Community Archaeology

This paper seeks to initiate a conversation about methodology in public and community archaeology through an examination of the use of case studies. Case studies enable the exploration of situations that are, by their nature, not easily reduced to statistical data. The challenge is that unless they are carefully structured, case studies may contribute little beyond anecdote to the field. Other disciplines that rely on case studies have addressed the methodological challenges aggressively. This paper explores these issues in four sections: First, the rationale for methodology in public archaeology is examined. Second, actual practice—through analysis of papers published in Public Archaeology and, to a limited degree, in the ‘grey literature’—is reviewed. Third, alternative case study methods, gleaned from diverse disciplines, are presented. Finally, the potential for method-based case study research is illustrated through an example of the use of one such method.     

Public Opinion and Policymaking in the States: The Case of Post-Roe Abortion Policy

Whether public opinion should be expected to play a role in the shaping of abortion legislation in the states is a debatable question. Representation is a difficult task, especially if legislators receive mixed cues from the public, activists, and the political parties. In this study, we find that grass-roots activism and public opinion tend to match, and both are reflected in state abortion policy. In addition, more Pro-Life policies are found in states with a tradition of conservative policies in other areas, Republican majorities in the state legislature, more Catholic residents, and fewer women legislators. These patterns hold true for a composite index of abortion policies and for the specific policy area of government funding of abortions. Slightly different patterns occur for parental consent laws, though these statutes also tend to reflect general preferences on abortion and interest group activity in a state.     

Relating Disability Policy to Broader Public Policy: Understanding the Concept of "Handicap"

While it is recognized that disability policy is a subset of broader public policy, the relationship between disability issues and other public policy issues is not well understood. Insight into this relationship can be gained through a greater understanding of the concept of "handicap," as distinguished from the concepts of "impairment" and "disability." In everyday conversation, these terms typically are used interchangeably and erroneously. However, when applied correctly, their important differences help us to focus on the appropriate level for analyzing disability and other policy issues. When ignored for reasons concerning the "political unacceptability" of handicap as a term or concept, we risk focusing on the wrong level and possibly holding individuals with disabilities responsible for circumstances beyond their control.     

Methodological Foundations for Public Policy Analysis: A Review Essay

Books reviewed in this articles:
Garry D. Brewer and Peter deLeon, The Foundations of Policy Analysis
Stuart S. Nagel, Policy Evaluation: Making Optimum Decisions
David C. Paris and James F. Reynolds, The Logic of Policy Inquiry
William N. Dunn, Public Policy Analysis: An Introduction
Melvin J. Dubnick and Barbara A. Bardes, Thinking About Public Policy: A Problem-Solving Approach     

Employers as Mediating Institutions for Public Policy: The Case of Commute Options Programs

Scholars have recently noted the role that employers can play as “mediating institutions” for public policy. Mediating institutions connect the private lives of individuals with public policy concerns by communicating societal norms to members and providing social contexts that encourage a commitment to these norms. Despite the potential importance of employers as mediating institutions for public policy, little scholarly attention has been devoted to employer mediation behavior. Accordingly, this study examines two research questions. What factors influence an employer's willingness to mediate policy problems? And how effective are employers as mediating institutions? The mediation behaviors of interest relate to employer efforts to mitigate traffic congestion and air quality problems by enabling employee “commute options,” which are alternatives to single‐occupancy vehicle commuting to work. Drawing on theories of organization behavior, the study hypothesizes that self‐interest, organizational control, and association membership will affect willingness to provide commute options. The study also hypothesizes that employers providing commute options will have lower percentages of employees that drive to work alone. Both sets of hypotheses are supported by statistical analyses of data from a cross‐sectional mail survey of metropolitan Atlanta organizations.     

浅析公众舆论于尼克松对华政策的影响

《美国大百科全书》对公众舆论（ｐｕｂｌｉｃｏｐｉｎｉｏｎ,或译为民意）的定义是“指一群人对一个共同关切的议题所表达的意见”,“它通常代表一种价值判断或偏好,或是对一个未来事件的结果所做的判断”①。自美国两党政治制度确立以来,公众舆论一直是美国政治生活中的一个重要因素,它对美国政治的影响已是众所周知,不庸置疑的了。但是,公众舆论与美国外交政策的关系,则还是一个值得研究的问题。这个问题在美国的学术界也存在不同观点,有人认为“美国的公众舆论先于对外政策”,“公众舆论在美国外交决策中占有一席之地,并对政…     

Moral Panics and Punctuated Equilibrium in Public Policy: An Analysis of the Criminal Justice Policy Agenda in Britain

How and when issues are elevated onto the political agenda is a perennial question in the study of public policy. This article considers how moral panics contribute to punctuated equilibrium in public policy by drawing together broader societal anxieties or fears and thereby precipitating or accelerating changes in the dominant set of issue frames. In so doing they create opportunities for policy entrepreneurs to disrupt the existing policy consensus. In a test of this theory, we assess the factors behind the rise of crime on the policy agenda in Britain between 1960 and 2010. We adopt an integrative mixed-methods approach, drawing upon a combination of qualitative and quantitative data. This enables us to analyze the rise of crime as a policy problem, the breakdown of the political-institutional consensus on crime, the moral panic that followed the murder of the toddler James Bulger in 1993, the emergence of new issue frames around crime and social/moral decay more broadly, and how—in combination—these contributed to an escalation of political rhetoric and action on crime, led by policy entrepreneurs in the Labour and Conservative parties.     

Voluntary Approaches to Environmental Problems: Exploring the Rise of Nontraditional Public Policy

Government reliance on voluntary programs represents a significant shift in public policy: moving from command and control regulations to market based mechanisms. This article explores the determinants of Voluntary Remediation Programs (VRPs) in the American States. During the 1980s and 1990s, 44 states adopted VRPs to facilitate remediation of existing hazardous waste sites. Relying on diffusion of innovation theory, I develop a model of state policy adoption that explores the influence of internal state political and economic factors, as well as testing the influence of regional and top‐down diffusion forces. I utilize a discrete‐time event history approach to test this model. The results indicate that state policymaking is responsive to interest group pressure and the pace of cleanup at hazardous waste sites. Additionally, state policymaking is consistently influenced by the actions of surrounding state governments; the probability of adopting a voluntary program increases if surrounding states have already developed these policies.     

Conflict, Uncertainty, and the Role of Planning and Analysis in Public Policy Innovation

Innovation by "groping along," in which appointed public officials experiment during program implementation after little, if any, initial planning and analysis, has been promoted as a more accurate model of policy innovation than the rational comprehensive model of policy change. Analysis of two cases of environmental regulatory policy innovation suggests that administrative agencies may be more likely to follow the conventional model of the policy cycle when high levels of conflict are likely to accompany policy initiatives. The cases also suggest, however, that public officials will experiment during the innovation process when they are uncertain about the nature of the problem and the probable impacts of alternative solutions.     

Paying Attention to Politics: Public Responsiveness and Welfare Policy Change

In order for the democratic process to work properly, it is vital that the public pays attention to politics and signals its opinions and preferences back to its representatives; if this is not the case, representatives have less incentive to represent. This article deals with the question of whether and how the public responds to welfare policy change. The thermostatic model departs from the assumption that the public responds to policy change with negative feedback, in relation to its preferred level of policy. The empirical analysis tests this model on public responses following the implementation of a consumer's choice model in Swedish primary health care. Did the reform trigger a thermostatic response from the public, and how should this be interpreted? A contribution in relation to previous research is the inclusion of ideological orientation and proximity, variables which, I argue, condition the nature and direction of public responsiveness. The study was designed as a natural experiment in which preferences of privatization of health care were measured before and after the health care reform of 2009/2010. The results provide partial support for the thermostatic model: preferences for further privatization decrease after the reform, but primarily within one subgroup. Additionally, public responses are demonstrated to vary according to ideological orientation, where the right‐oriented react thermostatically and the left‐oriented do not. The article contributes to a further understanding of the relation between policymaking and public opinion and to the expansion of thermostatic theory.     

公众参与和执政党政策的合法性

执政党依靠的是制定和实施公共政策来实现对社会的治理,执政党的政策能否得到广泛的认同和支持,直接影响到执政党自身的合法性。因此,执政党必然通过各种渠道和方式强化其与民众的联系。改革开放以来,中国共产党通过一系列制度和机制的创新,特别是倡导和鼓励公众参与,使执政党政策的合法性途径更为多元,这不仅实质性地提高了执政党的执政能力,有效地降低了执政成本,也为建构社会主义和谐社会提供了重要的制度平台。     

Tracking the Coverage of Public Policy in Mass Media

The average citizen often does not experience government policy directly, but learns about it from the mass media. The nature of media coverage of public policy is thus of real importance, for both public opinion and policy itself. It nevertheless is the case that scholars of public policy and political communication have invested rather little time in developing methods to track public policy coverage in media content. The lack of attention is all the more striking in an era in which media coverage is readily available in digital form. This paper offers a proposal for tracking coverage of the actual direction of policy change in mass media. It begins with some methodological considerations, and then draws on an expository case—defense spending in the United States—to assess the effectiveness of our automated content‐analytic methods. Results speak to the quantity and quality in media coverage of policy issues, and the potential role of mass media—to both inform and mislead—in modern representative democracy.