Creating Choice: A Community Responds to the Need for Abortion and Birth Control, 1961-1973

Creating Choice is an important collection of edited interviewswith individuals involved in the movement to secure women'saccess to birth control and abortion in western Massachusettsin the decades surrounding the Supreme Court's pivotal rulings,Griswold v. Connecticut, the 1965 decision that legalized contraceptiveuse by married couples, and Roe v. Wade, the 1973 abortion rightscase. The collection broadens the historical treatment of thismovement, introducing activists from grassroots women's organizationsand accentuating the contributions of professionals—clergy,medical practitioners, and health educators—who establishednetworks and services that made free choice possible for somewomen even before state law extended     

Welfare Theory,Public Goods,and Public Facility Location

The paper discusses a number of issues that are important to the development of a useful normative “welfare theory” of the public space economy. Attention is specifically focused on theoretical welfare economic models of public goods provided at facilities to which consumers must travel for consumption. The recent analysis of Bigman and ReVelle [2] is subjected to critical scrutiny and found wanting. An alternative, more complex but still very simple, analysis is provided.     

Coercion,vengeance, feud and accommodation: homicide in medieval Iceland

Quantitative methods were employed to situate medieval Icelandic homicide in comparative context. Estimates of homicide rates were derived from samtíðarsögur, and found comparable with European rural medieval homicide estimates: late twelfth‐century Iceland was probably not as violent as a qualitative reading of the sagas might suggest. There were significant differences in patterns of vengeance between íslendingasögur and samtíðarsögur. In íslendingasögur, farmers committing homicide faced flight, outlawry or death; chieftains who initiated homicide might escape justice, although most became embroiled in feud. In samtíðarsögur, lethal vengeance following ordinary homicide was less common, and not a source of feud. These results generate a critique of previous notions of reciprocity in Icelandic vengeance, and support more recent interpretations of early medieval Icelandic society as a highly unequal, divided society. Both sources suggest that, although vengeance may have been legitimated in the language of ‘repayment’, vengeance is best understood within a cross‐cultural context as competitive behaviour designed to achieve superiority rather than parity.     

关于侨乡优势的思考——广东潮州大吴村旅外乡亲捐资公益事业调研报告

广东省潮州市是著名侨乡.长期以来,旅外乡亲对家乡公益事业进行了无私的捐资.这些捐资促进了家乡的发展,也成为潮州的一大侨乡优势.本文以大吴村为个案,分析旅外乡亲捐资的情况,总结旅外乡亲捐资成功的大致模式,同时对这一侨乡优势所出现的问题进行初步探讨.     

Welfare and the Discriminating Public: Evaluating Entitlement Attitudes in Post-Communist Europe

Although post-communist Europe retains elements of its socialist past, public opinion shows discernment in its welfare preferences. This analysis of post-communist social welfare attitudes finds that post-communist societies are selective in their support for social policies. First, welfare preferences center on two underlying realms: government responsibility and government spending; and second, welfare opinions and beliefs are not uniform across several social policies. Although many of the conclusions highlight the selective nature of these preferences, the example of the support for unemployment benefits points to how the transition from communist-era welfare states to capitalist-led assistance continues to influence public opinion in these countries.     

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.     

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.     

Coercion,Peace, and the Issue of Jihad

This essay analyzes different perspectives on the issue of jihad; based on this analysis, it sheds light on the contemporary application and understanding of the word in the Muslim world.     

The Role of Public Input in State Welfare Policymaking

This article reports findings from a survey of 257 state officials involved in public assistance policymaking in the American states during the early to mid-1990s. Respondents were asked to comment on the impetus for welfare reform, on methods employed to gauge public preferences, and on sources of policy ideas. These officials, including state legislators, social service agency directors, and senior advisors to governors, revealed a variety of forums for gathering public input. Although few respondents affiliated with elective office reported significant direct electoral challenges on welfare issues, they often cited constituent contacts regarding welfare reform.     

Understanding Public Support for Time Limits and Other Welfare Reforms

This article presents results of a reanalysis of data from a survey of New York residents regarding that state's welfare system and proposed welfare reform. The data danger from most previous studies of public opinion about welfare because questions were asked about a range of specific welfare reform options, such as various time limits, eligibility restrictions, and work requirements, that are key features of the new federal welfare law. Specifically, the analysis explores the extent to which public support for these reforms can be explained by self interest factors, political qualification, and beliefs regarding the poor, social rights, and the welfare system. White these variables have been found to be important in prior research, they provide a somewhat less consistent explanation of support for specific features of the new welfare system in the United States.     

The Theory of Welfare Considerations in Public Facility Location Problems

The paper provides a general theoretical framework for analyzing the locational choice of public facilities from the point of view of social welfare. Spatial interactions of individuals and economies to scale in the public sector are taken into account, and that, in turn, adds another dimension to the set of alternatives facing the decision maker. His choice has to be made by considering size as well as space alternatives for the provision of the public service. The paper presents a theoretical structure for ranking those alternatives.