Exploring motivation crowding around farmer incentives for riparian management in Nova Scotia

Incentive programs to encourage landowners to protect habitat should be carefully designed to avoid motivation crowding: basically, replacing intrinsic reasons such as a land ethic with extrinsic ones like payments. Little research on motivation crowding tests real programs, and no such work has been done in Canada. We surveyed farmers in Nova Scotia in 2017 to explore whether participation in a new incentive program called Wood Turtle Strides, or knowledge about a similar incentive program potentially available in the future, would alter reported motivations to use riparian setbacks and buffers. Motivations to use setbacks or buffers were heavily intrinsic across all four survey cohorts: wildlife stewardship and sacrifice motivated actions more than social pressures. We were not able to statistically test for motivational crowding due to low program uptake and thus post-program survey responses, but there was no evidence of second-hand crowding: farmers being motivated by hearing about a program in an adjacent jurisdiction. Findings point to the significance of wildlife stewardship for many farmers, and persistent resistance to conservation among others, as well as a risk of low additionality. More post-program research is necessary to fully understand the program's net impact on motivations and conservation.     

Negotiating In/visibility: The Political Economy of Lesbian Activism and Rights Advocacy

Efforts to address HIV/AIDS have brought new opportunities and resources to LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) activism in many parts of the developing world. However, increased attention in terms of both political opportunities and economic resources is uneven across the diverse population of LGBT peoples and activists. Lesbian activists have reaped far fewer benefits than their gay men counterparts. Building on existing approaches to movement visibility and invisibility, we posit a ‘political economy of in/visibility’ to analyse lesbian activism in China and Myanmar, where activists face particularly restrictive political and economic conditions. Rather than focus on visibility as a movement pre‐condition, objective or strategy, we examine the sources of in/visibility and their interactions with activists’ agency; in/visibility emerges from political and economic conditions, but is continuously reshaped by activists who negotiate them. We demonstrate that, despite challenges, lesbian activists respond in ways that help advance LGBT rights advocacy broadly, sometimes even with tactics that their more visible gay counterparts avoid. These interactions subsequently influence the conditions that shape in/visibility. Investigating the political economy of in/visibility, therefore, has significant implications for understanding not only lesbian activism, but also LGBT advocacy and collective mobilization, especially under politically and economically restrictive conditions.     

Capacity Design of Coupled RC Walls

Capacity design aims to ensure controlled ductile response of structures when subjected to earthquakes. This article investigates the performance of existing capacity design equations for reinforced concrete coupled walls and then proposes a new simplified capacity design method based on state-of-the-art knowledge. The new method is verified through a case study in which a set of 15 coupled walls are subject to nonlinear time-history analyses. The article includes examination of the maximum shear force in individual walls in relation to the total maximum shear force in the coupled wall system, and subsequently provides recommendations for design.     

Lobbying after 9/11: Policy Regime Emergence and Interest Group Mobilization

Does the emergence of a new boundary‐spanning policy regime shift the focus of well‐established organized interests, or does it mobilize new ones? In this article, I show that interest groups with a presence in Washington before 9/11 rapidly—but temporarily—shift their attention to the homeland security issues. Established groups' entrenchment in antecedent subsystems appears to buffer against widespread policy disruption and interest upheaval. However, a new set of previously latent groups opportunistically mobilizes after the regime is institutionalized. Newly mobilized groups replace those that retreat back to the regime's antecedent subsystems. Though the policy regime fails to resolve the jurisdictional turf conflicts that triggered its creation, the institutionalization of homeland security generates its own original, distinct government demand for lobbying. Interests that previously had no business in Washington before 9/11 took advantage of the new opportunities the regime offered without supplanting interests established long before the Department of Homeland Security and its congressional committees existed.