The Abbott government and the Islamic State: a securitised and elitist foreign policy discourse

This article analyses the foreign policy discourse that surrounded the Abbott government’s 2014 decision to fight the Islamic State (IS). An analysis of parliamentary Hansard reveals that the debate featured three prominent axes: the legacy of the 2003 Iraq War; the strategies and objectives of the 2014 mission; and Australia’s domestic terror threat level. Throughout, the Abbott government not only marginalised dissenting views, but also justified its renewed engagement in the Middle East via a highly securitised and elitist foreign policy discourse. This finding has consequences beyond the battle against the IS. It reveals a deep-seated tension between the ideals of democratic pluralism and the reality that securitised and elitist foreign policy discourses protect governments from serious scrutiny.     

Out of the outhouse: The impact of place‐based policies on dwelling characteristics in Appalachia

The Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) administers and partially funds investment projects designed to improve economic conditions in the Appalachian region, an area of persistent poverty and reduced economic opportunity in the eastern United States in and around the Appalachian mountains. Previous research on the effectiveness of ARC programs is mixed. We analyze the impact of ARC investment projects related to expanding sewerage and waste water treatment on dwelling characteristics. Results from a difference‐in‐differences model using a quasi‐experimental approach show that ARC investment projects improved access to running water, and increased sewer hookups and indoor bathrooms in dwellings.     

Indexing Immigration and Integration Policy: Lessons from Europe

Immigrant‐related policy indexes have become popular in both U.S. and European contexts, yet these projects boast distinct and divergent trajectories. European indices are characterized by rigorous conceptualization, specificity in elements of policy design (e.g., settings like fees or appeal process), and a variety of measurement strategies. By contrast, U.S. state‐level policy indices exhibit a lack of differentiation between immigration and integration policy and excessive generality in measurement and representation of policy instruments and settings, exacerbated in presenting a policy index as an aggregate count. This paper argues U.S. policy indexing can benefit from the European indexing experience. Following an overview of the state of each field, assessing concept differentiation, specification, and measurement in each, the paper illustrates how even the well‐conceived and specified European integration policy indices run into problems at the analysis stage. It presents a replication‐replacement study to illustrate divergent performance of highly correlated and conceptually agreeing indices, as well as methodological issues inherent to indices of low‐N, including using a policy index as a dependent variable and index selection absent a priori theorization. It concludes with suggestions for improving American immigration policy indices, as well as general observations on working with statistical power‐challenged indices and data limitations.     

Sustained Organizational Influence: American Legislative Exchange Council and the Diffusion of Anti‐Sanctuary Policy

Building upon existing literature, we offer a particular model of network policy diffusion—which we call sustained organizational influence. Sustained organizational influence necessitates an institutional focus across a broad range of issues and across a long period of time. Sustaining organizations are well‐financed, and exert their influence on legislators through benefits, shared ideological interests, and time‐saving opportunities. Sustaining organizations' centralized nature makes legislators' jobs easier by providing legislators with ready‐made model legislation. We argue that sustaining organizations uniquely contribute to policy diffusion in the U.S. states. We evaluate this model with a case study of state‐level immigration sanctuary policy making and the role that the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) played in disseminating model legislation. Through quantitative text analysis and several negative binomial state‐level regression models, we demonstrate that ALEC has exerted an overwhelming influence on the introduction of anti‐sanctuary legislative proposals in the U.S. states over the past 7 years consistent with our particular model of network policy diffusion. Implications are discussed.     

Sustainability Policy Research: A Review and Synthesis

This paper reviews theoretical and empirical approaches drawn from influential journal articles and books on sustainability policy published over the last 10 years (2007 through 2017). Due to the widespread application of sustainability as a concept and space limitations, the paper more narrowly focuses on sustainability research in three critical policy areas: climate change, urban development, and agroecology and food systems. Drawing from information provided primarily by citation indexes, the study identifies and analyzes the research literature related to sustainability in these three fields. Future theoretical and empirical research approaches that can better integrate and connect the current diffuse and incongruent literature on sustainability are discussed in the paper. The findings of the literature review generate a number of possible future research directions that are discussed in the study.     

Policy Feedback and the Politics of the Affordable Care Act

There is a large body of literature devoted to how “policies create politics” and how feedback effects from existing policy legacies shape potential reforms in a particular area. Although much of this literature focuses on self‐reinforcing feedback effects that increase support for existing policies over time, Kent Weaver and his colleagues have recently drawn our attention to self‐undermining effects that can gradually weaken support for such policies. The following contribution explores both self‐reinforcing and self‐undermining policy feedback in relationship to the Affordable Care Act, the most important health‐care reform enacted in the United States since the mid‐1960s. More specifically, the paper draws on the concept of policy feedback to reflect on the political fate of the ACA since its adoption in 2010. We argue that, due in part to its sheer complexity and fragmentation, the ACA generates both self‐reinforcing and self‐undermining feedback effects that, depending of the aspect of the legislation at hand, can either facilitate or impede conservative retrenchment and restructuring. Simultaneously, through a discussion of partisan effects that shape Republican behavior in Congress, we acknowledge the limits of policy feedback in the explanation of policy stability and change.     

Between ‘here’ and ‘there’: family violence against immigrant and refugee women in urban and rural Southern Australia

The purpose of this article is to investigate how (dis)connection with place influences immigrant and refugee women’s experiences of family violence in regional/remote and metropolitan southern Australia. We draw on research from the ASPIRE project (Analysing Safety and Place in Refugee Experience) in the states of Victoria and Tasmania. A participatory research approach was used to interview immigrant and refugee women who had experienced violence, and providers of family violence services from eight locations in the two states. Both inner urban, regional and remote locations were included in the study. The findings present new insight into how geographic isolation and the scarcity of specialized services affected the experiences of immigrant and refugee women in regional/remote areas. Across all settings, participants described experiences of social isolation associated with both distance from community networks and being ostracized or seeking to avoid the proximity of perpetrators and their social networks. Notably, the experiences of women living in regional Tasmania and regional Victoria shared more similarities than did those of immigrant and refugee women in regional Victoria and inner-urban Melbourne despite the different legislative environments in the two states.     

Cooperation differs. Intentions of municipalities towards metropolitan cooperation in post-socialist space – Brno,Czech Republic

The long-term regional policy of metropolitan regions contributes to the socio-economic development of the entire functional region as it prevents the disharmony in the activity of the interested actors. In the Czech environment, metropolitan cooperation has not been institutionalized yet, which is remarkable while its importance is emphasized in many developed countries and the development of metropolitan regions is greatly supported by EU through the tool ITI. Moreover, a fully-fledged expert interdisciplinary discussion on this issue, which would provide valid conclusions for the needs of the planning practice, is developing rather slowly. The presented contribution is filling this research gap by analysing and assessing the potential of municipalities for metropolitan cooperation in post-socialist space (mainly through institutional cooperation), using a relevant literature, assessing the results of a questionnaire survey and empirical experiences from the model territory of Brno metropolitan area (BMA). The results of the research indicate a willingness to set-up more formal institutionalization of metropolitan cooperation. It would be feasible to transfer some competencies to a newly established metropolitan expert platform/agency. However, cooperation is significantly linked to the awareness of its benefits (not only of a financial character) and to the requirement of keeping ‘basic’ self-governing competencies.     

Eye to eye with the innovation paradox: why smart specialization is no simple solution to policy design

This paper revisits common, yet often untested assumptions on factors hampering the implementation – or even clear articulation – of regional innovation strategies. Based on a dedicated framework drawing on political science literature, it reflects on whether there are merit and promise in future higher-level attempts to promote a more strategic take on regional innovation policy. It investigates which relevant factors in local politics, policy and administrative facilitate or prevent the definition of clear priorities for action. Drawing on a Europe wide survey of stakeholders managing strategic processes, it finds that while a number of obstacles need to be overcome, these are regionally specific rather than attributable to restrictive national cultures. Furthermore, it demonstrates how stakeholder involvement bears different challenges at different levels.