Understanding Culture in Kentucky's Courtrooms: An Essential Tool for Management and Long‐Range Planning

Though the “old conventional wisdom” explained delay as the product of too few resources and staff, the “new conventional wisdom” posits court efficiency is largely due to the cultural makeup of the court. Adapting the Court Culture Assessment Instrument developed by Dr. Ostrom and colleagues at the National Center for State Courts, this research study examines judicial perceptions of culture in the Kentucky Court of Justice general and family circuit court. Results indicate circuit courts are predominantly autonomous but desire to be more structured (hierarchical). In addition, bivariate analyses showed a significant, but weak, inverse relationship exists between perceptions of a predominantly hierarchical culture orientation and the presence of delay. In other words, judges who perceived their circuit to be predominantly hierarchical in nature were less likely to perceive delay as a problem.     

Surveillance and identity management: Migrant perspectives on UK Biometric Residence Permits

The identity card for foreign nationals - now known as the Biometric Residence Permit (BRP) - was first introduced in November 2008. Following the May 2010 UK general election, the newly formed Conservative-Liberal Democrat Coalition government announced that the scheme would not be extended to UK citizens. To date, over 300,000 BRPs have been issued to UK foreign nationals - a group of non-EEA migrants that include international students, visiting scholars and entrepreneurs. In this paper, we draw on findings from interviews conducted with policymakers, advocacy groups, Higher Education administrators and foreign nationals - between March and December 2010 - to highlight some policy issues arising from the continued roll-out of the BRPs to this migrant group. We conclude by arguing that, although interviewees raised few objections to the BRPs in principle, cardholders were concerned about being unfairly ‘targeted’ for additional surveillance and remained unclear about the true purpose of the BRP. We identify a number of areas for further policy development.     

A theory of entangled political economy, with application to TARP and NRA

The recent financial crisis has provoked a raft of contending claims as to whether the cause of the crisis is better attributed to market failure or political failure. Such claims are predicated on a presumption that markets and polities are meaningfully separate entities. To the contrary, we argue that contemporary arrangements create an entangled political economy that renders theorizing based on separation often misleading. Within this alternative framework of entangled political economy, we illuminate both the recent Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) and the New Deal??s National Recovery Administration (NRA).     

THE LAWS,POLICIES, AND POLITICS OF REGULATING LEAD POLLUTION IN CHINA

This article examines the politics, laws and policies related to regulating lead pollution from lead-acid battery related manufacturing facilities in China. Particularly, this paper examines how China＇s Ministry of Environmental Protection （MEP） was able to force the temporary closure of nearly 90 percent of lead-battery manufacturing facilities within a period of months in 2011, after years of enforcement failures. The authors analyze the extent to which the Government＇s response to address lead pollution was based on laws and policies that can be systematically and consistently deployed by MEP as needed, or whether such measures are reliant on political will from outside MEP. Additionally, the authors are concerned with the extent to which China ＇s governance response to lead pollution primarily addresses environmental and public health issues; or rather it primarily addresses political and economic development issues, and whether this difference is significant. The article makes suggestions for how China can improve its environmental enforcement, and in so doing, contributes to a growing field of scholarship that examines environmental governance issues in the context of developing countries.