Intergovernmental Relations and Clean-Air Policy in Southern California

In 1989, California adopted a bold and comprehensive Air QualityManagement Plan (AQMP) to bring southern California into compliancewith federal air-quality standards by 2007. California's effortto control air pollution, as outlined in the AQMP, significantlyinfluenced the formulation of the 1990 federal Clean Air Act.This article analyzes the nature of this influence as well asthe way the new federal legislation bolsters specific provisionsof the AQMP. Also examined is whether the AQMP and the CleanAir Act are likely to bring southern California into compliancewith federal air-quality standards.     

Immigrants,welfare reform,and the economy

The welfare reform bill adopted in the United States in 1996 limited the eligibility of immigrants for several government assistance programs, and early projections estimated that nearly half of the savings associated with the reforms would come from these immigrant restrictions. Several studies have found that subsequent program participation declined more for immigrants relative to natives, seemingly verifying the early projections. However, many of these restrictions were either rescinded by the federal government or superceded by state and local policies. In this paper, we first reproduce earlier findings that show the relative declines in program use among immigrants. We then show that much, but not all, of the relative decline in program use among immigrants can be explained by changing macroeconomic conditions. © 2004 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

Why Immigrants Stay in Fashion: Insights from New York's Garment Industry

For many observers the influx of immigrants into New York's garment industry seemed to exemplify the deleterious impact of undocumented immigration: native displacement and a simultaneous deterioration of wages and working conditions. This article argues that this conventional view is incorrect. There is little evidence linking immigrant presence to the availability of undocumented workers. Rather, the immigrant presence is the consequence of the industry's basic labor strategy; immigrants have moved into garments as an older labor force deriving from earlier waves of migration has cyckd out.     

Beyond Enforcement: Welcomeness,Local Law Enforcement,and Immigrants

Studies of local law enforcement actions toward immigrants show that while some cities engage in enforcement, many others do not. The extent and determinants of enforcement have been assessed, but these studies have not evaluated the full range of practices, including welcoming practices, toward immigrants. This article introduces the concept of “welcomeness,” develops a framework for measuring it, and, using a nationwide survey of local police departments, examines how widely departments are welcoming (or unwelcoming) to immigrants. The data show that many police departments have consciously and deliberately developed practices intended to foster positive relationships between the police and immigrants and to encourage immigrants to call the police for assistance.

Practitioner Points

• Welcomeness encompasses a range of practices toward immigrants that are often intentionally created, thoughtfully implemented, and found in a variety of communities.
• The dimensions of welcomeness provide a framework for police departments to assess their practices and provide a model for police departments that want to engage positively with immigrants.
• Welcoming practices may improve interactions between police officers and immigrants and may improve immigrants’ perceptions of local law enforcement.
• Welcoming police departments often have a deeper commitment to community policing.

     

Unity in Diversity: Contending Conceptions of the French Nation and Republic

This article argues that there is not one conception of the French nation and Republic among French Republicans, but two. One theory is assimilationist and centralising. It regards the Republic as one and indivisible and the French nation a cultural whole. The other is more regionalist, envisaging a republic that is perhaps indivisible, but certainly diverse and respectful of local cultures. The article traces these contending conceptions through three constitutional debates: the debate on the reform of the Empire in 1946; the debate on the adoption of the Maastricht Treaty in 1992; and the recent debate on decentralisation, which was re-launched at the beginning of the 2000s by the left and subsequently taken over by the right.     

IRCA and the Unionization of Mexican and Central American Undocumented Workers in Los Angeles County

This article explores the likely impact of the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) on the unionization o f undocumented workers. Research conducted prior to IRCA challenges the conventional wisdom that undocumented workers cannot be organized because of their fear of apprehension and deportation by the INS. Preliminary research subsequent to the passage of this legislation in 1986 suggests that essentially the same factors that mitigated the fear of the INS and made the undocumenteds as receptive to unionization as other classes of workers similarly located in the labor market prior to IRCA are operating in the post-IRCA period. The future "organizability" of undocumented workers rests considerably on unions'determination to organize them and whether they continue to be protected by U.S. labor laws.     

Altruism and Spite in Politics: How the Mind Makes Welfare Tradeoffs About Political Parties

How much will people sacrifice to support or oppose political parties? Extending previous work on the psychology of interpersonal cooperation, we propose that people’s minds compute a distinct cost–benefit ratio—a welfare tradeoff ratio—that regulates their choices to help or hurt political parties. In two experiments, participants decide whether to financially help and hurt the inparty and outparty. The results show that participants were extremely consistent (>?90%) while making dozens of decisions in a randomized order, providing evidence for tradeoff ratios toward parties. Moreover, participants’ ratios correlated in the expected directions with partisanship, political ideology, and feelings of enthusiasm and anger toward each party, corroborating that these ratios are politically meaningful. Generally, most participants were willing to sacrifice at least some money to help their inparty and hurt the outparty. At the same time, a sizable minority hurt their inparty and helped their outparty. Welfare tradeoff ratios push our understanding of partisanship beyond the classic debate about whether voters are rational or irrational. Underneath the turbulent surface of partisan passions hide precise calculations that proportion our altruism and spite toward parties.

     

Making Tradeoffs in Federal Block Grant Programs: Understanding the Interplay Between SSBG and TANF

Welfare reform gave states the option of transferring up to10 percent of their annual federal Temporary Assistance forNeedy Families (TANF) award to the Social Services Block Grant(SSBG). Drawing on administrative data, we consider the impactof TANF transfers on SSBG. We find evidence suggesting thatmore innovative states, states that experienced larger TANFcaseload declines, and states that transferred a higher percentageof TANF funds to the Child Care Development Fund (CCDF) havetransferred higher portions of their TANF allocations to SSBG,all else equal. Preliminary analysis of changes in SSBG expenditurepatterns from FY 1995 to FY 2000 indicates that states are transferringsignificant sums to SSBG, but that TANF transfers do not appearto have a consistent effect on SSBG spending priorities acrossstates.     

Living With A Deficit: Indio, California

This article is a case study of the California city of Indio which has been deficit spending for the past five years. The article explores the causes of Indio's deficit, the resulting coping policies, and the effects on, and expectations of, Indio's citizens. The article suggests that Indio's problems are indicative of fiscal problems in many similar cities; the suggested solutions for Indio may be instructive for similar cities.     

Language Disparity Cost,Human Capital,and Earnings Differences for Immigrants

This research reports the degree to which English-language proficiency （EP） determines earnings among immigrants to the United States using a more nuanced measure of EP than employed in previous studies. It obtains direct and indirect （through human-capital transfer） estimates of the impact of EP on earnings using nonlinear least squares （NLS） to estimate an earnings function with separate arguments for schooling and experience obtained before and after immigration to the United States. It found that immigrants with the highest level of EP earn on average over 16.3% more than those with the lowest proficiency level. The increment in earnings associated with an additional pre-education degree for higher education level when the English proficiency is improved. So destination language proficiency will improve higher level of human capital transferable to destination labor market. In contrast, associated with additional one post degree of education, the relation between post human capital and English proficiency is still ambiguous even though there is complement in generating earnings for post working experience.     

Integrating Immigrants: Morality and Loyalty in US Naturalization Practice

The issues of how to integrate immigrants and ensure the integrity of citizenship have become passionate topics of public discourse and policy debate in recent years in a number of immigrant receiving countries. Behind these debates are often unarticulated questions about how to ensure loyalty to the state and to particular conceptions of national identity among prospective citizens. These issues have been explicitly debated in the United States since the enactment of the first naturalization law in 1790, which requires that immigrants who wish to become citizens demonstrate their good moral character and attachment to the country. This article explores the ways that these morality and loyalty requirements have historically been applied and institutionalized in US naturalization practice, particularly through government sponsored immigrant education programs. It does so first through a discussion of the interpretation of these laws, and then through a case study of the original 1914 Bureau of Naturalization initiative that resulted in the incorporation of these laws into naturalization testing and citizenship education for immigrants. It concludes with a discussion of the implications of this history for current debates in both the United States and elsewhere on immigrant integration.     

Re-slicing the Big Apple: New Immigrants and African-Americans in the New York Economy

The continuing convergence of immigrants on New York City is a puzzle. On the one hand, the decline of the city's manufacturing sector and the growth of advanced services appear to provide little demand for immigrant labor; on the other hand, the deep penetration of immigrants into the city's economy has been paralleled by a deteriorating employment situation among native blacks. This article, seeks to unravel this puzzk in the light of two conflicting perspectives, the restructuring and the replacement labor hypotheses. The paper assesses each perspective using data from the 1970 and 1980 Censuses of Population and merged sampks of the June 1986 and 1988 Current Population Surveys.     

Contending discourses in the electric and magnetic fields controversy: The social construction of EMF risk as a public problem

The issue of adverse health effects from electric and magnetic fields (EMFs) has been brewing for the last decade or so. While the epidemiological evidence persists in linking proximity-to-powerlines to a few forms of cancer, exposure and dose remain undefined, and no clear mechanism of action has been identified. Despite this scientific ambiguity, there are frequent calls for governmental action; and yet, there is no unanimity on what action is appropriate, even among those asserting that something ought to be done. This article analyzes the various ways that the EMF problem has been socially constructed through distinctive forms of public discourse and the sources of contention among these different forms. It should appeal to interpretive policy analysts and to those interested in the valuative assumptions behind policy claims. Those oriented exclusively to the technical side of EMF may find the interpretation offered here somewhat unsettling, however, since it relativizes many of the factual claims surrounding the issue. Attention is also given to the ways that multiple EMF discourses are accommodated in the absence of scientifically conclusive evidence.     

The industrial structure of the California Assembly: Committee assignments,economic interests,and campaign contributions

This paper examines the provision of campaign contributions made by economic interests to incumbents seeking reelection in the 1984, 1986, and 1988 California Assembly elections. The study tests whether the distribution of campaign contributions by specific industrial sectors corresponds to legislator possession of the policy property rights associated with membership on relevant Assembly standing committees. A non-parametric statistical model compares the distribution of campaign contributions from groups within a given industrial sector to members of relevant policy committees with the distribution of contributions from all other contributor classes. The empirical analysis confirms that committee assignments significantly affect the allocation of special interest resources in Assembly elections, substantiating the importance of institutional considerations in influencing special interest activity.