Small City Autonomy in the Federal System: A Study of Local Constraint and Opportunity in California

How severe have been the restrictions on the autonomy of localgovernments, as state and federal mandates and grant programsproliferated in the 1970s? This study of mandate and grant impactsin nine, small California cities suggests that local controlhas not been reduced as much as the recent literature of federalismargues. Municipal officials in these communities perceived arange of effects according to program areas. Clean water standardswere negatively viewed, while state planning mandates actuallyserved to further local goals. Most of the cities did not hesitateto compete for grants, despite their many strings. Based onthe "hard case" of small cities—which are relative newcomersto grant and mandate programs, and generally change-resistantin attitude—this study points out some positive localgovernment impacts of federal-and state-local entanglements. ¹ As associate investigator of the project on which this paperis based, Joan Hogan of the Institute of Governmental Affairs,University of California at Davis, contributed significantlyto the research.     

Federalism and the Strong-State/Weak-State Conundrum: Canadian Economic Policymaking in Comparative Perspective

The areal dispersion of power and constitutional division ofresponsibilities in federal arrangements are generally feltto limit the ability of federal systems to improve economicperformance. Examining Canada within a comparative framework,we assess "the federations as weak states" hypothesis as wellas the utility of the "strong-state/weak-state" model itself.Although some aspects of the Canadian federal system—namelythe combination of federal with parliamentary traditions andthe resulting adverse policy styles—inhibit the adoptionof effective economic adjustment policies, these features arenot necessarily found in other federal arrangements. Comparisonswith Switzerland, Austria, and West Germany suggest that, undercertain circumstances, federal power sharing may be conduciveto bringing about broad agreement on both goals and policiesamong national, regional, and local governments and major economicactors.     

County Compliance with North Carolina's Solid-Waste Mandate: A Conflict-Based Model

This article presents the findings of research on the implementationof intergovernmental mandates. A framework is developed fromempirical and theoretical work in conflict management to assessthe response of government actors in the implementation of aspecific mandate—North Carolina's Solid Waste ManagementAct of 1989. Our expectation is that the imposition of a mandateby the state on local governments would produce conflict andcontention, especially if the mandate is not accompanied byfunding. However, this study indicates that state and localgovernments may be able to overcome a single-minded concernfor their own interests and take on a problem-solving attitudeduring the implementation process. In addition, evidence indicatesthat county governments that take a problem solving approachare more likely to achieve the intended policy outcomes, producingthe potential for win-win results for the state and its counties.     

Many Borders to Cross: Is Immigration the Exclusive Responsibility of the Federal Government?

In a period when many policymakers in Washington are attemptingto push an unprecedented number of programs and functions backto state and local jurisdictions, immigration stands out asa policy area that is universally regarded as the exclusivedomain of the federal government. This article challenges thispervasive understanding of policies toward legal as well asillegal immigrants. It does so by examining the historical evolutionof state-federal responsibilities in this area and then by scrutinizingcontemporary evidence of state and local efforts to influenceimmigration flows. Finally, the unique political dynamics ofimmigration will be explored to explain why—in the faceof so much evidence to the contrary—this one-sided viewof state-federal responsibilities persists in this increasinglyvolatile policy domain.     

Social Policy and Social Citizenship: Britain's Welfare States

In Britain the imagery and rhetoric of the postwar welfare stateremain powerful—citizens should have equal access to publicservices based on need not place of residence. Devolution issometimes depicted as a threat to this tradition. This articleshows that the immediate risk of a social policy race to thebottom is small. Moreover, because of the peculiarities of Britishterritorial politics the traditional imagery was never borneout in practice; the article traces policy variation beforeand after devolution. Finally, locating British social policywithin the comparative framework of "nationalization" and "citizenship,"I argue that Britain lost its status as an exemplary welfarestate partly because it failed to provide an adequate territorialframework for the development of social policy.     

HAVA and the States

Two major events—the 2000 vote counting crisis in Floridaand passage of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) in October 2002—spawneda wave of federal, state, and local policy innovation and policyimplementation. The major effect of the Florida crisis was anationwide effort to analyze information on elections and todebate policy solutions. Subsequently, HAVA, the first majorelection law in U.S. history that includes federal funds forelection equipment and operations, had a more substantial effecton policy innovation and implementation. Both before and afterHAVA, election law changes have been affected by partisan considerations,policy analyses, and entrepreneurial leadership. Thus far, HAVAhas positively affected election administration, though administrativepractices and their effectiveness vary across and within thestates.     

Usable information for policy: An appraisal of the U.S. Global Change Research Program

The U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) was established in law in 1990 (P.L. 101–606) with a mandate to provide policymakers with usable information. The law gave a White House Committee on Earth and Environmental Sciences (CEES) responsibility to implement the program with respect to its policy mandate. In 1994 CEES was replaced, in part, because it failed to provide usable information. This article, documenting the development of the program's policy mandate and CEES implementation of the USGCRP, finds a performance shortfall. The shortfall is attributed to a breakdown in the legislative process, participant perspectives, and the structure of post-World War II science policy. The purpose of the article is to explain the CEES performance shortfall in hope that its successor can improve USGCRP performance with respect to its legal mandate based upon the lessons of experience.     

Research and Social Security policy in the United States

This article is adapted from a paper presented at a conference that investigated the role of policy research in shaping public policy. The conference focused on how studies of economic and social forces and their relationship with public problems and programs affect the decisions of public policymakers. The author contends that research has the potential to inform policy-making in any of its five stages: problem identification, option development, passage of new laws or development of new procedures, implementation, and evaluation. She notes that different players in the policy-making process use research differently, from the senior government official who needs a quick review of what is known relating to a "hot" issue to the interest group lobbyist who wants access to raw data. The article concludes that research can best achieve its potential when (1) it anticipates policymakers' information needs, (2) it is disseminated in an accessible form understandable to nonresearchers, and (3) the policy analyst is willing to engage in the policy process as an advocate for efficiency.     

Introduction: Gender, Citizenship and Participation: Opportunities and Obstacles in the Twenty-first Century Politics

THIS special half issue of Parliamentary Affairs brings togetherseveral pertinent themes that have been the source of debate—academicand broader—in recent years. We hear much about the ‘crisisof participation’ in which ‘traditional’ formsof political activity attract the participation of ever-decreasingnumbers, although the extent to which this is a ‘natural’development of social change or the result of political bankruptcyremains to be decided. While, for     

State Actions Affecting Cities and Counties, 1990–1993: De Facto Federalism

States experienced considrable fiscal stress during the first four years of the 1990s. This has led to changes in five policy areas: (1) state financial aid; (2) local revenue diversification; (3) "sorting out" of responsibilities between the state and local governments; (4) tax and spending limitations; (5) and mandate relief. Some of the most significant changes occurred in California, Colorado, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, Oregon, and Wisconsin.     

The Social Psychology of Policy Analysis

This article illustrates how some of the core concepts of social psychology can increase understanding of the practice of policy analysis. Policy analysis is shown to be a form of rhetoric subject to social psychological principles of attitude change. The article argues that policy analysts are primarily concerned with changing policymakers' beliefs about the consequences of alternative policies, but that preferences for alternative policies are largely the result of values. Values are formed and modified primarily by social comparison processes, conformity pressures, and the dynamics of group decision making rather than by rational argument. As a result, policy analysts could become more effective by addressing issues of values in their analyses or by mediating the social processes that might interfere with good policy choices.     

Industrial Policy and the States

The emergence of industrial policy proposals on the nationalscene raises the prospect of a greater role for the states inAmerican economic policy. Four types of industrial policy proposalsare described, each representing a distinctive strategic orientation.After describing the implied role of states in each type, weargue that state involvement is politically necessary if anyproposal is to succeed in the national policymaking arena. Weassess the four strategic proposals in light of that contentionand conclude that two of the approaches—infrastructureinvestment and subnational jurisdiction proposals—havean advantage over the better known trade policy and sectoraltargeting strategies.     

Local Policy Determinants in a Centrist System

The study deals with determinants of local policy outputs inIsrael's centrist system. It compares the effects on local expenditurepolicy of political and socio-economic variables, as well asthe roles of tax revenue and central aid. Tax is analysed asan intervening variable between socio-economic factors and localpolicy, rather than as a policy output (the traditional conception);our findings indicate that tax is indeed an intervening variable.Government aid is also seen as an intervening factor which affectsvaritions in local policy outputs. Data indicate a two-stageprocess in which socio-economic factors affect the tax leveland government aid—which, in turn, affect policy outputs.The casual ordering of these findings is estimated through pathanalysis. ^*Special thanks are due to Mr. Uri On and Mr. Pinchas Kahanahfor their invaluable help in producing this paper and to Ms.Nechama Schpack for her help with processing the data.     

Congressional Response to Mandate Elections

Elections from time to time are widely believed to carry a mandate, to express a message about changed policy preferences of the electorate. Whatever the accuracy of such beliefs—a matter about which we are skeptical—perceptions of a mandate should affect the behavior of actors in government. Politicians lack the scholarly luxury of waiting for careful analyses. They must act in the months following elections. We postulate that many will act as if the mandate perceptions were true, veering away from their normal voting patterns. This is driven by election results and interpretations that undermine old calculations about what voters want. As the flow of information gradually changes these perceptions, and the election becomes more distant, members of Congress return to their normal position. We first ask, how would members observe an emerging consensus of mandate? And then we model the duration of the change in behavior in an event‐history framework. That permits a depiction of important movements of the median member and, from this, inferences about policy impact.     

How Policy Rules Shape the Structure and Performance of Collaborative Governance Arrangements

Local food system governance increasingly occurs in collaborative venues at the local, state, and regional levels. Prominent examples of such are food policy councils (FPCs). FPCs take a systemic approach to improve local food systems by including diverse stakeholders to advise on policy development. The authors study public FPCs to understand how policies structure the stakeholder composition and goals of FPCs and how FPCs’ stakeholder composition facilitates and/or impedes performance. Data come from a content analysis of policies that mandate the structure and functions of public FPCs and interviews with FPC representatives. Findings indicate that FPCs connected to a broader array of food policy actors in their communities produce more diverse policy outputs, but this outcome is tempered by whether council members represent personal or organizational interests.     

The Federal Role in State Fiscal Stress

This article examines the extent to which the federal government'spolicies were responsible for the fiscal stress experiencedby most state governments in the early 1990s. Federal policieshave contributed considerably to recent state fiscal stress,particularly through the Medicaid program—the fastestgrowing part of state budgets—and the recession, whichdepressed revenue and increased welfare and Medicaid spending.Federal aid reductions have not been an important source ofrecent state fiscal stress. The real value of per capita federalaid other than for welfare programs fell considerably in the1980s, but the reductions were much greater for local governmentsthan for states. The largest reductions were in the early 1980s.Federal policies have affected state finances in several otherways—through tax policy, unfunded mandates, and the federalfailure to cope effectively with problems like health and poverty.Federal court rulings have also caused budget problems (as havestate court decisions). In some respects, state fiscal problemsare not a federal responsibility. Rising school enrollments,new corrections policies, and inelastic tax systems have createdfiscal stress for many states. Excessive state spending in the1980s has contributed to recent fiscal problems in some states,but not generally.     

Item Similarity in Scale Analysis

A statistic—the similarity coefficient—is developedfor assessing the property that a set of scale items measuresone and only one construct. This statistic is rooted in an explicitmeasurement model and is flexible enough to be used in exploratoryscale analyses, even in small samples. Methods for analyzingsimilarity coefficients are described and illustrated in analysesof Stimson's (1991) policy mood data and Markus' (1990) popularindividualism items. The Appendix discusses the statisticalproperties of similarity coefficients.     

Conduit or contributor? The role of media in policy change theory

The policy change literature is contradictory about the role the media plays in policy change: a conduit for policy participants, with media accounts transmitting multiple policy beliefs of those involved in policy debates or a contributor in the policy process, with media accounts supplying consistent policy beliefs with congruent narrative framing strategies to construct a policy story. The purpose of this study is to empirically test whether the role of the media is that of a conduit or contributor in the policy change process. This study tests whether there are differences in policy beliefs and narrative framing strategies between local and national print media coverage of two contentious policy issues in the Greater Yellowstone Area between 1986 and 2006, that of snowmobile access and wolf reintroduction. In the Greater Yellowstone Area policy arena, local media accounts are believed to be aligned with the Old West Advocacy Coalition, whereas the national media accounts are thought to be part of the New West Advocacy Coalition. With a methodology informed by narrative policy analysis, one hundred seventy five local and national print newspaper accounts were content analyzed to determine whether these media accounts were policy narratives, with embedded policy beliefs and narrative framing strategies. The results indicate that there are statistical differences between local and national media coverage for five of the seven hypotheses. Media accounts are generally policy stories, suggesting that the media’s role is more of a contributor than a conduit in the policy change process.

The State of American Federalism, 1996-1997

Federalism enjoyed political and popular salience during theperiod 1996–1997 as the so-called "Devolution Revolution"began to be implemented and analyzed in the United States. Whilethere were a few examples of important Revolutionary efforts,the federal government continued to hold much of the power andsignificance it has achieved over the past sixty years. Evenin the area of welfare policy, where in 1996 there were historicreforms enacted to end the federal entitlement, the federalgovernment maintained a significant presence that made the ideaof devolution of welfare policy responsibility some what questionable.Nevertheless, states continued to lead in policy innovationin areas ranging from education to health, and the U.S. SupremeCourt continued to question the limits of federal power. Thepast year illustrated, once again, the complexity of our federalsystem and how difficult it is to reform federalism—particularlywhen it involves a shift in power and creates the perceptionof winners and losers.