The patient protection and affordable care act: the victory of unorthodox lawmaking

The 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was a major legislative achievement of the 111th Congress. This law structurally reforms the US health care system by encouraging universal health care coverage through regulated competition among private insurance companies. When looking at the process for reform, what strikes an observer of US health care policy in the first place is that the Democratic majority was able to enact something in a political field characterized by strong resistance to change. This article builds on that observation. Arguments concentrate on the legislative process of the reform and support the idea that it may be partly explained by considering an evolution of US legislative institutions, mostly in the sense of a more centralized legislative process. Based on approximately one hundred semidirected interviews, I argue that the Democratic majority, building on lessons from both President Bill Clinton's health care reform attempt and the Republicans' strategy of using strong congressional leadership to pass social reforms, was able to overcome institutional constraints that have long prevented comprehensive change. A more centralized legislative process, which has been described as "unorthodox lawmaking," enabled the Democratic leadership to overcome multiple institutional and political veto players.     

Harry and Louise and health care reform: romancing public opinion

The question whether the "Harry and Louise" campaign ads, sponsored by the Health Insurance Association of America (HIAA) during the 1993-1994 health care reform debate, influenced public opinion has particular relevance today since interest groups are increasingly choosing commercial-style mass media campaigns to sway public opinion about health policy issues. Our study revisits the issue of the Harry and Louise campaign's influence on public opinion, comparing the ad campaign's messages to changes in opinion about health care reform over a twenty-six-month period in Oklahoma. Looking at the overall trends just prior to the introduction of the Harry and Louise campaign, public opinion was going in the "wrong" direction, from the HIAA perspective. Moreover, public opinion continued in the wrong direction until the mid-point of the campaign. However, in either the turning point of the campaign in terms of message content and tone or in the lag period following it, public opinion reversed on each health reform issue and returned to pre-campaign levels. It appears from these findings that the campaign captured public opinion when support for issues that were unfavorable to HIAA members was increasing and turned public opinion back to pre-campaign levels. The campaign may result in many more such marriages of political interest groups and commercial advertisers for the purpose of demobilizing public support for health policy initiatives that are unfavorable to special interests.     

Over-simplification and error in public opinion surveys on capital punishment

Public opinion polls have shown a marked increase in support for capital punishment. Results of a recent poll, which resulted from collaboration between the author and Associated Press, further clarify published findings of public opinion polls and challenge the common wisdom that support for the death penalty is increasing. It was found that only 12 percent of those polled opposed the death penalty in all cases, that 57 percent advocated its use under some circumstances and that 27 percent supported the death penalty for all murder cases. These findings differ little from those reported by Louis Harris in 1973 (Bedau 1982).     

公众舆论对公共政策的影响述评

公众舆论是公众以内心深处的政治文化价值体系为标准,并经一定渠道由公众自主表达的对当前政治事务和公共政策的意见。公众舆论关注的焦点是公共政策的制定和执行。公众关注的程度越高．表明公众参与的热情越高，对公共政策的影响也就越大。公众舆论对公共政策的影响主要体现在内容、形式、功能和实践四个方面。     

Battered woman and public opinion: Some realities about the myths

Expert testimony regarding the battered woman syndrome is often presented at trial on behalf of women charged with killing their batterers. Where courts have admitted such testimony into evidence, they have done so on the theory that the testimony is needed to dispel common myths regarding battered women—e.g., erroneous beliefs that battered women are masochists, who are somehow responsible for the battering they suffer and could avoid being battered by simply leaving their batterers. To date, however, there is no published empirical evidence that either jurors or members of the public at large hold such erroneous beliefs. The results of this study provide empirical support for the judicial hypothesis. These results suggest that many members of the general public eligible for jury duty do, in fact, hold erroneous, stereotyped beliefs about battered women.     

Can information change public opinion? Another test of the Marshall hypotheses

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall offered his opinion regarding the utility of public opinion polls as a tool for assessing the “evolving standards of decency” regarding capital punishment. His arguments became known as the Marshall hypotheses and spawned a considerable body of empirical testing. The three Marshall hypotheses are: (1) support for capital punishment is inversely associated with knowledge about it, (2) exposure to information about capital punishment produces sentiments in opposition to capital punishment, but (3) exposure to information about capital punishment will have no impact on those who support it for retributive reasons. The results of previous tests of these hypotheses were somewhat mixed but supportive. None of these studies, however, examined the effects of change in knowledge levels with changes, if any, in death penalty attitudes and beliefs as needed for a more complete test of the Marshall hypotheses. The present study addressed this shortcoming. The results provided mixed support for these three hypotheses. That is, death penalty supporters were somewhat less informed than death penalty opponents; exposure to death penalty information and knowledge gains tended to be associated with attitudinal change in a directions suggested by these hypotheses; but, retributivists' attitudes toward and beliefs about capital punishment were not any more resistant to change than were the attitudes and beliefs of non-retributivists.     

Why public opinion changes: the implications for health and health policy

Research on stasis or change in public opinion toward health, health policy, and medical care tends to focus on short-term dynamics and to emphasize the impact of discrete messages communicated by individual speakers in particular situations. This focus on what we term "situational framing," though valuable in some respects, is poorly equipped to assess changes that may occur over the longer term. We focus, instead, on "structural framing" to understand how institutionalized public health and health care policies impact public opinion and behavior over time. Understanding the dynamics of public opinion over time is especially helpful in tracking the political effects of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 as it moves from the debate over its passage to its implementation and operation.     

Framing innocence: an experimental test of the effects of wrongful convictions on public opinion

Journal of Experimental Criminology - Discourse about criminal justice in the USA increasingly revolves around wrongful convictions. Research has documented the emergence of the “innocence...     

Policy feedback and public opinion: the role of employer responsibility in social policy

This study extends the literature on policy feedback and explores the extent to which public attitudes reflect learning from past government initiatives. We analyze the ways in which feedback mechanisms affecting public attitudes may differ from those earlier identified in the literature. We apply this general analytic framework to help explain variation in public attitudes toward private employer involvement in health care, explore possible causal pathways, and offer some preliminary empirical tests of these hypotheses. There are different levels of public support for the notion of employer obligation involving medical care, long-term care, and the treatment of substance abuse. Our evidence suggests that lessons about the performance of institutions in each of these policy domains represent the most important effect of existing policy on public attitudes. Furthermore, these differences correspond to what one would expect based on our model of policy feedback and cannot be explained by other plausible sources of policy legitimacy.     

Psychologists as consultants for changes of venue the use of public opinion surveys

This study reports the use of public opinion surveys to support motions to change venue. Step-bystep procedures of venue surveys are outlined, and results of their use in five capital murder trials are presented. Employing a quasi-experimental approach to the surveys allows inferences, about the likelihood of obtaining between-county differences of certain magnitudes. In addition, the use of a survey instrument with standardized subparts permits a second, novel type of contrast: comparisons previous cases. The responsiveness of this approach to the typical criticisms of venue surveys is discussed.     

电子治理视野下新闻舆论监督模式的选择

在电子治理的视野中,新闻舆论监督具有自己的独特形态。当前我国的新闻舆论监督存在着一些问题。完善新闻舆论监督的一个重要途径是选择建立合作监督的网络模式。     

坚持正确舆论导向重视文化安全建设

随着我国综合国力在世界舞台上的提高,开放的中国已经成为世界经济的一分子.金融、战争、能源等全球性的危机也不能避免地接踵而来;从国内情况看,我国正处于社会转型期,这一时期必然面临诸多复杂的公共安全问题,食品安全、社会治安、高强度传染病爆发、环境破坏造成的各种自然灾难以及人为因素造成的安全责任事故等等……都给人们的社会生活带来极大的威胁,影响了社会的稳定.公共安全问题已经上升到一个重要高度,要求新闻媒体在我国现代化建设和国家信息文化安全方面,肩负起历史的责任,牢牢把握正确舆论导向,进一步提高舆论引导水平,为我国经济社会发展营造良好的舆论环境.