Buying Amendments? Lobbyists' Campaign Contributions and Microlegislation in the Creation of the Affordable Care Act

When do campaign contributions matter? This article advances the claim that a group that gives campaign contributions to US Members of Congress is more likely to achieve legislative success when (1) a single legislator can deliver to the group (2) a private benefit (3) without attracting negative attention. Using an original data set based on the written comments of nearly 900 interest groups lobbying the US Senate Finance Committee on health reform legislation in 2009, I link group requests to corresponding legislation. The analysis shows a significant relationship between lobby groups' campaign contributions and their legislative success, and at distinct units of analysis—the group, the side, and the group-senator dyad. The relationship is particularly strong in predicting senators’ amendments in committee. The rare data presented here offer compelling evidence that interest groups' legislative victories are sometimes connected to campaign contributions in a way that previous studies could not identify.     

Regulating the new urban poor: Local labour market control in an old industrial city

There has been considerable debate in recent years about the new forms of labour market policy developing in advanced industrial states, and especially the emergence of neo-liberal workfare regimes in the US and the UK. Conceptually, this has been viewed as part of a new form of employment regulation, based upon compulsion and coercion within a shift towards more flexible labour markets. Whilst in the UK policy might be conceived at the national level, it is at the local scale, within particular contexts, that the new employment initiatives are played out and their impact needs to be assessed. In this paper, attention is drawn to the importance of local labour control regimes, focusing upon how labour market institutions and mechanisms of regulation are developed within particular local historical contexts. In contrast to some accounts, the importance is emphasised of inherited social institutions and practices, both within the workplace and beyond in the sphere of social reproduction, in the development of local labour market regimes. Against more top–down narratives, this leads also to highlighting the importance of local autonomy and action in the emergence of new local labour control regimes as such proposed perspectives rejoin community-based practices with more conventionally perceived work-based struggles. The arguments are illustrated through an examination of a specific set of labour market programmes established to ‘deal’ with the after-effects of deindustrialisation in the city of Glasgow and in particular the need to manage those displaced by the shift from a productivist economy to one increasingly geared towards services and consumption.     

Children's identification of unfamiliar voices on both target-present and target-absent lineups

ABSTRACT

A robust finding from the eyewitness literature is that children are as accurate as adults on target-present lineups from the age of five years, whereas they continue to make an erroneous false positive identification from a target-absent lineup up until around fourteen years of age (Pozzulo, J. D., & Lindsay, R. C. L. (1998). Identification accuracy of children versus adults: a meta-analysis. Law and Human Behavior, 22(5), 549–570). The current study explores whether the same pattern occurs when voices are used instead of faces. A total of 334 participants from six age groups (6–7-year-olds, 8–9-year-olds, 10–11-year-olds, 12–13-year-olds, 14–15-year-olds and adults) listened to a 30 second audio clip of an unfamiliar voice and were then presented with either a six person target-present or target-absent voice lineup. Overall, participants were more accurate with target-present than target-absent lineups. Moreover, performance on target-present lineups showed adult-like levels of attainment by 8–9 years of age. In contrast, performance on target-absent lineups was extremely poor, with all age groups tending to make a false identification. Confidence was higher when participants made correct rather than incorrect decisions for both types of lineup and this did not change with increasing age. Given these results, both child and adult earwitness evidence needs to be treated with considerable caution.     

Capacity Building for New Parliamentarians: Survey of Orientation and Induction Programmes

This article reports original research which built on conceptual issues previously identified by the authors. A survey of national parliaments sought information on orientation and induction programmes offered to first term members and on members' perceptions of those programmes. An overview of findings is presented and significant issues identified. Most programmes provided passive development through information and a handbook rather than active skill development. Few used training processes and techniques that were based on contemporary adult learning principles. There were sharp divisions over training and development in dealing with ethical issues. The findings suggest considerable potential for the further development of programmes and for sharing information about programmes in order to assist capacity building for parliamentarians and thereby enhance the performance of parliaments and individual members.     

Political Influence on Public–Private Partnerships in the Public Health Sector in New Zealand

The purpose of this article is highlight the influences on the performance of public-private partnership organizations established to provide procurement services for public-sector organizations. The findings provide evidence of some values-based fracturing in public-private partnerships in the New Zealand public sector. However, it is the impact of political influence that illustrates significant potential to undermine effectiveness and efficiency. This case suggests there are innovative approaches which can be adopted—other than traditional models of public expenditure—yet still providing a sustainable public health service. Finally the case argues for the importance of appropriate political understanding of the changing scenarios.     

Brazilian genomics and bioinformatics: instituting new innovation pathways in a global context

Abstract

The paper raises issues of analysis and policy for science and technology in developing countries within the global context of the post-genomic era. Based on a case study of a newly created Brazilian research and technology capability, it argues for an understanding of variety creation, where new organizational forms often transgress established scientific and organizational boundaries and arrangements. In particular, new frontiers of science and technology can be opened up by the alternative trajectories generated by differences in socio-economic, institutional and ecological conditions in ways that thereby reinforce those very differences. It stresses the inherent unevenness and heterogeneity of innovation processes. By focusing on the geopolitical significance of diverse pathways of science and innovation, the approach suggests an alternative vision to catch-up models of innovation and development in terms of variety creation.     

Stress in small town and rural law enforcement: Testing the assumptions

Sandy and Devine (1978) theorized that small-town and rural police officers experienced Stressors different from their urban counterparts. They delineated four rural stress dimensions: security, social factors, working conditions, and inactivity. Despite the number of hypotheses annunciated by these authors from their exposure to small-town and rural police, they have never been tested. This study is an attempt to rectify this deficiency in the literature by testing their theory/hypotheses with data derived from a survey questionnaire of West Virginia law enforcement officers. The findings of this study lend support for many of the original hypotheses and all four of the dimensions.     

The Impact of Cooking with Firewood on Respiratory Health: Evidence from Indonesia

The vast majority of households in low-income countries cook with firewood, which is known to produce various airborne toxins. We examine whether cooking with firewood results in poorer respiratory health by using a unique Indonesian household survey that collected direct measures of lung capacity. We find that individuals living in households that cook with firewood have 9.4 per cent lower lung capacity than those that cook with cleaner fuels. This impact is larger for women and children than for men. The results strongly support the international policy focus on facilitating households to switch to cooking with cleaner fuels.     

An Examination of Local Climate Change Policies in the Great Plains

As the United States struggles with national solutions to address climate change, state and local governments have become leaders in both mitigation and adaptation policy. Although a significant and growing body of research targets these policies, most studies have assumed common factors motivating both adaptation and mitigation policy adoption. There remains a need for more research on cities of all sizes, their adoption of specific local policies, the factors motivating those choices, and whether the influences for mitigation differ from those that motivate adaptation. The paper uses data from a new survey of over 200 local governments in eleven states of the Great Plains region, including measures distinguishing between mitigation and adaptation policies. These data are employed to test the relative influence of factors from three areas: the policy environment, the attitudes of governmental actors, and community atmosphere, in explaining observed variation in the adoption of climate change policies.