Managing policy‐making in the local climate governance landscape: The role of network administrative organizations and member cities

Trans‐municipal networks (TMNs) have reshaped the landscape around local government action on global climate policy. Past research has focused on why cities join TMNs and the impact that membership has on local action. This study considers a potential reverse effect: namely, that cities' membership choices position them to influence TMNs' overall priorities. In considering this, we emphasize the role of network administrative organizations (NAOs) and posit that the multiple climate‐related networks, which share members and operate in overlapping geographic and issue spaces, are bound together as part of a meta‐network. We utilize social network analysis and data on membership in four climate‐related TMNs to examine the factors that shape how cities can influence meta‐network priorities. We find that cities with local vulnerabilities tend to be located in network positions that enable them to influence the meta‐network's overall priorities.     

What Levels of Racial Diversity Can Be Achieved with Socioeconomic‐Based Affirmative Action? Evidence from a Simulation Model

This paper investigates to what extent socioeconomic status (SES)‐based affirmative action in college admissions can produce racial diversity. Using simulation models, we investigate the racial and socioeconomic distribution of students among colleges under the use of race‐ or SES‐based affirmative action policies, or targeted, race‐based recruitment policies. We find, first, that neither SES‐based affirmative action nor race‐targeted recruiting on their own produce levels of racial diversity achieved by race‐based affirmative action. However, the two policies in combination, although likely expensive, may yield racial diversity comparable to race‐based affirmative action. Second, the use of affirmative action policies by some colleges reduces the diversity of similar‐quality colleges without such policies. Third, the combination of SES‐based affirmative action and race recruiting results in fewer academically‐overmatched Black and Hispanic students than under race‐based affirmative action, but the schools that use both also see a reduction in the academic achievement of enrolled students.     

Relationship Between Two Types of Help Seeking Behavior in Domestic Violence Victims

A coordinated community response system to the help-seeking behaviors of domestic violence victims is critical to minimize the impact of violent events and to educate the public, so that safe and effective conflict management skills may replace violent responses. The focus for the present study is to identify and analyze victims’ choices of law enforcement assistance in stopping the violence and/or aid through the services of the regional family violence center. Some victims select legal channels of support; others rely exclusively on social service support, and others seek assistance from both sources. Characteristics of victims whose cases followed two types of help-seeking behavior patterns—legal support or social support–were determined through archived data from both the records of a regional family violence center (FVC) (n=258) and domestic violence incident reports of a police department serving a city of approximately 200,000 citizens (n=127). Findings indicate that African American victims more frequently sought protection through law enforcement sources than they did through family violence center services, and the reverse was true for Euro-Americans.     

‘Beauty isn't all a matter of looking glamorous’: attitudes to glamour and beauty in 1950s women's magazines

This article analyses representations of glamour in two British magazines during the 1950s: Home and Country and Woman's Outlook, the publications of the National Federation of Women's Institutes (NFWI) and the Women's Co-operative Guild (WCG) respectively. Both publications shared many traits with best-selling women's magazines of the period but they also had certain distinctive characteristics, such as a relative lack of advertising for beauty products, which make them particularly interesting subjects for a study of glamour. Through its exploration of the diverse and even contradictory attitudes towards glamour evidenced in these publications, the article contributes to continuing feminist debates about women and beauty as well as offering fresh insights into the NFWI and WCG. Its findings demonstrate heterogeneous understandings of femininity, thus challenge the stereotypes of 1950s womanhood that continue to abound, and add another case study to the growing body of revisionist literature on women in the post-1945 period.     

The Great Wall and I

正I don’t remember exactly when it was,but I was in primary school when I fi rst heard about the Great Wall.A 21,196-km wall built more than 2,300 years ago and still standing!It sounded unreal and,for a child,magical.About 20 years later,I found a job in Beijing and moved to China.I read everything I could about the Great     

An Assessment of the Impact that Participation in Local Climate Networks Has on Cities’ Implementation of Climate,Energy, and Transportation Policies

Much of the attention surrounding local climate protection in the United States is associated with two networks: ICLEI Local Governments for Sustainability's Cities for Climate Protection and the U.S. Conference of Mayors’ Climate Protection Agreement (MCPA). However, the impact of these networks on member‐city actions has not been clearly established. This paper examines whether, and to what extent, participation in climate networks leads to the implementation of greenhouse gas (GHG)‐reducing policies, above and beyond what would have been done in their absence. To account for the possibility that cities which join climate networks are systematically different from those that do not and control for self‐selection induced bias, three statistical techniques—propensity score matching, Heckman full information maximum likelihood, and instrumental variables—are employed to estimate the “treatment effect” of participation. Results suggest that impact is network specific: ICLEI membership causes small to moderate increases in cities’ GHG‐relevant activity, whereas the MCPA has no such effect. The characteristics of each network are evaluated in light of these findings.     

Children in conflict: assessing the Optional Protocol

Rachel Stohl is Senior Analyst at the Center for Defense Information in Washington, DC. She is a founding member of the US Campaign to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers and serves on its Steering Committee.     

Changing the world: Time,space and perceptions

The vicissitudes of one small feminist organisation are used to illustrate the problems of others, even in the context of a period when attention has supposedly been directed at women. The prejudices and problems experienced have, however, come from other women as well as from men, and these require examination in order to be overcome. The objectives of the organisation are outlined, with several informal strategies that have evolved through the experience of putting the objectives into effect.     

Crimes against children in nineteenth-century France

Abuse of children is not entirely a modern phenomenon but the definition and classification of abusive practices has changed. Modern concepts of child abuse date only from the 1880s in France. Child abuse in twentieth-century terms of emotional and physical assault, neglect, abandonment, and sexual molestation was not considered a crime during most of the past century. Prior to the 1880s, only two acts, abortion and infanticide, constituted crimes against children. Child abandonment, rather than a crime, was the state supported, societally acceptable alternative to abortion and infanticide. After abandonment, malnourishment and neglect of these children, even to the point of death, likewise were not crimes. With changes in attitudes of the 1880s, parental neglect, assault, and starvation of children became defined as child abuse as did perceived immoral behavior of the parents such as habitual drunkenness and debauchery. Under these new definitions of abuse, state officials could deprive parents of their legal rights and make the children wards of the state for their own protection. The state becamein loco parentis. This essay explores the changing perceptions of child abuse, and the increasing state intervention for the care of abused children after the 1880s.