Public sector primary care and Medicaid: trading accessibility for mainstreaming

Facilities operated by public and nonprofit agencies have become increasingly important sources of primary care for Medicaid patients. These facilities are particularly important sources of care in segregated, competitive urban areas, where they are more geographically accessible than many private physicians and expand the availability of care to Medicaid patients rather than substituting for care provided by private physicians. In rural areas, in contrast, the availability of care from public facilities appears to reduce the level of care Medicaid patients receive from private physicians in the counties where these facilities are located. These findings suggest that policymakers can expand urban Medicaid patients' access to care by spending on public care, but at the cost of increasing the segregation of Medicaid patients into a two-tier system of care.     

When do you follow the (national) leader? Party switching by subnational legislators in Japan

In 1993, after 38 years of single-party control, more than 20% of Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) House of Representatives members left the party to form new alternatives and create an anti-LDP coalition government. However, despite substantial popular support, the new parties attracted few subnational politicians. The effect of this lack of subnational party switching was substantial since the relatively small pool of subnational defectors meant that the new parties had difficulty forming the strong subnational bases of support that would help them to compete with the LDP in the future. In this paper, we consider why so few subnational politicians were willing to switch to these new party alternatives. Using case studies and conditional logit analysis of party affiliation pattern among prefectural assembly members in Japan, we find that party switching was most common among subnational politicians who had powerful patrons who had also left the LDP and had maintained especially good access to central government largesse. We also find that subnational politicians from urban areas, which depend less upon central government pork, were considerably less likely to switch parties, than their rural counterparts.     

Criminality Among Rural Stimulant Users in the United States

Despite the increase in media attention on "meth cooking" in rural areas of the United States, little is known about rural stimulant use, particularly the criminality associated with stimulant use. Data were collected from community stimulant users in rural Ohio, Arkansas, and Kentucky (N=709). Findings from three logistic regression models indicate that younger stimulant users (x =32.55, SD = 10.35), those with more convictions, and those who used crack frequently were significantly more likely to have been arrested for committing a substance-related crime, a property crime, or another crime in the 6-months before entering the study. Implications include the need for longitudinal studies to further understand rural stimulant use as well as increasing community and corrections-based drug abuse prevention and treatment interventions for stimulant users who live in rural areas.     

Community Stakeholder Responses to Countering Violent Extremism Locally

ABSTRACT

In the United States, despite federal efforts to empower communities to form local governance networks to develop and implement collaborative countering violent extremism (CVE) programs, local CVE governance networks are rare. Why do CVE governance networks emerge within only some communities? I argue that three factors—interest in CVE, capacity to participate, and facilitation—determine the prospects for the emergence of a CVE governance network within a community. The article uses a matching technique to identify and compare the community stakeholder responses to CVE in two communities—Houston, TX and Columbus, OH. Survey research of stakeholders who participated in Houston and stakeholders most likely to participate in Columbus but did not highlights the importance of the three factors. By focusing on these drivers of collaborative governance, the article provides an explanation for the lack of CVE collaboration in the United States.     

Television viewing: Cultivating perceptions of affluence and support for capitalist values

Abstract

This article examines the proposition that television viewing contributes to unrealistic perceptions of the degree of affluence in America and to support forthe basic values underlying capitalism. The survey data examined show that heavy television viewers are more supportive of capitalist values, but are no more likely to misperceive the degree of affluence in America than light viewers.