Expanding the discursive context of policy design: A matter of feminist standpoint epistemology

While recent elaborations of policy design have been innovative and intriguing, feminist analysis remains unacknowledged. The exclusion of feminist analysis confounds policy design's goal of increased sensitivity to context, values, and audience. I use feminist standpoint epistemology to illustrate and expand the dialogue of policy design as well as policy analysis generally. Addressing policy analysis from a meta-perspective facilitates a discussion of theory. methodology, and practice. The applicative aspects of the feminist epistemic stance are illustrated via a hypothetical case study addressing the environmental problematique. As such, a feminist standpoint reformulation of policy design is proffered. Overall, the analysis expands the theoretical construction of policy design, providing an increased potential for participatory policy analysis and a bridge between two discourses previously lacking interchange.     

Low-level Radioactive Waste Compacts: Lessons Learned from Theory and Practice

The interstate compact as a policy tool has a long history ofuse in the United States. Yet some observers feel that interstatecompacts have never lived up to their potential. Nevertheless,in 1980, the compact was chosen as the policy instrument tosolve one of the thorniest environmental policy issues of thedecade: the siting of low-level radioactive waste (LLRW) disposalfacilities. Drawing from research on interstate compacts andon alliance theory developed in international relations, thisarticle applies five key questions to the case of LLRW: Whydo states join compacts? Which compacts will they join? Howstable are the compacts? How important are outside factors?What types of situations are compacts most suited to address?It concludes with lessons that should be useful to future policymakersabout the use of interstate compacts to solve salient, nationwidepolicy problems.     

Abortion Policy and Super-optimum Solutions

Super-optimum solutions to public policy problems are ones that enable conservatives, liberals, and other major viewpoints all to come out ahead of their best initial expectations simultaneously. Thinking in terms of multiple goals and alternatives facilitates the development of mutually beneficial packages, possibly with the aid of spreadsheet-based software that enables one to better deal with the multiplicity of goals and alternatives. This article describes how super-optimum solutions might be applied to abortion policy and deals with auxiliary policies concerning birth control and adoptions. It also addresses related policies that focus on the Chinese population problem. Chinese abortion policy involves a battle between women who do want to stay pregnant and a society that would like to facilitate pregnancy termination. American abortion policy involves a battle between women who do not want to stay pregnant and a society that is reluctant to facilitate abortions.     

State budget periodicity: An analysis of the determinants and the effect on state spending

Much of the public budgeting literature focuses on the institutional rules of budgeting and how those rules affect process and outcomes. This study focuses on a particularly rudimentary rule of budgeting: the length of the budget period. State budgets are dictated (constitutionally or statutorily) to recur over one-or two-year intervals. Statistical analysis of the determinants of state budget periodicity shows that the more states spend, ceteris paribus, the more likely they are to budget annually. I hypothesize that budget periodicity has the opposite effect on spending: Biennial budget states spend more, ceteris paribus, than annual budget states spend. Ordinary least squares analysis does not support the hypothesis, but with instrumental variable methods, biennial budgeting exhibits a positive and statistically significant effect on state spending.     

The median voter hypothesis: Evidence from general purpose local governments

The median voter hypothesis (MVH) represents a much-used as well as much-criticized tool in the hands of public finance economists. To evaluate the MVH, this paper applies the Cox specification test using data from general purpose municipal governments. The Cox test allows for possible simultaneous rejection of the MVH and all tested models, thus providing stricter criteria than applied to date in empirical MVH analyses. The test results reveal that the MVH is appropriate for explaining the aggregate behavior of municipal governments, but not specific services. Further, the single service and single tax base assumptions are not critical to the empirical MVH performance.     

The influence of the gramm-rudman-hollings act on federal budgetary outcomes, 1986—1989

This article analyzes the impact of the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings (GRH) Act on federal budgetary and fiscal outcomes. Rather than portraying it as a two-on federal budgetary and fiscal outcomes. Rather than portraying it as a two-party game between Congress and the president, each with monolithic policy preferences, we view GRH as a multiparty negotiation game among advocates of different programs and agencies. In this game, agencies subject to sequestration and their congressional advocates have an incentive to reach a budget accord, while those exempt from sequestration do not. Consistent with this argument, we find that GRH has restrained outlays for nonexempt programs and that exempt programs have, if anything, experienced more rapid growth. Overall, GRH is estimated to have restrained outlays by $59 billion by fiscal 1989, and to have restrained outlays more effectively after the 1987 modifications in the Act. The Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Act signals another phase in the decade-long struggle between the White House and Congress over public spending priorities. Our final counterfactual analysis suggests that GRH partially returned federal fiscal and budgetary relationships and priorities to those that prevailed before Reagan.     

Tax Expenditure Reporting: The Utilization of an Innovation

Central to this article is the question, “Are tax expenditure reports used?” State legislators serving on tax committees in ten states were surveyed regarding their use and their perceptions of others' use of tax expenditure report information. Responses indicate (1) strong acceptance and broad use of report information; (2) purposes and policy stages of use characteristic of technical information use; and (3) use focused predominantly on resource acquisition (revenue) policy rather than resource allocation (budget) policy. Thus it appears that tax expenditure reporting does not operate to secure budgetary control over tax expenditures, and consequently tax expenditures continue largely to escape budget scrutiny.