Beyond (and Within) City Limits: Climate Policy in an Intergovernmental System

This analysis explores the role of city‐level and state‐level variables to explain why some cities make more progress on climate‐related policy implementation than others. Using multilevel modeling, we find little support for the influence of state factors on local government leadership among the 812 cities in the dataset, but local government institutional and community variables are strongly associated with climate policy initiatives. We argue for a rethinking of the notion of the limited and constrained city and suggest that, in the realm of climate protection and environmental policy, cities are leading a bottom‐up federalism. Moreover, where some political analysts and scholars have argued that climate protection and environmental policies may not be economically rational for cities to pursue, we theorize that cities are acting locally to further their self‐interest in an increasingly global economy.     

Preemption of local smoke-free air ordinances: the implications of judicial opinions for meeting national health objectives.

Elimination of state laws that preempt local antismoking ordinances is a national health objective. However, the tobacco industry and its supporters have continued to pursue state-level preemption of local tobacco control ordinances as part of an apparent strategy to avoid the diffusion of grassroots antismoking initiatives. And, an increasing number of challenges to local ordinances by the tobacco industry and persons supported by the tobacco industry are being decided in state supreme courts and courts of appeals. The outcomes of seemingly similar cases about the validity of local smoke-free air ordinances vary significantly by state. This paper examines the common and unique aspects of the decisions and the potential implications of court rulings on preemption for future state tobacco control efforts and achievement of national health objectives around the elimination of preemption. Using a search strategy developed for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's State Tobacco Activities Tracking and Evaluation (STATE) System, cases where a state or federal appellate level court made a finding on the validity of a local smoke-free air ordinance or regulation were identified in 19 states. In contrast to previous studies, we found that cases in approximately half of states were decided for local governments. We also found that across the states, courts were considering similar factors in their decisions including the extent to which: (1) the local government possessed the authority to pass the ordinance, (2) the ordinance conflicted with the state constitution, and (3) state statutes preempt the ordinance.     

Landmark reforms

After more than one hundred years, the future of a unified Probation Service looks bleak in the face of current proposals by the Ministry of Justice to open up the market for rehabilitation services to new providers from the private, voluntary and community sectors.     

Strategic politicians,partisan roll calls,and the Tea Party: Evaluating the 2010 midterm elections

The 2010 midterm elections were politically and historically significant in several respects. This article offers a concise narrative of the congressional elections beginning with a discussion of the factors influencing the outcome of the historic election. We briefly consider established research on congressional elections and analyze the degree to which these theories apply to the specific circumstances in 2010. Throughout the article, we compare the 2010 midterms to two other recent elections, 2006 and 2008. We also examine several idiosyncratic aspects of the 2010 elections, relative to the historic midterm elections of 1994 and 2006, as well as the effects of the stimulus and healthcare reform bills and the Tea Party movement. We find strong effects for member votes on the individual roll calls, but little evidence of Tea Party influence on electoral outcomes.     

The stability of risk-seeking from adolescence to emerging adulthood

Purpose

The current study examines the stability of the risk-seeking component of self-control using a second-order latent class growth model.

Methods

Longitudinal data from 962 respondents from the NLSY79-Child and Young Adult sample are used to examine the stability of the risk-seeking component of self-control from ages 14 to 23.

Results

Data reveal three trajectories of risk-seeking (low, moderate, and high) that maintain strong relative stability from adolescence through early adulthood. Further, two trajectories of risk-seeking (moderate and high) maintain absolute stability, whereas the low risk-seeking group exhibits statistically significant decreases in risk-seeking over time.

Conclusions

The SOLCGA may provide a stricter test of the stability hypothesis since it accounts for measurement error in the construct prior to estimating the developmental trajectories. The results from the SOLCGA support Gottfredson and Hirschi's hypotheses that self-control will remain stable from adolescence into emerging adulthood.