‘Letting the Beasts Out of the Cage’: Parole in the Post-Stalin Gulag, 1953–1973

After a lapse of 15 years under Stalin, parole was reintroduced into the Soviet Gulag in 1954. For justice officials anxious to expunge Stalin's repressive legacy, the resurrection of parole signalled a return to correctionalism, societal oversight over the Gulag, and a vastly reduced rate of incarceration. In practice, though, parole exposed significant continuities with the Stalinist Gulag, including endemic corruption, overwhelming concern with production, suspicion of outside interference in penal affairs, and constant upward pressure on the inmate population. In the broader view, the experience of parole in the post-war USSR aligned closely with that of the Western world.     

Policy dynamics and the evolution of state charter school laws

Baumgartner and Jones (1993) showed how radically new policies emerge on government agendas as a consequence of exogenous shocks to policy subsystems displacing privileged interests. But how do these policies evolve post-punctuation? In this paper, we present three different models of policy change. Policies may revert to the old status quo if displaced interests re-assert themselves, or they may be “locked-in” by new interests now reaping the benefits. Alternatively, they may incrementally change as lawmakers “learn” how to better meet target population needs, particularly by witnessing how other jurisdictions address similar problems. We test these models with data on change in state charter schools laws over time. We find that whether old status quos are overthrow, and the fate of charter policies when they are enacted, is influenced more by competing political interests, especially interest groups, than elite and public perceptions of broad systemic crises. Yet, we also find that changing demands on the state and learning from the successes and failures of neighboring states also play significant roles.     

Beyond COVID-19: Five commentaries on expert knowledge,executive action,and accountability in governance and public administration

Several Canadian and international scholars offer commentaries on the implications of the COVID-19 pandemic for governments and public service institutions, and fruitful directions for public administration research and practice. This first suite of commentaries focuses on the executive branch, variously considering: the challenge for governments to balance demands for accountability and learning while rethinking policy mixes as social solidarity and expert knowledge increasingly get challenged; how the policy-advisory systems of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and United Kingdom were structured and performed in response to the COVID-19 crisis; whether there are better ways to suspend the accountability repertoires of Parliamentary systems than the multiparty agreement struck by the minority Liberal government with several opposition parties; comparing the Canadian government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the Global Financial Crisis and how each has brought the challenge of inequality to the fore; and whether the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated or disrupted digital government initiatives, reinforced traditional public administration values or more open government.     

THE CRITICAL CLIMATE AGENDA

The world set a goal in the Paris Agreement: to keep global warming within 1.5 degrees Celsius of preindustrial levels. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has explained why this is a valid goal. If global warming were to go higher than 1.5 degrees Celsius, this would jeopardize life on the planet with a potential multi-meter sea-level rise, the collapse of critical ecosystems, and the release of methane from thawing permafrost, possibly triggering runaway warming. Yet the world's current trajectory implies a catastrophic 2.7-degree- Celsius increase in global temperature.     

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.     

Adolescence terminable and interminable: When does adolescence end?

The question of when adolescence ends and young adulthood begins is considered. Throughout, it is addressed in terms of the theory of broad and narrow socialization, which emphasizes the cultural context of development. The question is approached from cognitive, emotional, and behavioral perspectives, then from the perspective of role transitions (such as marriage and parenthood). The idea of an extended path from adolescence to adulthood is discussed, and the concept of emerging adulthood is presented. It is suggested that in most non-Western cultures the entrance to adulthood is socially defined and marked by a social event, usually marriage. In the contemporary West, however, where there is a strong emphasis on independence and individualism, the entrance to adulthood is defined and marked individually. Consequently, it is likely to be based on the achievement of residential and financial independence as well as on the attainment of cognitive self-sufficiency, emotional self-reliance, and behavioral self-control. Thus in the contemporary West the passage from adolescence to young adulthood is a process that is gradual and may take many years.This research was funded partly by an institutional training grant from the National Institute of Mental Health 5T32 MH14668-14, for the Clinical Research Training Program in Adolescence, jointly sponsored by the Department of Psychiatry at Northwestern University and the Committee on Human Development at the University of Chicago.Received Ph.D. from University of Virginia, Research interests include adolescent reckless behavior, adolescents' uses of media, and the transition to adulthood.Research interests include the transition to adulthood and development in young adulthood.     

Heterogenous demand for public goods: Behavior in the voluntary contributions mechanism

Numerous laboratory experiments have investigated the performance of several processes for providing public goods through voluntary contributions. This research has been able to identify features of the institution or environment which are reliably likely to produce outcomes “close” to the free riding outcome or “substantially” greater than the pessimistic prediction of standard models. One such feature is the “marginal per-capita return” (MPCR) from the public good. Various authors have altered MPCR between groups or for an entire group at the same time. The experiments reported here address a different question, “What would happen if, within a group, some persons faced a ‘high’ MPCR while others faced a ‘low’ MPCR?”