Dual-System Families: Cash Assistance Sequences of Households Involved With Child Welfare

Dual-system families, those involved with the child welfare system and receiving public cash assistance, may be more vulnerable than families connected to only one of the two systems. This study advances our understanding of the heterogeneous and dynamic cash-assistance histories of dual-system families in the post–welfare reform era. With merged administrative data from Washington over the period 1998–2009, we use cluster analysis to group month-to-month sequences of cash-assistance use among households over the 37-month period surrounding child removal. Close to two thirds of families who received any assistance either had a short spell with Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) or lost TANF. Smaller percentages had steady support. Families who lose assistance are less likely than average to reunify while those who connect to benefits are more likely, suggesting that coordination between systems may serve dual-system families well.     

Democracy and dictatorship revisited

We address the strengths and weaknesses of the main available measures of political regime and extend the dichotomous regime classification first introduced in Alvarez et al. (Stud. Comp. Int. Dev. 31(2):3–36, 1996). This extension focuses on how incumbents are removed from office. We argue that differences across regime measures must be taken seriously and that they should be evaluated in terms of whether they (1) serve to address important research questions, (2) can be interpreted meaningfully, and (3) are reproducible. We argue that existing measures of democracy are not interchangeable and that the choice of measure should be guided by its theoretical and empirical underpinnings. We show that the choice of regime measure matters by replicating studies published in leading journals.     

Marketing good works: new trends in how interest groups recruit supporters

Charities or interest groups need to attract supporters, who offer both financial support and participation, to achieve their overall goal of influencing public affairs. They can use political marketing to help them attract and retain such supporters. Existing literature indicates they use marketing techniques such as direct mail to communicate to potential new supporters, but new research has discovered that the influence of political marketing is much more comprehensive. The most effective groups are now using political marketing to design the package they offer to supporters. They go through a four‐stage process. First, they conduct market intelligence to understand what supporters want from the organisation and second, they design their product accordingly. Third, they communicate this to potential supporters and then finally deliver campaign progress and they communicate this to existing supporters. They use marketing concepts: they adopt a market orientation and build an organisation designed to take account of its users' needs and wants. Although such charities are often associated with non‐business behaviour, the most successful groups are adopting the concepts and techniques of comprehensive political marketing as the means to increase their influence on government and public affairs. Copyright © 2003 Henry Stewart Publications     

Sex,gender, and promotion in executive office: Cabinet careers in the world of Westminster

This article provides the first analysis of gendered promotion issues for cabinet ministers using most-similar systems design for three “Westminster-style” governments: Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. Using individual-level data and controlling for biographical, institutional, and country effects we find, in common with earlier literature, that women are more likely to be given less prestigious cabinet posts and be assigned to “feminine” portfolio. Using both sequence and event history analysis, we see the careers of men and women starkly diverge. We find that women are less likely to be promoted than men but find no relationship between prestigious portfolio and promotion. However, feminine portfolio assignments decrease the promotion prospects for women yet increase them for men.     

External affairs and trusted family businesses: A research agenda

In the past two decades, the Journal of Public Affairs has solidified corporate public affairs as a legitimate leadership skillset vital to driving future business growth. Yet, more work at a persistently overlooked gap in the Journal, the intersection of public affairs and family businesses, might shed new light on thriving, trusted, and sustainable business practices. This paper examines the unique contributions of family businesses as trusted influencers. As one of the most prominent forms of business, worldwide, family businesses persistently enjoy unusually high levels of public trust while collectively employing millions of wage earners yet their contributions to corporate external affairs research ostensibly have been largely overlooked. These “silent” community and social influencers offer a potentially new perspective on effective public outreach given their persistent and unique trust advantage. Family business' trust-based capabilities can potentially bring new insights to understanding effective stakeholder engagement, credible communications, and issues management—the sweet spot of corporate public affairs functions. Future research opportunities based on relational- and locational- advantages of trusted family businesses are identified.     

Linking parental incarceration and family dynamics associated with intergenerational transmission: A life‐course perspective*

Children experiencing parental incarceration face numerous additional disadvantages, but researchers have often relied on these other co‐occurring factors primarily as controls. In this article, we focus on the intimate links between crime and incarceration, as well as on the broader family context within which parental incarceration often unfolds. Thus, parents’ drug use and criminal behavior that precedes and may follow incarceration periods may be ongoing stressors that directly affect child well‐being. We also use our analyses to foreground mechanisms associated with social learning theories, including observations and communications that increase the child's risk for criminal involvement and other problem outcomes. These related family experiences often channel the child's own developing network ties (peers, romantic partners) that then serve as proximal influences. We explore these processes by drawing on qualitative and quantitative data from a study of the lives of a sample of respondents followed from adolescence to young adulthood, as well as on records searches of parents’ incarceration histories. Through our analyses, we find evidence that 1) some effects attributed to parental incarceration likely connect to unmeasured features of the broader family context, and b) together parental incarceration and the broader climate often constitute a tightly coupled package of family‐related risks linked to intergenerational continuities in criminal behavior and other forms of social disadvantage.     

Characterization and differentiation of cyclopropylfentanyl from E-crotonylfentanyl, Z-crotonylfentanyl,and 3-butenylfentanyl

Recently, a sample containing cyclopropylfentanyl was analyzed at this laboratory. Cyclopropylfentanyl began to appear in the United States' illicit drug markets in 2017. Unfortunately, cyclopropylfentanyl presents an analytical challenge due to its mass spectrum being almost identical to that of crotonylfentanyl. There are two possible isomers of crotonylfentanyl, Z- and E- crotonylfentanyl. In order to provide sufficient analytical data to distinguish the two isomers of crotonylfentanyl and cyclopropylfentanyl, crotonylfentanyl was synthesized and fully characterized. Each isomer was analyzed via nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, gas chromatography–mass spectrometry, and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. During the synthesis of crotonylfentanyl, an unknown compound was formed. The identification of this compound and the analytical characterization of the two isomers of crotonylfentanyl are presented. Through the comparison of these compounds, it was confirmed that cyclopropylfentanyl can be differentiated from crotonylfentanyl.