Types of Malingering in PTSD: Evidence from a Psychological Injury Paradigm

Psychological Injury and Law - The extent to which persons may feign or malinger psychological symptoms is an important concern for civil litigation, specifically in the context of personal injury....     

Strategic use of evidence in state-level policymaking: matching evidence type to legislative stage

Although interest in research utilization in the policy process has grown, how advocates strategically deploy different types of evidence to influence lawmakers remains not well understood. In this paper, we draw on the Advocacy Coalition Framework and the Narrative Policy Framework to show how various types of evidence—from empirical findings to personal anecdotes—were utilized by advocates during the 2 years leading to the passage of California’s historic 2010 law to extend foster care. The result was a generous and flexible entitlement policy passed with bipartisan support in the context of a recession, a state budget deficit, and an ambivalent governor. We find that leaders of a diverse advocacy coalition strategically showcased different types of evidence at specific moments in the legislative process. Each evidence type can be tied to a specific narrative element and strategy. Advocates first used research evidence to convince lawmakers of the policy’s effectiveness, then used professional expertise and benefit-cost analysis to convince them it would come at an acceptable cost, and finally used personal narratives to motivate them to act. We conclude that though benefit-cost analyses play an integral role in policymaking during a time of austerity, advocacy coalitions may still benefit from personal stories that lend emotional potency and urgency.     

College Socialization and the Economic Views of Affluent Americans

Affluent Americans support more conservative economic policies than the nonaffluent, and government responds disproportionately to these views. Yet little is known about the emergence of these consequential views. We develop, test, and find support for a theory of class cultural norms: These preferences are partly traceable to socialization that occurs on predominantly affluent college campuses, especially those with norms of financial gain, and especially among socially embedded students. The economic views of the student's cohort also matter, in part independently of affluence. We use a large panel data set with a high response rate and more rigorous causal inference strategies than previous socialization studies. The affluent campus effect holds with matching, among students with limited school choice, and in a natural experiment; and it passes placebo tests. College socialization partly explains why affluent Americans support economically conservative policies.     

State Capacity,Bureaucratic Politicization,and Corruption in the Brazilian State

Responding to recent articles in Governance highlighting the need for improved measurement of bureaucratic characteristics, this article describes efforts to map Brazil's federal agencies on three dimensions—capacity, autonomy, and partisan dominance—derived from data on more than 326,000 civil servants. The article provides a “proof of concept” about the utility of agency‐level measures of these variables, demonstrating how they relate to an output common to all agencies: corruption. The article provides a first step in the direction of building a comparative research program that offers objective evaluation of bureaucracies within nation‐states, with the intent of better disentangling their impact on governance outcomes.     

The influence of business associations on legislation: The case of Kenya

Interest groups seek to influence public policy. Business associations specifically seek to influence policy related to the environment in which their members operate, with the intention of making it easier for the members, and the wider private sector, to “do business.” Scholars question whether interest groups are influential and, if so, the degree to which their activity influences public policy. Even if they do influence public policy at the margins, it is questionable how effective they are in influencing legislation. As a result, there is little exploration of the factors that may determine whether business membership organizations (BMOs) are likely to be successful. This paper explores the efforts of two BMOs in Kenya to influence legislation: In one case, the BMO persuaded the government to introduce legislation to regulate an activity that had previously not been subject to legislation; in the other, a BMO sought to persuade the government to amend its own proposals to replace existing legislation with new legislation. In both cases, we find evidence that the BMO was successful, though one BMO was significantly more successful than the other. We review the factors perceived by the BMOs to have led to their success. Neither was in a position to rely on economic or other power to strong‐arm the government. Both followed a predominantly insider strategy though with occasional media back‐up. Both were successful on the more “technical” issues. Key factors include the use of a champion, engaging across government, supplying information, and providing evidence and good argumentation.     

Gender,ethnicity and feminism: an intersectional analysis of the lived experiences feminist academic women in UK higher education

Studies have begun to explore how those women academics committed to social justice, namely feminist academics, are navigating the increasingly managerial Academy. To understand how these multiple social identities, including gender and ethnicity, interact and intersect, this paper adopts an intersectional approach to understanding the heterogeneity of women’s experiences in academia. Five focus groups with feminist academics (n = 6–10 in each focus group) reveal concerns of hampered career progression as a consequence of being female and openly feminist. Some ethnic minority academics felt that they were forced to choose between a feminist identity or that of their ethnic background. For some women, their feminist identity provided opportunities for challenging dominant practices. The paper concludes that the heterogeneity of feminist academics’ experiences within academia is under-researched and that the lens of intersectionality helps to illuminate this. This paper advances understanding of multiple identities at work, though demonstrating that intersectionality can lead to the accumulation of advantage as well as disadvantage in relation to social identities such as gender and ethnicity, and a political identity such as feminist.     

‘Living Rights’, rights claims,performative citizenship and young people – the right to vote in the Scottish independence referendum

This paper examines the rights claims-making that young people engaged in during the 2014 Scottish independence referendum when the right to vote was extended to 16- and 17-year-olds for the first time in the UK. Understanding citizenship and rights claims-making as performative, we draw on the novel idea of ‘living rights’ to explore how young people ‘shape what these rights are – and become – in the social world’. They are co-existent and situated within the everyday lives of young people, and transcend the traditional idea that rights are merely those that are enshrined in domestic and/or international law. We explore the complex and contested nature of rights claims that were made by young people as ‘active citizens’ in the lead up to the referendum to illustrate how the rights claims-making by young people is bound up with the performativity of citizenship that entails identity construction, political subjectivity (that challenges adult-centric approaches) and social justice.     

Single,straight, wants kids: media framing of single,heterosexual fatherhood via assisted reproduction

The new reproductive technologies have made possible various postmodern family forms. I highlight an emerging form that has received little attention: single fathers by choice (SFCs), created by single men using egg donation and surrogacy. I focus on heterosexual SFCs, which have been largely ignored in the scholarly literature even as gay and lesbian parenthood have increasingly become topics of feminist inquiry. This type of fatherhood raises several important questions for gender and family scholars about the ‘traditional’ family, the relationship between masculinity and fatherhood, and men’s own desires for parenthood without a female partner. I analyze US media framing to explore cultural sense-making of SFCs. While media framing cannot tell us about men’s lived experiences as intentional single fathers, it does point to larger discourses that potentially impact these men as they engage in non-normative fathering. I identify three core themes within the media frames: (1) viewing men and women as similar, but ultimately different, (2) addressing the tension between bachelorhood and fatherhood, and (3) representing the gender of paternal desire in multiple, conflicting ways. Overall, I argue that further investigations of SFCs can illuminate issues about men’s desires for children and agency in becoming fathers.