HISTORICAL CONTINGENCIES AND THE EVOLVING IMPORTANCE OF RACE,VIOLENT CRIME,AND REGION IN EXPLAINING MASS INCARCERATION IN THE UNITED STATES

This article combines insights from historical research and quantitative analyses that have attempted to explain changes in incarceration rates in the United States. We use state‐level decennial data from 1970 to 2010 (N = 250) to test whether recent theoretical models derived from historical research that emphasize the importance of specific historical periods in shaping the relative importance of certain social and political factors explain imprisonment. Also drawing on historical work, we examine how these key determinants differed in Sunbelt states, that is, the states stretching across the nation's South from the Atlantic coast to the Pacific, from the rest of the nation. Our findings suggest that the relative contributions of violent crime, minority composition, political ideology, and partisanship to imprisonment vary over time. We also extend our analysis beyond mass incarceration's rise to analyze how factors associated with prison expansion can explain its stabilization and contraction in the early twenty‐first century. Our findings suggest that most of the factors that best explained state incarceration rates in the prison boom era lost power once imprisonment stabilized and declined. We find considerable support for the importance of historical contingencies in shaping state‐level imprisonment trends, and our findings highlight the enduring importance of race in explaining incarceration.     

Bridging the Gender Gap In Bill Sponsorship

Under what circumstances do men sponsor issues that are traditionally regarded as salient primarily to women? By examining the sponsorship of legislation in the upper and lower chambers of 15 state legislatures in 2001, we explored the conditions under which men are likely to focus attention on policy areas involving women's issues and children's issues. We found little effect of institutional context (such as party control of the legislature or diversity within the legislature) on the sponsorship behavior of either men or women. Personal characteristics such as race, education, age, and family circumstances are associated with sponsorship by men, but not by women. Committee service is also strongly associated with sponsorship behavior, particularly for men. Differences in sponsorship are relatively marked in the sponsorship of legislation that focuses on reproduction or other health issues particularly relevant to women. We conclude that the boundaries of the set of issues traditionally defined as “women's issues” may be changing over time and that it is important to recognize that the influences on the sponsorship of women's issues can be different for men than they are for women.     

Does Reinvention Need Reinvention? Lessons from Tmncated Managerialism in Britain

Since the 1970s, reformers have pressed innovation in Whitehall management. However, the reinvention efforts by both the Thatcher and Major governments under the banners of public choice and managerialism have led the reform movement to a dead end. Using interviews ranging from 1978 to 1993 and drawing upon the works of public management theorists, this article analyzes the obstacles to reinventing government in the UK. Namely, the politicization of the process coupled with HM Treasuy's stronghold on expenditures has limited managerial discretion and built mistrust of veforms among civil servants. Rather than creating an environment conducive to innovations in public management, the UKs efforts have deepened the divide between policymakers and administrators.     

Spontaneous Adaptation in Public Management: An Overview

This collection addresses the issue of why it so often proves difficult to foster innovation in public management. Specifically, it focuses its attention on why reform efforts encounter so frequently intractable obstacles stemming from the erosion of the mutual regard among political executives and career officials for the integrity of each others' respective competences in the devising of policies and the crafting and implementation of decisions based upon these.