Is there a key to the normative budgeting lock?

This article explores how to answer the normative question: What is a good budgetary process? It proposes that a deliberative process involving practitioners and academics could identify and justify achievably ambitious standards for budgetary processes, and the best practices for attaining those standards. In hopes of beginning that deliberation, the article sets out a prototype model, and then applies the model to the federal budgetary process.     

The Contagion Effects of the Feminist Initiative in Sweden: Agenda‐setting,Niche Parties and Mainstream Parties

As new parties have emerged in Europe on the left and the right, they have placed pressure on mainstream parties to adjust their issue positions and engage with new issues. This research note asks whether women's parties have the same effect. Analysing election manifestos of the mainstream parties in Sweden from 1991 to 2014, this article considers the extent to which the Swedish Feminist Initiative (F!) has influenced the attention parties pay to women's issues. The data indicate that a profound discursive change has occurred among these parties in Sweden around gender and women's roles in society, resulting in near consensus that gender inequality is a problem necessitating government action. There is gradual evolution for most of the period under study but a marked departure from past trends in 2014, coinciding with the emergence of F! as a contender for EU and parliamentary seats. Consistent with contagion theory, the concerns of women acquired urgency as F! grew more competitive. News coverage and public comment by political parties suggests that F! has had disproportionate influence, given its electoral support, on the issue agenda of the mainstream parties, pressuring them to ‘take up’ the issues of this niche party and engaging them in a competitive struggle to address women's issues in politics. The results indicate that we should look more closely at women's parties as a tactical choice of social movements to enhance women's representation and encourage public discourse about gender and power.     

The "Ball of Confusion" in Federal Budgeting: A Shadow Agenda for Deliberative Reform of the Budget Process

The budget process is seriously flawed, as Irene Rubin suggests, but there is little prospect for its effective reform. Current economic and political conditions could open the window for reform, but the excessive partisanship that helped create these conditions also has reduced the pool of institutionalists who could lead reforms. More important is confusion about which reforms might be most effective. Most proposed reforms would create more rules, but they will not work unless politicians commit to meeting the goals such rules are intended to support. Those commitments could be produced by deliberation over critical issues that have been neglected in recent discussions of budget process reform: how the process could support macroeconomic policy making, how improved budget concepts could accurately measure finances and aid in dealing with upcoming policy challenges, how reorganization could enable intelligent priority setting, and how the process could be better aligned with the constitutional sharing of powers and the electoral system.     

Parental Self-Efficacy and Bullying in Elementary School

This study investigated associations of general and specific parental self-efficacy factors with bullying and peer victimization behaviors among 142 fourth and fifth graders and their parents. Using structural equation modeling, exploratory factor analysis was used to examine one general parenting self-efficacy measure and a bullying-specific parent self-efficacy measure. The latter produced two unique factors: (a) self-efficacy to know when one’s child is bullied, and (b) self-efficacy to respond to one’s child being bullied. Child reports of bullying and peer victimization were simultaneously regressed on the three (i.e., one general and two specific) parent self-efficacy factors. Findings revealed that parental self-efficacy to know when one’s child is bullied was uniquely and negatively associated with both bullying and victimization. Additionally, and contrary to expectations, parental self-efficacy to respond when one’s child is being bullied was uniquely and positively associated with victimization.     

The isolation and identification of precursors and reaction products in the clandestine manufacture of methaqualone and mecloqualone

Abuse of the hypnotic quinazolinone is well recognized and increasing. Clandestine laboratories producing methaqualone (2-methyl-3-ortho-tolyl-4(3H) quinazolinone) and mecloqualone (2-methyl-3-ortho-chlorophenyl-4(3H) quinazolinone) have been discovered throughout the United States. These laboratories utilize one of many synthesis routes to produce the illicit quinazolinone. Frequently, the clandestine chemist has little, if any, formal education in chemistry; does not keep notes; and does not label flasks and beakers containing solutions. The forensic chemist may be asked to analyze unmarked reaction mixtures that were seized in a clandestine laboratory raid. As a result, a rapid method of isolation and identification of the precursors and products of such a mixture is presented.     

More, Less, or More of the Same? Trends in State Social Welfare Policy in the 1990s

Major reforms to cash assistance and other welfare programsin the 1990s raise questions about whether states gained newflexibility in setting social policies, and, if so, how theyexercised this flexibility. We extend prior research on statesocial policy by examining trends during the middle to late1990s in five areas of cash or near-cash policy affecting theeconomic security of low-income families. We find evidence ofsubstantial change in the generosity and the availability ofthese benefits between 1994 and 1999, along with evidence ofgreater divergence or cross-state variation in policy choices.By considering several forms of assistance simultaneously, wealso find evidence that states constricted traditional welfare-basedassistance while expanding some forms of non-welfare supportfor the working poor.