A Multiple Streams Analysis of Institutional Innovation in Forest Watershed Governance

Increasingly severe wildfires have focused attention on forested watershed vulnerabilities, causing significant changes to policies and governance. We utilized the Multiple Streams Approach (MSA) to understand institutional innovations of federal agency–large water provider partnerships in Colorado to protect watersheds through joint planning and funding. Ambiguous problem definition and focusing events were significant aspects of these partnerships. We interviewed individuals in the partnerships, with MSA ideas of how solutions to policy problems develop, and the role of policy entrepreneurs. We found that wildfires served as focusing events, creating space and time for learning, collaboration and new problem framing, increased political attention, and institutional innovation. In this study, windows of opportunity stayed open longer, policy entrepreneurs and agencies played larger roles in communication and coupling streams and the context of fast‐moving, unpredictable ecological crises changed responses to issues. Our findings also have implications for broader policy studies and environmental governance scholarship.     

Integrating ethics into the public administration curriculum: A three-step process

This article provides a three-step process for analyzing public policy dilemmas with ethical implications. A framework is proposed that builds on existing ethics theories and attempts to provide a relevant, usable approach for decisionmaking. A review of current thought in ethics indicates a concern for two areas: (a) responsibilities to relevant constituencies; and (b) adherence to moral obligations. The framework presented herein directly addresses both of these areas of concern. The authors have found this approach to be useful for classroom applications. This process is simple to explain, understand, and apply to a range of administrative situations. Students find the framework a memorable tool, useful in structuring deliberations with ethical implications. Sample applications of the framework provide examples for educators interested in integrating ethics into their advanced undergraduate and graduate courses.     

Paid Family Leave,Fathers’ Leave‐Taking,and Leave‐Sharing in Dual‐Earner Households

Using difference‐in‐difference and difference‐in‐difference‐in‐difference designs, we study California's Paid Family Leave (CA‐PFL) program, the first source of government‐provided paid parental leave available to fathers in the Unites States. Relative to the pre‐treatment mean, fathers of infants in California are 46 percent more likely to be on leave when CA‐PFL is available. In households where both parents work, we find suggestive evidence that CA‐PFL increases both father‐only leave‐taking (i.e., father on leave while mother is at work) and joint leave‐taking (i.e., both parents on leave at the same time). Effects are larger for fathers of first‐born children than for fathers of later‐born children.     

Hope Springs Eternal: An Exploration of Hope at a Local Jail

Prevention and intervention research has indicated the malleability of hope in a variety of populations and the positive impact on treatment outcomes in general clinical settings and substance use treatment. However, despite its prospective role in improving well-being, research on hope is not often situated behind bars. Thus, the current project intended to explore the nature of theory-driven hope discussions for women involved in justice systems. The aim was to maintain and enhance hope, activate positivity, and thereby enhance the quality of life.

Four weekly focus group sessions were conducted with women detained at a local jail (n?=?23), with discussion prompts based on Snyder’s theory of hope (goal setting, agency thinking, and pathway thinking). Using interactional delivery methods, we emphasized hope among jailed women by: (1) facilitating the development and maintenance of hopeful thinking; (2) developing concrete goals towards rehabilitation and a positive life; (3) enhancing the capacity for developing enduring, cross-sectional strategies for goal attainment; and (4) facilitating self-analysis on their overall ability to produce workable plans required to reach the goals. Weekly journaling was also included to complement the process.

Results from the qualitative analysis suggest hope for these jailed women was constructed as belief in a better future and was also often embedded within a religious worldview. Further, jailed women’s perceptions of meeting goals were heavily dependent upon outside sources that would provide structure and discipline. Implications include providing strength-based reentry programs, offering mentorship, emphasizing goal-setting strategies, and reviewing visitation policies.     

Distributive Justice Antecedents of Race and Gender Disparities in First-Year College Performance

Public education is a sphere of society in which distributive justice with respect to the allocation of opportunities to learn can have profound and lasting effects on students’ educational outcomes. We frame our study in the distributive justice literature, and define just outcomes specifically from a meritocratic and strict egalitarian perspectives in order to investigate how assignment to academic tracks and the availability of opportunities to learn during high school are associated with students’ academic achievement during college. We examine the role of “just” placement into high school academic tracks, “just” access to high-quality teachers, and “just” assignment of secondary schools’ resources in high school, in relation to college freshmen’s grade point averages (GPA). We utilize longitudinal data from a unique dataset with over 15,000 students who spent their academic careers in North Carolina public secondary schools and then attended North Carolina public universities. Our results suggest that “unjust” assignment of students to certain high schools, access to high-quality teachers, and assignment to learn in specific academic tracks result in long-lasting consequences that are reflected in freshman college GPA. Importantly, findings also show that the direction and magnitude of the relationship between distributional injustice at schools and college performance is moderated by students’ own gender and race. Race and gender interact with the high schools’ institutional contexts operationalized by tracking practices, teacher quality, and by school racial and socioeconomic composition. Results show that similar settings do not affect all students in the same ways.