The Density of State Interest-Communities: Do Regional Variables Matter?

To better understand state interest-group politics, this studycompares two approaches to understanding the density of theirinterest communities. The first approach—Gray and Lowery'senergy, stability, area model of density—emphasizes asmall set of political and economic variables operative withineach state in accounting for density. The second, of which thereare several examples, emphasizes a regional level of analysis.The two approaches are evaluated as both independent and complementaryaccounts of state interest-community density using 1990 statelobby-registration data. Although some evidence of modest underspecificationin the Gray and Lowery model is found, regional or spatiallybased variables only have a small impact on the density of stateinterest-communities.     

MAKING IT WORK

With the prevalence of divorce in our country, there is a serious need of services for divorcing families to be readily available and offered in a manner to increase the use of the services. Early intervention with the divorcing family is critical to help alleviate levels of parental conflict and decrease potential litigation. This article is an evaluation of the first year of court-mandated parenting psychoeducational workshops. The results demonstrate the positive effects of the workshops for most divorcing parents in terms of levels of ongoing conflict between parents, children's adjustment as observed by the parents, parents' adjustment, and parents' ability to settle the legal issues of the divorce and keep the children out of the middle of the conflict.     

Adolescent response to the death of a parent

Participants in the present study, while between the ages of 12 and 19, had a parent die. The death had occurred not less than 6 months and not more than 5 years prior to psychological testing and interview. The effects of loss, as assessed by the Beck Depression Inventory and other measures, were considered in relation to a number of independent factors. Factors found to influence healthy adaptation included high levels of informal social support postloss, good relations with the surviving parent prior to loss, a balanced personality style, and presence of religious beliefs.Received Ph.D. in psychology from University of Toronto. Research interest is applied clinical research.     

A policy mix experiment to promote start-up success: exploratory evaluation of the NSF Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR)/Industry University Cooperative Research Center (IUCRC) membership supplement

The Journal of Technology Transfer - This paper investigates the outcomes of a policy experiment, the NSF SBIR/IUCRC Membership Supplement, designed to promote the success of small high-tech...     

The political management of managed care: explaining variations in state health maintenance organization regulations

In the 1990s, strong incentives for managed care organizations to control costs, once regarded as a fortuitous confluence of interests, came to be seen as antithetical to consumers' interests in quality of care. In response to this change in political climate, many states have greatly increased their regulatory control of managed care organizations since the mid-1990s. This activity is surprising in an era when public policy on health care issues is usually described as frozen, gridlocked, and/or stalemated as a result of intense activity on the part of organized interests. We take advantage of the variation in state regulations of health maintenance organizations (HMOs) to discover why some governments are able to address policy problems that are often perceived as intractable in a political if not in a true policy sense. From the history of HMOs, the backlash against managed care, and state responses to that backlash, we first extract a number of hypotheses about state regulatory activity. We then test these hypotheses with data on regulatory adoptions by states during the late 1990s and the early 2000s. Last, we discuss the findings with special attention to the role of politics in health care.