Legislative Victory, Electoral Uncertainty: Explaining Outcomes in the Battles over Lesbian and Gay Civil Rights

Previous studies indicate that in cases of relatively low issue salience, the interest group model best explains lesbian and gay antidiscrimination policy in the American states. The analysis of state and local public policy prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation concludes that for cases of high issue salience, the morality politics model best describes outcomes. The interest group politics model is used here in a case study of Wisconsin's passage of a comprehensive antidiscrimination policy, while the morality politics model is used to investigate the electoral outcomes of anti‐gay ballot initiatives in several states. The results of this analysis conform with prior research—when lesbian and gay issues are not salient, the interest group politics model best explains resulting policy, however, under salient conditions, the morality politics model best describes outcomes. Finally, the implications of this research for social scientists and activists are discussed.     

A Regulatory Analysis of International Climate Change Regulation

The political challenges impeding the negotiation of a comprehensive multilateral agreement on international climate change have received a great deal of attention. A question that has gone somewhat overlooked is what essential components an effective regulatory scheme to reduce greenhouse gas emissions should contain. The objective of this article is to examine the regulatory architecture of current international arrangements relating to global climate change regulation. A systematic analysis of the structure, substantive composition, and administrative characteristics of the UNFCCC and Kyoto Protocol is undertaken. The analytical standard against which the agreements are examined is whether current international regulatory arrangements satisfy the basic requirements of regulatory coherence. The analysis identifies how the present scheme consists of a complex institutional structure that lacks a substantive regulatory core. The implications of the absence of functional and effective mechanisms to govern greenhouse gas emission reductions are considered in relation to the principles of good regulatory design. This, in turn, provides useful insights into how a better regulatory scheme might be designed.     

NEUROPSYCHOLOGICAL TESTS PREDICTING PERSISTENT MALE DELINQUENCY*

This article reports the first longitudinal evidence that prospective measures of neuropsychological status predict antisocial outcomes. We studied data for a birth cohort of several hundred New Zealand males from age 13 to age 18. Age-13 neuropsychological scores predicted later delinquency measured via multiple sources: police, courts, and self-report. Poor neuropsychological scores were associated with early onset of delinquency. The results fit our predictions about two trajectories of delinquent involvement: (1) Poor neuropsychological status predicted specifically male offending that began before age 13 and persisted at high levels thereafter. (2) By contrast, in this sample neuropsychological status was unrelated to delinquency that began in adolescence.     

PRISONERS' ATTITUDES TOWARD COMPONENTS OF THE LEGAL AND JUDICIAL SYSTEMS

Prisoners' attitudes toward components of the legal and judicial systems are reviewed and analyzed with data collected from prisoners in their first several days of incarceration. These data are analyzed within subgroups of the prison population. In general, attitudes toward the police are negative, attitudes toward the law and the judicial system are mixed, and attitudes toward lawyers are positive. However, preprison and prison status factors influence the attitudes held by prisoners, and these different patterns of influence are discussed.