Reintegration and localised conflict: security impacts beyond influencing spoilers

This article investigates the effectiveness of combatant reintegration through a case study of two security-oriented programmes held in Poso, Indonesia from 2007 to 2008. Each programme aimed to prevent further attacks by addressing perceived economic difficulties experienced by youths whose main skill was perpetrating violence. The effect of such reintegration programmes on potential spoilers has typically been conceptualised in terms of programme influences on former combatants themselves. But in a localised conflict context where many combatants may have held jobs while perpetrating violence, the paper finds that the clearest contribution to sustaining peace of reintegration programming was its effect on police capacity to manage security. Police increased their levels of contact with combatants through reintegration and other informal incentives, then leveraged this contact to gather information after security incidents and to detect potential security disturbances. This pattern of achieving security outcomes through police contact with perpetrators of violence owes its conceptual lineage to the counter-terrorism strategy of the Indonesian police. The case highlights the potential for greater exchange between the fields of combatant reintegration and counter-terrorism disengagement.     

Cannabis policy diffusion in Ontario and New Brunswick: Coercion,learning, and replication

This article integrates Hall’s (1993) social learning framework, as well as more recent contributions, into the literature on policy diffusion to better identify the goals, instruments, and precise settings for recreational cannabis policy in New Brunswick and Ontario. We analyze committee hearings, Hansard debates, and government reports and find that policy diffused via three mechanisms: coercion due to the federal criminal law power, learning from Washington and Colorado, and replication of analogous provincial policies concerning tobacco and alcohol. We also find the non‐binding federal Task Force on Cannabis Legalization and Regulation had a considerable effect on the diffusion of goals, instruments, and settings.     

Effects of the Minimum Wage on Infant Health

The minimum wage has increased in multiple states over the past three decades and it continues to be a controversial policy. Most prior research has examined the effect of the minimum wage on employment and wages. In this study, we examine the impact of the state minimum wage on infant health. Using data on the universe of births in the U.S. over 24 years, we find that an increase in the minimum wage is associated with a small, but statistically significant increase in birthweight driven primarily by increased fetal growth rate. Effects are largest for young, married mothers. In terms of mechanisms, we find no evidence that prenatal care use and smoking during pregnancy are channels through which minimum wage improves infant health.     

Experimentation at the interface of science and policy: a multi-case analysis of how policy experiments influence political decision-makers

For decades now, scholars have grappled with questions about how knowledge producers can enhance the influence of their knowledge on users and improve policy making. However, little attention has been paid to how policy experiments, a flexible and ex ante method of policy appraisal, obtain influence over political decision-making. To address this gap, an exploratory framework has been developed that facilitates systematic analysis of multiple experiments, allowing hypotheses to be tested regarding how an experiment’s institutional design can influence the views of political decision-makers. Cash’s categories of effectiveness are used to describe an experiment’s conceptual influence; being how credible, salient, and legitimate decision-makers perceive an experiment to be. The hypotheses are tested using 14 experiment cases found relevant to climate adaptation in the Netherlands, with complete survey responses from over 70 respondents. The results show that although, in general, the experiments had medium to high influence on decision-makers, institutional design does have a noticeable impact. Organisers should make choices carefully when designing an experiment, particularly in order to maintain relevance during an experiment’s implementation and to build community acceptance. Suggestions for future research include a comparison of experiment effects with the effects of non-experimental forms of appraisal, such as piloting or ex ante impact assessment.     

Measuring parentage policy in the Canadian provinces: A comparative framework

This paper develops a framework to measure parentage policy based on the legal barriers faced by intended parents, taking into account eligibility requirements, rules for genetic relationships, and surrogacy contract enforceability. It then applies this framework to the Canadian provinces. While parentage policy in Canada is undoubtedly a patchwork, policy change has moved in an increasingly permissive direction, often as a result of litigation. Moreover, this study provides an opportunity to develop broader research project for comparative scholars of parentage policy. Future studies of parentage policy, building from the framework developed here, should qualitatively examine the role of policy implementers other than legislatures and determine how policy learning and transfer affect parentage policy change. Because parentage policy can provide legal certainty for parents and prevent legal disputes, understanding the factors behind policy change is an endeavour with both theoretical and practical significance.     

Policing Unauthorized Camping

We argue that the links between welfare, policing, and exclusion, though rarely made explicit, nevertheless form the undercurrent of the modern neo-liberal state. In making this argument, we draw particularly upon the voluminous literature which amplifies the seminal work of Foucault, especially as it relates to government. Thereafter, we apply this set of understandings to the way in which the unauthorized encampments of Gypsies and Travellers are policed. We concentrate first on the construction of legislation and its legal aftermath. Subsequently, we draw upon case study evidence to illustrate our thesis, particularly focusing on the sorting processes of decision-makers.     

Trade unions and NGOs: the need for cooperation

The challenges posed by economic globalisation make it imperative that civil society organisations break down the barriers that have traditionally divided them, in order to ensure that the rights of those who are marginalised or vulnerable are kept firmly on the international agenda. In particular, globalisation brings fresh impetus to the need to forge alliances between the trade union movement and NGOs concerned with social and economic development. While there is plenty of evidence of successful cooperation, major problems, fears, suspicions, and at times hostilities remain between them. Some of these are substantial and sharp policy differences, but others are the consequence of colliding political or organisational cultures, prejudices, financial competition, and a mutual lack of understanding of respective roles and objectives. Debates surrounding the organisation of workers in the informal economy, including the ILO discussion in June 2002, provide a useful case study.     

Rap Music Genres and Deviant Behaviors in French-Canadian Adolescents

This study investigated the links between the preference for 4 rap music genres (American rap, French rap, hip hop/soul, and gangsta/hardcore rap) and 5 types of deviant behaviors in adolescence (violence, theft, street gangs, mild drug use, and hard drug use). The effects of peers' deviancy, violent media, and importance given to lyrics were statistically controlled. A self-report questionnaire was distributed to a sample of 348 bilingual French-Canadian adolescents (age: M = 15.32; SD = 0.9; 185 girls and 163 boys). Results indicated that rap music as a whole was linked to deviant behaviors, however the nature of the relation differed according to genres. Preference for French rap had the strongest links to deviant behaviors, whereas preference for hip hop/soul was linked to less deviant behaviors. Results are discussed within the psychosocial and sociocognitive perspectives on music influence in adolescence and also within the perspective of normative deviant behaviors in adolescence.     

‘Yeah but,no but’ – Pinnock and Powell in the Supreme Court

This note considers the Supreme Court decisions in Manchester CC v Pinnock and Hounslow LBC v Powell. It is argued that there are a number of remaining outstanding questions around proportionality, including: deference; section 89, Housing Act 1980; procedural issues; ‘publicness’; and the future landscape.