Pedagogy of individual choice and female inmate reentry in the U.S. Southwest

Much of the mental health, substance use, and educational programming within a particular women's prison in the southwestern United States promotes individual choice and agency. Incarcerated women from rural areas are told that their ability to succeed outside of prison is primarily dependent upon their personal choices. Comparably little attention is given to preparing women for their upcoming release or to overcoming structural barriers that could undermine successful reentry within rural communities. As a result, these returning citizens, many of whom grapple with mental illness and alcohol or drug dependence, blame themselves for their inability to surmount these barriers. In this qualitative research, we draw upon the perspectives of 99 incarcerated women to clarify how ideologies of individual choice promulgated in reentry pedagogy clash with contextual factors within rural communities to derail the reentry process. We also consider community reentry from Amartya Sen's capabilities framework and discuss how this model could inform needed interventions.     

Support Structures and Constitutional Change: Teles,Southworth, and the Conservative Legal Movement

This essay reviews two recent works in political science on the American conservative legal movement: Steven M. Teles's The Rise of the Conservative Legal Movement: The Battle for Control of the Law (2008) and Ann Southworth's Lawyers of the Right: Professionalizing the Conservative Coalition (2008). It examines these books in the context of a larger debate over the variables that best explain constitutional change in general and the recent “conservative counterrevolution” in Supreme Court jurisprudence in particular. It shows how these studies build on the scholarship of Charles Epp, who argued in The Rights Revolution (1998) that serious constitutional change requires not only the right cast of characters on the court, but also a strong “support structure” in the legal profession and civil society. Finally, it draws on the author's own research on the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy to illustrate some important avenues for further inquiry.     

Waste in the Sewer: The Collapse of Accountability and Transparency in Public Finance in Jefferson County,Alabama

Following failed auctions for sewer debt in April 2008, major bond rating companies downgraded Jefferson County, Alabama’s bond rating to D (default) triggering massive mandatory payments by the county to its creditors. At the time of writing, the county teeters on the brink of actual default and bankruptcy, unable to pay service on its $3.3 billion sewer debt portfolio. If the county defaults, it will be the largest municipal bankruptcy in United States history, eclipsing Orange County, California’s 1994 default. The intriguingly complex tale of the Jefferson County debt crisis is recounted here by identifying and examining failures of transparency and accountability by local bureaucratic and political actors, private financial institutions, as well as the larger regulatory framework governing public finance. Enhanced regulation of local government and the financial sector plus greater local government capacity to close accountability gaps and thus prevent future crises of similar scale in this or other jurisdictions are recommended.     

PBB in American Local Governments: It's More than a Management Tool

Despite academic findings that performance information seldom is used in appropriations decisions, many professional organizations and governments continue to press for integrating performance information into local public management, planning, and budgeting processes. Is it possible to reconcile such inconsistencies? Looking beyond the executive–legislative relationship and departmental appropriations, the author examines the budget implications of applying performance information at the subdepartmental program level. Case analysis of Indianapolis’s IndyStat initiative underscores that performance measurement application is positively related to intradepartmental program budget changes. Hence, performance‐based budgeting (PBB) can improve local budgeting despite severe political constraints. Still, successful use of PBB requires strong executive leadership, and its effects remain less visible at the departmental level or within the wider political arena of legislative bargaining. The author concludes by recommending some rethinking of the current analytical focus of PBB both in future research as well as recommended practice.     

Disparities in the Spending Needs of Highland Municipalities

A certain rough consensus holds that highland municipalities have higher spending needs than others, because of the particularly adverse conditions in which they provide essential public services. However, there is no empirical evidence to support this assertion. This study examines whether any relevant differences actually exist in the spending policies of highland and lowland municipalities. To this end, we make logarithmic estimations of per capita municipal spending in order to determine whether the indicators selected, which are based on local government powers, adequately reflect spending needs. Our results point to the special circumstances of highland districts as a key explanatory factor for higher municipal spending, along with demographic factors, locational population patterns, economic activity, subsidies, and local fiscal capacity.     

The Durability of EU Civil Service Policy in Central and Eastern Europe after Accession

This article examines the post‐accession durability of EU civil service policy in Central and Eastern Europe (CEECs). Civil service professionalization was a condition for EU membership but the European Commission has no particular sanctions available if CEECs reverse pre‐accession reforms after gaining membership. Comparing eight CEECs that joined the EU in 2004, the article finds that post‐accession civil service developments are characterized by great diversity. The three Baltic States continued civil service reforms, while Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Poland, and Slovenia are classified as cases of post‐accession reform reversal. The post‐accession pathway of Hungary is identified as a case of reform reorientation. The diversity in post‐accession pathways was almost exclusively the result of domestic political constellations, in particular, patterns of government alternation after accession. There were hardly any factors that could have locked in the level of professionalization that had been reached at the time of accession.     

The Limits of Policy Diffusion: Introducing International Norms of Anti‐Money Laundering into China's Legal System

This article examines the contribution of policy diffusion to create a regulatory system against money laundering in China. A two‐level analysis of transnational interactions and domestic law making shows how Communist Party prerogatives shape the insertion of multilateral norms into the legal system. In a contentious process of local accommodation, transnationally engaged technocratic bodies, turf‐conscious bureaucracies, and powerful party organs struggle to reconcile the goals of promoting global economic expansion, gaining international recognition, and absorbing innovative regulatory tools while preserving tight domestic control. In effect, Chinese policymakers try to utilize policy diffusion as a mechanism for negotiating and promoting the nation's global rise. Yet, when it comes to implementation, global regulatory standards are weakened or even neutralized through discretionary enforcement. The depth and robustness of normative assimilation therefore remain uncertain.