Gender Role Ideologies and Marriage Promotion: State Policy Choices and Suggestions for Improvement

The 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunities Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) lists marriage as one of the major strategies for reducing welfare dependency among clients of the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) Program along with work requirements and time limits. President George W. Bush has allocated over $240 million to the individual states to create programs to promote and sustain marriages, with specific attention given to encouraging marriage among the low‐income, welfare‐reliant population. We suggest that this policy is based upon a specific gender ideology that seems to ignore the reality of the lives of poor women with children and may be, as some critics suggest, an attempt at “legislating patriarchy.” In this work, we trace the social changes that shaped this ideology, present the options the states have taken to encourage marriage, discuss flaws in the philosophy and implementation of these policies, and provide suggestions for improving program design.     

Service Efforts and Accomplishments Standards: Fundamental Questions of an Emerging Concept

In 1994, the Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB) adopted and published Concepts Statement No. 2, Service Efforts and Accomplishments Reporting} Although service efforts and accomplishments (SEA) is not a common term, this statement establishes the foundation for the subsequent adoption of reporting requirements that may expand the boundaries of reporting to significantly increase the amount of non-financial information that states and municipalities will report, as well as the cost of external reporting Budget analysts are among prospective users of SEA information. A study of comment letters filed in response to the exposure draft, which preceded Concepts Statement No. 2, shows two divergent views of SEA reporting requirements.2 Support for SEA reporting requirements is grounded in a vision of the potential benefits of SEA reporting;3 opposition to SEA standards is grounded in concerns about potential consequences of instituting reporting requirements.4 The strength of opposition to SEA reporting requirements suggests that consideration of the rationale for standards setting is appropriate. In this article, commonly expressed concerns about reporting requirements are incorporated into five questions. Analysis of these questions evidences the weakness of the rationale for SEA standards as distinguished from the rationale for voluntary SEA reporting. Two proposals are advanced to address concerns about SEA reporting requirements. First, adoption of models of information use from the disciplines of public administration and political science is encouraged. Second, modification of the standard setting process to reflect the non-financial domain of SEA is advocated. Thus, it is proposed that standard setters adopt approaches that emphasize cross-disciplinary research, cooperation with other organizations, and active extension of due process to new stakeholders.     

Poor educational standards and Part V of the Education Act 1 993

This article offers a critical examination of Part V of the Education Act 1993, which builds on the quality assurance regime provided for by the Education (Schools) Act 1992. Among its many important provisions are new powers for special measures to be taken in respect of ‘failing’ schools.     

A decade of dissent: explaining the dissent voting behavior of Bank of England MPC members

We examine the dissent voting record of the Bank of England Monetary Policy Committee. Contrary to findings in the FOMC literature (for example Havrilesky and Schweitzer in The Political Economy of American Monetary Policy, pp. 197?C210, 1990; Chappell et al. in Q. J. Econ. 108(1):185?C218, 1993), the effects of members?? career backgrounds and the political channel of appointment on voting behavior are negligible, reflecting the distinct institutional constraints and incentives associated with UK monetary policy. Our findings also suggest that literature which characterizes voting behavior as being predominantly determined by members?? internal or external status is overly simplistic. This view is supported by econometric results appertaining to the introduction of member-specific fixed-effects, which account for possible unobserved heterogeneity.     

Intimate Partner Homicide: Risk Assessment and Prospects for Prediction

Little is known about assessing the risk of intimate partner homicide (IPH). Research has shown that women killed by an intimate partner scored higher than abuse survivors in retrospectively measured risk for IPH. In this study, we examined the characteristics of 146 men who committed an actual or attempted act of IPH. Of these, 42% had prior criminal charges, 15% had a psychiatric history, and 18% had both; events which could feasibly have permitted a prior formal assessment of risk. We also identified a subsample of 30 who could be scored on the Ontario Domestic Assault Risk Assessment (ODARA; Hilton et al., Psychological Assessment, 16, 267–275, 2004). The mean ODARA score was at the 80th percentile of risk for domestic violence, although only 13 had a previously documented partner assault. We conclude that co-operation among sectors responding to domestic violence and the shared use of validated risk assessment will increase the prediction and potential prevention of IPH.     

Interstate Relations,Perceptions, and Power Balance: Explaining China’s Policies Toward Ethnic Groups, 1949–1965

Why do multi-ethnic states treat various ethnic groups differently? How do ethnic groups respond to these state policies? We argue that interstate relations and ethnic group perceptions about the relative strength of competing states are important—but neglected—factors in accounting for the variation in state-ethnic group relations. In particular, whether an ethnic group is perceived as having an external patron matters a great deal for the host state's treatment of the group. If the external patron of the ethnic group is an enemy of the host state, then repression is likely. If it is an ally, then accommodation ensues. Given the existence of an external patron, an ethnic group's response to a host state's policies depends on the perceptions about the relative strength of the external patron vis-à-vis the host state and whether the support is originating from an enemy or an ally of the host state. We present five configurations and illustrate our theoretical framework on the eighteen largest ethnic groups in China from 1949 to 1965, tracing the Chinese government's policies toward these groups, and examine how each group responded to these various nation-building policies.