Environmental Justice as Scalar Parity: Lessons From Nuclear Waste Management

The development of major infrastructure projects, such as power stations, waste facilities or transport networks, commonly raises concerns of how to ensure environmental justice within policy and planning. Environmental justice has been divergently theorised, though procedural/participative, distributive and recognition-related elements are commonly cited. With growing inter-disciplinarity between normative ethics and the geographic social sciences, there is a renewed interest in the scalar aspects of environmental justice (particularly in relation to infrastructure projects)—how the framing of environmental decisions at multiple and conflicting scales results in disparities between locally affected communities, and regional and national decision-making authorities. In analysing this problem, the paper has three principal aims. The first is to outline the problem of scalar environmental justice. The second is to explore a practical case of scalar environmental justice, by examining the decision-making processes surrounding radioactive waste management in the UK. The third is to outline a new concept of “scalar parity” derived from the radioactive waste policy process, whereby local communities and regional and national political stakeholders are charged with balancing their competing interests through the “fulcrum” of a partnership organisation, to fairly resolve environmental justice disputes. This scalar parity model is used as an exemplar of good practice in environmental justice resolution that could be applied to other major infrastructure projects.     

A Molecular Method to Detect Wound Cells in Bloodstains Resultant of Sharp Force Injuries for Crime Scene Reconstruction

Previous research by the authors on an animal model showed that bloodstains can contain additional information about their somatic origin in the form of wound cells. Bloodstains produced by a gunshot wound to the head were distinguished from bloodstains produced by a gunshot wound to the chest by testing the stains for a brain microRNA marker. In this study, the effectiveness of the technique was examined on blood drops shed externally from a stab wound to the liver of rat carcasses. Specifically, investigations were conducted on the liver microRNA marker, rno‐mir‐122‐3p, with the QIAGEN miScript System, and PCR analysis. Between the two stabbing methods used, 67% of the scalpel blades and 57% of the blood drops tested positive for rno‐mir‐122‐3p; however, other samples tested negative giving inconclusive results as to the wound‐of‐origin. The amount of the liver cells in the bloodstains appeared to be related to the extent of trauma.     

The double-design dilemma: political science,parliamentary crisis and disciplinary justifications

Two separate, but inter-linked, dilemmas have highlighted the importance of design-led thinking. First, the crumbling physical fabric of the Palace of Westminster has prompted a multi-billion rebuilding project, which will require the parliamentary studies specialism to engage with questions of design, space, and architecture. Separately, political science more generally has been challenged to utilize the insights of design-thinking and design-practice: a challenge to which it is culturally and methodological ill-equipped. This article considers what a design-led approach to political science looks like in theory, and in practice, in the case study of the Restoration and Renewal of the Palace of Westminster. This represents a first attempt at how such a fusion could be beneficial for both politics as theory and politics as practice. The main conclusion is that although design-orientated political science is not a panacea for the challenges of modern democratic governance – in intellectual or practical terms – it does appear to offer significant potential in terms of theoretically-informed but solution focused research.     

Estimating the Effect of Elite Communications on Public Opinion Using Instrumental Variables

A central question in the study of democratic polities is the extent to which elite opinion about policy shapes public opinion. Estimating the impact of elites on mass opinion is difficult because of endogeneity, omitted variables, and measurement error. This article proposes an identification strategy for estimating the causal effect of elite messages on public support for European integration employing changes in political institutions as instrumental variables. We find that more negative elite messages about European integration do indeed decrease public support for Europe. Our analysis suggests that OLS estimates are biased, underestimating the magnitude of the effect of elite messages by 50%. We also find no evidence that this effect varies for more politically aware individuals, and our estimates are inconsistent with a mainstreaming effect in which political awareness increases support for Europe in those settings in which elites have a favorable consensus on the benefits of integration.     

Analysing Reform: The House of Commons, 2001–5

This article examines the nature and implications of reforms to the House of Commons that were implemented during the 2001–5 Parliament under the guise of 'modernisation'. It describes the reforms that were implemented during this period in order to enhance the House of Commons' scrutiny capacity over the executive and attempts to assess the degree to which these reforms represent a shift in the balance of power. In order to ground the analysis and provide a clear conceptualisation of power the article adopts a resource-dependency framework that identifies and traces the transfer and deployment of key resources in order to prevent or facilitate change. The article concludes that the common distinction between 'modernising parliament' and 'parliamentary reform' needs refining and offers an 'incremental-bounded reform' model which provides a framework for not only gauging and understanding the process of reform but also explaining the nature of restraints. This model suggests that scrutiny reforms implemented during 2001–5 should not be dismissed, particularly in the context of the parliamentary decline thesis. A number of significant 'cracks and wedges' have been achieved and these may expand over time through a gradual process of extension, accretion and spillover.     

Who Preempted the Massachusetts Burma Law? Federalism and Political Accountability Under Global Trade Rules

With its "Burma law, " Massachusetts joined a procurement boycottof companies doing business in Burma. In Crosby v. NFTC, theU.S. Supreme Court held that Congress preempted the Massachusettslaw, even though Congress was silent on preemption. The Courtrelied on actions by executive-branch, foreign, and corporateactors to find that the state law was an obstacle to impliedobjectives of federal Burma sanctions. In doing so, the Courtdiffused congressional accountability for preemption and constrainedthe "constituent diplomacy" by which states and local governmentsuse their purchasing power to influence national policy andmultinational corporations. Crosby shifted the burden to Congressto express its intent not to preempt such measures. Congresshas several opportunities to meet this burden if it wants topreserve the diversity and balance that constituent diplomacybrings to the federal system.     

The experience of sexual assault: findings from a statewide victim needs assessment

A statewide assessment was conducted of assaults, experiences, needs, and recommendations of 125 adult victims receiving care at 19 sexual assault centers (SACs) in the State of Maryland. More than one half of the victims (55.6%) waited years before disclosing, with delays in reporting especially likely if the assault was perpetrated by a family member (the most frequent perpetrators at 42.4% of respondents). About one half of the victims (51.3%) had been previously sexually assaulted, yet only 9% of these victims had sought treatment. The majority of respondents (69.4%) indicated they would not be filing charges against perpetrators, and of those who did, 46.2% reported dissatisfaction with the interview with police. Psychological symptoms such as depression and anxiety were the most common reasons for seeking care at the centers. Nearly all of respondents rated the care they received at the centers as very good or excellent. Respondents recommended more SACs, better advertising of their services, more mental health care within them (especially group therapy), and improved laws and law enforcement of perpetrators.     

Why triggers fail (and what to do about it): An examination of the unemployment insurance extended benefits program

During periods of high unemployment, many workers exhaust their unemployment insurance (UI) benefits before regaining employment. To help alleviate this problem, Congress created the extended benefits (EB) program, expanding the number of weeks of benefits available to UI recipients in high unemployment states. The EB program operates by “triggering on” additional weeks of benefits in states where unemployment and UI benefit receipt are above federally established thresholds. We analyze the performance of the EB program by creating a series of policy simulations using weekly UI claims and unemployment data from the program's inception in 1970 through the most recent economic expansion in 2005. Overall, we find that EB triggers, as currently constructed, fail as a policy tool for extending UI benefits. Minor adjustments to the triggers are unlikely to be effective. We develop an alternative set of “fix point” triggers that allow the EB program to trigger on and off in a more timely fashion. These triggers outperform all previously legislated triggers as well as other commonly proposed triggering mechanisms on criteria of timeliness, breadth, and duration. © 2006 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management