The other woman and her child: extra-marital affairs and illegitimacy in twentieth-century Britain

This article investigates the numbers of 'other women' and their children up until the 1960s in Britain. It analyses 'irregular and illicit unions' in the records of the National Council for the Unmarried Mother and her Child (now One Parent Families/Gingerbread), and explores evidence on these unions in the debates over the passage of the Divorce Acts of 1923 and 1937 as well as the Legitimacy Acts of 1926 and 1959. It suggests that the prevalence of illicit unions throughout the twentieth century and before allows us to question contemporary concerns about our supposed 'divorcing society' and the decline of family life in modern Britain.     

Peasants,grapes and corporations: The growth of contract farming in a Chilean community

This article examines the social implications of contract farming promoted in smallholding areas. It is argued that rather than resulting in overall proletarianisation of the local peasantry, contract farming may accelerate its differentiation and disintegration by converting rich peasants into peasant capitalists. The argument is supported by a historical analysis of socio‐economic and organisational processes in a Chilean smallholding community which experienced two consecutive waves of agribusiness expansion: a tobacco boom in the 1950s and a fruit export expansion in the 1970s and 1980s.     

A challenge for environmental governance: institutional change in a traditional common-property forest system

This article examines how the Miskito peoples of Río Plátano, Honduras have responded to agricultural expansion by migrant farmers and ranchers onto their ancestral forest lands, and considers the policy options for supporting the common-property system of the Miskito and the forests they have historically conserved. The analysis compares institutional changes in the common-property systems of three Miskito communities, each with a different history of colonization. The findings illustrate that the Miskito response to the colonists has been multifaceted, and that while the Miskito leaders have made institutional changes to strengthen their common-property system, these changes are not necessarily reflected in the daily decisions of the Miskito people. The findings suggest that policies that support indigenous rulemaking abilities, specifically policies that legitimize indigenous rights to their lands and provide the resources to apply those rights, may be vital to maintain robust common-property systems and the frontier forests in the region.     

An Examination of Jury Verdicts for Evidence of a Similarity-Leniency Effect,an Out-Group Punitiveness Effect or a Black Sheep Effect

Archival data from cases adjudicated by jury in El Paso and Bexar County, Texas, were used to test whether a similarity-leniency effect, an out-group punitiveness effect, or a black sheep effect (BSE; J. M. Marques, V Y. Yzerbyt, & J. P. Leyens, 1988) influenced jury decisions. Defendant ethnicity, jury ethnic composition, and strength of evidence against the defendant were coded for 418 closed noncapital, felony cases to test their impact on trial verdicts and sentence lengths. Results indicated complex relations exist among juror and defendant characteristics and their influence on trial outcomes. No support was found for any of the theoretical models as predictors of jury decision-making. Strength of evidence was the most influential variable for both verdicts and length of sentences. Case strength, defendant ethnicity, and jury composition were related to sentence lengths.     

Learning our way out of environmental policy problems: a review of the scholarship

In acknowledgement of the complexity of environmental challenges, research on learning in environmental policy has grown substantially over the past two decades across a range of disciplines. Despite this growth, there are few comprehensive assessments of the literature on learning in environmental policy. This article fills this gap by providing insights on the overall coherence and impact of this body of scholarship. To do so, we analyze a sample of 163 articles from 2004 to 2014 using a standardized coding framework. The results provide an in-depth assessment of the status of the literature on learning in the context of environmental policy, as well as the quality of the literature. We demonstrate that despite the diversity in research questions and goals, the literature is lacking with respect to diversity in cases and context, theoretical development, clear conceptualization and operationalization of learning, and advancements in empirical approaches to study learning. From these insights, we discuss the challenges and opportunities for scholars in studying learning and provide recommendations for building the theoretical and methodological rigor of the field.     

Working the Spaces in between: A Case Study of a Boundary‐Spanning Model to Help Facilitate Cross‐Sectoral Policy Work

Since the 1990s, ‘joined‐up government,’ ‘whole‐of‐government,’ and ‘horizontal governance’ approaches have emerged in many industrialized countries, resulting in the devolution of government functions to diverse policy networks. From these shifts, complex systems of networked actors have emerged, involved in designing, implementation, and influencing policy. Arguably, networked approaches to policy may solve some problems. However, as with all paradigm shifts, new problems have emerged. Specifically, skill and knowledge gaps have opened up, reflecting the need for new collaborative and networked relationships that can increase the capabilities and agility to work in these ways. In response to these gaps, we developed the Power to Persuade initiative. Power to Persuade is an annual symposium and online forum, aimed at deepening knowledge and awareness of current problems faced by policy networks, and providing the skills and knowledge to overcome them. In this paper, we discuss how Power to Persuade works within the spaces in between as a vehicle for relationship building and better policy.     

Freedom of information in times of crisis: The case of Mexico's war on drugs

Transparency guarantees in Mexico presented a serious challenge to its 2007–2012 war on drugs. We use an original database of access to information requests, including both petitions for information and appeals to IFAI. We conduct statistical tests on the databases, finding that transparency is lower on security issues, as expected, but that there are unexpected variations between security agencies, and over time. We then conduct a content analysis of freedom of information requests to determine what drives agency responses, finding that security agencies developed various techniques to deflect petitions for information, such as falsely claiming that information has been provided when it has not, claiming that the information is outside the competence of the agency, that it does not exist, or that it is already in the public domain. Also there are significant differences in transparency between security agencies, possibly explained by their operational roles.     

Policy Conflict Framework

This essay introduces a Policy Conflict Framework to guide and organize theoretical, practical, and empirical research to fill the vacuum that surrounds policy conflicts. The framework centers on a conceptual definition of an episode of policy conflict that distinguishes between cognitive and behavioral characteristics. The cognitive characteristics of a policy conflict episode include divergence in policy positions among two or more actors, perceived threats from opponents’ policy positions, and unwillingness to compromise. These cognitive characteristics manifest in a range of behavioral characteristics (e.g., framing contests, lobbying, building networks). Episodes of policy conflicts are shaped by a policy setting, which consists of different levels of action where conflicts may emerge (political, policy subsystem and policy action situations), interpersonal and intrapersonal policy actor attributes, events, and the policy issue. In turn, the outputs and outcomes of policy conflicts produce feedback effects that shape the policy setting. This essay ends with an agenda for advancing studies of policy conflicts, both methodologically and theoretically.     

Unpacking the intensity of policy conflict: a study of Colorado’s oil and gas subsystem

This article applies the Policy Conflict Framework (PCF) to describe and explain the characteristics of policy conflict within the oil and gas subsystem in Colorado. We use data from a survey of policy actors to assess three cognitive characteristics of policy conflict: divergence in policy positions, perceived threats from opponents’ positions, and an unwillingness to compromise. Aggregating these indicators across policy actors in the subsystem, we find a moderately high level of policy conflict intensity, but we also find substantial variation in the characteristics of policy conflict across policy actors. To help explain this variation, we examine how interpersonal and intrapersonal attributes of policy actors relate to the characteristics of policy conflict. In particular, we find that insular policy actor networks, interest group affiliations, and rigidity of risk and benefit perceptions associate more consistently with conflict characteristics than political views, education, or experience. We conclude with a discussion of the strengths and limitations of this first application of the PCF and reiterate the need for theoretically and empirically rigorous measures of policy conflict.