Building Green: Local Political Leadership Addressing Climate Change

Municipal agreements have been instrumental in communicating commitment to addressing climate change at the local level. However, what is the practical implication of this potentially symbolic decision? This study examines the power of mayoral participation in climate change agreements in driving the proliferation of sustainable or “green” building in a city as a mechanism to reach its climate change goals. In addition, mayors can localize what is otherwise a public good by framing green buildings as having other tangible impacts on a community. We analyze the impact of political leadership on green building projects in 591 cities in 50 U.S. states, controlling for a variety of city‐ and state‐level variables. Hierarchical models indicate that mayoral leadership in climate change policy fosters green building, while state‐level predictors are not as important as city policy in creating green buildings. Our research concludes that local governments can be a very effective venue in addressing broad climate change goals.     

HOW COLLECTIVE IS COLLECTIVE EFFICACY? THE IMPORTANCE OF CONSENSUS IN JUDGMENTS ABOUT COMMUNITY COHESION AND WILLINGNESS TO INTERVENE

Existing studies have generally measured collective efficacy by combining survey respondents’ ratings of their local area into an overall summary for each neighborhood. Naturally, this approach results in a substantive focus on the variation in average levels of collective efficacy between neighborhoods. In this article, we focus on the variation in consensus of collective efficacy judgments. To account for differential consensus among neighborhoods, we use a mixed‐effects location‐scale model, with variability in the consensus of judgments treated as an additional neighborhood‐level random effect. Our results show that neighborhoods in London differ, not just in their average levels of collective efficacy but also in the extent to which residents agree with one another in their assessments. In accord with findings for U.S. cities, our results show that consensus in collective efficacy assessments is affected by the ethnic composition of neighborhoods. Additionally, we show that heterogeneity in collective efficacy assessments is consequential, with higher levels of criminal victimization, worry about crime, and risk avoidance behavior in areas where collective efficacy consensus is low.     

Cyberbullying Among Chilean Students and the Protective Effects of Positive School Communities

Cyberbullying is a type of bullying that involves the use of technology to harm other students. Most researchers have examined individual-level characteristics, but the perception of school climate and school characteristics such as type, size, and level of vulnerabilities have not been considered using multilevel methods. Using a sample of 8,237 Chilean seventh graders from 1,322 schools we examined individual- and school-level predictors of cyberbullying perpetration. Cyberbullying perpetration was predicted by prior victimization, interpersonal relationships, and gender. We found an interaction effect between interpersonal relationships and teacher support for victims. Our findings support the notion that school policies and culture can play a vital role in the prevention of cyberbullying, supporting a protective resilience model.     

“The Long and Winding Road”: A Comparative Policy Analysis of Multilevel Judicial Implementation of Work‒Life Balance in Spain

ABSTRACT

This article studies how processes of policy implementation and the impact of a multilevel European legal order shape social policies. By using an interdisciplinary approach to comparative policy analysis that investigates policy implementation through the critical study of judicial litigation, the article analyses the case of García Mateos on work?life balance in its different stages before Spanish and supranational courts. It shows that the implementation of work?life balance policy through litigation in Spain is a “long and winding road” paved with discursive and material opportunities and obstacles. While multiple pressures, actors, and framings at different governmental levels contributed to a favourable judicial decision on gender equality, norms about the gendered division of labour limited its transformative potential.     

Integration of Environmental Concerns in a Trans‐Atlantic Perspective: The Case of Renewable Electricity

The issue of integrating environmental concerns into energy policy decision making is increasingly addressed, not least related to climate change. Although the United States, unlike the EU, did not sign the Kyoto Protocol, several U.S. states promote renewable electricity (RES‐E), and some of these initiatives are linked to climate‐change mitigation efforts. The present article assesses in this connection the six New England states of the United States, comparing their efforts of integrating RES‐E with climate change to the Nordic countries in Europe. In order to explain different approaches, the article focuses on the importance of different EU and U.S. multilevel governing structures. The analysis indicates that the New England states' RES‐E promotion thus far has not been substantially integrated with climate‐change concerns, whereas in the EU's more top‐down approach, climate change figures more prominently vis‐à‐vis RES‐E. EU policies represent an increasingly important driver for the Nordic countries. In the United States, on the other hand, it remains an open question as to how future federal policy efforts will relate to existing policies at the state level.     

政体与法治:一个思想史的检讨

从思想史的角度,主要有三种法治与政体之间内在理论结构的范式:法治工具主义论、法治目的主义论和法治社会秩序论。法治工具主义是人类社会的普遍现象,法治目的论则是人类社会的特定历史条件下独特的现象。在非宪政的政体之下,法治工具主义与法治目的主义不能并存;而在宪政的政体下,法治工具主义与法治目的主义则可以并存。     

Multilevel governance and women's legislative representation

Research shows that electoral systems, gender quotas and a country's socio-economic development affect women's legislative representation (WLR). Less attention is paid to the effects of the rise of regional political arenas and multilevel politics on WLR. Due to less costly and competitive electoral campaigns, women can have easier access to regional legislatures. We argue that this relationship is mitigated by the distribution of competences between the different levels of the political system and that decentralization's effect on WLR at the regional level is dependent on the regions’ political power. To test this, we use an original dataset on WLR in 383 regional parliaments in 19 European countries from 1970 to 2018. Results of the three-level models show that more political authority vested into regions leads to a lower level of WLR in the legislatures of the more politically powerful regions in comparison with not only the regions possessing less authority but also with the national parliament. Possible explanations for this effect, such as the attractiveness of these positions to the mostly male political elite and, consequently, increased costs and competitiveness of electoral campaigns, are suggested.     

Routine Activity Theory,Target Congruence,and School Context: A Multilevel Analysis of Teacher Victimization

Teachers at school are typically considered as handlers or guardians of students and managers of classrooms—in roles that foster learning and protect students from harm. Thus, relatively little research attention is given to identifying the risk factors for teacher victimization in comparison with the great deal of work addressing the correlates of student victimization at school. The present study fills this gap in the literature on school violence by examining the individual- and school-level predictors of teacher victimization. The authors’ analysis is framed using a multilevel opportunity theoretical approach, incorporating measures of teacher activities, self-protection, teacher attributes that suggest target vulnerability and target antagonism, school-level norms supportive of delinquency, and school-level guardianship. These various risk and protective factors are examined using hierarchical negative binomial regression models with data from over 4,100 teachers in 98 schools in Kentucky.     

Abortion Law and Scotland: An Issue of What?

In recent years, several decisions have been made regarding the devolution of abortion laws from central government at Westminster to the devolved regions of the United Kingdom. This article considers the decision to devolve abortion law to Scotland. It addresses Westminster debates from the time, employing a discursive analysis to examine the arguments made for this legislative move. It argues that the debate was largely a proxy argument for the broader question of Westminster–Edinburgh relations and Scottish independence. It further argues that utilising abortion in this way is problematic, and politicises an area which is better seen as an issue solely of women's rights.     

Building bridges over troubled waters: Administrative change at the regional level in European,multilevel water management

The European Commission is promoting more decentralized forms of multilevel administration, without having its own administrative capacity on the ground. This article examines the role of ground-level administration in this multilevel system, by analysing why and how administrative change at sub-national levels comes about in connection with the implementation of European Union (EU) legislation. Despite their similar unitary state systems, Sweden and Norway have implemented the administrative requirements of the Water Framework Directive differently. While Sweden has delegated decision-making authority to novel regional-level bodies, triggering frictions in the hierarchical structure of government, Norway established networked, interdependent structures. Enquiring into the causes, the study finds that complementary use of instrumental, power-oriented and historical institutionalism shed light on the conditions under which European multilevel administration develops. In complex political-administrative systems, domestic legacies and time-specific events provide ‘turfs’ for Europeanization-processes shaping domestic administrative systems from within.