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.     

Les barrières à la mise en œuvre des politiques d’adaptation au changement climatique: le cas de la Suisse

Abstract: The implementation of climate change adaptation polices has barely occurred in developed countries. This paper examines to what extent the perceptions of political actors might hinder the development of adaptation policies. We study the Swiss case using computer aided textual analysis. Our results demonstrate that adaptation is still not perceived as an important dimension of climate change policy. Decision makers do not perceive links between adaptation, the Swiss economy and the energy supply. Adaptation is mainly considered an issue for developing countries and not as a way to reduce the impacts of climate change in Switzerland. Right‐wing parties tend to consider adaptation a secondary issue and are more likely than those to the left to object to the formulation or the implementation of public measures.     

西方政策过程理论的最新进展、趋势与启示

政策过程理论研究从一开始就争论不休,而这些争论大致可以划分为三个阶段。在寻求因果关系理论的逻辑下,形成了大量的主流政策过程理论或框架。而今,政策过程理论又有了一些新的发展,包括叙事政策框架、子系统及其超越、决策和官僚机构、政策过程的综合框架等方面的发展。这种新发展及其趋势,对我国政策过程理论的研究来讲无疑具有诸多启示：（1）区分和厘清政策过程理论研究中的关键概念;（2）继承与创新政策过程理论的研究方法;（3）实现行动主体的多元化、精细化与政策子系统的超越;（4）合理把握官僚机构在我国政策过程中的影响力。     

论市场背景下公共政策的合法性基础

本文关于公共政策合法性的论证主要是基于以下几个层面:首先,公共政策自上世纪20年代以来的快速发展,很大程度上是因为市场体制失灵的弊端不断呈现在人们的面前,亟需加以矫正,这种矫正是无法通过市场体制内在的私人理性来完成的;其次,引导社会长远发展的智慧之光,还是所谓的集体共同理性,而这一理性需通过公共政策来实现;第三,人类社会发展至今日,世界大同的倾向将随历史的进步而日益得到人类的认同,人类的合作前景将会大于竞争前景,趋势是超越私人理性。即便如此,市场机制的有效性也不容否定。问题的关键是,如何处理好市场运行和公共政策之间的良好配合关系,充分发挥好两方面的作用。本文专门就市场体制下公共政策的合理性基础进行了论证。     

Falling from the sky

Back examines the human costs of immigration policy through recovering the stories of the desperate stowaways who are literally falling out of the skies over London. Some 3,000 people have died trying to gain entry to Europe. These are the human costs of contemporary forms of immigration policy. Back attempts to problematize the ways in which the global movement of people is understood within an immigrant/host framework. He argues for an alternative way of thinking about the movement of people, culture and imagination in the context of globalization.     

How to scale coded text units without bias: A response to Gemenis

Coding non-manifesto documents as if they were genuine policy platforms produced at election time clearly raises serious issues with error when these codings are used in the standard manner to estimate left-right policy positions. In addition to the long term solution of improving the document base of the Manifesto Project identified by Gemenis (2012), we argue that immediate gains in manifesto-based estimates of policy positions can be realised by using the confrontational logit scales from Lowe et al. (2011), which addresses the problems of scale content and scale construction that are exacerbated by but not unique to the problems found in proxy documents.     

Policy Tool Interactions and the Adoption of State Renewable Portfolio Standards

We contribute to extant policy theory by focusing on interrelationships between existing policies and innovation. In particular, we call attention to the link between supply‐side incentives and demand‐side innovation, which has not been systematically investigated. Our research expectation is that supply‐side policies generally will complement demand‐side policy, leading to a positive impact on the adoption of demand‐side innovations. We test this idea by examining adoptions of renewable portfolio standards (RPS), a demand‐pull approach targeted to renewable energy generation by utilities, in the American states from 1991 to 2008. Event history models show that an index of supply‐side financial incentives has a strong positive influence on RPS adoption. We do not find support for the hypothesis that this effect is contingent on in‐state carbon‐based energy generation. In conclusion, we argue that the study of policy adoption needs to give greater consideration to the interrelationships among policy instruments.     

发展型福利模式下的中国养老制度安排

养老问题是人口老龄化研究的核心命题。随着人口老龄化成为中国社会的常态,中国的养老制度安排不应是应急策略,还必须考虑到老龄社会的可持续发展。本文以发展型福利的视角重新审视中国养老制度,试图为实现养老政策的发展型转变构建一个初步的分析框架。发展型福利模式强调经济与社会发展的内在整合,重视社会福利的生产主义特色,并致力于推进福利主体的能力发展。基于此,本文认为构建中国的发展型养老政策应首先重塑养老制度安排的价值立场,协调短期目标与中长期战略的关系,并由此在行政管理体制创新的基础上推进老年福利的适度普惠性、在机会平等的基础上促进老年人口参与发展过程、增进对未来劳动人口的人力资本投资、以及关注家庭能力发展在养老可持续性中的作用。这些分析对于政府审视现有养老制度安排,并合理选择养老政策改革的切入点提供了理论和实践依据。     

《校车安全条例(草案)》的政策议程分析——基于多源流模型的视角

校车安全问题何以进入决策者的视野是理解《校车安全条例(草案征求意见稿)》得以快速发布的关键。采用案例分析法,从多源流理论视角对校车安全的源流发展、焦点事件和政策行动者等方面进行整体分析,研究表明:校车安全政策议程是政策企业家在政策窗口开启之时推动问题、政策和政治三大源流汇合的结果。相比垃圾桶模型、触发机制模型和议程设置理论,多源流模型在本案例中更具解释力。同时,多源流模型面临中国情境,源流之间存在相关性,而非完全独立。拥有双重身份的政策企业家具有从政府机构中打开"政治窗口"的可能性,这为多源流模型的本土化应用与后续研究提供了一个可供考察的角度。最后,指出阻碍校车安全政策议程设置的主要因素包括,制度性利益表达通道不通畅、政府部门对焦点事件处理能力和水平不高、管理权限划分模糊。为此,应创建有效的制度性利益表达通道、积极关注媒体舆情,扩大问题来源、科学合理划分管理权限。这些问题及对策对于其他政策领域也具备一定的借鉴意义,这也是本研究对政策制定者的启迪所在。     

侨务与外交:对中国侨务政策的思考——以中印(尼)关系为例

自20世纪50年代以来,"侨务服从外交"一直是中国处理对外侨务的指导原则。在中国与印度尼西亚的双边关系中,中国为了建立包括印尼在内的国际反帝统一战线,在侨务政策上作出让步,以换取印尼在中国对外战略上的支持。随着冷战后两极体制的终结,以及中国在经济上的崛起,中国实施侨务政策的大环境发生变化,侨务政策也因此出现调整的空间,但中国侨务政策调整的限度和可能性依然受制于一系列因素。