Agenda Control, the Median Justice, and the Majority Opinion on the U.S. Supreme Court

Some scholars argue that the author of the majority opinion exercises the most influence over the Court's opinion-writing process and so can determine what becomes Court policy, at least within the limits of what some Court majority finds acceptable. Other students of the Court have suggested that the Court's median justice effectively dictates the content of the majority opinion: whatever policy the median justice most wants, she can get. We test these competing models with data on Supreme Court decision making during the Burger Court (1969–86). While we find substantial evidence for both models, the agenda control model gains greater support. This suggests that opinions on the Court on each case are driven, in general, by the interaction of three key variables: the policy preferences of the majority opinion author, the policy preferences of the median justice, and the location of the legal status quo .     

The energy model muddle

It is well-known that modelers and policy analysts gain access to policymaking arenas based on what they know. Therefore, critics of models are quick to employ various types of technical standards when evaluating policy models in order to assess validity and reliability of claims to knowledge. This article argues that, in the effort to make models better, overreliance on technical standards misses the important political and policy reasons to model: models call attention to the modelers and to their advice about important policy problems of the day. In this sense, models are used as symbols, as claims to authority, whether or not the underlying knowledge is technically up to snuff. Drawing on the experience of energy policy models, this article explores the problem of models as knowledge versus models as symbols and it examines the muddle that conflicts between them produce.     

Organization and education among Salvadoran political prisoners

During twelve years of war, the Salvadoran government imprisoned thousands of activists. Confronting massive violations of their human rights, prisoners struggled against prison authorities to resist the abuses to which they were subjected. They also educated themselves mutually, applying the principles of popular education widespread in the Salvadoran popular movement, which emphasized close integration between pedagogy and politics both in the content of education and in the political process. In opposing oppressive confinement and in mutually educating themselves, prisoners continued the political struggle they had been waging outside. Human rights movements working to protect them against violations of their rights used a rhetoric which presented them as helpless victims, but the prisoners' own testimonies reveal that they were active protagonists opposing injustice even in prison.     

ON THE SHANGHAI COMMUNIQUéAND THE SINO-U.S.RAPPORT

In 1954,representatives of France,Britain,the Soviet Union,the United States and China gathered in Geneva,Switzerland,for a conference on the political and military situation in the Korean Peninsula and in French Indochina.When U.S.Secretary of State John Foster Dulles encountered Chinese Premier and Foreign Minister Zhou Enlai.     

“Success” in policy piloting: Process,programs, and politics

Research has demonstrated that pilots contain multiple shifting purposes, not all of which relate to simple policy testing or refinement. Judging the success of policy pilots is therefore complex, requiring more than a simple judgment against declared goals. Marsh and McConnell provide a framework against which policy success can be judged, distinguishing program success from process and political success. We adapt Boven's modification of this framework and apply it to policy pilots, arguing that pilot process, outcomes and longer-term effects can all be judged in both program and political terms. We test this new framework in a pilot program in the English National Health Service, the Vanguard program, showing how consideration of these different aspects of success sheds light on the program and its aftermath. We consider the implications of the framework for the comprehensive and multifaceted evaluation of policy pilots.