Digital Commons Network^™

The Relevance Of Emotions In Presidential Public Appeals: Anger’S Conditional Effect On Perceived Risk And Support For Military Interventions, José D. Villalobos, Cigdem V. Sirin

José D. Villalobos

Impacts Of Pay-As-You-Throw And Other Residential Solid Waste Policy Options: Southern Maine 2007–2013, Travis Blackmer, George Criner

George K. Criner

Municipal solid waste management in the U.S. began a transformation in the 1980s as a result of a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency regulation requiring the closure of municipal “dumps.” This legislation, coupled with increasing total and per capita waste, resulted in waste management receiving national attention. Maine and other states began broad efforts to reduce and wisely manage their municipal solid wastes. Many states established solid waste goals, with Maine targeting a waste diversion rate of 50 percent. Four common residential waste management programs in Maine include curbside trash collection, curbside recyclable collection, single-stream recycling, and pay-as-you-throw programs. This article …

Solid Waste Management In Local Municipalities, George K. Criner

George K. Criner

For most of the era since 1960, when environmental policy and resource policy have been central public issues, the focus of public debates on those policies was at the federal and state levels. Now, more and more of the decisions and policies that will determine the quality of life for citizens are being made at the local level. Issues that have historically been local prerogatives are increasingly identified as crucial for effective environmental policy and for insuring "quality of life." Those local decisions are often constrained by a wide variety of state and federal policies on environmental policy and resource …

Solid Waste Management Options For Maine: The Economics Of Pay-By-The-Bag Systems, Stephanie Seguino, George Criner, Margarita Suarez

George K. Criner

State and federal environmental mandates during the last three decades have changed the nature of the debate over solid waste disposal, but not the basic question: What do we do about the garbage we produce? Unlike years past, however, disposal options are now fewer and more costly. This has resulted in a shift in focus away from solutions that simply try to deal with the output of the disposal process—the trash—to those that focus on inputs—reducing the volume of materials going into the waste stream. Among the volume reduction strategies are recycling, which focuses on specific input materials, and volume-based …

Global Governance: The Ideological Kenosis Of The West, Steven Alan Samson

Steven Alan Samson

No abstract provided.

Land Restitution, Traditional Leadership And Belonging: Defining Barokologadi Identity, Robin L. Turner

Robin L Turner

How do government policies and practices affect struggles over collective identity and struggles over land? Examining the interconnections among collective identity struggles, land struggles and state policies and practices in post-apartheid South Africa, this paper argues that the government's contradictory policies and ambivalent practices have aggravated collective struggles over the boundaries of belonging. Specifically, the differing definitions of community set forth in traditional leadership, land tenure and land restitution policies exacerbate existing divisions among ‘communities’ concurrently subject to these policies and create practical policy dilemmas for decision-makers. This paper illustrates the interplay between public policies and collective identity struggles through …

Volunteering For Development: Tensions Around Conducting Multi-Sited Ethnography With Volunteers, Nichole Georgeou

Nichole Georgeou

A scholarly and personal account of the ethical, and human issues and values involved in a specific example of ethnographic research and field-work, with wider research implications and relevance.

Rudolf Kjellén: Nordic Biopolitics Before The Welfare State, Markus Gunneflo

Markus Gunneflo

Public Management In Political Institutions: Explaining Perceptions Of White House Chief Of Staff Influence, José Villalobos, Justin Vaughn, David Cohen

José D. Villalobos

The notion that public managers influence organizational performance is common in public administration research. However, less is known about why some managers are better at influencing organizational performance than others. Furthermore, relatively few studies have systematically examined managerial influence and scholars have yet to investigate either quantitatively or systematically managerial influence in the White House. Utilizing original survey data collected from former White House officials who served in the Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and Clinton administrations, this study applies empirical public management theory to examine for the first time the key determinants that shape perceptions of chief of staff managerial …

Agency Input As A Policy Making Tool: Analyzing The Influence Of Agency Input On Presidential Policy Success In Congress, José Villalobos

José D. Villalobos

This study posits a theoretical framework for understanding the role and value of agency input in presidential legislative policy making. I assert that by employing agency input for policy development, presidents instill their proposals with a degree of bureaucratic objectivity, expertise, process transparency, and agency support, which aids their legislative passage while lowering the extent of changes made to policy substance in the process. To test my hypotheses, I conduct binary and ordered logistic regression analyses using pooled cross-sectional data across twelve administrations from 1949-2010. I find that agency input serves as a key component for increased presidential legislative success.

Policy Pathways, Policy Networks, And Citizen Deliberation: Disseminating The Results Of World Wide Views On Global Warming In The Usa, Jason Delborne, Jen Schneider, Ravtosh Bal, Susan Cozzens, Richard Worthington

Jen Schneider

Leading a coalition spanning 38 countries, the Danish Board of Technology organized World Wide Views on Global Warming (WWViews) on September 26, 2009. WWViews represented a pioneering effort to hold simultaneous citizen deliberations focusing on questions of climate change policy addressed at the UN Climate Change Conference (COP15) in December 2009. Sponsors and organizers envisioned WWViews as a means to affect the COP15 negotations, and the project included numerous strategies to influence policy-making. This paper examines the success of such strategies in the USA through the lens of 'policy pathways,' routes of influence to affect the behavior of policy-makers and …

The Limits Of Debate Or What We Talk About When We Talk About Gender Imbalance On The Bench, Keith Bybee

Keith J. Bybee

What do we talk about when we talk about gender imbalance on the bench? The first thing we do is keep track of the number of female judges. Once the data has been gathered, we then argue about what the disparity between men and women in the judiciary means. These arguments about meaning are not freestanding. On the contrary, I claim that debates over gender imbalance occur within the context of a broader public debate over the nature of judicial decisionmaking. I argue that this public debate revolves around dueling conceptions of the judge as impartial arbiter and as politically …

Spillovers Of Veterans Hospice Care: The Economic And Social Impact Of Palliative Care, Maximiliano Mendieta, Bruce D. Mcdonald Iii

Bruce D. McDonald, III

In exchange for military service in the United States, soldiers are promised a benefits package inclusive of health and education after the completion of their service. While the economic effects of the defense-growth relationship are well known, this study takes a unique approach to understanding the relationship between veterans and society by investigating the social and economic spillovers of veterans hospice care. This study shows that as an early adopter of hospice care, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs maximized its efficiency through sponsoring innovative research on geriatric care, introducing competition into the health sector, and legitimizing death and dying …

What We Do And Do Not Know: The Social Implications Of Defense, Bruce D. Mcdonald Iii

Bruce D. McDonald, III

The relationship between defense spending and economic growth has been a major topic of research and political debate for more than one hundred years. Although the relationship of interest is economically oriented, its theoretical underpinning has relied upon the social spillovers of the defense sector. This includes programs on community health, education, and access to technology. Despite this reliance, little is known about what social spillovers. This paper furthers our understanding of the defense-growth relationship by introducing the social spillovers that exist and clarifying how those spillovers occur. The author concludes with a discussion about the direction of future research …

Manager-In-Chief: Applying Public Management Theory To Examine White House Chief Of Staff Performance, David B. Cohen, Justin S. Vaughn, José D. Villalobos

José D. Villalobos

In an effort to examine the causal determinants of performance dynamics for the administrative presidency, we apply empirical public management theory to White House administration to explain managerial performance. Utilizing original survey data that measures the perceptions of former officials from the Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and Clinton administrations, we conduct quantitative analyses to determine the extent to which a chief of staff’s background, relationship with the president, and internal as well as external management approaches shape overall perceptions of White House administrative efforts. We find that managerial dimensions matter considerably when explaining the dynamics of White House organizational performance.

Politics Or Policy? How Rhetoric Matters To Presidential Leadership Of Congress, José Villalobos, Justin Vaughn, Julia Azari

José D. Villalobos

In this study, we examine the linkage between presidential policy proposal messages and legislative success. Employing a dataset on presidential legislative proposals that covers the years 1949-2010, we find that politics matters less than policy. Purely political messages that reference the electoral logic of mandates or appeal to a sense of bipartisanship appear to have no impact on presidential legislative success, nor does policy signaling, though highlighting the role of agency-based policy experts in crafting legislation does. From these results, we conclude that although the way presidents communicate their messages to Congress represents an important component of presidential-legislative relations, it …

Editorial: Social Implications Of Technology- “Il Buono, Il Brutto, Il Cattivo”, Katina Michael

Professor Katina Michael

Late last year, IEEE SSIT was invited to put together a paper for the centennial edition of Proceedings of the IEEE that was published in May 2012. The paper titled, “Social Implications of Technology: The Past, the Present, and the Future,” brought together five members of SSIT with varying backgrounds, and two intense months of collaboration and exchange of ideas. I personally felt privileged to be working with Karl D. Stephan, Emily Anesta, Laura Jacobs and M.G. Michael on this project.

Agenda Setting From The Oval Office: An Experimental Examination Of Presidential Influence Over The Public Agenda, José D. Villalobos, Cigdem V. Sirin

José D. Villalobos

This study employs an experimental approach to isolate and directly test the extent to which presidents can affect public perceptions of issue importance and support for policy action, taking into consideration key factors that condition such effects. Our findings provide new empirical evidence that presidents can, in fact, positively influence public opinion through agenda setting, particularly by increasing the perceptual importance of low salience foreign policy issues. However, the results also indicate that such positive effects do not translate into public support for policy action; instead, presidential appeals actually decrease support. Last, our study offers new evidence that employing bipartisan …

Reconsidering The Defense-Growth Relationship: Evidence From The Islalmic Republic Of Iran, Bruce D. Mcdonald Iii

Bruce D. McDonald, III

Recent literature has failed to reach a consensus on how best to model the defense-growth relationship. Although several attempts have been made to solve the problem by the theoretical comparison of models, empirical attempts of comparison have been largely restricted to the United States. Given the recent criticism of the Feder-Ram model, this paper uses Iranian data to compare the performance of the Feder-Ram and augmented Solow models in the context of a growing, yet heavily militarized, economy. The results indicate that the improved ability of the augmented Solow model to explain economic growth can better account for the effects …

“Never Forget National Humiliation: Postcolonial Consciousness And China’S Rise.”, Zheng Wang

Zheng Wang

No abstract provided.

Moving Toward Comparability: Assessing Per-Student Costs In K-12, Robert J. Eger Iii, Bruce D. Mcdonald Iii

Bruce D. McDonald, III

The current classifications for public school costs are provided by the National Center for Educational Statistics. To improve comparability between school districts, this paper provides an alternative classification with fewer numbers of expenditure categories and sub-categories. We also introduce distinctions between school-based and non-school based administration costs and between elementary and secondary schools to provide an identification of possible sources of inefficiency. The new classification is then applied to five comparable urban school districts Atlanta, Boston, Mobile, Nashville, and Newark. We find (1) that teacher salaries per student are affected by school level disaggregation; (2) that separating administrative costs into …

Staff Of The People? Assessing Progress In Descriptive Representation Under The Obama Administration, José D. Villalobos

José D. Villalobos

Over the past few decades, presidents have made some increasingly noticeable efforts to fill their administrations with a higher number of minorities. Though not yet fully representative of the general public, such advances in descriptive representation are a sign of progressive change occurring within the executive branch, with positive potential implications for the state of representative democracy and public policy. In this article, I survey the current state of descriptive representation under the Obama presidency and the extent to which the president’s policy agenda has substantively addressed the needs of historically underrepresented groups. Descriptively, I find that President Barack Obama …

Data Sharing By Scientists: Practices And Perceptions, Carol Tenopir, Suzie Allard, Kimberly L. Douglass, Arsev Umur Aydinoglu, Lei Wu, Eleanor Read, Maribeth Manoff, Mike Frame

Kimberly L Douglass

Background: Scientific research in the 21st century is more data intensive and collaborative than in the past. It is important to study the data practices of researchers – data accessibility, discovery, re-use, preservation and, particularly, data sharing. Data sharing is a valuable part of the scientific method allowing for verification of results and extending research from prior results. Methodology/Principal Findings: A total of 1329 scientists participated in this survey exploring current data sharing practices and perceptions of the barriers and enablers of data sharing. Scientists do not make their data electronically available to others for various reasons, including insufficient time …

Where Does The Buck Stop? Applying Attribution Theory To Examine Public Appraisals Of The President, Cigdem V. Sirin, José D. Villalobos

José D. Villalobos

This study applies attribution theory to examine public appraisals of the president. To date, most political science research on attribution theory has focused on domestic policy and no work has considered both domestic and foreign policy domains in tandem. To fill this gap, we formulate and experimentally test a series of hypotheses regarding the level of responsibility and credit/blame that individuals attribute to the president in both policy domains across varying policy conditions. We also consider how party compatibility affects people’s attribution judgments. Our findings provide a new contribution to the literature on political attributions, executive accountability, and public perceptions …

Promises And Human Rights: The Obama Administration On Immigrant Detention Policy Reform, José D. Villalobos

José D. Villalobos

This article evaluates the Obama administration’s efforts towards reforming U.S. immigration detention policies. Over the past decade, immigrant rights advocates have increasingly criticized certain policies of the U.S. Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE) system of immigration detention, including the widespread use of private contractors, lack of proper oversight, grouping of violent criminals and non-violent undocumented immigrants (particularly minority women and children) in holding cells, and neglect of detained immigrants in need of medical attention. In reviewing these developments, I contend that the Obama administration must take substantive steps towards reforming the existing system, particularly by instituting legally enforceable standards with …

Physician Utilization By Insurance Type Among Youth With Type 2 Diabetes, Carrie Macadam-Marx, Robert I. Field, Stephen Metraux, Stephen T. Moelter, Diana Brixner

Stephen Metraux

Objective: To evaluate the relationship between insurance type (Medicaid vs private insurance) and access to physician care for youth with type 2 diabetes mellitus by quantifying whether these youth saw a physician during the year before their first diabetes documentation. Study Design: Retrospective cohort study. Methods: Youth with Medicaid or private insurance aged 5 to 19 years with type 2 diabetes were identified by an electronic medical record review. The first indication of type 2 diabetes defined the index date. Youth with type 1 diabetes and female patients with polycystic ovaries were excluded. Descriptive statistics evaluated differences in office visits …

Welfare Programs And The State Economy, Bruce D. Mcdonald Iii, D. Ryan Miller

Bruce D. McDonald, III

Welfare policy has been controversial and support is often drawn along political affiliation lines, the economic return of investment in welfare programs is frequently cited as a justification for new and expanded policies. To investigate the direct and indirect effects of welfare programs on economic performance, the authors develop a multilink approach, through employment and investment. The relationship is then tested with data from each of the United States from 1976 to 2006. Findings show welfare programs have no direct effect on a state's economy. Indirectly, welfare has a negative effect through investment, though the effect on employment is minimal.

The Bureau Of Municipal Research And The Development Of A Professional Public Service, Bruce D. Mcdonald Iii

Bruce D. McDonald, III

This paper explores the professionalization of public administration in terms of its relation to the New York Bureau of Municipal Research. The formation of the New York Bureau of Municipal Research in 1907 served as the catalyst for the creation and expansion of a professional public service. Though public administration has failed to transform into a profession, this paper shows that the Bureau contributed to professionalization by (1) developing a body of knowledge and theory for the field; (2) developing a school in which to train persons in that knowledge; and, (3) promoting a place that the training and knowledge …

The Defense-Growth Relationship: An Economic Investigation Into Post-Soviet States, Bruce D. Mcdonald Iii, Robert J. Eger Iii

Bruce D. McDonald, III

An important question stemming from the collapse of the Soviet Union is how defense spending has influenced the economic performance of the 15 member states since their establishment as market economies. This study furthers the understanding of the relationship between defense spending and economic growth using data from the states of the former Soviet Union from 1992 to 2007. A nonlinear production function was used for direct effects, and models of investment and employment were employed for indirect effects. Contrary to expectations, the findings show that continued reliance on the defense sector in post-Soviet states has helped overall economic growth. …

The Obama Administration's Challenges After The 'War On Science': Reforming Staffing Practices And Protecting Scientific Integrity In The Executive Branch, Justin Vaughn, José Villalobos

José D. Villalobos

In this article, we examine the difficult leadership position President Barack Obama inherited as he took office with respect to science and technology policy making and implementation, particularly following the Bush administration and years of the so-called "war on science." We contend that the Obama administration's challenge is not only to take substantive policy action, but also to reform certain administrative practices, particularly in light of the previous administration's practice of the politics of strategic vacancies, a managerial technique that rearranges an agency's ideological inclinations not through the usual forms of active politicization (i.e., by filling the appointee ranks with …