Other Public Affairs, Public Policy and Public Administration Commons^™

The Underlying Factors Driving The Push For Universal Suffrage In Hong Kong, Anthony Hoyin Wong

Political Science

This paper examines the current civil unrest in Hong Kong to determine the underlying causes that are driving Occupy Central and its affiliates to pressure the Central Government in Beijing and the Hong Kong government for universal suffrage. Drawing upon data from the 2003, 2007, and 2010 Asian Barometer, there has been a gradual decline in the level of trust in the Legislative Council and Hong Kong government as the majority of Hong Kong residents have expressed increasing uncertainty about their future economic situation along with their continual distrust in the abilities of government officials to serve the public. From …

Parenting From Prison: Family Relationships Of Incarcerated Women In Massachusetts, Erika Kates, Sylvia Mignon, Paige Ransford

Sylvia I. Mignon

Historically in the United States, there has been little concern about the needs of incarcerated women and their family members, especially children. This began to change with the tremendous increase in the number of incarcerated women. The rate of women’s incarceration increased dramatically during the 1980s and today the number of female inmates continues to rise faster than the number of male inmates. In 1986, 19,812 women were incarcerated in the United States and this number rose in 1991 to 38,796. Today, over 112,000 women are incarcerated in state or federal facilities (Sabol et al., 2007; Snell 1994). While in …

Conditional Cash Transfers, Community, And Empowerment Of Women In Colombia, Harlan Downs-Tepper

21st Century Social Justice

In 2001, the Colombian government initiated an experiment in poverty alleviation called Familias en Acción. This conditional cash transfer (CCT) program takes a novel approach to poverty reduction by addressing short- and long-term factors contributing to poverty. Though Colombia’s CCT program is just one of a wave of similar initiatives, its unique context and unexpected social effects, beyond the primary intentions of program designers, differentiate it from other such programs. Drawing on 200 interviews and focus group discussions which he conducted with academic experts, program beneficiaries and program administrators in three Colombian cities, the author finds that an unexpected …

Testimony On Social Impact Bonds Before U.S. Senate Task Force On Government Performance, Kyle Mckay

Kyle McKay

The primary difference between social impact bonds and prior attempts to link outcomes to payments is the inclusion of investors. According to proponents, social impact bonds and the inclusion of investors can increase the extent of evidence-based policy, encourage innovation in service programming, produce costs savings to governments, and invoke government expenditures only after success is demonstrated. For governments facing revenue constraints for political or economic reasons, social impact bonds may appear to be the silver bullet for social services. However, the benefits may be based largely on wishful thinking. Yet the risks and costs to governments from engaging in …

Women’S Municipal Leadership In Massachusetts: Snapshot Of Cape Cod, Center For Women In Politics And Public Policy, University Of Massachusetts Boston

Publications from the Center for Women in Politics and Public Policy

The center tracks the status of women at all levels of government in New England. It also provides dynamic web resources to inform and support the public leadership of women of color.

Book Review: Policing And The Poetics Of Everyday Life., Rodger E. Broome Phd

Rodger E. Broome

Policing and the poetics of everyday life. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2008. 256 pp. ISBN 978-0-252-03371-1 (cloth). $42.00. Policing and the Poetics of Everyday Life is a hermeneutical-aesthetic analysis within a human scientific approach of modern policing in the United States. It is an important study of police-citizen encounters informed by hermeneutic aesthetic thought and the author’s professional experience as a veteran with a Seattle area police department in Washington, USA.

Sometimes We Do Reinvent The Wheel: Commentary On Macdonald (1912), Mario Scalora

University of Nebraska Public Policy Center: Publications

As a researcher of targeted violence, I found Arthur MacDonald’s work “Assassins of Rulers” (MacDonald, 1912) very provocative. Although different norms for behavioral and criminological research early the past century may have limited the current applicability of Mac- Donald’s findings, this work highlighted certain paradigmatic issues that have later emerged within the targeted violence literature. Before addressing commonalities with recent research, discussion of methodological issues is warranted. First, one is impressed with how detailed MacDonald’s presentation is across the range of cases of political assassination and regicide. One wonders how more descriptive MacDonald’s work would have been if he had …

How Civil Society Represents Women: Feminists, Catholics, And Mobilization Strategies In Africa, Alice Kang

Department of Political Science: Faculty Publications

In recent years, civil society has risen to speak on behalf of underrepresented groups in Africa. In particular, civil society has advocated for the representation of women’s interests (Tripp et al. 2008). Yet, relatively little is known about the full range of actors who seek the representation of women’s interests, mobilize around women’s issues, and articulate specific preferences.1 Some of these actors include not only feminists, but also religious activists who may clash over women’s issues. This gap in knowledge, moreover, extends to non-democratic countries. Who in civil society seeks to influence the representation of women’s interests and how, in …

Exposure To Pre-Incident Behavior And Reporting In College Students, Mario Scalora, Brandon A. Hollister, Sarah Hoff, Alissa Marquez

University of Nebraska Public Policy Center: Publications

Campus targeted violence is preceded by noticeable, alarming behavior, and reporting improvement efforts have been suggested to increase students’ willingness to inform campus authorities of forewarning actions. Reporting improvement techniques have been most successful with material appealing to the perceptions of high-risk students (i.e., those likely to observe and not report). The current study examined the characteristics of students that view threatening behavior and lack willingness to report with a large, Midwestern, undergraduate sample (n 450). Approximately 35% of the sample (i.e., n 157) indicated observing pre-incident behavior on campus, and 65% of these individuals (i.e., n 101) described unwillingness …

The Mask Of Virtue: Theories Of Aretaic Legislation In A Public Choice Perspective, Donald J. Kochan

Donald J. Kochan