Public Policy Commons^™

Paid Family Leave, Rachel-Lyn Longo, Shanna Pearson-Merkowitz

Senior Honors Projects

Paid Family Leave policies are rare in the United States. Around the world, one hundred and eighty-two countries provide some form of paid maternity leave, and seventy countries also offer paid paternity leave. It is estimated that only 36 percent of U.S. employees have access to paid leave if they get sick, a policy that is almost universal in other developed countries, and only 12 percent of employees have access to paid family leave. Presently, just three states have implemented Paid Family Leave (PFL) to help offset the cost of time taken off of work to care for a newborn …

Southie Versus Roxbury: Crime, Welfare, And The Racialized Gubernatorial Politics Of Massachusetts In The Post-Civil Rights Era, Daniel T. Kirsch

Doctoral Dissertations

Racial and ethnic divisions at the national level and their effects on politics take on an abstract character when not discussing specific communities. To obtain a reliable, consistent, and potentially reliable measure of a relationship, demographic information and voting behaviors at the small community, submetropolitan level must be examined in high-turnout, same-office elections over a protracted period, ideally in a polity with a penchant for racial tolerance. The political language of Boston has been mired in racialization since at least the Civil Rights era, particularly since the Boston anti-segregation busing crisis of the 1970s. While previous research has focused on …

Dwight Eisenhower, The Warrior, & John Kennedy, The Cold Warrior: Foreign Policy Under Two Presidents, Andrew C. Nosti

Student Publications

This paper presents a comparison between President Eisenhower and President Kennedy's foreign affairs policies, specifically regarding the Cold War, by examining the presidents' interactions with four distinct Cold War regions.

Absence Of Evidence And Evidence Of Absence In The Effects Of Same Sex Marriage Laws On Rates Of Opposite Sex Marriage, Alexis Dinno

Community Health Faculty Publications and Presentations

This presentation will explore the question of whether legal recognition of same sex marriages affects state- rates of opposite sex marriages in the U.S., with attention given to statistical methods for equivalence testing.

Congruence Across Levels Of Role-Taking In U.S. Foreign Policy, Paul A. Kowert, Stephen G. Walker

Political Science Faculty Publication Series

A psychosocial approach to national behavior, emphasizing the foreign policy roles selected by states, has proven to be a fertile source of insights into the ways states respond to their external environment. Disaggregating the phenomenon of role into several distinct processes—e.g., roletaking, role contestation, role enactment, and role transition—highlights interactions across different levels of analysis as part of a general process of role location. We focus in this paper specifically on the process of role-taking leading to role selection and conceive of this process as operating simultaneously at the state, domestic, and individual levels of analysis. Rather than assume that …

The Silent Crisis: Including Latinos And Why It Matters, Representation In Executive Positions, Boards, And Commissions In The City Governments Of Boston, Chelsea, And Somerville, Miren Uriarte, James Jennings, Jen Douglas

Human Services Faculty Publication Series

The Silent Crisis: Involving Latinos in Decision-Making & Why Latino Representation Matters provides a measure of the economic, social, and political inclusion of Latinos at mid-decade in three cities of the Commonwealth where about one fourth of the state’s Latino population lives. Often wrongly referred to as a “new population,” Latinos have been present in Massachusetts since the end of the 19th century, arriving in large numbers beginning in the 1960s and 1970s and growing to nearly 630,000 persons (9.6% of the population) by 2010. That same year, they accounted for 62.1% of the population of Chelsea, 17.5% of the …

Medical Marijuana, Brittany Hale

PPPA Paper Prize

No abstract provided.

The Effect Of Welfare Policies And Hardships On Participation Rates Among The Poor, Matthew W. Cain

Undergraduate Honors Theses

For several decades, a new political prospective has emerged in the Political Science literature - Policy Feedback Theory. Put simply, Policy Feedback Theory looks at the way public policy affects politics. Existing policies can define the political environment, shaping the capacities, interests, and beliefs of political elites and states, which in tum influence the next round of policy-making. However, does public policy only change the politics of elites and states? Can public policy also change the politics of mass publics? Recent Political Science researchers are now examining this question.

Even though much ground has been gained in examining this question, …

Lobbying On Behalf Of The Faithful: Three Mainline Protestant Denominations And Their Advocacy Efforts On Capitol Hill During The 110th Congress, Julia Ann Summers

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

A number of mainline Protestant denominations engage in direct lobbying and grassroots advocacy efforts with Congress on behalf of the poor and other marginalized groups. This study explores the work of three specific denominations the Presbyterian Church [PC(USA)], the United Church of Christ (UCC), and the United Methodist Church (UMC), as religious special interests. Specifically, the study explores how they facilitated their policy agendas on Capitol Hill during the 110th Congress (2007-2008). This question is answered primarily through interviews with and surveys of the professional staff engaged in this work during that session. Results indicate that each denomination works extensively …

Fairness, Justice And An Individual Basis For Public Policy, Douglas R. Oxley

Douglas R. Oxley

Prior models of the policy process have examined how human characteristics can affect policy decision-making in such a way that it leads to aggregate effects on policy outcomes as a whole. I develop a model of the policy process which suggests that emotions related to fair and unfair experiences in the same policy domain are utilized by decision-makers as policy criteria. In the lab, I empirically tested this, and find that emotions and experience related to fairness do influence the policy decision to move away from the status quo alternative. Based upon this result, I simulated the evolution of a …

Urban/Rural Spatial Identity And Legislative Behavior In Nebraska: The Impact Differences On Economic Development And Environmental Legislation, Melissa L. Trueblood

Community and Regional Planning Program: Theses and Student Projects

The urban/rural divide is pervasive in policy-making in Nebraska. In this nonpartisan state, coalitions based on spatial identity or whether the legislator is urban or rural seem to have greater weight than party especially in the creation of economic development policy. Often, economic development policies include locational considerations which give areas such as rural areas and economically distressed areas greater weight when distributing program funds. In my study, I investigate whether constituency or party has a greater impact on the legislative behavior of Nebraska state legislators when voting on economic development and environmental legislation. I expect that constituency would have …

Massresults – Building A More Effective, Accountable, And Open State Government, John W. Mccormack Graduate School Of Policy And Global Studies, University Of Massachusetts Boston, Edward J. Collins, Jr., Center For Public Management, University Of Massachusetts Boston, Russ Meekins, Amy Branger

Office of Community Partnerships Posters

Through strategic plans, performance reports, and a program-based performance budget, the Patrick administration is using data to manage, making government more transparent and accountable. Working with the Executive Office of Administration & Finance, and partnering with the Commonwealth Performance, Accountability and Transparency office, the Collins Center at UMass Boston has been charged with implementing the MassResults program throughout the executive branch.

Super Pacs 2012, Joseph Miller

Muskie School Capstones and Dissertations

The 2010 Supreme Court ruling in the case of the Citizens United vs the Federal Election Commision dramatically changed how elections are financed in the United States. That landmark case let to the creation of Super Political Action Committees (Super PACs). These organizations have the ability to raise limitless amounts of money and spend thses funds however they see fit on candidtaes of their choosing.

This case study will test six hypotheses. These hypotheses deal with two major actions. The first action is the conduct of Super PACs and the manner in which they went about choosing races to involve …

Patterns Of Role Transition: A Taxonomy, A Research Program, And The Three-Body Problem, Paul A. Kowert, Stephen G. Walker

Political Science Faculty Publication Series

In foreign policy, role transition as a process of role change implies at least two roles (a state'ʹs old role and its new role) and a dynamic process of role location in which Ego’s role changes over time. If every role for Ego presumes a counter-role for Alter, a pattern of role transition for Ego implies as well a potential process of role transition for Alter. In order to model the process of role transition, a taxonomy of mutually exclusive and logically exhaustive roles and counter-roles is desirable, in order to identify and specify the possible combinations of old and …

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.

The Axe Without The Handle: An Exploratory Analysis Of Eco-Terrorism And Its Relationships To U.S. Public Policy Towards Terrorism:1990-2010, Phillip Andrew Smith

Department of Conflict Resolution Studies Theses and Dissertations

From 1990-2010 ecoterrorist attacks by the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) and Earth Liberation Front (ELF) created an anomaly in the U.S. with millions of dollars in property destruction. Interestingly, in a post 9/11 era, the FBI warns that the number one threat to U.S. national security is not religious terrorism, but rather environmental-group terrorism. When examining this topic further, there is a void in analysis between examining ecoterrorist attacks and U.S. public policy. Is there a statistical significant relationship between terrorist attacks by ALF/ELF and U.S. public policy towards terrorism? Is per capita income an influence on the attacks occurring …

Suburban Sustainability: Favorable, Forgotten, Or Fantasy?, Tessia Melvin, Tessia G. Melvin

School of Business Student Theses and Dissertations

In the decades after World War II, the United States became a prosperous nation and world superpower. Reinventing itself through the development of suburbs, many communities were created by suburbs. Years later, criticized for suburban sprawl and aging communities, suburban communities today are faced with the dilemma of what changes to make in order to create sustainable suburban communities.

Most of the literature on sustainability and its success comes from the private sector. Much available literature provides sustainable indicators and concepts on corporate sustainability. As a result, many public administrators are faced with a reality that changes need to occur …

Performance Track’S Postmortem: Lessons From The Rise And Fall Of Epa’S “Flagship” Voluntary Program, Cary Coglianese, Jennifer Nash

All Faculty Scholarship

For nearly a decade, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (“EPA”) considered its National Environmental Performance Track to be its “flagship” voluntary program — even a model for transforming the conventional system of environmental regulation. Since Performance Track’s founding during the Clinton Administration, EPA officials repeatedly claimed that the program’s rewards attracted hundreds of the nation’s “top” environmental performers and induced these businesses to make significant environmental gains beyond legal requirements. Although EPA eventually disbanded Performance Track early in the Obama Administration, the program has been subsequently emulated by a variety of state and federal regulatory authorities. To discern lessons …

Litigation Reform: An Institutional Approach, Stephen B. Burbank, Sean Farhang

All Faculty Scholarship

The program of regulation through private litigation that Democratic Congresses purposefully created starting in the late 1960s soon met opposition emanating primarily from the Republican party. In the long campaign for retrenchment that began in the Reagan administration, consequential reform proved difficult and ultimately failed in Congress. Litigation reformers turned to the courts and, in marked contrast to their legislative failure, were well-rewarded, achieving growing rates of voting support from an increasingly conservative Supreme Court on issues curtailing private enforcement under individual statutes. We also demonstrate that the judiciary’s control of procedure has been central to the campaign to retrench …