Elaine B Sharp
Biographic Data
| ID | 144385 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Elaine B Sharp |
| GIVEN NAMES | Elaine B |
| FAMILY NAME | Sharp |
| SIGNATURE | SHARP E B |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Kansas |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 43 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 479 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 43 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1978 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2014 |
| H-INDEX | 13 |
Back to Basics: Two Issue Areas for the Future Urban Politics Agenda
This essay argues for the importance of two areas of inquiry in the future agenda of urban politics: urban infrastructure and urban policing. Both topical areas have deep roots in the field. However, this essay argues that we know less than we should about how varied institutional arrangements used to produce and manage urban infrastructure might help account for quality and equity problems of urban infrastructure. This essay also argues that urb…
Minority Representation and Order Maintenance Policing: Toward a Contingent View
Objective This article's aim is to test the impact of black political and bureaucratic representation on the rate at which blacks are arrested for order maintenance violations in U.S. cities. Methods Using data from the Law Enforcement Management and Administration Survey, the Census Bureau, and the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, for all U.S. cities over 100,000 population, the article first documents the continuing influence of…
Politics, Economics, and Urban Policing: The Postindustrial City Thesis and Rival Explanations of Heightened Order Maintenance Policing
This paper sets forth the hypothesis that the more that a city’s economy reflects the creative class and cultural tourism elements that characterize “new economy”-style postindustrial cities, the more that the police will emphasize heightened order maintenance. Such a thesis is evident in case studies on innovations in urban social control and on cities aspiring to global city status. But the thesis needs empirical test across a large sample of c…
Response to J. Eric Oliver's review of Does Local Government Matter? How Urban Policies Shape Civic Engagement
One thing our books and mutual reviews show that we very much agree on is the challenge in the study of local politics of adapting data collected for other purposes to the testing of theories of interest. We also clearly agree that local government does matter—that is, that what it does affects the shape and character of local civic engagement. But it is not clear that we see the relevance of policy feedback theory for local government in the sam…
Understanding Local Adoption and Implementation of Climate Change Mitigation Policy
Increasingly, local governments are crafting policy to tackle climate change. This article examines why cities develop and implement climate change programs. The authors consider the impact of interest group pressure, political institutions, and problem severity on a city’s decision to develop and implement climate protection programs. Their results suggest that organized interests influence both adoption and implementation of climate mitigation …
Local Government, Social Programs, and Political Participation: A Test of Policy-Centered Theory
For scholars of urban politics, the study of political participation has introduced an emphasis on a range of forms of civic engagement beyond vot ing. This research includes a substantial line of work on involvement in neighborhood organizations (Berry, Portney, and Thomson 1993; Goetz and Sidney 2008) and contact ing of city officials (Traut and Emmert 1993; Thomas and Melkers 1999) as well as copro duction of public services, collaboration on …
Culture, Segregation, and Tolerance in Urban America
Objective. The objective of this article is to examine whether racial tolerance attitudes are influenced by the character of the urban subculture in which individuals live. Specifically, is there a significant association between Florida's (2002) concept of creative class and racial tolerance among white survey respondents? Methods. The Social Capital Community Benchmark Survey that comprises respondents across some 27 cities provides the data fo…
Religious Interests in Community Conflict: Beyond the Culture Wars Edited by Paul A. Djupe and Laura R. Olson
Journal Article Religious Interests in Community Conflict: Beyond the Culture Wars Edited by Paul A. Djupe and Laura R. Olson Get access Religious Interests in Community Conflict: Beyond the Culture Warsedited by Paul A. Djupeand Laura R. Olson. Waco, TX, Baylor University Press, 2007. 353pp. $34.95. Elaine B. Sharp Elaine B. Sharp University of Kansas Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Political Science Quar…
Revitalizing Urban Research: Can Cultural Explanation Bring Us Back from the Periphery
This article lays out an argument that if the urban politics field has become marginalized, it is because the field has neglected to develop a contemporary, theoretically grounded version of cultural explanation to go along with its attention to institutions and political economy. The article introduces such a theoretical framework. It then shows how taking cultural explanation seriously could bring the study of urban politics closer to themes th…
At the Invitation of the Court: Eminent Domain Reform in State Legislatures in the Wake of the Kelo Decision
The Supreme Court's 2005 Kelo decision upholding a condemnation of private property for economic development purposes sparked a wave of reform legislation in state legislatures. However, there is considerable variation in the extent to which state legislatures restricted the power of eminent domain. This article seeks to account for this variation. It tests hypotheses drawn from the literature on state responses to Supreme Court decisions and res…
Policing Urban America: A New Look at the Politics of Agency Size
Objectives. This article analyzes competing explanations for variation in the relative size of contemporary police forces in larger U.S. cities. The featured explanation is conflict theory, which previously provided much evidence for a racial threat thesis but limited evidence that racial insurgency affected police mobilization in the 1960s and 1970s. Methods. The study sample consists of the 66 cities with a population of at least 250,000 in 200…
Taking the Keys from Grandpa
Recent highly publicized traffic accidents involving older drivers have led to renewed interest in state policies and administrative practices that award and renew drivers’ licenses in the American states. Because the probability of traffic accidents is linked to the medical conditions that are more prevalent among the elderly, and because the number of older drivers is expected to rise over the next several decades, one might expect that this wi…
Cities and Subcultures: Exploring Validity and Predicting Connections
Recently there has been renewed attention to the concept of culture in analyses of urban politics. That resurgence has taken a different path from the religion-, race-, and ethnicity-dominated approach of classic formulations. Instead, a variety of scholars conceptualize and measure subculture based on trends at the heart of a postindustrial, cultural divide in the United States. Focusing on change in women’s social roles, greater prevalence of p…
Local Government and the Politics of Decency
Objective. Local government officials exhibit a variety of responses to morality issues involving “decency” (i.e., pornography, prostitution, sexually explicit businesses). The purpose of this research is to account for these differences. Methods. This research analyzes a subset of data from a larger study of morality policy making at the local level, that is, all cases of decision making on decency issues (e.g., pornography, prostitution, regula…
Culture, Institutions, and Urban Officials' Responses to Morality Issues
Culture, Institutions, and Urban Officials' Responses to Morality Issues
This article focuses on city officials' actions when morality issues (gay rights, pornography regulations, etc.) are at stake. Cases drawn from a systematic sample of cities reveal a continuum of local officials' actions ranging from actions unfavorable to activists to evasion of the issue to actions favorable to activists. In order to account for this variation, hypotheses are developed that identify institutional arrangements, ideol- ogy of iss…
Individual and Contextual Effects on Attributions about Pornography
This article focuses on individuals' willingness to attribute rape effects to pornography. Using General Social Survey data from 1975 and 1986, the paper examines (1) the attitudinal and experiential variables that shape acceptance of this causal attribution; (2) the impact of elite-level efforts to reframe the pornography issue to incorporate this causal attribution; and (3) interaction effects. The analysis shows the following: 1. Both experien…
The Sometime Connection: Public Opinion and Social Policy
A Comparative Anatomy of Urban Social Conflict
A Comparative Anatomy of Urban Social Conflict
This study explores local government's roles in "culture wars"—i.e., morals-based controversies such as those involving abortion clinic protest, anti-pornography crusades, debates over the extension of civil rights pro tections to gays, and regulation of hate group activities. Three particular roles are highlighted for analysis: hyperactive responsiveness, entrepreneur ial instigation, and repression. Both deductive and inductive approaches are u…
Culture Wars and City Politics: Local Government's Role in Social Conflict
The author focuses on morals-based controversies, or culture wars, that have engulfed U.S. cities over issues such as gay rights, pornography, the operation of abortion clinics, hate-group activity, and judicial handling of sexual assault. Explanation of the importance of such social controversies to urban scholarship and reasons for neglect of the topic to date are offered. Drawing upon a variety of case studies of culture-war controversy, the a…
The Dynamics of Issue Expansion: Cases from Disability Rights and Fetal Research Controversy
This article draws upon cases from the history of disability rights policy-making and from the history of fetal research regulation to explore the role of public opinion in policy-making. Drawing upon Wilson's typology, hypotheses set forth expectations that (a) in episodes of majoritarian politics, policymakers respond to popular concern about an issue; (b) in episodes of entrepreneurial politics, policy-makers mobilize popular concern; (c) in e…
Agenda‐Setting and Policy Results: Lessons From Three Drug Policy Episodes
This paper focuses on three episodes of US. policymaking concerning illicit drugs, one. during the Nixon administration, one during the Carter administration, and the contemporary war on drugs. Drawing upon evidence from drug‐related Congressional hearings, the Gallup Poll, counts of relevant articles in the Headers' Guide to Periodical Literature and content analysis of the New York Times Index, the three episodes are characterized as fating one…
Theories of the Local Welfare Role
This article investigates four competing explanations of variation in the extent of local governments' welfare activity: a need responsiveness explanation, a fiscal capacity explanation, a crimeoriented version of social disturbance theory, and a community homogeneity thesis. Using census data for a national sample of U.S. cities in 1977, the analysis shows that, once the powerful effects of intergovernmental influence and functional scope are ta…
Institutional Manifestations of Accessiblity and Urban Economic Development Polity
hile there has been an avalanche of research on the general~/B / topic of local economic development, surprisingly littlew V research has been done to account for variation in cities’ economic development policy activities. That which has been done on this subject suggests that economic need is a powerful force driving officials to adopt economic development policies ranging from loans, tax abatements, and other financial incentives to infrastruc…
Understanding Local Adoption and Implementation of Climate Change Mitigation Policy
Increasingly, local governments are crafting policy to tackle climate change. This article examines why cities develop and implement climate change programs. The authors consider the impact of interest group pressure, political institutions, and problem severity on a city’s decision to develop and implement climate protection programs. Their results suggest that organized interests influence both adoption and implementation of climate mitigation …
Politics, Economics, and Urban Policing: The Postindustrial City Thesis and Rival Explanations of Heightened Order Maintenance Policing
This paper sets forth the hypothesis that the more that a city’s economy reflects the creative class and cultural tourism elements that characterize “new economy”-style postindustrial cities, the more that the police will emphasize heightened order maintenance. Such a thesis is evident in case studies on innovations in urban social control and on cities aspiring to global city status. But the thesis needs empirical test across a large sample of c…
Culture, Institutions, and Urban Officials' Responses to Morality Issues
This article focuses on city officials' actions when morality issues (gay rights, pornography regulations, etc.) are at stake. Cases drawn from a systematic sample of cities reveal a continuum of local officials' actions ranging from actions unfavorable to activists to evasion of the issue to actions favorable to activists. In order to account for this variation, hypotheses are developed that identify institutional arrangements, ideol- ogy of iss…
"Exit, Voice, and Loyalty" in the Context of Local Government Problems
Citizen-Initiated Contacting of Government Officials and Socioeconomic Status: Determining the Relationship and Accounting for It
The topic of citizen-initiated contacting of government officials has received increasing attention, but research has yielded conflicting findings on the relationship of socioeconomic status to contacting behavior. Various studies find that the two are negatively, positively, parabolically, or negligibly related. Data are presented supporting the claim of a positive relationship, and reasons for the conflicting findings are explored. The need-awa…
Citizen-Demand Making in the Urban Context
Citizen-initiated contacting of public officials, a form of political participation of special interest to urban scholars, has been viewed by some as a maverick form of participation, unexplainable by the standard socioeconomic model; others find that socioeconomic variables are associated with contacting, while still others argue that need for government attention is the key factor in an explanatory model of contacting. This paper presents data …
Theories of the Local Welfare Role
This article investigates four competing explanations of variation in the extent of local governments' welfare activity: a need responsiveness explanation, a fiscal capacity explanation, a crimeoriented version of social disturbance theory, and a community homogeneity thesis. Using census data for a national sample of U.S. cities in 1977, the analysis shows that, once the powerful effects of intergovernmental influence and functional scope are ta…
The Sometime Connection: Public Opinion and Social Policy
Institutional Manifestations of Accessiblity and Urban Economic Development Polity
hile there has been an avalanche of research on the general~/B / topic of local economic development, surprisingly littlew V research has been done to account for variation in cities’ economic development policy activities. That which has been done on this subject suggests that economic need is a powerful force driving officials to adopt economic development policies ranging from loans, tax abatements, and other financial incentives to infrastruc…
Revitalizing Urban Research: Can Cultural Explanation Bring Us Back from the Periphery
This article lays out an argument that if the urban politics field has become marginalized, it is because the field has neglected to develop a contemporary, theoretically grounded version of cultural explanation to go along with its attention to institutions and political economy. The article introduces such a theoretical framework. It then shows how taking cultural explanation seriously could bring the study of urban politics closer to themes th…
Cities and Subcultures: Exploring Validity and Predicting Connections
Recently there has been renewed attention to the concept of culture in analyses of urban politics. That resurgence has taken a different path from the religion-, race-, and ethnicity-dominated approach of classic formulations. Instead, a variety of scholars conceptualize and measure subculture based on trends at the heart of a postindustrial, cultural divide in the United States. Focusing on change in women’s social roles, greater prevalence of p…
Minority Representation and Order Maintenance Policing: Toward a Contingent View
Objective This article's aim is to test the impact of black political and bureaucratic representation on the rate at which blacks are arrested for order maintenance violations in U.S. cities. Methods Using data from the Law Enforcement Management and Administration Survey, the Census Bureau, and the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, for all U.S. cities over 100,000 population, the article first documents the continuing influence of…
A Comparative Anatomy of Urban Social Conflict
This study explores local government's roles in "culture wars"—i.e., morals-based controversies such as those involving abortion clinic protest, anti-pornography crusades, debates over the extension of civil rights pro tections to gays, and regulation of hate group activities. Three particular roles are highlighted for analysis: hyperactive responsiveness, entrepreneur ial instigation, and repression. Both deductive and inductive approaches are u…
Culture Wars and City Politics: Local Government's Role in Social Conflict
The author focuses on morals-based controversies, or culture wars, that have engulfed U.S. cities over issues such as gay rights, pornography, the operation of abortion clinics, hate-group activity, and judicial handling of sexual assault. Explanation of the importance of such social controversies to urban scholarship and reasons for neglect of the topic to date are offered. Drawing upon a variety of case studies of culture-war controversy, the a…
The Dynamics of Issue Expansion: Cases from Disability Rights and Fetal Research Controversy
This article draws upon cases from the history of disability rights policy-making and from the history of fetal research regulation to explore the role of public opinion in policy-making. Drawing upon Wilson's typology, hypotheses set forth expectations that (a) in episodes of majoritarian politics, policymakers respond to popular concern about an issue; (b) in episodes of entrepreneurial politics, policy-makers mobilize popular concern; (c) in e…
Individual and Contextual Effects on Attributions about Pornography
This article focuses on individuals' willingness to attribute rape effects to pornography. Using General Social Survey data from 1975 and 1986, the paper examines (1) the attitudinal and experiential variables that shape acceptance of this causal attribution; (2) the impact of elite-level efforts to reframe the pornography issue to incorporate this causal attribution; and (3) interaction effects. The analysis shows the following: 1. Both experien…
Culture, Segregation, and Tolerance in Urban America
Objective. The objective of this article is to examine whether racial tolerance attitudes are influenced by the character of the urban subculture in which individuals live. Specifically, is there a significant association between Florida's (2002) concept of creative class and racial tolerance among white survey respondents? Methods. The Social Capital Community Benchmark Survey that comprises respondents across some 27 cities provides the data fo…
Policing Urban America: A New Look at the Politics of Agency Size
Objectives. This article analyzes competing explanations for variation in the relative size of contemporary police forces in larger U.S. cities. The featured explanation is conflict theory, which previously provided much evidence for a racial threat thesis but limited evidence that racial insurgency affected police mobilization in the 1960s and 1970s. Methods. The study sample consists of the 66 cities with a population of at least 250,000 in 200…
Citizen Perceptions of Channels for Urban Service Advocacy
Journal Article Citizen Perceptions of Channels for Urban Service Advocacy Get access ELAINE B. SHARP ELAINE B. SHARP Elaine B. Sharp is Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science and Research Associate in the Center for Public Affairs, University of Kansas. The data reported here were collected by the Police Service Study, a joint project of the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis at Indiana University and the Center…
The Impact of Fiscal Limitation: A Tale of Seven Cities
In the latter 1970s, scholarly attention was drawn to the as fiscal limitation measures were adopted in a variety of states. By 1983, twenty states had adopted such limitations on either state revenue or expenditures, and many others had imposed new fiscal limits on local government. ' Much of the initial research on the fiscal limitation movement focused on interpretations of voter intentions and the roots of this movement.2 Even as controversy …
Agenda‐Setting and Policy Results: Lessons From Three Drug Policy Episodes
This paper focuses on three episodes of US. policymaking concerning illicit drugs, one. during the Nixon administration, one during the Carter administration, and the contemporary war on drugs. Drawing upon evidence from drug‐related Congressional hearings, the Gallup Poll, counts of relevant articles in the Headers' Guide to Periodical Literature and content analysis of the New York Times Index, the three episodes are characterized as fating one…
The Politics and Economics of the New City Debt
This paper contrasts nonguaranteed city debt with taxation and general obligation debt. Drawing upon Bureau of the Census, Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations (ACIR) and Municipal Year Book data, the analysis shows that both per capita tax revenue and outstanding general obligation debt are best explained by background factors such as total population, functional scope, and region, while fiscal strain plays a secondary role. Politi…
At the Invitation of the Court: Eminent Domain Reform in State Legislatures in the Wake of the Kelo Decision
The Supreme Court's 2005 Kelo decision upholding a condemnation of private property for economic development purposes sparked a wave of reform legislation in state legislatures. However, there is considerable variation in the extent to which state legislatures restricted the power of eminent domain. This article seeks to account for this variation. It tests hypotheses drawn from the literature on state responses to Supreme Court decisions and res…
Responsiveness in Urban Service Delivery: The Case of Policing
This article explores current conceptualizations of responsiveness, and argues that, while several levels of responsiveness (e.g., access, policy) are identified in the literature, the responsiveness concept is treatedfrom the perspective of a "consumer" model. Consequently, attention is directed toward satisfying citizen preferences, and the professional administrator's role in molding preferences and responding to "needs" as well as "preference…
Street‐level Discretion in Policing: Attitudes and Behaviors in the Deprofessionalization Syndrome
This article examines the consequences of a clash between police officers' expectations of street‐level discretion and supervisors' constraints on such discretion. Two hypothesized consequences are examined: police officer alienation from the citizenry and police officer disaffection with the department. Both attitudinal data (from a survey of police officers) and behavioral data (from direct observation of police officers on patrol) are used. Th…
Citizen Organizations in Policing Issues and Crime Prevention: Incentives for Participation
Toward a New Understanding of Urban Services and Citizen Participation: The Coproduction Concept
Citizen Perceptions of Channels for Urban Service Advocacy
Journal Article Citizen Perceptions of Channels for Urban Service Advocacy Get access ELAINE B. SHARP ELAINE B. SHARP Elaine B. Sharp is Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science and Research Associate in the Center for Public Affairs, University of Kansas. The data reported here were collected by the Police Service Study, a joint project of the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis at Indiana University and the Center…
Citizen Participation and Urban Capacity Building: Representation and Conflict
The paper focuses on two major urban capacities to which citizen participation policies are expected to contribute—the capacity to represent diverse interests and the capacity to sustain conflict. The comparative strengths and weaknesses of two different citizen participation structures are considered—single-purpose, appointed advisory boards and multiple-purpose, elected neighborhood councils. Drawing from both the literature and original data f…
Responsiveness in Urban Service Delivery: The Case of Policing
This article explores current conceptualizations of responsiveness, and argues that, while several levels of responsiveness (e.g., access, policy) are identified in the literature, the responsiveness concept is treatedfrom the perspective of a "consumer" model. Consequently, attention is directed toward satisfying citizen preferences, and the professional administrator's role in molding preferences and responding to "needs" as well as "preference…
Citizen Perception of Police Service Delivery: A Look at Some Consequences
What difference does it make if public services are inequitably distributed? This articles addresses that question by examining the relationships among perceived inequity in service delivery and dissatisfaction with public services on‐the‐one‐hand, and a variety of other attitudes and reports of behavior on‐the‐other. In the case of police services, I find that perceptions of inequity and dissatisfaction with services have negative consequences b…
Organizations, Their Environments, and Goal Definition: An Approach to the Study of Neighborhood Associations in Urban Politics
Sources of and Reactions to the Fear of Crime
Street‐level Discretion in Policing: Attitudes and Behaviors in the Deprofessionalization Syndrome
This article examines the consequences of a clash between police officers' expectations of street‐level discretion and supervisors' constraints on such discretion. Two hypothesized consequences are examined: police officer alienation from the citizenry and police officer disaffection with the department. Both attitudinal data (from a survey of police officers) and behavioral data (from direct observation of police officers on patrol) are used. Th…
Citizen-Initiated Contacting of Government Officials and Socioeconomic Status: Determining the Relationship and Accounting for It
The topic of citizen-initiated contacting of government officials has received increasing attention, but research has yielded conflicting findings on the relationship of socioeconomic status to contacting behavior. Various studies find that the two are negatively, positively, parabolically, or negligibly related. Data are presented supporting the claim of a positive relationship, and reasons for the conflicting findings are explored. The need-awa…
Need, Awareness, and Contacting Propensity: Study of a City with a Central Complaint Unit
Recent research on citizen-initiated contacting propensity has generated two different findings: one of a parabolic relationship between contacting and neighborhood social well-being, the other a negative relationship between the two. It has been argued that the latter pattern is to be expected in cities with central complaint-handling units, owing to the effect of such units on citizen awareness of urban service systems. Results reported here fr…
Citizen-Demand Making in the Urban Context
Citizen-initiated contacting of public officials, a form of political participation of special interest to urban scholars, has been viewed by some as a maverick form of participation, unexplainable by the standard socioeconomic model; others find that socioeconomic variables are associated with contacting, while still others argue that need for government attention is the key factor in an explanatory model of contacting. This paper presents data …
"Exit, Voice, and Loyalty" in the Context of Local Government Problems
The Impact of Television Coverage of City Council
In this article we examine the impact of a local government reform or innovation that is being widely adopted in American cities—television coverage of city council meetings. Television coverage of meetings may be viewed as one of a series of innovations directed at increasing citizen awareness of the governing process by increasing the visibility and public scrutiny of formal decision making processes. It is often viewed as a public service, is …
The Politics and Economics of the New City Debt
This paper contrasts nonguaranteed city debt with taxation and general obligation debt. Drawing upon Bureau of the Census, Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations (ACIR) and Municipal Year Book data, the analysis shows that both per capita tax revenue and outstanding general obligation debt are best explained by background factors such as total population, functional scope, and region, while fiscal strain plays a secondary role. Politi…
Voting on Citywide Propositions: Further Tests of Competing Explanations
Existing research on urban referendum voting offers several different explanations of local voting patterns, but these usually are not tested against one another in a way that can demonstrate the relative importance of each. This research analyzes the response by voters in Kansas City, Missouri, to two tax-and-spending-type propositions and a fluoridation proposal by using predictor variables representative of the "socioeconomic status" explanati…
The Impact of Fiscal Limitation: A Tale of Seven Cities
In the latter 1970s, scholarly attention was drawn to the as fiscal limitation measures were adopted in a variety of states. By 1983, twenty states had adopted such limitations on either state revenue or expenditures, and many others had imposed new fiscal limits on local government. ' Much of the initial research on the fiscal limitation movement focused on interpretations of voter intentions and the roots of this movement.2 Even as controversy …
Political Theory and Praxis from Neighborhood to Nation-State
Theories of the Local Welfare Role
This article investigates four competing explanations of variation in the extent of local governments' welfare activity: a need responsiveness explanation, a fiscal capacity explanation, a crimeoriented version of social disturbance theory, and a community homogeneity thesis. Using census data for a national sample of U.S. cities in 1977, the analysis shows that, once the powerful effects of intergovernmental influence and functional scope are ta…
Institutional Manifestations of Accessiblity and Urban Economic Development Polity
hile there has been an avalanche of research on the general~/B / topic of local economic development, surprisingly littlew V research has been done to account for variation in cities’ economic development policy activities. That which has been done on this subject suggests that economic need is a powerful force driving officials to adopt economic development policies ranging from loans, tax abatements, and other financial incentives to infrastruc…
Agenda‐Setting and Policy Results: Lessons From Three Drug Policy Episodes
This paper focuses on three episodes of US. policymaking concerning illicit drugs, one. during the Nixon administration, one during the Carter administration, and the contemporary war on drugs. Drawing upon evidence from drug‐related Congressional hearings, the Gallup Poll, counts of relevant articles in the Headers' Guide to Periodical Literature and content analysis of the New York Times Index, the three episodes are characterized as fating one…
The Dynamics of Issue Expansion: Cases from Disability Rights and Fetal Research Controversy
This article draws upon cases from the history of disability rights policy-making and from the history of fetal research regulation to explore the role of public opinion in policy-making. Drawing upon Wilson's typology, hypotheses set forth expectations that (a) in episodes of majoritarian politics, policymakers respond to popular concern about an issue; (b) in episodes of entrepreneurial politics, policy-makers mobilize popular concern; (c) in e…
Culture Wars and City Politics: Local Government's Role in Social Conflict
The author focuses on morals-based controversies, or culture wars, that have engulfed U.S. cities over issues such as gay rights, pornography, the operation of abortion clinics, hate-group activity, and judicial handling of sexual assault. Explanation of the importance of such social controversies to urban scholarship and reasons for neglect of the topic to date are offered. Drawing upon a variety of case studies of culture-war controversy, the a…
A Comparative Anatomy of Urban Social Conflict
A Comparative Anatomy of Urban Social Conflict
This study explores local government's roles in "culture wars"—i.e., morals-based controversies such as those involving abortion clinic protest, anti-pornography crusades, debates over the extension of civil rights pro tections to gays, and regulation of hate group activities. Three particular roles are highlighted for analysis: hyperactive responsiveness, entrepreneur ial instigation, and repression. Both deductive and inductive approaches are u…
Political science (38 works) · Sociology (28 works) · Law (26 works) · Politics (23 works) · Law (20 works) · Economics (17 works) · Public Administration (15 works) · Psychology (14 works) · Business (12 works) · Public Administration (11 works)