Suchergebnisse

Public managers, in addition to implementing sound policies, are expected to manage public participation in the policy process. Civic meetings, in which citizens, elected officials, and public managers discuss proposed policies, can be an effective venue for citizen input, but only if participation is sufficiently high. This article shows that municipal government managers can improve attendance at civic meetings through invitation phone calls. Results from a field experiment in which stakeholders were randomly assigned to receive an invitation phone call for a civic meeting indicate that invitation phone calls can significantly increase meeting attendance. The attendance rate among the 108 stakeholders selected to receive the phone call was higher than among the 169 stakeholders in the control group (8.3 percent versus 4.7 percent). The $20 cost of increasing meeting attendance by one stakeholder is about equal to the cost of increasing turnout in an election by one voter.

AbstractNatural disasters are worsening, but elected officials have not adequately invested in programs that would improve disaster preparedness. Federal spending and election outcomes have been taken to suggest policymakers' failure to support long‐term preparedness results from a lack of interest in disaster preparedness among voters and a pervasive preference among voters for more spending on disaster relief than preparedness. However, our national survey experiment on state legislators and public preferences shows that the public is equally interested in disaster preparedness and relief and that both the public and legislators are open to increases in spending on preparedness. The support for preparedness can be motivated by information about past disaster losses rather than having to make difficult predictions about future losses. This study suggests the lack of preparedness spending stems not from voter disinterest, but from a failure of legislators to harness voter support for preparedness. Specifically, the legislators included in our study report being less responsive to attentive voters' preferences on preparedness than relief.

Policy entrepreneurs are thought to be instrumental in agenda change, yet we lack knowledge of how legislators perceive their role in the agenda formation process. Using data from a national survey of state legislators, we examine whether entrepreneurs shape the legislative agenda on disaster preparedness and relief, which types of entrepreneurs are most influential, and what strategies they use in their interactions with legislators. The results indicate that legislators who report contact with policy entrepreneurs are more likely to have introduced related legislation, evidence of the important link between entrepreneurs and policy change. While entrepreneurs utilize a variety of different strategies, the analysis reveals policymakers are particularly receptive to entrepreneurs who provide new and reliable information. This finding suggests the influence of entrepreneurs lies not only in their ability to define problems and build coalitions, but also in their distinctive ability to provide information to elected officials, an important role that has largely been overlooked by existing literature.

AbstractObjectiveUnderstanding how positive parenting is conveyed across generations informs early childhood policy.BackgroundThe extant literature has focused on how a mother's relationship with her own mother sets the stage for her parenting of her own children, yet less understood is how a mother's relationship with her father supports her responsive parenting and potentially informs her child's attachment security.MethodWe analyzed data from 6,400 mothers of singleton infants participating in the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Birth Cohort. We examined whether a mother's closeness with her own mother and father (Generation 1) related to her responsiveness and child attachment security (Generation 3) at age 24 months.ResultsMost mothers reported being extremely (25.7%) or at least quite close (25.1%) with both their mother and father. How close mothers felt to their own parents was not associated with their observed level of responsiveness to their toddler or their toddler's attachment security, adjusting for sociodemographic covariates. Maternal education was the strongest predictor of responsiveness and attachment security.ConclusionMaternal education is strongly related to responsiveness, and to a lesser extent, child attachment security, in toddlerhood.Implications.Programs aimed at addressing the challenges of caregiving may overcome the limitations of lower education status.

Legislators' actions are influenced by party, constituency, and their own views, each weighted differently. Our survey of state legislators finds that legislator's own views are the strongest influence. We also find that institutions are an important source of party leaders' influence. Legislators in states where members rely more on party leaders—states without term limits, with less professional legislatures, and where the majority party controls the agenda—put more weight on leaders' preferences. Beyond direct party influence, the views of party leaders are preemptively incorporated into legislators' preferences when the rules of the legislature make party leaders more powerful.