Suchergebnisse

Since 1989, throughout the administrations of Salinas de Gortari, Zedillo, & Fox, there have been several proposals to reform the Federal Labor Law (LFT). None of these bills, thou, has been discussed by the floor of the Mexican Congress. A number of factors account for the opposition to labor reform, including NAFTA negotiations from 1991 to 1993; the 1993-1994 presidential shift; & the refusal by the CTM (Mexican Workers Confederation) to modify some provisions of the LFT (such as the exclusion clause), or to make changes to union statutes that prevent free & secret vote to elect their executive committees or in other internal election processes. The agreement between President Fox & CTM leaders has recently ratified the position of workers confederation, but did not give rise to in any reform to the LFT. Adapted from the source document.

Understanding the dynamics of lawmaking in the United States is at the center of the study of American politics. A fundamental obstacle to progress in this pursuit is the lack of measures of policy output, especially for the period prior to 1946. The lack of direct legislative accomplishment measures makes it difficult to assess the performance of our political system. We provide a new measure of legislative significance and accomplishment. Specifically, we demonstrate how item‐response theory can be combined with a new dataset that contains every public statute enacted between 1877 and 1994 to estimate "legislative importance" across time. Although the resulting estimates and associated standard errors provide new opportunities for scholars interested in analyzing U.S. policymaking since 1877, the methodology we present is not restricted to Congress, the United States, or lawmaking.

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "In fiscal year 2004, the Congress appropriated $6.8 billion to serve 919,000 poor children through 1,680 Head Start grantees nationwide. Recent reports of financial improprieties at a number of Head Start programs around the country raised questions about the effectiveness of the oversight provided by the Department of Health and Human Services' (HHS) Administration for Children and Families (ACF) in identifying and resolving financial management weaknesses in Head Start grantees. This testimony discusses (1) the processes ACF uses to assess the programs' risks, (2) whether those processes could be improved to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the information ACF collects on its Head Start grantees, and (3) whether ACF ensures that grantees with financial management weaknesses correct those problems in a timely manner."

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "In fiscal year 2004, the Congress appropriated $6.8 billion to serve 919,000 poor children through 1,680 Head Start grantees nationwide. Recent reports of financial improprieties at a number of Head Start programs around the country raised questions about the effectiveness of the oversight provided by the Department of Health and Human Services' (HHS) Administration for Children and Families (ACF) in identifying and resolving financial management weaknesses in Head Start grantees. This testimony discusses (1) the processes ACF uses to assess the programs' risks, (2) whether those processes could be improved to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the information ACF collects on its Head Start grantees, and (3) whether ACF ensures that grantees with financial management weaknesses correct those problems in a timely manner."

Introduces this investigation of legislative coalitions in AK, FL, GA, MI, & TX over the last two decades of the 20th century, analyzing the political culture of each of these states separately & in a final combined analysis with the remaining southern states: AL, LA, NC, SC, TN, & VA. The overall goal is to determine whether the "descriptive representation" of African Americans in state assemblies & local governments during this period correlated with actual "substantive representation" of African American interests. Previous studies of representation in the US Congress & state legislatures is reviewed, & the design of the current research is outlined. Analysis includes (1) the growth of African-American representation in each legislative chamber, 1980-2000; (2) committee leadership (chairpersonships) for each state in 2000; & (3) roll-call voting on key policy issues of concern to African Americans. K. Hyatt Stewart

Initial studies of legislative behavior in post-communist Ukraine suggest that party affiliation plays a significant role in legislator voting decisions. Yet, the intense debate in the US Congress literature on party effects suggests that finding effects can be problematic. The article contends that there was evidence of party effects in the mixed-member Verkhovna Rada (1998e 2002). An analysis of party switching demonstrates that those parliamentary parties linked to powerful political and economic elites were able to affect substantively the preferences of party switchers. While this analysis establishes the existence of party effects, the ability of a party to affect deputies does not depend on the strength of the party label as it does in the US case.

Examines some personal characteristics of the new ruling elite who came to power in China at the Sixteenth National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 2002. It is shown that these top leaders are, for the most part, motivated by rational self-interest & have achieved their success largely through patronage. The political & organizational environment in which they operate today is free of the "strongmen" & intense ideological struggle of the past. Retirement is considered an acceptable method of political exit (in contrast to the purges of the Mao years), & age limits have become more important in shaping elite behavior; the political power of the military, on the other hand, has waned. It is suggested that Chinese elite politics can best be explained as a function of shifts in power among uni-, bi-, & multipolarity. 10 References. K. Hyatt Stewart

A chapter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Congress and the President have called for various homeland security efforts to be based on risk management--a systematic process for assessing threats and taking appropriate steps to deal with them. GAO examined how three Department of Homeland Security (DHS) components were carrying out this charge: the Coast Guard, which has overall responsibility for security in the nation's ports; the Office for Domestic Preparedness (ODP), which awards grants for port security projects; and the Information Analysis and Infrastructure Protection Directorate (IAIP), which has responsibility for developing ways to assess risks across all types of critical infrastructure. GAO's work focused on identifying the progress each DHS component has made on risk management and the challenges each faces in moving further."

Introduces this investigation of legislative coalitions in AK, FL, GA, MI, & TX over the last two decades of the 20th century, analyzing the political culture of each of these states separately & in a final combined analysis with the remaining southern states: AL, LA, NC, SC, TN, & VA. The overall goal is to determine whether the "descriptive representation" of African Americans in state assemblies & local governments during this period correlated with actual "substantive representation" of African American interests. Previous studies of representation in the US Congress & state legislatures is reviewed, & the design of the current research is outlined. Analysis includes (1) the growth of African-American representation in each legislative chamber, 1980-2000; (2) committee leadership (chairpersonships) for each state in 2000; & (3) roll-call voting on key policy issues of concern to African Americans. K. Hyatt Stewart

Several characteristics of a political system have been identified as increasing the cost of governing, such as presidentialism, federalism, an open list with proportional representation, a multiparty system, and coalition governments. Although Brazil suffers from all of these "pathologies," the authors argue that other characteristics of the Brazilian system have the opposite effect and allow high levels of governability at low cost. In particular, the authors examine the role of legislators' amendments to the budget, which provide the executive a low-cost means of obtaining support. The authors provide evidence that the Brazilian president routinely uses his or her powers to reward and punish legislators for supporting or opposing his or her interests in Congress. Although legislators have a limited role in the budgetary process, that role can have important electoral consequences for their political careers.

Data from the 1999-2000 Annual Survey of Deaf and Hard of Hearing Children and Youth (GRI Annual Survey; Gallaudet Research Institute, 2000) are systematically compared with those summarized by the U.S. Department of Education (2001, 2002) in the Annual Report to Congress on the Implementation of the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) to estimate the degree to which findings based on the GRI Annual Survey sample are likely to be representative of the population of deaf and hard of hearing children and youth served under IDEA. An appropriate weighting system is then applied to provide more nationally representative estimates of the characteristics of deaf and hard of hearing students served under IDEA and, more important, to provide a better national description of these students and the services they receive than would otherwise be available.

AbstractThere have always been United States policies on the arts. Some of the nation's founding fathers envisioned federal support for the arts. Congress maintained the Constitution did not empower it to "encourage" the arts, but enacted legislation addressing acknowledged national concerns that also regulated the arts, employed artists, acquired artworks, and created cultural institutions. These uncoordinated de facto arts policies provided models for future action on arts‐related matters.The federal government's failure to address the arts more directly produced a contentious environment for the nation's artists, leaving them to feel disenfranchised. Advocates' attempting to gain parity for artists and the arts gave rise to a national movement in the 1930s that continued into the 1960s, and constituted the pregovernmental agenda for the National Foundations on the Arts and the Humanities Act of 1965.

Appropriations are one part of a complex federal budget process that includes budget resolutions appropriations bills, recessions, and budget reconciliation bills. The process begins with the President's budget request and it bounded by the rules of the House and Senate, the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974, the Budget Enforcement Act of 1990, and current program authorizations. This report is a guide to one of the 13 regular appropriations bills that Congress passes each year. It is designed to supplement the information provided by the House and Senate Appropriations Subcommittees on Energy and Water. It summarizes the current legislative status of the bill, its scope, major issues, funding levels, and related legislative activity. The report lists the key CRS staff relevant to the issues covered and related CRS products.