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Policy diffusion studies often infer that learning occurs, but statistical analyses cannot demonstrate it definitively. The spread of medical marijuana offers the opportunity to take a closer look at whether policy and political learning occur during diffusion. An increasing number of states have adopted medical marijuana policies in defiance of federal prohibition and in the space created by federal inactivity. Furthermore, early adopting states have adapted their programs to account for changes in the industry and to coincide with recreational marijuana programs. This article sheds light on how the laws have evolved over time due to policy learning, political learning, and local adaptation. Specifically, we review how states have incorporated best practices from others (policy learning) and how the laws have been repackaged in more politically conservative states (political learning). Finally, we show how states adapt to medical marijuana laws by using precedents from the regulation of other industries.

Diffusion research often characterizes the role of the federal government in innovation adoption as a supportive one, either increasing the likelihood of adoption or its speed. We examine the adoption of medical marijuana laws (MMLs) from 1996 to 2014 to shed light on what motivates states to adopt innovations that are in explicit defiance of federal law. Furthermore, we examine whether federal signals have any influence on the likelihood of adoption. In doing so, we utilize implementation theory to expand our understanding of how the federal government's position impacts state policy innovation adoption. We find mixed evidence for the influence of federal signals on the adoption of MMLs. The results suggest that medical marijuana policies are much more likely to be adopted in states when proponents have the political or institutional capital, rather than a medical or fiscal need. Moreover, this political capital is sufficient independent of the federal government's real or perceived position.

We examine the role that local parties play in responding to and equipping local volunteers to work during campaign seasons. We use a field experiment during the 2020 U.S. general election to investigate whether local parties are more likely to respond to certain types of volunteers and to examine what factors are associated with local parties' responsiveness. We find that both Democratic and Republican local parties in competitive counties are more likely to respond to volunteers. Moreover, we find that both parties are more likely to respond to white volunteers and Democratic parties are more likely to respond to women. These differential response rates may be contributing to the increased demographic sorting between the parties.

In this research note we document changes to the rate of comments, shares, and reactions on local Republican Facebook pages. Near the end of 2018, local Republican parties started to see a much higher degree of interactions on their posts compared to local Democratic parties. We show how this increase in engagement was unique to Facebook and happened across a range of over a thousand local parties. In addition, we use a changepoint model to identify when the change happened and find it lines up with reported information about the change in Facebook's algorithm in 2018. We conclude that it seems possible that changes in how Facebook rated content led to a doubling of the total shares of local Republican party posts compared to local Democratic party posts in the first half of 2019 even though Democratic parties posted more often during this period. Regardless of Facebook's motivations, their decision to change the algorithm might have given local Republican parties greater reach to connect with citizens and shape political realities for Americans. The fact that private companies can so easily control the political information flow for millions of Americans raises clear questions for the state of democracy.

Political parties use the internet, and social media in particular, for fundraising, advertising, and mobilizing to achieve desirable ends. Local parties are first and foremost organizations, and so as they make their decisions, they have to use their resources wisely. Through our analysis of over 6000 county-level Democratic and Republican parties in the United States, we find a high degree of variation in the use of social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram) by parties. In explaining this variation, we focus on parties as organizations and so find the choice to use social media and their overall activity on it reflects the resources available to the party organization, as well as the size of potential audience and the competitiveness of their political environment. These variables explain local Democratic parties better than they explain local Republican parties.

Under the Controlled Substances Act (1970), the federal government classifies cannabis as a Schedule I drug with high potential for abuse and no accepted medical use. Meanwhile, thirty-five states have defied federal prohibition and approved cannabis use for either medical or medical and recreational purposes. States are chipping away at War on Drugs policies with little clear guidance from the federal government. The starkly divergent approaches to cannabis regulation lead to administrative challenges for adopting states and the budding industry. We examine how the federal government's rhetorical and regulatory fickleness on cannabis policy has led to several downstream administrative consequences in banking, taxes, social equity, and bankruptcy protections. We also discuss whether recent events like the coronavirus pandemic and more state adoptions can accelerate change at the federal level. Finally, we argue for additional research attention to cannabis policy by federalism and public administration scholars.

AbstractPublic administration upholds four pillars of an administrative practice: economy, efficiency, effectiveness, and social equity. The question arises, however, how do administrators balance effectiveness and social equity when implementing policy? Can the values contributing to administrative decisions be measured? This study leverages the expansion of medical cannabis programs in the states to interrogate these questions. The awarding of dispensary licenses in Pennsylvania affords the ability to determine the effect of social equity scoring on license award decisions, relative to criteria that represent the other pillars. The results show that safety and business acumen were the most important determining factors in the awarding of licenses, both effectiveness concerns. Social equity does not emerge as a significant determinant until the second round of licensing. This study then discusses the future of social equity provisions for cannabis policy, as well as what the findings mean for social equity in public administration.

Purpose
Despite increased attention to, and investment in, scaling up of disaster risk reduction (DRR), there has been little detailed discussion of scalability. The purpose of this paper is to respond to this critical gap by proposing a definition of scaling up for DRR, what effective scaling up entails, and how to measure and plan for scalability.


Design/methodology/approach
A literature review of debates, case studies and good practices in DRR and parallel sectors (i.e. education, health and the wider development field) unveiled and enabled the weighting of key concepts that inform scalability. The mixed methods research then developed, validated and employed a scalability assessment framework to examine 20 DRR and five non-DRR initiatives for which a minimum set of evidence was accessible.


Findings
Support from national, regional and/or local authorities strongly influenced the scalability of all initiatives assessed. Currently, insufficient to support effective scaling up, monitoring and evaluation were also found to be critical to both identify potential for and measure scalability.


Originality/value
The paper ends with a scalability assessment and planning tool to measure and monitor the scalability potential of DRR initiatives, highlighting areas for corrective action that can improve the quality and effectiveness of DRR interventions.

11 pages, 3 figures, 1 table, supplementary material https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abm7452.-- Data and materials availability: All data needed to evaluate the conclusions in the paper are present in the paper, the Supplementary Materials, Dryad, and Zenodo ; Phylogenetic relationships and the timing of evolutionary events are essential for understanding evolution on longer time scales. Cheilostome bryozoans are a group of ubiquitous, species-rich, marine colonial organisms with an excellent fossil record but lack phylogenetic relationships inferred from molecular data. We present genome-skimmed data for 395 cheilostomes and combine these with 315 published sequences to infer relationships and the timing of key events among c. 500 cheilostome species. We find that named cheilostome genera and species are phylogenetically coherent, rendering fossil or contemporary specimens readily delimited using only skeletal morphology. Our phylogeny shows that parental care in the form of brooding evolved several times independently but was never lost in cheilostomes. Our fossil calibration, robust to varied assumptions, indicates that the cheilostome lineage and parental care therein could have Paleozoic origins, much older than the first known fossil record of cheilostomes in the Late Jurassic ; This project is funded by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement no. 724324 to L.H.L.). Extra funding for specific sampling expeditions were provided by the National Science Centre of Poland (grant PANIC/2016/23/B/ST10/01936 to P.K.), the ASSEMBLE Plus (Horizon 2020), the Leverhulme Trust (Research Project Award RPG-2016-429 to A.W.), the Russian Science Foundation (grant 18-14-00086 to A.N.O.), Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico, Brazil [PQ-CNPq 308768/2018-3], Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo, Brazil [FAPESP 19/17721-9] and the DISTANTCOM project (CTM2013-42667/ANT to C. Avila). B.F. was supported by Beatriu de Pinós (2019-BP-00183), funded by the AGAUR (Government of Catalonia) and by the Horizon 2020 programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant (no. 801370). The CAML-CEAMARC cruise of RV Aurora Australis (IPY project no. 53) were supported by the Australian Antarctic Division, the Japanese Science Foundation, the French Polar Institute IPEV, and the Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle, led by voyage leader, M. Riddle ; With the institutional support of the 'Severo Ochoa Centre of Excellence' accreditation (CEX2019-000928-S) ; Peer reviewed