Editor's Notes

Abstract

It has been a year now since the APSA's Public Policy Section voted to provide the Policy Studies Journal to all members. Section members should by now have received a full volume of the PSJ, and have had the opportunity to see that the Journal provides a high quality and highly visible outlet for their best research. Submission to the Journal remains quick (with an average decision time of 43 days) and our reviewers continue to make a substantial investment in assessing (and improving) quality of our papers. We welcome your public policy submissions, and provide guidance on content and format along with the submission portal on our easily accessible webpage (http://psj.ipsonet.org). Articles in this issue provide a good illustration of the range and quality of the current research focusing on public policy. These articles address matters ranging from the strategies employed to drive change in public policy to specific policies that shape (or misshape) political representation. Robert Wood uses the cases of national forest and public range management to demonstrate how strategic attacks to shift policy making venues within entrenched subsystems can lead to policy change. Judith Layzer, focusing on the management of New England fisheries, identifies reliance on the adroit combination of plausible scientific claims and explicit protection requirements in fisheries’ governing statutes to bring about discontinuous policy change. Gregory Lewis, on the other hand, documents a much less successful effort to change arts policies via attempts to influence public opinion by reframing the policy debate. Several articles in this issue attack conventional wisdom about mechanisms that drive the policy process. Leigh Raymond uses the study of habitat conservation plans to argue that trust (or social capital) is an over-rated ingredient in encouraging cooperative social action. Rather, he argues, policy should focus on structuring incentives and building assurance mechanisms. Beth Leech shows that, despite the concerns of legislators, non-profit organizations that receive federal grants do not lobby more heavily than those without such grants. Cumulatively, these and the other articles in this issue add substantively to the stock of knowledge about public policy process and outcomes. One of the key ingredients to the continuing success of the Policy Studies Journal has been having sufficient resources to properly and expeditiously manage the flow of manuscripts, inquiries, solicitations, and other ingredients of an academic journal. We are deeply grateful to the George H. W. Bush Library Foundation for providing a generous four-year grant to underwrite journal operations. In addition, the Policy Studies Organization and the George Bush School of Government and Public Service both provide unstinting financial and material support to the Journal. We are deeply grateful for the continuing support of each of these organizations.