Policy Messages Research Articles

Cultural criminology and kryptonite: Apocalyptic and retributive constructions of crime and justice in comic books

The current study utilizes a cultural criminological approach to examine paradigms of justice portrayed in American comic books. Based on a review of the literature, we hypothesize that the dominant crimes depicted in comic books are violent street crimes and that the portrayed responses to these crimes are executed outside the rule of law by an avenging protagonist. According to the literature surveyed, comic book protagonists seek to restore public order as a means of returning the community to a constructed, nostalgic ideal. Moreover, the implied policy message in comic books is one of vigilantism, in which moral justice trumps legitimate criminal procedure. Based on a content analysis of 20 contemporary best-selling comic books, themes of organized crime, often involving complex transnational networks, are more prevalent than street crimes, contrary to our hypothesis. However, the response to crime remains focused on vigilante methods and on the restoration of a constructed utopic community that espouses the rule of law.

Reducing the healthcare costs of urban air pollution: The South African experience

Air pollutants often have adverse effects on human health. This paper investigates and ranks a set of policy and technological interventions intended to reduce such health costs in the high population density areas of South Africa. It initially uses a simple benefit–cost rule, later extended to capture sectoral employment impacts. Although the focus of state air quality legislation is on industrial pollutants, the most efficient interventions were found to be at household level. These included such low-cost interventions as training householders to place kindling above rather than below the coal in a fireplace and insulating roofs. The first non-household policies to emerge involved vehicle fuels and technologies. Most proposed industrial interventions failed a simple cost–benefit test. The paper's policy messages are that interventions should begin with households and that further industry controls are not yet justifiable in their present forms as these relate to the health care costs of such interventions.

Rotavirus Vaccination and Intussusception: Can We Decrease Temporally Associated Background Cases of Intussusception by Restricting the Vaccination Schedule?

The first rotavirus vaccine that was licensed in the United States, RotaShield, could have prevented the enormous burden of rotavirus diarrhea in American children but left instead the unfortunate legacy that live oral rotavirus vaccines may be associated with a serious but rare adverse event: intussusception. Although large trials indicate that the next generation of rotavirus vaccines is not associated with this complication, many children likely will develop intussusception by chance alone in the 2-week window after immunization, raising concerns about whether these cases might be "caused" by the vaccine. Our objective for this study was to model and compare the number of temporally associated intussusception events that are expected by chance alone under 2 rotavirus vaccination strategies. We used national vaccine coverage rates and age-specific incidence of intussusception by months to model the number of temporally associated cases of intussusception that are expected by chance alone for 2 potential vaccination strategies: a strict schedule, limiting immunization to children within 1 month of the designated age for each dose (ie, 60-89, 120-149, and 180-209 days for doses 1, 2, and 3, respectively) versus a free schedule whereby infants are immunized whenever they appear for their routine vaccines up to 1 year of age. The number of intussusception events during the 2-week postvaccination window was 24% lower for the strict versus the free schedule (138 vs 182, respectively). This reduction was attributable largely to the smaller number of infants who were immunized fully under the strict schedule (vaccine coverage for 3 doses, 67% vs 89%). The cumulative risk for intussusception's occurring by chance in the 2-week postvaccination window essentially was the same between schedules (4.59 vs 4.76 per 100000 doses). Most cases occurred after the second or third dose. Although an age-restricted vaccination schedule substantially reduced the number of intussusception events that were observed in the 2-week postvaccination window when compared with a schedule with fewer restrictions, this decrease was attributable to a lower rate of vaccine coverage rather than a safer schedule of vaccination. The risk for intussusception did not differ significantly between vaccination strategies. Public health policy and education messages for physicians and parents should be developed to anticipate intussusception events that will occur by chance alone but are temporally related to rotavirus vaccination.

The Good News About Smoking: How do US Newspapers Cover Tobacco Issues?

Media advocacy, or advocacy seeking media attention, can shape the policy environment, but the relationship between the nature of news media coverage of public health topics and policy outcomes has received insufficient research attention. We present the first large-scale study of news coverage of tobacco to focus on the potential impact for policy outcomes. Through our analysis of 9859 tobacco-focused news articles from ioo leading US daily newspapers between 2001 and 2003 we examined whether tobacco issues are newsworthy, and if so, whether coverage is favorable to policy progress. We found strong evidence for news-worthiness, and a tendency for coverage to highlight policy approaches to tackling tobacco. Coverage emphasized successes rather than setbacks, and newspaper editors lent support to tobacco control positions. There were, however, areas that did not garner sufficient attention to sustain a meaningful policy message. Our analysis of coverage of controversial issues also revealed areas where tobacco control efforts seem to pushing against ideological boundaries.

Public Health News Frames in North Carolina Newspaper Coverage of the 100% Tobacco-Free Schools Campaign? Sometimes

News organizations are an important and influential part of the social environment. They identify certain issues by the extent and nature of their coverage. To help explain what public health policy messages may have influenced school policy decisions, this content analysis provides an examination of newspaper coverage of North Carolinas 100% tobacco-free schools campaign. Researchers searched LexisNexis for articles published in North Carolina newspapers between January 1, 2001 and December 31, 2004 that included variations of "North Carolina tobacco-free schools." Researchers then conducted a descriptive analysis of 138 stories from nine North Carolina newspapers (approximately 4% of all the states newspapers) and used page placement and story type to examine the level of importance placed on the issue. Finally, frames for and against tobacco-free school policies were tracked, along with the presence of key messages presented by 100% TFS advocates. The volume of news coverage changed throughout the study period, with peaks and valleys closely associated with external "trigger" events. In addition, a majority of the newspaper articles did not include key public health messages. The results suggest an opportunity for public health experts and officials to work more effectively with local journalists to increase the use (and impact) of public health messages in news coverage of tobacco policies affecting youth.

Poverty as social deprivation: a survey

The concept of poverty is discussed using qualitative and quantitative measures as an indicator for social deprivation. Poverty can be absolute, relative, income based, consumption based, or entitlement based. The variation in the concept of poverty reveals its dimensionality. However, when closely examined, these dimensions are seen to be conceptually interrelated and complementary rather than substitutable. The concept used to define poverty determines the methods employed to measure it. Composite indicators can hide important policy messages inherent in their constituent variables.

Working with Families: Messages for Policy and Practice from an Evaluation of a School‐based Project

In 2002 the authors evaluated a family support project known as Working with Families managed by the Children's Society and located in a primary school on a large, mainly white council estate in Rochdale. Our reflections on some of the issues which emerged in relation to basing family support services in a school setting seem timely in the light of the apparent growth in such services as a result of investment by the Children's Fund, and the proposals in the Green Paper, Every Child Matters, (Department for Education and Skills, 2003a) that schools should play a key role in the delivery of support services. Our experience of one such project is offered as a contribution to ongoing policy and practice developments. We highlight the strengths and difficulties of delivering support services from school settings and we offer some thoughts on whether integrated services which tackle children's needs can be delivered from schools.

International Taxation Alternatives and Global Governance

In New York on 20 September 2004, world leaders reaffirmed their commitment the global fight against poverty and hunger at the Summit for Action Against Hunger and Poverty and endorsed the campaign gather necessary funds through both traditional and innovative mechanisms assist in that fight. (1) This initiative builds on the Geneva declaration adopted in January with leadership from the presidents of Brazil, France, Chile, and Spain and UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan--the Quintet Against Hunger. (2) Financing such efforts is always a problem; proposals have included taxation on carbon emissions, financial transactions, and arms trade along with the creation of special drawing rights (SDRs) and an international financial facility. On 20 September, the World Commission on the Social Dimension of Globalization presented A Fair Globalization: Creating Opportunities for All, (3) which also suggested taxing greenhouse gas emissions and certain financial transactions bankroll a U.S.$50 billion fund fight poverty. These initiatives again bring the fore both the need for and the problems associated with international taxation. There are many shortcomings in global governance, but none is more glaring than the lack of an independent financial base for international activities. It is therefore timely revisit three proposals for international taxation that have been debated over the past three decades. Tobin Tax Almost ten years before he won the 1981 Nobel Prize for economics, James Tobin unveiled his proposal for a levy on international currency transactions in his Janeway Lectures at Princeton University in 1972. (4) He emphasized repeatedly that his aim was not generate international revenues but reduce short-term speculation in currency markets and thereby to preserve and promote autonomy of national macroeconomic and monetary policies. (5) However, Tobin conceded that substantial revenues would be raised and could be devoted agreed international programs. The proposal was received coolly at first, although some countries (for example, Canada) have warmed the idea since. Most central bankers deemed it impractical, and most economists predicted that it would damage liquidity without reducing volatility in currency markets while also displacing them tax-free jurisdictions. Tobin's proposal was confined academic footnotes until 1989-1990, when Joseph Stiglitz and Lawrence Summers rekindled interest. (6) In the wake of the 1994 Mexican crisis, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) began discuss restrictions on speculative currency movements--some sand in the wheels of our excessively efficient international money markets. (7) At the March 1995 social summit in Copenhagen, French president Francois Mitterrand referred the proposal's potential finance internationally agreed priorities. A few months later, the G7 Economic Summit in Halifax made an indirect reference improving the macro-economic performance of economies trapped by external financial pressures. (8) Interest in the Tobin tax resurfaced during the 1990s because of the enormous growth in foreign currency transactions. The daily turnover in foreign exchange markets was $18 billion in 1972, when most countries had fixed exchange rates, but by 1995, due floating exchange rates, it had reached $13 trillion. The opportunities for profiting from the movement of currencies and futures trading, options, and derivatives have also expanded. In December 1995, the UN Development Programme (UNDP) invited several experts, including Professor Tobin, carry out a critical and scholarly study of the proposal for a foreign exchange transaction levy. (9) The five main conclusions and policy messages remain pertinent. First, today's foreign exchange markets do not always function optimally; they are marked by excessive, destabilizing volatility. Second, the Tobin tax would reduce short-term trading and strengthen the defensibility of the exchange rate regime but would only modestly, if at all, widen the scope of national policy autonomy. …

POPULATION AGEING, HUMAN CAPITAL ACCUMULATION AND ECONOMIC GROWTH IN CHINA

This paper uses a Computable General Equilibrium model to explore the macroeconomic impact of growth in the human capital stock for a given ageing profile of the population in China, during the first half of this century. It examines whether the projected reduction in the total dependency ratio for the period 2000 to the 2030s can be exploited for energetic human capital formation. Policy simulations show that accelerating human capital formation raises both total output and per capita real income dramatically. Public expenditure on education is, therefore, welfare enhancing, mitigating the adverse effects of population ageing while laying the foundation for supporting China's rapidly increasing elderly population. The basic policy message is that China should significantly increase investment in human capital. The long implementation lags of such policies and the rapidly growing proportion of the elderly population suggest that this investment should be undertaken without delay.

USING FUNCTIONINGS TO ESTIMATE EQUIVALENCE SCALES

Equivalence scales are used to enable welfare comparisons across heterogeneous households. In this paper, we propose to use the achievement of a certain level of functioning as the identifying assumption for the derivation of equivalence scales. This will allow us not only to deal with welfare comparisons between households of different size and composition, but will also enable us to incorporate other characteristics (such as location and employment status) in the creation of equivalence scales for welfare comparisons. The paper applies this approach to create equivalence scales for the functioning “shelter” using Belgian and Italian data. The analysis shows that the income differences associated with different characteristics only play a small role in explaining differences in functionings. An important policy message is therefore that compensating people for functioning shortfalls in monetary terms may not be sensible.

Data Don't Matter? Academic Research and School Choice

School choice has attracted much attention from academic policy analysts. Their data analyses, however, have become entangled in the politics surrounding debates over market-driven reform rather than serving as foundations for utilitarian policy making. High-profile research programs generate an increasing number of empirical studies, which are often valued for how well they fit ideological preferences rather than how useful they may be in offering practical guidance on workable and politically feasible strategies. In this paper I assess what supportable policy message(s) can be extracted from the large research literature on choice and vouchers.Kevin Smith is an associate professor of political science at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln (ksmith1@unl.edu). His most recent book is The Ideology of Education: The Market, the Commonwealth, and America's Schools.

Adoptive family life and adoption support: policy ambivalence and the development of effective services

ABSTRACTAdoption policy and practice in England is being ‘modernized’ in order to increase the number of permanent placements for children in public care. Success depends on improving adoption services as well as reforming the adoption process itself. To this end the Adoption and Children Act 2002 places new duties on local authorities to ensure greater consistency and quality of service in adoption support as well as in care planning.Questions now arise locally about what priority and focus to give to adoption support. Yet service development is inhibited by the ambivalence of New Labour about exactly what it is that adoption support is supposed to be supporting and how. Funds are limited and service re‐organization is always difficult to achieve. However, mixed policy messages result largely from the ambiguous social role and expectations of adoptive family life and kinship. In law adoption replicates the autonomous normative birth family whilst in policy it provides reparative parenting for particularly vulnerable children. A lack of clarity about the claims for support of those affected by adoption results.This paper argues a fresh case for the distinctive claims of adoptive family life for support. It suggests how new thinking about adoptive family life and kinship might stimulate local service collaboration and effective adoption support.

Agricultural drainage: Towards an integrated approach

Drainage needs to reclaim its rightful position as an indispensable element in the integrated management of land and water. An integrated approach to drainage can be developed by means of systematic mapping of the functions of natural resources systems (goods and services) and the values attributed to these functions by people. This mapping allows the exploration of the implications of particular drainage interventions. In that sense an analytical tool for understanding a drainage situation is proposed. The process dimension of the functions and values evaluation and assessment is participatory planning, modelled on co-management approaches to natural resources management. This provides a framework for discussion and negotiation of trade-offs related to the different functions and values related to drainage. In that sense the approach is a communication, planning and decision-making tool. The tool is called DRAINFRAME, which stands for Drainage Integrated Analytical Framework. The implementation of an integrated approach posits challenges for the governance, management and finance of drainage, as well as for research and design of drainage infrastructure and operation. Both have to be rethought from the perspective of multi-functionality. The paper concludes with five main policy messages.

Uncertainty and Sensitivity Analysis Techniques as Tools for the Quality Assessment of Composite Indicators

SummaryComposite indicators are increasingly used for bench-marking countries’ performances. Yet doubts are often raised about the robustness of the resulting countries’ rankings and about the significance of the associated policy message. We propose the use of uncertainty analysis and sensitivity analysis to gain useful insights during the process of building composite indicators, including a contribution to the indicators’ definition of quality and an assessment of the reliability of countries’ rankings. We discuss to what extent the use of uncertainty and sensitivity analysis may increase transparency or make policy inference more defensible by applying the methodology to a known composite indicator: the United Nations's technology achievement index.

A new look in 2005

Welcome to an expanded INR! Beginning with this issue, the journal has more pages and a new look. Sixteen additional pages in each issue of INR and a revised layout enable us to bring you more international news and original articles from 2005 onwards. The extra space assists us in fulfilling ICN's mission to inform readers of the many nursing developments taking place worldwide. It also allows us to publish a greater number of authors and reduce the amount of time authors must wait to see their articles in print. The new INR layout and our search for efficient use of space brings challenges for authors. From 2005 we have established some new boundaries in the Author Guidelines. All future submissions of original articles should be between 3000 and 5000 words in total, inclusive of a 250-word abstract and up to 40 references. The revised guidelines will encourage authors to write more economically, and ensure that we do not have to reject good articles simply because of a lack of space. Article rejection is the worst possible outcome for our entire publication team. The data sources for articles remain unchanged. These include descriptions of innovative practice; audits; human interest or opinion pieces; empirical research; theoretical critiques; and literature reviews. We are pleased to announce that a new subject heading is also being introduced. Experiences from the Field will comprise short reports, not previously published, on subjects that include single case studies and service innovations that do not aim to be comprehensive or necessarily research-orientated. These reports should be no more than 1000 words with up to 10 references, and no abstract is required. They should contain up to five key policy messages and three on implications for practice. The complete Author Guidelines are available on the inside back cover of each issue of the journal, and at: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/inr and http://www.icn.ch/fr_INRsubscribe.htm. Our constant aim is to encourage publication from authors representing as many of ICN's 125 member countries as possible. We ask all authors therefore to include as one of their 10 keywords the name of the country that is the subject of their article. The number of different countries represented in article submissions continues to increase. At the last count, in November 2004, authors from 55 member countries had submitted at least one article on nursing and/or health care, since 2000. A key editorial objective is to encourage INR authors to be international in outlook. The evidence for increasing collaboration between authors from different countries that was mentioned last year11 Robinson, J. (2004) Some international aspects of nursing International Nursing Review, 51 (3), 131. is also found in this issue. Community relationships, health development22 See also, Nickson, P. (2004) Trends and Issues in Nursing 18, Community Development: Guidelines for Action. ICN, Geneva. , building nursing and midwifery capacity, and collaboration on the curriculum for Nursing and Public Health in Europe all feature aspects of working together locally, between agencies, and across international boundaries. This does not exclude specifically local studies where possible international implications for nurses can always be included in a discussion section. We hope that you will enjoy reading your new INR, and that you will take advantage of the expanded pages by sending us articles and short reports about your work and experiences. We want to hear from you.

The Role of Nonsystem Actors in the Relationship Between Policy and Practice: The Case of Reading Instruction in California

Studies of the relationship between policy and practice typically focus on the formal policy system alone. Yet, the public policy system does not exist in isolation. A host of nonsystem actors promote, translate, and transform policy ideas as they carry them to teachers. This study draws on neoinstitutional theories of organization to investigate the role of nonsystem actors in the relationship between policy and teachers’ classroom practice. A cross-case, historical design was used to investigate how teachers in two California elementary schools responded to changes in state reading policy from 1983 to 1999. The way in which teachers responded depended in part on the nature of their connections to policy messages, which varied substantially across teachers and across policy initiatives. Policy messages from nonsystem actors were more consequential for teachers’ classroom practices. Teachers’ connections to nonsystem actors were influenced by the interrelationship between system and nonsystem actors as policy ideas emerged, diffused, and were implemented over time.

Extension Policy at the National Level in Asia

Extension is clearly facing challenging times in Asia. This paper draws together experiences from across Asia to explore extension policy and the extension policy process. The paper argues that extension policy needs to tackle two major sets of issues. The first concerns the content in view of the broader role extension needs to play in the present context of agriculture systems. The second issue concerns the nature of the policy process itself. Instead of prescribing reforms, the policy process should ideally facilitate continuous incremental change through experimentation, reflection and learning. Four cases are presented to illustrate the challenges involved in developing and implementing extension policy. The experiences indicate that reform processes only informed by prescriptions generated centrally or from outside are bound to fail. The message for extension policy in Asia is that the process of reform must be lead from within. The paper stresses the need for undertaking an institutional analysis of historical and current approaches of implementing different extension approaches and developing capacity within the country on experimenting with different approaches and evaluating them. These learning based approaches should inform policy development. However the existing culture of extension organisations may prevent the emergence of learning based approaches to invigorate extension. Changing these cultures may yet be the biggest challenge of all for reforming extension.

Cracking Cashew Nut Myths? The Challenges of Gendered Policy Research in the Cashew Sector in Mozambique

This article is a reflection on collaborative policy research on liberalisation gender and livelihoods in the cashew sector in Mozambique. The research aims to examine the effects of liberalisation in the cashew sector from a gender perspective and to study the extent to which women and mens livelihoods may be enhanced by recent strategies to revive the sector. The article has two objectives: first to illustrate the way in which representations of womens involvement in the cashew sector in earlier research can be contested (cracking some myths) and second to illustrate some of the challenges involved in translating findings into policy messages so as to not merely generate another set of myths. The article begins by providing a brief overview of cashew nut production processing and trade and sets out the objectives and methods of the research. It then goes on to discuss findings related to womens access to land and cashew trees and the gender division of labour and benefits in cashew processing units. These findings challenged prevalent representations of women but posed difficulties in our attempts to translate them into policy messages. It concludes that some of these challenges arise from the pressures from funders and government to provide policy messages and practical recommendations relating to gender equality in an overall framework which emphasises poverty reduction within an essentially market-oriented neo-liberal approach to development. (excerpt)

When can fiscal consolidation be expansionary? Evidence from a small open economy

The paper focuses on the implications of stabilisation policies in a small open economy that were introduced to reverse burgeoning public sector deficit. In particular, I examine the hypothesis that such stabilisation policies can actually have expansionary effects on business investment. While this goes against the standard Keynesian view that the institution of more conservative fiscal and monetary programmes will, at least initially, lead to deflationary outcomes, there are important reasons for believing that such policies will in fact be expansionary. Such predictions are made in a dynamic setting, which weighs the short-term consequences of curtailed government expenditures against their long run implications for future increases in government spending, a reduction in debt burdens and greater stability. With the introduction of expectations, the positive implications of such policies can be immediate. This paper tries to clarify the ‘expectational crowding-in’ process and investigates whether the effects of stabilisation on business investment were due to that process or to other features of the stabilisation programmes. The policy message from my analysis is that budget consolidations producing expansionary effects are more than a theoretical construction. The experience of small open economies mentioned above should be taken into account also in policy making. Empirical findings indicate that EMU countries may need to carry out budgetary consolidations to dispose of room for manoeuvre against first the fiscal constraints in smoothing the business cycle imposed by the Stability Pact, and second, the looming budgetary implications of ageing populations.

Categorising farming values as economic, conservation and lifestyle

Degradation of land and water is currently one of Australia's most important environmental, social and economic issues. Economic instruments and common good interventions represent two broad policy genre that have been applied to induce change in on-farm land stewardship in response to this issue. Unfortunately, both policies have considered landholders to be homogenous and have thus failed to adequately `target' the states' response. By way of contrast, the health psychology and marketing literatures suggest that alternate within-landholder differences may be stimulated by different policy messages. This study sought to determine if the dichotomy between economic and common good could be found within the goals and objectives that farmers have for their landholdings. Focus interviews, focus groups and item piloting were used to develop 15 items reflecting economic, conservation and lifestyle farming values. A principal component analysis of survey data from 552 Australian farmers showed support for three separate factors. The economic factor had a weak correlation with the conservation and lifestyle factors and the latter were moderately correlated. These findings are important as they show that farmer's values can be classified into three distinct groups that might potentially be used to formulate more effective land conservation policies. Future research could utilise these value categories when developing attitude items and examine if landholders with different values respond differently to the dichotomous policy stimuli.