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Exceptionally clear and well-written chapters provide engaging discussions of the methods of accessing, generating, and analyzing social science data, using methods ranging from reflexive historical analysis to critical ethnography. Reflecting on their own research experiences, the contributors offer an inside, applied perspective on how research topics, evidence, and methods intertwine to produce knowledge in the social sciences.
Police officers, social workers, teachers, and many other street-level bureaucrats exercise discretion in dealing with clients. In so doing, they make policy as it is experienced at the frontline. Instead of puzzling at repeated public policy implementation failures and wondering why street-level bureaucrats (SLBs) don’t behave the way policy-makers expect, we need to understand the world as seen from the ground. This short and practical text explores the value of interpretive analysis for researching street-level bureaucracy. Using Michael Lipsky’s (1980) idea of SLB and connecting it to contemporary debates, Mike Rowe argues for an approach to researching SLBs that focuses on dilemmas ...
Although a technique for hydraulic fracturing—more commonly known as fracking—was developed and implemented in the 1970s in Texas, fracking of the Marcellus Shale formation that stretches from West Virginia through Pennsylvania to New York did not begin in earnest until the twenty-first century. Unconventional natural gas production via fracking has ignited debate, challenged regulators, and added to the complexity of twenty-first-century natural resource management. Through a longitudinal study taken from 2000 to 2015, Jonathan M. Fisk, Soren Jordan, and A. J. Good examine how the management of natural resources functions relative to specific regulatory actions including inspections, identifying violations, and the use of specific regulatory tools. Ultimately, they find that factors as disparate as state policy goals, elected officials, the availability of data, inspectors, front-line staff, and the use of technology form a context that, in turn, shapes the use of specific regulatory tools and decisions.
Topless bars, casino gambling, needle exchange programs for drug addicts—there's no question, morality issues remain front and center in urban politics. Presenting a systematic analysis of culture-war issues at the local level, Elaine Sharp shows how American cities deal with these ongoing concerns. Drawing on a sample of ten strategically chosen cities, she explains differences in how municipalities respond to controversies surrounding sex business, abortion clinics, legalized gambling, gay rights, and drug use. By analyzing the relative importance of subculture, economics, and institutional arrangements in the disputes, she points the way toward richer and more complete understanding of ...
This book can improve the effectiveness of those working within the legal process and in legal policy. It seeks to clarify how the examination of risk levels, time allocation, and other legal policy situations can lead to optimum choices. The principles discussed are amplified by illustrative examples covering such important subjects as right to counsel, plea bargaining, client selection, pretrial release, jury size, crime prevention, delay reduction, and many other controversial and problematic issues of concern to the practicing attorney, the legal scholar, and the legal policymaker. Nagel offers the reader realistic applications of the theories provided, and is unique in his hands-on direct relation of those theories to the decision-making process.
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An exciting aspect of contemporary legal scholarship is a concern for law from a global perspective across all legal fields. The book draws upon examples from North America, Western Europe, Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, and Latin America. It refers to the basic private law fields of torts, property, contracts, and family law. It also refers to the basic public law fields of constitutional law, administrative law, criminal law, and international law. It analyzes diverse legal policy problems from a perspective that is designed to produce solutions whereby conservatives, liberals, and other major viewpoints can all come out ahead of their best initial expectations simultaneously. Such solution...