Politics public policy arizona

This completely revised third edition of Smith's classic text on Arizona politics and public policy brings its examination up to date through the most recent election cycle. Intended for courses on state and local politics and policy, the text provides an introduction to and analysis of the political process in the State of Arizona and the policies that process has produced. The new edition includes contributions from experts on Arizona law, politics, criminal justice, and sociology, and retains the first edition's two-pronged analysis of Arizona's political institutions (the courts, legislature, governor's office, etc.) and the current policy issues facing the state (the environment, water, health care, immigration, and land use, among others). The complete text for courses in public policy and politics.

This completely revised edition of Smith's classic text on Arizona politics and public policy brings its examination up to date through the most recent election cycle. Intended for courses on state and local politics and policy, the text provides an introduction to and analysis of the political process in the State of Arizona and the policies that process has produced. The new edition includes contributions from experts on Arizona law, politics, criminal justice, and sociology, and retains the first edition's two-pronged analysis of Arizona's political institutions (the courts, legislature, governor's office, etc.) and the current policy issues facing the state (the environment, water, health care, immigration, and land use, among others). The complete text for courses in public policy and politics.

The first truly empirical examination of American conservatism, this book provides an important counterweight in a debate which has been, until now, heavily dominated by ideological conservatives. Arguing that many of the social, political, and economic underpinnings of conservative dogma do not stand the test of close scrutiny, Vedlitz clearly articulates the underlying assumptions of conservative policy and evaluates their validity for American politics and society. A book for both liberals and conservatives alike, Conservative Mythology and Public Policy in America offers a timely challenge to widely held views about the impact of conservatism on U.S. public policy.

In the public law area, there is an understanding that judicial decision making is not always objective, that the courts are not constrained by the law and the facts of the case, and that courts are actually policy makers influenced by extraneous factors that have little to do the legal and factual matters of a case. Through a combination of an integrative review of the relevant literature in the public law area and new case studies researched by the author, Barbara Yarnold argues that the public law area has discarded the traditional view of the judiciary as a passive interpreter of the law who truly weigh the facts of each case. She examines political and environmental variables that have been used to explain judicial outcomes and develops an original general theory of public law explaining under what circumstances political variables impact court decisions, and when region, as an environmental variable, is related to judicial outcomes. The central question in this study is When exactly do the law and the facts count? As Yarnold's analyses of the judicial decision field draw variables from political science, economics, psychology, and criminal justice, among other fields, this work also suggests that the public law area is multidisciplinary in nature. The book concludes with a case study examination of interest groups involved in asylum-related appeals and their role in the Sanctuary Movement. Students and scholars of public administration, law and society, and public law will find Yarnold's integration of research and current literature toward a general theory of public law highly provocative and interesting.

In this wide-ranging survey of contemporary race relations in the United States, Smith and O'Connell provide a thorough re-examination of our situation. They begin by assessing the part played by status struggles and anxieties in intergroup relations. For the black middle classes, they assert, the benefits of social-economic advancement and rising expectations combine with status frustration and anxiety to create a sense of estrangement from whites and what are typically referred to as white institutions. They then look at the role social scientists have played in both analyzing and contributing to race problems. In their examination of racial stereotypes, Smith and O'Connell show how whites typically construct stereotypes in such a way that they can respond to blacks as concrete individuals, rather than as members of an abstract, all-embracing racial category. In their examination of the Quota Revolution they demonstrate that affirmative action predictably fails to raise average black income; nor does it promote racial respect and cooperation. Finally, they assert that if status anxiety plays an increasingly important role in intergroup struggles as group power relations are increasingly characterized by social and political parity, then there are rather strict limits to what social reform can accomplish. Racism, Smith and O'Connell contend, has less to do with current social conditions in black America than is usually supposed. More indirect forces such as technological innovation, global interdependence, immigration, misguided welfare policies, and certain kinds of cultural values post far more serious threats to the incomes and employment opportunities of less affluent black Americans than do the remaining traces of white racism. This thought-provoking book is must-reading for scholars and researchers in the fields of public policy and contemporary race relations.

Some Sharp observations... Emphasizing interrelated themes of policy failure and policy change, this book is a theoretical and conceptual examination of drug policy in the United States. It is in part a policy history, using case studies to link specific drug policies to a general theoretical framework. These cases focus primarily on three important and interesting episodes of drug policy development during the Nixon-Carter, and Reagan-Bush administrations, and the author interprets the historical significance of each period. The Dilemma of Drug Policy in the United States examines a wide array of ideas concerning incrementalism, interest groups, and symbolic politics to determine why there has been so much continuity in drug policy despite policy failure. Finally, a chapter on policy alternatives deals with the legalization debate, and critiques it from the perspective of a political scientist.