Creating Tobacco Control Policy at the Local Level: Implementation of a Direct Action Organizing Approach

1997 ◽  
Vol 24 (5) ◽  
pp. 640-651 ◽  
Author(s):  
Therese M. Blaine ◽  
Jean L. Forster ◽  
Deborah Hennrikus ◽  
Stephen O'Neil ◽  
Mark Wolfson ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Policy Change ◽  
Direct Action ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Control Policy ◽  
City Council ◽  
Community Members ◽  
Political Factors ◽  
Public Events ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
Training Activities

This article describes the community activation and policy change process in seven Minnesota communities involved in the Tobacco Policy Options for Prevention (TPOP) study. The study's intervention employed a direct action organizing model, which relies on mobilizing large numbers of people to alter decision making and leverage the power of elites. As part of the organizing process, TPOP organizers and teams made 1,319 personal contacts with community members, generated 309 media stories, and initiated 445 public events related to tobacco use. These actions resulted in the establishment of comprehensive tobacco ordinances in all seven communities. The authors discuss the goals, training, activities and political factors relevant to four phases of the TPOP intervention: information gathering and team recruitment, community awareness building and ordinance development, preparing for city council, and ordinance establishment and enforcement. Included are suggestions for practitioners interested in using policy change and community-based advocacy to resolve public health problems.

Change in Service Provision Networks: The Case of Animal Welfare Services

2021 ◽  
pp. 0160323X2110092
Author(s):  
Laura A. Reese ◽  
Xiaomeng Li
Keyword(s):  
Service Provision ◽  
Survey Design ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Major Change ◽  
Network Evolution ◽  
Political Factors ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Organizational Ties ◽  
The Impact

This research focuses on change within informal service provision networks, specifically examining the impact that changes within a key organization can have on the larger network. Employing a before and after survey design with a treatment at the midpoint and participant observation, it asks: What is the impact of a major change within one organization on the larger external network? What is the nature of the organizational ties? and, How do political factors exogenous to the network impact the network evolution process? The findings suggest that internal change within a focal actor can have ripple effects throughout the network increasing density. Public service provision at the local level can be enhanced through an increase in partnerships between the public and nonprofit sectors. However, network evolution can be limited by the larger political environment and lack of a coordinating role on the part of local government.

scholarly journals The Interlocking Processes Constraining the Struggle for Sanctuary in the Trump Era: The Case of La Puente, CA

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (5) ◽  
pp. 155
Author(s):  
Gilda L. Ochoa
Keyword(s):  
Status Quo ◽  
City Council ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
Transformative Change ◽  
Cautionary Tale ◽  
Community Members ◽  
White Supremacist ◽  
The Status ◽  
The City

By 10 January 2017, activists in the predominately Latina/o working class city of La Puente, California had lobbied the council to declare the city a sanctuary supporting immigrants, people of color, Muslims, LGBTQ people, and people with disabilities. The same community members urged the school district to declare itself a sanctuary. While community members rejoiced in pushing elected officials to pass these inclusive resolutions, there were multiple roadblocks reducing the potential for more substantive change. Drawing on city council and school board meetings, resolutions and my own involvement in this sanctuary struggle, I focus on a continuum of three overlapping and interlocking manifestations of white supremacist heteronormative patriarchy: neoliberal diversity discourses, institutionalized policies, and a re-emergence of high-profiled white supremacist activities. Together, these dynamics minimized, contained and absorbed community activism and possibilities of change. They reinforced the status quo by maintaining limits on who belongs and sustaining intersecting hierarchies of race, immigration status, gender, and sexuality. This extended case adds to the scant scholarship on the current sanctuary struggles, including among immigration scholars. It also illustrates how the state co-opts and marginalizes movement language, ideas, and people, providing a cautionary tale about the forces that restrict more transformative change.

scholarly journals Tensions in Urban Transitions. Conceptualizing Conflicts in Local Climate Policy Arrangements

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 78
Author(s):  
Winfried Osthorst
Keyword(s):  
Climate Policy ◽  
Policy Change ◽  
Local Governance ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Town Planning ◽  
Ecological Modernization ◽  
Political Debate ◽  
Local Climate ◽  
Political Processes ◽  
Policy Arrangements

Academic and political debate places great expectations on cities’ potential for furthering decentralized, bottom-up climate policies. Local policy research acknowledges the role of local agency to develop and implement sustainability, but also acknowledges internal conflicts. This partly reflects tensions between different functions of the local level, and different governance models related to them. In addition, local dependency on higher level competencies, resources, and overarching strategies is discussed. This article proposes a focus on political processes and power relationships between levels of governance, and among relevant domains within cities, to understand the dynamics of policy change towards sustainability. Researching these dynamics within local climate policy arrangements (LCPAs) is proposed as an approach to understanding the complexities of local constellations and contradictions within them. It makes the distinction between “weak” and “strong” ecological modernization, and relates it to two basic rationales for local governance. The resulting typology denotes constellations characterizing policy change ambitions towards local climate policy in crucial domains, including economic development, energy infrastructures, climate change management, town planning and housing, and transportation. This article argues that this approach overcomes the limitations of the predominating conceptualizations of urban carbon control strategies as consistent, and recognises the multi-level dimension of such internal urban processes.

scholarly journals Disaster management strategies and relation of good governance for the coastal Bangladesh

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 269-279
Author(s):  
Prabal Barua ◽  
◽  
Abhijit Mitra ◽  
Saeid Eslamian ◽  
◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Disaster Management ◽  
Local Governments ◽  
Local Community ◽  
Good Governance ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Management Strategies ◽  
National Policy ◽  
Successful Implementation ◽  
Community Members ◽  
Management Policies

Although Bangladesh’s immense steps in preparing the disaster management policies following the values of good governance issue, the quantity to which these policies have productively been executing at the local level remnants mostly unknown. The objectives of this investigation were dual: firstly, to inspect the roles and efficiency of the local-level governance and disaster management organization, and lastly, to recognize the obstacles to the execution of national the policies and Disaster-Risk-Reduction guidelines at the local community level. The authors applied qualitative research and case Study approach, using techniques from the Participatory Rural Appraisal toolbox to collect data from local community members as well as government and NGO officials. From the finding of the study, it was revealed that interactive disaster governance, decentralization of disaster management, and compliance by local-level institutions with good governance principles and national policy guidelines can be extremely effective in reducing disaster-loss and damages. According to coastal community members, the local governments have generally failed to uphold good governance principles, and triangulated data confirm that the region at large suffers from rampant corruption, political favoritism, lack of transparency and accountability and minimal inclusion of local inhabitants in decision-making – all of which have severely impeded the successful implementation of national disaster-management policies. This study contributes to these research gaps, with identification of further research agenda in these areas. The paper deals with International Sendai Framework that called for enhancement of local level community resilience to disasters. Thus, it contributes to numerous policy and practice areas relating to good disaster governance. The study identified the specific manifestations of these failures in coastal communities in Bangladesh. These results underscore the vital need to address the wide gap between national DRR goals and the on-the-ground realities of policy implementation to successfully enhance the country’s resilience to climate change-induced disasters.

Case Study: Nontraditional Partners in the Case of Kansas City

2019 ◽  
pp. 445-450
Author(s):  
Scott Hall ◽  
Rex Archer
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Policy Change ◽  
Kansas City ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Health Department ◽  
Chamber Of Commerce ◽  
Working Together ◽  
Multiple Jurisdictions

This chapter demonstrates the power of non-traditional partnerships to achieve policy change at the local level. The chapter's review of the work of the Kansas City Chamber of Commerce and the KCMO Health Department to motivate adoption of Tobacco 21 initiatives in multiple jurisdictions highlights the importance of business and public health working together.

M-Government Initiatives at the Local Level

2007 ◽  
pp. 233-251 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luis V. Casaló ◽  
Carlos Flavián ◽  
Miguel Guinalíu
Keyword(s):  
Public Sector ◽  
Local Level ◽  
City Council ◽  
Mobile Telephone ◽  
The Public ◽  
Local Government Level ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The City ◽  
Good Number ◽  
Government Level

This chapter introduces the concept of m-government and its implications for both citizens and public institutions. Although m-government is currently in an initial phase of development, its potential in the relationship between the public sector and the citizen is obvious because of, for example, the large number of mobile phone users among the public. In addition, the development of m-government initiatives generates a good number of bene?ts for the public sector that operates it as well as for the public, who experience improved accessibility to electronic public services. Because of this, this chapter analyses m-government initiatives developed by the Zaragoza City Council (Spain) in order to describe its bene?ts, implications for the relationship between the City Council and the citizen, and the future perspectives of these initiatives. We have speci?cally chosen a country like Spain due to the fact that mobile telephone usage is widespread and, at the same time, local government level has been chosen as the citizen participates more in the relationship with the public sector when it is at the local level.

scholarly journals Make love, not war?: Radical environmental activism’s reconfigurative potential and pitfalls

2020 ◽  
pp. 251484862090144
Author(s):  
Tema Milstein ◽  
Lynette McGaurr ◽  
Libby Lester
Keyword(s):  
Middle Age ◽  
Direct Action ◽  
Global Ocean ◽  
Environmental Action ◽  
Environmental Organizations ◽  
Specific Interest ◽  
News Values ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
Radical Organizations

New radical environmental action movements are attracting large numbers of diverse actors who inevitably will take inspiration and learn from mistakes of those radical environmental organizations that precede them and continue today into middle age. The representational strategies of these established organizations are of specific interest as they enter a maturity phase that coincides with the planet experiencing an unprecedented anthropogenic moment of reckoning – a time when more broadly engaging and transformative activism is paramount to reconfiguring ecological, societal, and spatial orientations. We focus on Sea Shepherd, a global ocean protection organization founded in the same decade as many other formatively radical organizations, to examine its historic and current representations of its direct action stance; its multiple and at times conflicting positioning of cetaceans; its emphasis on celebrity and timely campaigns; and its longstanding military, war, and piracy framing – much of which has garnered attention based on appealing to news values of conventional media outlets. We illustrate ways direct action may be framed as in opposition to current extractive practices ( against framing) or as a collaborative means to thriving futures ( with framing) and consider ways activism frames might eschew violent clashes and celebrity long valued by conventional media outlets and speak more to today’s broader internet-savvy populations and to the reconfigurative potential of guardianship, interconnectedness, and nurturance.

Can States Promote Minority Representation? Assessing the Effects of the California Voting Rights Act

2019 ◽  
pp. 107808741989685
Author(s):  
Loren Collingwood ◽  
Sean Long
Keyword(s):  
Local Level ◽  
Voting Rights ◽  
Average Treatment Effect ◽  
City Council ◽  
Voting Rights Act ◽  
Minority Representation ◽  
City Councils ◽  
Before And After ◽  
And Control ◽  
The City

One goal of the California Voting Rights Act (CVRA) is to broaden representation in largely White-controlled city councils state-wide by incentivizing cities to shift council electoral jurisdictions from at-large to single-member districts. However, little research has investigated whether the CVRA helped contribute to increased minority representation at the city level. This article employs matching and difference-in-difference methods to determine whether cities that switched to district elections as a result of the CVRA enhanced city council diversification. By comparing matched treatment and control group’s racial composition of city councils before and after fully switching from at-large to district election jurisdictions, we estimate the average treatment effect (ATE) of city switching on minority city council representation at 10% to 12%. Further analysis reveals treatment effects are larger among cities with larger shares of Latinos (21%). Thus, states seeking to increase local-level minority representation should consider policies similar to those found in the CVRA.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document