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Legislation

About: Legislation is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 62664 publications have been published within this topic receiving 585188 citations. The topic is also known as: law & act.


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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This paper found that students whose parents are involved in their acquisition of credit cards have significantly lower credit card balances than do students with no parental involvement. And they also support the assumptions underlying the proposed legislation.
Abstract: Federal legislation has been proposed that would require parents/guardians to act as co-obligors on college students’ credit card applications. This study supports the assumptions underlying the proposed legislation, suggesting that students whose parents are involved in their acquisition of credit cards have significantly lower credit card balances than do students with no parental involvement.

104 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The main claim made in the article is that although politicians argue for the value and relevance of public participation their willingness to initiate participatory processes is overruled by their concern with playing by the rules of the political game.
Abstract: Over recent decades, public participation initiatives have been employed across Europe often with a focus on science and technology issues. In the area of new food technologies most participation initiatives have centered on genetically modified foods. By contrast, in the area of functional foods--where significant EU legislation was recently passed--we have seen no initiatives towards public inclusion. This applies also for Denmark, the country which is the focus of this article. Based on an interview study with members of the Danish parliament the article examines why such considerable differences exist between initiatives to involve the public, and it challenges the role that public participation plays in Danish politics. The main claim made in the article is that although politicians argue for the value and relevance of public participation their willingness to initiate participatory processes is overruled by their concern with playing by the rules of the political game.

104 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the effect of seat belt legislation introduced in the state of Queensland was examined by using two approaches, one consisting of modeling time series of road deaths before intervention (the legislation) as a Box-Jenkins univariate time series model, and the second approach, involving causal model and incorporating a proxy explanatory variable and autoregressive moving average error, was fruitful in overcoming the limitation of the previous approach.
Abstract: The effect of seat belt legislation introduced in the state of Queensland was examined by using two approaches. The first approach consisted of modeling time series of road deaths before intervention (the legislation) as a Box-Jenkins univariate time series model. As we expected, this model proved to be inadequate in explaining the postintervention period, and the model was modified to incorporate the expected form of the intervention effects. Results showed that the legislation produced significant reduction in the road toll, but this analytical approach was limited in describing long-run effects. The second approach, involving causal model and incorporating a proxy explanatory variable and autoregressive-moving average error, was fruitful in overcoming the limitation of the previous approach. The long-run legislative effect was quantified, at a specific level of the explanatory variable, to be a 46 percent reduction in deaths.

104 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that district projects are also used for another purpose: to help committee leaders to construct supporting coalitions for legislative packages that satisfy the leaders' own goals, including general benefit legislation.
Abstract: The literature on distributive politics in legislatures concentrates on the formation of logrolling coalitions to pass the district projects of the coalitions' members at the expense of the general public. This article argues that district projects are also used for another purpose: to help committee leaders to construct supporting coalitions for legislative packages that satisfy the leaders' own goals, including general benefit legislation. This study explicates such a strategy and tests its efficacy by estimating the impact on House members' roll call votes of the inclusion of highway "demonstration" projects in the 1987 highway and urban mass transit reauthorization by the leadership of the House Public Works and Transportation Committee. The analysis shows that distributive benefits conferred by the leaders did indeed influence members' support for the leaders' legislative goals on that bill.

104 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the relative importance of local constituency versus international normative influence in treating national policies was examined in the context of female genital cutting, and it was found that reform is often a top-down process in which national laws are developed to change rather than reflect local attitudes, and African states tend to work around local communities by adopting bureaucratic policies to combat FGC.
Abstract: Looking at power struggles primarily within national boundaries reifies the nation-state and misses larger issues of control in the international system. Using the example of female genital cutting (FGC), we consider the relative importance of local constituencies versus international normative influence in treating national policies. We find that the occurrence of anti-FGC legislation in countries where many individuals support the procedure, the timing and character of national legal action directed against FGC, and the uniformity of political action all lend weight to the importance of international norms. At the national level, we find (1) reform is often a top-down process in which national laws are developed to change rather than reflect local attitudes, and (2) African states tend to work around local communities by adopting bureaucratic policies to combat FGC (Western countries, in contrast, tend to adopt formal laws). At the international level, our findings suggest (1) the structural position of international actors influences whether they deploy assimilative or coercive reform strategies, (2) contradictions among international ideals limits Western hegemony, and (3) international ideals can simultaneously empower (by offering options) and disempower (by disengaging states from local constituencies) local individuals. Social science literature tends to assume a link between national policies and local civil societies. Although that model may represent Western nations reasonably well, its extension to African nations and other countries in the Southern Hemisphere is often problematic.1 Such analyses miss an important piece of the picture: the international context of national action. Increasingly, calls for democratic process coincide with calls for particular political outcomes, which may go against local majority sentiments. Examining the evolution of laws from power struggles within countries reifies the nation-state and misses larger issues of control in the international system. An examination of the practice and policies of female genital cutting (FGC)2 provides an interesting case to explore the importance of international culture in creating national policies.3 FGC has generated many debates precisely because the issue juxtaposes the ideals of sovereign autonomy and local representation against an international definition of human rights. Due to the resulting moral quandary, national laws relating to the procedure are highly controversial. In this article, we examine why countries adopt anti-FGC legislation. Assuming that laws reflect national culture and material conditions, one might expect female genital cutting to be legally condoned in countries where the practice is prevalent (see Kidder 1984:36-57). Instead, laws in these countries are exclusively directed at banning female genital cutting. Laws banning female genital cutting are also common in countries in which the practice is very rare (the United States, Great Britain, etc.). Rather than viewing each law as the end point of a national political struggle, we consider all anti-FGC laws as part of an international process.4 We elaborate this process, exploring the strategies used by international actors to eradicate female genital cutting. We adopt the perspective that laws are significant because of the transcendent principles outside the means-end relationship for which they stand (see Boyle & Meyer 1998; Gusfield 1963; 1986:166; Burke 1945; see also Fine 1993). Law is a key ingredient in the social construction of reality. For example, African countries' anti-FGC policies bolster the perception of an international consensus to eradicate female genital cutting (cf. Edelman et al. 1999) and are viewed as an invitation by international activists to work within countries to eradicate the practice (see El Dareer 1982:96). In this way, laws have real consequences in fueling eradication efforts, regardless of whether local individuals are actually prosecuted under them. …

104 citations


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Performance
Metrics
No. of papers in the topic in previous years
YearPapers
202410
20235,313
202212,046
20211,728
20202,190
20192,226