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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.


Papers
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Journal ArticleDOI
01 Oct 2014-Futures
TL;DR: The authors argue that many artisanal miners are in fact operating at various stages of legality, through payment of informal taxes, and following informal agreements made with local government officials, which can be seen as a locally grounded formalization, benefiting both cash-strapped miners who are unable to pay the full fees required by the Mining Code and underpaid government officials who are presented with an opportunity to supplement their incomes.

96 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In the early 1990s, Congress passed the Family Support Act (FSA) as discussed by the authors, which included the Job Opportunities and Basic Skills (JOBS) program, which established a new set of employment and training services targeted at AFDC recipients.
Abstract: In ancient times alchemists believed implicitly in the existence of a philosopher's tone, which would provide the key to the universe and, in effect, solve all of the problem of mankind. The quest for coordination is in many respects the twentieth-century equivalent of the medieval search for the philosopher's stone. If only we can find the right formula for coordination, we can reconcile the irreconcilable, harmonize competing and wholly divergent interests, overcome irrationalities in our government structures, and make hard policy choices to which no one will dissent. In an attempt to reform Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), the major intergovernmental program providing public assistance to the poor in the United States, Congress approved the Family Support Act (FSA) in 1988 (PL. 100-485). This act included the Job Opportunities and Basic Skills (JOBS) program, which established a new set of employment and training services targeted at AFDC recipients.(1) JOBS, which became operational in October 1990, has been initiated in a complex organizational and policy environment composed of pre-existing programs that are open to the same target group. The involvement of multiple state, local, and other organizations is characteristic of this new program, as it was of some of the pre-existing programs. In recognition of the multiple possible linkages, the Family Support Act imposes several requirements intended to foster the coordination of services delivered by the different agencies and organizations to JOBS participants. The multiagency, multiprogram framework and the welfare reform legislation mandates for coordination raise questions about how effectively the JOBS program can be administered. Although state welfare departments are designated as the lead agencies, cooperation of other public agencies is required. Activities of the state agencies need to be linked to not-for-profit and for-profit organizations. Success of the welfare reform effort might well turn on the degree to which the diverse organizations and programs integrate their efforts. That coordination was already a problem in the social service arena can hardly be questioned. The categorized, fragmented nature of the welfare system has seriously constrained effective delivery of human services, as several national commissions noted in 1991 (National Commission for Employment Policy, 1991; National Commission to Prevent Infant Mortality, 1991; National Commission on Children, 1991). We know, however, that coordination is hard to achieve. Seidman (1970) has called coordination the "philosopher's stone"' of public administration, suggesting that it is an illusive, magical ingredient that will transform flawed systems of administration. Agranoff's (1991) recent review of service integration efforts of the past 20 years indicates that coordination continues to be extraordinarily difficult to attain in the mosaic of American social services. Thus we ask: What practices have managers used to blend together the essential ingredients of the JOBS program? Have the wizards of the social service organizations overcome their specialized concerns and been able to amalgamate the diverse elements into a functioning system? What barriers to coordination fell to their magic or resisted their alchemy? The answers to these questions will tell us something about the potential for the long-term success of JOBS and similar programs. They will also tell us about factors that shape the success of intergovernmental program implementation and interorganizational policy activity. The Barriers to Coordination Previous research suggests that coordination barriers are of several types: organizational, legal/technical, and political. Organizational barriers are rooted in the differing missions, professional orientations, structures, and processes of the agencies. Mission defines an organization's purposes, and differences in mission can lead to conflicts over goals, directions, and activities. …

95 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Public health agencies that use their communication and marketing resources effectively to support people in making healthful decisions and to foster health-promoting environments have considerable opportunity to advance the public's health, even within the constraints of their current resource base.
Abstract: Communication and marketing are rapidly becoming recognized as core functions, or core competencies, in the field of public health. Although these disciplines have fostered considerable academic inquiry, a coherent sense of precisely how these disciplines can inform the practice of public health has been slower to emerge. In this article we propose a framework – based on contemporary ecological models of health – to explain how communication and marketing can be used to advance public health objectives. The framework identifies the attributes of people (as individuals, as social networks, and as communities or populations) and places that influence health behaviors and health. Communication, i.e., the provision of information, can be used in a variety of ways to foster beneficial change among both people (e.g., activating social support for smoking cessation among peers) and places (e.g., convincing city officials to ban smoking in public venues). Similarly, marketing, i.e., the development, distribution and promotion of products and services, can be used to foster beneficial change among both people (e.g., by making nicotine replacement therapy more accessible and affordable) and places (e.g., by providing city officials with model anti-tobacco legislation that can be adapted for use in their jurisdiction). Public health agencies that use their communication and marketing resources effectively to support people in making healthful decisions and to foster health-promoting environments have considerable opportunity to advance the public's health, even within the constraints of their current resource base.

95 citations

Book
01 Jan 1979
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors provide five case studies of the Corps of Engineers project planning process, and a survey data analysis of the attitudes of citizens who took part in Corps public involvement activities.
Abstract: As the title suggests, this work concerns itself with our assessment of the environmental movement's impact upon the procedures, organizational structure, and objectives of the Corps of Engineers. The authors have selected four measures of organizational change-setting new goals, reorganization, changes in output, and open decisionmaking-as important factors in the assessment of bureaucratic change in the 1970s. With these factors in mind, the authors provide five case studies of the Corps of Engineers project planning process, and a survey data analysis of the attitudes of citizens who took part in Corps public involvement activities. The methodology is innovative and sophisticated. The reader is allowed the richness of detail and insight that only case studies provide, and empirical generalizations derived from survey data analysis, upon which conclusions about the overall effectiveness of Corps planning strategies on citizen attitudes can be based. The conclusion? Not much change, either in citizen attitudes about the Corps, or the Agency's organizational accommodation to citizen demands through citizen participation. The book, therefore, represents a missed opportunity. Instead of considering a wide scope of decision making in order to define the changing constellation of political support, opposition, and the Corps' organizational responses, the authors chose to focus on a rather minor component of decision making and public relations, the public involvement process. Thus, the work stands primarily as a technical analysis of citizen participation strategies, rather than a political study of the Corps of Engineers. However, the book may be testimony enough to this agency's political strength. The environmental movement of the last decade gave us sweeping anti-pollution legislation, unprecedented federal authority to regulate many sectors of society, wholesale governmental reorganization, and billions for anti-pollution control technology. The authors admit that this social movement led only to what amounted to organizational fine tuning within the Corps: brief experimentation with open planning and decision making, a small increase in environmentally-oriented personnel, and the creation of environmental units in District Planning and Engineering Divisions. These modifications

95 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the problem of designing a legal system able to cope in a rapidly changing technological environment is considered, and the authors analyze the idea of technological neutrality as a technique of statutory drafting designed to ensure that statutes are able to operate fairly and effectively in diverse technological contexts.
Abstract: Although not every technology generates litigation and legal scholarship, technological change is often the occasion for legal problems. Metaphors of law's struggle to keep up with technology reflect the law's failure to cope with technological change. These metaphors have been used in contexts as diverse as railroads, in vitro fertilization, computers, and the Internet. This article seeks to understand why technological change poses such difficulties for the law. It describes four common types of legal problems that arise from technological change: (1) the potential need for laws to ban, restrict or, alternatively, encourage a new technology; (2) uncertainty in the application of existing legal rules to new practices; (3) the possible over-inclusiveness or under-inclusiveness of existing legal rules as applied to new practices; and (4) alleged obsolescence of existing legal rules. Using this classification, the Article considers the problem of designing a legal system able to cope in a rapidly changing technological environment. It analyzes the idea of "technological neutrality" as a technique of statutory drafting designed to ensure that statutes are able to operate fairly and effectively in diverse technological contexts. It demonstrates that, while such techniques might ensure proper treatment of existing technologies, they are ineffective in a changing technological environment. Instead of focusing on drafting techniques, a broader institutional context is required. The goal should not be technology-neutral legislation, but rather a legal system that continues to treat different technologies fairly and effectively as technology evolves.

95 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