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This paper explores the engagement and mobilization of an affluent community in relation to a known environmental hazard. It extends our understanding of individual responses to environmental risk and provides at least one response to the long-unanswered question: how would affluent communities respond to hazardous sites? Despite the contention that these resource-rich communities will respond differently than the less affluent communities that traditionally have these environmental hazards, we find no meaningful difference in their mobilization and engagement. Despite their perception of risk associated with the Ascon landfill in Huntington Beach and  relatively little trust in government to clean up the site, the community is largely unwilling to engage in activities related to site cleanup. This is an important contribution to our understanding of what generates individual action for environmental hazards and compels us to re-examine our understanding of what (if any) role socio-economic status plays in an individual’s response.

Much of the literature on home rule overlooks structural variations in city governance. Because structural features of city governance expand or restrict democratic participation, we take a comprehensive look at the 481 cities in California to identify correlates of home rule status and city council size. Roughly a quarter of the cities in the state have chosen to become charter cities while the rest remain general law cities with essentially identical governing bodies of five member city councils elected in at-large elections.  Some cities that have opted to become charter cities have altered their form of government or electoral systems, but many have not.  Among all cities in California, both general law and charter, variations in city council size, election method, and mayoral selection are largely unrelated to demographic factors but rather the year of incorporation, selection method of the mayor, and whether the city has adopted a charter.

Previous research has failed to adequately address why we should expect the diffusion of policy innovations in the realm of gun policy. As a social regulatory policy, gun policy may be highly influenced by policy adoptions in neighboring regions, in part due to the high likelihood of spillover effects. This article discusses under what conditions we should expect policy diffusion to occur from neighboring jurisdictions. We use event-history analyses to evaluate impact of neighboring states diffusion pressure on the adoption of 'shall issue' concealed weapons laws between 1974 and 2007. Neighboring diffusion pressure has a significant effect on policy adoption even when controlling for National Rifle Association membership and a previous adoption of a similar policy ('may issue' permit). We provide a rationale why scholars should find neighboring diffusion effects in some policy areas but not others. Keywords: Policy Adoption and Diffusion, Gun Policy, Firearms Control, United States, 'Shall Issue' Concealed Weapons Permits, Event-History Analysis, Social Regulatory Policy, Trans-Jurisdictional Policy Problems. Investigaciones anteriores no han tenido exito en evaluar el por que se deberia esperar la difusion de politicas innovadoras en el ambito de la regulacion de armas. Vista como una politica regulatoria social, la regulacion de armas puede ser altamente influenciada por las regulaciones adoptadas en las regiones adyacentes, en parte debido a la alta probabilidad de efectos de propagacion. Este estudio analiza bajo que condiciones deberiamos esperar la difusion de politicas en jurisdicciones adyacentes. Usamos un Analisis de Eventos Historicos para evaluar el impacto de la presion en la difusion de estados adyacentes en la adopcion de politicas 'Shall Issue' para armas encubiertas entre 1974 y 2007. La presion en la difusion de estados contiguos tiene un efecto significativo en la adopcion de regulaciones aun cuando se controla por membresia en la NRA y previas adopciones de politicas similares (permisos 'May Issue'). Brindamos una explicacion del por que se deberian de encontrar efectos de difusion adyacentes en algunas politicas pero no en otras., Unfortunately, gun violence occurs far too frequently in America. Occasionally, events like the 'Batman' shooting in Aurora Colorado on July 20, 2012 (Brown 2012) or the attack at Virginia Tech [...]

Numerous studies argue that law affects behavior 'expressively'--such as when states create focal points that overcome the coordination difficulties firms face. We argue that governments help firms overcome coordination dilemmas by explicating a preferred strategy for firms weighing investment in voluntary regulation. Firms would prefer to coordinate on a common strategy as a way of reducing the costs of voluntary regulation and increasing its benefits. We test our hypothesis about the efficacy of focal point selection with the European Union's (EU) advocacy of the Eco-Management and Audit Scheme (EMAS) over a rival environmental management system, International Standards Organization (ISO) 14001. EU nations have statistically significantly lower rates of ISO 14001 certification than comparable countries at least in part due to their advocacy of EMAS. These results emphasize the role the state plays in coordinating business behavior even when such policy is simply expressive. KEY WORDS: voluntary regulation, environmental management, expressive law, seemingly unrelated regression (SUR), Introduction Substantial recent attention has been paid to numerous ways that law affects behavior indirectly--'expressively'--that is, independent of direct deterrence (Cooter, 1997, 1998, 2000; McAdams, 2000a, 2000b; Posner, 1998, 2000a, [...]

Stern, West, and Schmitt (2014) reported that liberals display truly false uniqueness in contrast to moderates and conservatives who display truly false consensus. We conducted a close, preregistered replication of Stern et al.'s (2014) research with a large sample (N = 1,005). Liberals, moderates, and conservatives demonstrated the truly false consensus effect by overestimating ingroup consensus. False consensus was strongest among conservatives, followed by moderates, and weakest among liberals. However, liberals did score higher than moderates and conservatives on the need for uniqueness scale, which partially accounted for the difference in false consensus between liberals and conservatives. Overall, our data align with Stern et al.'s (2014) in demonstrating left-right ideological differences in the overestimation of ingroup consensus but fall short of illustrating a liberal illusion of uniqueness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]