Do policymakers learn from the policy experiences of other governments, and if so, what do they learn? A long-established normative claim suggests that intergovernmental learning can and should occur among the US states, which serve as “laboratories of democracy” for the nation. We put this claim to a tough test, comparing the influences on the diffusion of instrumental Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers (TRAP) laws with that of more symbolic abortion regulation, from 1993 to 2016. We find evidence of substantive intergovernmental learning in policy diffusion even for abortion regulation—but only for instrumental abortion regulation. On symbolic abortion policy, states appear to learn mainly political lessons. Furthermore, proponents and opponents appear to learn different lessons in these diffusions, with loss aversion motivating opponents especially highly. Our results suggest that policymakers have a sophisticated understanding of the differences among policies’ goals and act strategically in pursuit of those goals.

The COVID-19 pandemic has upended every aspect of American life. State governments responded quickly to protect public health and stabilize overwhelmed hospital systems. The most restrictive policy, the stay-at-home order, was seen by public health officials as a cornerstone of successful state mitigation strategies. But like many aspects of contemporary politics, support for these efforts took on a distinctly partisan hue. In this paper, I argue that party politics significantly affected state policy responses to COVID-19, which in turn limited mitigation efforts. To this point, I first demonstrate that Democratic governors were faster and more likely to adopt stay-at-home orders than Republicans. Next, using a synthetic control approach, I show that these orders caused residents to practice greater social distancing. Finally, I find that greater social distancing worked to “flattened the curve” by limiting the growth of COVID-19 cases. Together these findings show how party politics affected state pandemic responses and have important long-term implications as states begin lifting restrictions.

This paper examines the impacts of state policies and NGO advocacy on female sex workers’ identity and how they manage stigma. Comparing three groups of sex workers – those born and working in mainland China, those born and working in Hong Kong, and those born in mainland China who later migrated to Hong Kong and entered the sex industry – this paper suggests that differences in state policies on prostitution and the different degrees of visibility of NGOs campaigning for sex workers’ rights are related to three strategies used by sex workers to construct a positive self-image to counteract the stigma they face: gendered obligation fulfilment, professional work and responsible citizenship. The paper illustrates that stigmatized-identity management involves complex relationships among individual interpretation, selection and mobilization of gender, work and citizenship scripts, which are contingent on structural features of the environment and may change during migration and relocation.

Attempts to assess the influence of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) groups on LGBT-related policy are hampered by imprecise measurement of LGBT group strength and activity. This research note examines the problems with existing measures of state-level LGBT advocacy strength and it develops an alternative measure of LGBT advocacy group strength. We utilize revenue and asset data available from the National Center for Charitable Statistics to develop better and reproducible state-level measures of LGBT interest group strength on an annual basis. We compare our measures to existing measures and demonstrate their utility for the ongoing study of LGBT politics. The approach used in construction of our measure can be extended over time, is replicable in other issue areas, and thus has broad utility for the study of interest groups at the subnational level.

The Great Recession of late 2007 through 2009 had profound negative economic impacts on the U.S. states, with 49 states experiencing revenue decreases in their 2009 budgets representing more than $67.2 billion USD. Also during this period, states enacted a record number of laws related to immigrants residing in their states. We make use of data from the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) to examine punitive immigration policy enactment from 2005 to 2012 and conduct a state comparative study using cross-sectional time-series analysis to examine the potential ways in which the economic recession and changing demographics in the states have impacted punitive state immigration policy making. We hypothesize that although anti-immigrant anxieties are driven in part by economic insecurity, they are also impacted by the presence of a large or growing proportion of racialized immigrants. We find that increases in state Hispanic populations and state economic stressors associated with the recession have both led to a greater number of enacted punitive state immigration policies. In addition, we find that changes in the non-Hispanic white populations in the states are also impacting the expression of anti-immigrant attitudes in state policy during this period.

This article asks what shaped immigrant policy in the 50 states between 2005 and 2011. Theoretically, politicians are influenced by electoral considerations as they craft laws. Law-makers consider both current public opinion and how the electorate is likely to change, at least in the near future. Empirically, the article analyses an original dataset on immigrant-related laws enacted by the states with a Bayesian spatial conditionally autoregressive model. The analysis shows that state immigrant policy is affected primarily by legislative professionalism, electoral ideology, state wealth and change in the foreign-born population.

Family and kinship support have always been central to the maintenance of the elderly in western society. For the past 70 years provincial statutes have adopted the principle of filial support for indigent parents as an essential element in state policy regarding the elderly. This article discusses the history of the Canadian legislation to the present day and examines its application through the courts and state agents of Ontario and provincial officials of British Columbia. While of some significance as a mechanism of support for a brief period prior to 1951, the legislation was generally ineffective and at times counterproductive. Nevertheless, it has continued to play a role in state policy for the elderly because of the familist ideology that it reflects.

The report of the International Commission of Inquiry on Darfur, set up pursuant to a UN Security Council resolution, is an important contribution to the evolving law of genocide. The Commission concluded that genocide had not been committed, but that the case should be referred to the International Criminal Court for prosecution as crimes against humanity and war crimes. The Commission did not find significant evidence of genocidal intent. It looked essentially for a plan or policy of the Sudanese state and, in its absence, concluded that genocide was not being committed. The Commission endorsed the ‘stable and permanent groups’ approach taken by one trial chamber of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR). On this point, it exaggerated the acceptance of this interpretation, which has been ignored by other trial chambers of the international tribunals. However, the Commission found that the better approach to determination of the groups covered by the Convention is subjective, and that the targeted tribes in Darfur meet this criterion.