By Land and By Sea

This short article discusses the results of the By Land and By Sea project, in which Maine fishermen and farmers came together to discuss common concerns and to forge new solutions aimed at re-envisioning a unified food system

Federalism, checks and the welfare state: a cross national analysis

It is often asserted in the institutional literature that there is a trade-off between effective and efficient government. Effective government is often stipulated to be more representative, while efficient government is considered superior at passing legislation. This analysis critiques Arend Lijphart\u27s theory that consensus democracies are more representative, and therefore, result in kinder, gentler democracies with more encompassing social policies. I hypothesize that more representative government - operationalized as having higher levels of fractionalization within the legislature, more federalism and more checks within the system - is actually more effective at translating the median voter\u27s preference for occupationally dependent or targeted welfare policies into legislation. Consequently, states with more institutional autonomy will be more efficient at passing larger forms of welfare legislation. Through a cross sectional OLS multivariate regression analysis, I find that federalism is negatively correlated with the level of social expenditure across states. However, my results also suggest that Downsian platform convergence may actually make more representation in the legislature conducive to social policy implementation. These findings suggest that representative features within government actually have mixed effects on the emergence of social policies and that better measures for these independent variables as well as a more accurate measure for the welfare state are imperative to future welfare state studies

Resource, Environment and Energy Considerations for Maine Food Security in 2050 and Beyond

This article discusses some of the expensive “externalities” produced by industrial agriculture and fishing. These include impaired watershed quality, soil degradation, pollution, reduction in biodiversity, and impacts on human health. The article also includes a discussion of transgenic crops and how these relate to sustainable agricultur

Historical Perspectives on Resource Use in Food Systems

No one would deny that industrial agriculture and fishing have been highly productive—but at what cost? This article explores the historical development and contemporary impact of food production on the environment, availability of water and other resources, energy, food safety, and even our waistline

Creating an Organization to Support SFA’s Women Employees

The purpose of this session is two-fold. First, we wish to introduce the SFA OWLE (Organization for Women’s Leadership and Equity), the newly created professional women’s organization, to interested members of our campus community. Second, we wish to share experiences that we believe are relevant to others on our campus, in our community, and at other institutions, who might seek to create organizations through which to advocate for the unique needs of their marginalized or underrepresented group. To that end, this session will include a panel of female employees at SFA who have worked for more than a year to plan for, create, and implement a professional women’s organization for our campus. The panel will begin the session by sharing the reasons why a professional women’s organization is needed on our campus (as well as many similar institutions nationwide) and will describe the steps taken to create the organization. The committees constituted in the organization’s by-laws reflect the challenges faced by women in academia. We will share challenges we faced as we sought to create an organization that would provide support to women of differing types of employment (e.g., both staff and faculty), from different academic disciplines and areas of the university, in different stages of their personal and professional lives, and from diverse positionalities (i.e., race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, parenthood status, etc.). We will also identify some of the successes our organization has achieved in its early stages

The political foundations of welfare development : regime type, domestic pressures, and social spending in Latin America

Title from PDF of title page (University of Missouri--Columbia, viewed on Feb 26, 2010).The entire thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file; a non-technical public abstract appears in the public.pdf file.Dissertation advisor: Dr. Jonathan Krieckhaus.Vita.Ph.D. University of Missouri--Columbia 2009.There is an ongoing debate in the literature concerning the impact of democracy on welfare spending. In this study, I argue that the effect of democracy is conditional on the degree or extent of democracy and the existence of domestic groups - predominantly labor and the elderly - who pressure the government for policy changes. In countries where there is a larger high skilled labor force and a more democratic government, welfare expenditure is higher because the government will respond to labor pressures for broader welfare protection. In countries with a larger elderly population, governments will respond with more of a social security and welfare effort. However, in countries where the labor force is less organized and the elderly population is weak, democratic leaders are more likely to have lower welfare spending and favor more orthodox economic policies. Finally, new democratic governments and established democratic governments have a different relationship with welfare expenditure. While domestic pressures condition the role of each regime type, new democracies are fragile, so representatives in these regimes may have an even greater response to domestic pressures for welfare development.Includes bibliographical reference

New England Food Vision: Healthy Food for All, Sustainable Farming and Fishing, Thriving Communities

A New England Food Vision proposes changes in food production, distribution, and consumption reaching from the most rural areas to the densest cities—across the entire food system. The New England Food Vision Writing Team has been working since 2011 to produce a bold vision that calls for our region to build the capacity to produce at least 50% of clean, fair, accessible and just food for New Englanders by 2060. The Vision includes a set of guiding assumptions and calculations that sketch a future in which diverse local and state food systems are supported by and in turn support a regional sustainable food system. The roles of the writing team include production of a New England Food Vision document, including input from regional stakeholders at the annual New England Food Summits, discussions at various meetings, presentations, and via an online survey

Domestic and International College Students: Health Insurance Information Seeking and Use

This article explores perceived barriers to using health insurance and identifies discriminant factors between health insurance information seekers and non-seekers

Maine Won\u27t Wait One-Year Progress Report, 2021

This document, an “Maine Climate Science Update 2021”, is an interim communication to the Maine Climate Council and the public about the ongoing work of the scientific community and recent events associated with climate change. It is divided into three sections: (1) current events that reflect the acceleration of extreme weather events in Maine and elsewhere with possible connections to climate change; (2) noteworthy scientific reports with national and international scope released in 2021; and (3) examples of recent peer-reviewed publications from the ongoing work of the scientific community to understand climate change in Maine