Over a Decade of Comparative Risk Analysis: A Review of the Human Health Rankings

The author reviews a method for undertaking a cross-project comparison of comparative risk analyses to understand which environmental problem areas have been cited most as often posing the severest risks

Public Attitudes on the Environment

Researchers at the Harry S Truman School of Public Affairs at the University of Missouri have recently completed a national survey of 1,000 adults on attitudes about the environment. The survey asked respondents about their level of concern for the environment and about their preferences for government action to address a wide set of environmental issues. The survey was administered as part of the 2007 Cooperative Congressional Election Study (CCES), a 10,000 person survey conducted through the collaborative efforts of a consortium of universities. The 2007 CCES was administered in November 2007 by Polimetrix, an internet survey firm located in Palo Alto, California

Public Confidence in Government: Trust and Responsiveness

http://www.truman.missouri.edu/ipp/publications/index.asp?ViewBy=DateTo examine public confidence in government, researchers at the Harry S Truman School of Public Affairs at the University of Missouri have recently completed a national survey of 1,000 adults on these issues. The survey asked respondents about their general trust in government, their trust in local, state, and federal governments specifically, and their feelings on different levels of government's responsiveness to public opinion. The survey was administered as part of the 2007 Cooperative Congressional Election Study (CCES), a 10,000 person survey conducted through the collaborative efforts of a consortium of universities. The 2007 CCES was administered in November 2007 by Polimetrix, an internet survey firm located in Palo Alto, California.Includes bibliographical reference

Environmental Justice and Government Behavior: A Summary of New Findings

For nearly two decades, environmental justice advocates have charged that low-income and minority groups suffer a disproportionate burden from environmental risks associated with exposure to air, water, and land pollution as well as proximity to hazardous waste and other pollution generating facilities. Claims of these inequities have been amplified by a growing social movement that began with widely publicized protests in Warren County, North Carolina, where a predominantly black community mobilized in large numbers to fight the siting of a PCB landfill. Since that time, grassroots organizations have sustained and brought national attention to the environmental justice movement, which is often characterized as a new kind of social campaign embodied by the convergence of civil rights and environmental activism. Government at all levels have taken notice of environmental justice concerns, and responded with a variety of initiatives to these inequities (real and perceived). This policy report briefly summarizes new research that examines an understudied dimension of the environmental justice argument: that government behavior contributes to the alleged inequities.Includes bibliographical reference

Explaining Public Attitudes on State Legislative Professionalism

Scholars have long argued that state legislative professionalism, or the provision of staff, legislator salary, and session length, has behavioral incentives for legislators and implications for legislative capacity. Scant attention, however, has been devoted to public attitudes on the provision of these legislative resources. Using survey data on preferences for features associated with a citizen legislature versus a professional legislature, we examine the contours of public attitudes on professionalism and test models on the factors associated with these attitudes. Results suggest partisanship, trust, and approval of the local delegation matter, but the factors differ by the legislative professionalism of the respondents state and for low versus high knowledge citizens.Legislative Professionalism, Public Opinion, Political Economy

Public Attitudes on State Election Administration, Goals, and Reforms*

While few would disagree that elections serve a fundamental role in democracy, there is considerable debate regarding the rules by which elections should be conducted. State and local officials responsible for carrying out elections face difficult challenges, and often must work to achieve what many view are two competing aims: increasing voter turnout and minimizing voter fraud

Public Approval for State Government Institutions

There are a number of state level institutions designed to limit the impact of special interests on government or to facilitate citizen participation in government. These include legislative term limits, ballot initiatives, governors' line item veto power and public funding for legislative and gubernatorial candidates. While most of these state government institutions are fairly common around the United States, relatively little is known about Americans' opinion of them. This policy note explores Americans' views on these features as well as the relationship between survey respondents' partisanship and their approval of these state government institutions. To assess the public's attitudes on these political institutions, researchers at the Harry S Truman School of Public Affairs at the University of Missouri conducted a national survey of 1,000 adults. The survey was administered as part of the 2007 Cooperative Congressional Election Study (CCES), a 10,000 person survey conducted through the collaborative efforts of a consortium of universities. The 2007 CCES was administered in November 2007 by Polimetrix, an Internet survey firm located in Palo Alto, California.Includes bibliographical reference

Compared to private firms, government agencies are more likely to violate regulations and less likely to be punished

Recent events such as the Volkswagen emissions scandal have reminded us that the private sector often break government regulations. But what about government agencies? In new research, that examines compliance with the Clean Air Act and Safe Drinking Water Act, David M. Konisky and Manuel P. Teodoro find that, facing higher compliance costs, government agencies are more likely than private firms to violate such regulations. They also argue that these agencies are less likely to be penalized by government for their infractions compared to private firms

What Missouri Thinks: An Examination of Public Attitudes

Political observers often refer to Missouri as a “bellwether” state, suggesting that the political and social attitudes of Missourians tend to reflect those of the rest of the United States. (Robertson, 2004). To better understand the opinions of Missourians on a set of important political, economic, and social issues, researchers at the Harry S Truman School of Public Affairs examined results from the 2008 Cooperative Congressional Election Survey (CCES). This nationally-representative public opinion survey included a sample of 817 Missouri residents. In this report, we explore the attitudes of Missourians to examine how they differ from the rest of the nation and how they vary within the state. Given the demographic patterns of Missouri, we are particularly interested in potential differences in attitudes between residents living in urban and rural areas (see Appendix A for additional discussion.) Overall, we find that Missouri residents shared similar attitudes on major economic, social and military issues with the rest of the nation, but we also find that rural and urban Missourians held distinctly different opinions on these same issues. These differences in opinion are likely driven by factors such as partisan identification, political ideology, education, and other socioeconomic attributes.Includes bibliographical reference

Regulatory competition and the politics of environmental enforcement

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Political Science, 2006.Includes bibliographical references (p. 239-258).Does interstate economic competition result in states weakening their environmental regulation? Scholars have long been interested in this question. Of particular concern, is whether this type of behavior leads to a "race to the bottom" in U.S. state environmental regulatory behavior. Although there is a mature theoretical literature investigating the conditions under which regulators will use environmental measures as competitive instruments vis-a.-vis other states for attracting economic investment, the empirical literature has lagged far behind in testing the direct predictions of the race to the bottom argument. The purpose of this project is test the applicability of the race to the bottom argument in U.S. state environmental regulation. To test the race to the bottom argument, I examine both behavioral' and attitudinal evidence. Specifically, I estimate a series of strategic interaction models which aim to detect whether state enforcement of three federal pollution control programs - the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act - follows a pattern consistent with regulatory competition theory generally, and the race to the bottom argument specifically. I also conduct a nationwide survey of senior officials working in state environmental agencies.(cont.) This elite level survey helps to validate the behavioral evidence studied in the statistical analysis, as well as elucidates the mechanisms of regulatory competition within states. My research finds strong evidence that state environmental regulatory behavior is interdependent - that is, state regulatory agencies respond to the regulatory behavior of the states with which they compete for economic investment. Evidence from both the statistical analysis of state enforcement data and the survey of state environmental regulators supports this conclusion. The evidence for a race to the bottom is less clear. While I do find that some states weaken their environmental regulatory effort in response to interstate economic competition, I also find that other states strengthen their regulatory effort, which supports an alternative race to the top argument. In the final part of the dissertation, I reconcile these results by identifying the factors that make particular states more susceptible to race to the bottom-type behavior.by David M. Konisky.Ph.D