Kristin A. Goss

Volunteering and the Long Civic Generation

By virtually every conceivable measure, civic participation is on the decline in America. Volunteering is one important exception. An analysis of a newly available archive of national surveys finds that the frequency with which Americans volunteer has increased 20% since the mid-1970s. However, nearly all of that increase is concentrated among older Americans, who are volunteering twice as frequent in the late 1990s as their same-aged predecessors did in the 1970s. Meanwhile, volunteering has actually decreased among middle-age adults, who once were the voluntary sector’s most reliable source of donated labor. The reasons for increased volunteering among seniors remain elusive. Tests of various hypotheses, from improved health and financial conditions to increased spare time, do not explain the explosive increase. Nonetheless, it is clear that a powerful and mysterious force is pushing seniors toward greater volunteer involvement, and non-profit groups should tap into this particularly civic age group before the Indian summer of volunteering reaches its end.

Organizing Women as Women: Hybridity and Grassroots Collective Action in the 21 st Century

The Million Mom March (favoring gun control) and Code Pink: Women for Peace (focusing on foreign policy, especially the war in Iraq) are organizations that have mobilized women as women in an era when other women’s groups struggled to maintain critical mass and turned away from non-gender-specific public issues. This article addresses how these organizations fostered collective consciousness among women, a large and diverse group, while confronting the echoes of backlash against previous mobilization efforts by women. We argue that the March and Code Pink achieved mobilization success by creating hybrid organizations that blended elements of three major collective action frames: maternalism, egalitarianism, and feminine expression. These innovative organizations invented hybrid forms that cut across movements, constituencies, and political institutions. Using surveys, interviews, and content analysis of organizational documents, this article explains how the March and Code Pink met the contemporary challenges facing women’s collective action in similar yet distinct ways. It highlights the role of feminine expression and concerns about the intersectional marginalization of women in resolving the historic tensions between maternalism and egalitarianism. It demonstrates hybridity as a useful analytical lens to understand gendered organizing and other forms of grassroots collective action.

Policy Plutocrats: How America’s Wealthy Seek to Influence Governance

© American Political Science Association, 2016 doi:10.1017/S1049096516000676 ........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................ ........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

Rethinking the Political Participation Paradigm: The Case of Women and Gun Control

Abstract Political-participation studies have paid too little attention to the cognitive and emotional motivations for citizen engagement. This study uses a natural experiment in issue-centered mobilization, a womens march for stricter gun control, to construct a fuller model of political participation, one that focuses on the interaction between individuals and issues. I find that reframing political issues to resonate with social roles and responsibilities-in this case, reframing gun control as a child-protection issuelegitimizes participation by new groups of people-in this case, women. The more citizens internalize these frames, the more intensively they participate over time.

Firearm-Related Laws in All 50 US States, 1991–2016

Objectives To describe a new database containing detailed annual information on firearm-related laws in place in each of the 50 US states from 1991 to 2016 and to summarize key trends in firearm-related laws during this time period. Methods Using Thomson Reuters Westlaw data to access historical state statutes and session laws, we developed a database indicating the presence or absence of each of 133 provisions of firearm laws in each state over the 26-year period. These provisions covered 14 aspects of state policies, including regulation of the process by which firearm transfers take place, ammunition, firearm possession, firearm storage, firearm trafficking, and liability of firearm manufacturers. Results An examination of trends in state firearm laws via this database revealed that although the number of laws nearly doubled during the study period, there was substantial heterogeneity across states, leading to a widening disparity in the number of firearm laws. Conclusions This database can help advance firearm policy research by providing 26 years of comprehensive policy data that will allow longitudinal panel study designs that minimize the limitations present in many previous studies.

Easiness of Legal Access to Concealed Firearm Permits and Homicide Rates in the United States

Objectives To examine the relation of “shall-issue” laws, in which permits must be issued if requisite criteria are met; “may-issue” laws, which give law enforcement officials wide discretion over whether to issue concealed firearm carry permits or not; and homicide rates. Methods We compared homicide rates in shall-issue and may-issue states and total, firearm, nonfirearm, handgun, and long-gun homicide rates in all 50 states during the 25-year period of 1991 to 2015. We included year and state fixed effects and numerous state-level factors in the analysis. Results Shall-issue laws were significantly associated with 6.5% higher total homicide rates, 8.6% higher firearm homicide rates, and 10.6% higher handgun homicide rates, but were not significantly associated with long-gun or nonfirearm homicide. Conclusions Shall-issue laws are associated with significantly higher rates of total, firearm-related, and handgun-related homicide.

Civil Society and Civic Engagement: Towards a Multi-Level Theory of Policy Feedbacks

Scholars are increasingly recognizing that design of a public policy influences the scope and nature of political engagement around that policy. Such ‘policy feedback’ models typically focus on organizational engagement (such as interest group lobbying) or on individual engagement (such as joining associations), with each form of participation treated as a discrete phenomenon. Here, drawing on US laws and regulations surrounding civil society and civil rights, I develop a multi-level model of policy feedbacks that integrates organizational and individual participation. Specifically, I suggest that laws and administrative rules operate on voluntary organizations to structure the resources, capacities, strategies, and ideals of individuals. To develop the model, I draw on policy feedback mechanisms identified by Suzanne Mettler and Joe Soss to derive empirically grounded hypotheses about feedback effects. I suggest that public policy (1) structures the political orientation of civil society by stimulating the development of certain types of groups and strategies, while constraining others, with implications for the range of participatory opportunities afforded to individuals; (2) alters the capacity of civil society groups, including resources and political learning, to channel civic engagement towards non-political strategies of social improvement; (3) affects the framing of strategies in a way that might influence mass attitudes about the optimal form that civic engagement should take; (4) defines civic membership; and (5) forges political community in ways that encourage rights-based advocacy over communitarian notions of public service. I conclude with thoughts on how the theories and hypotheses put forth in this conceptual article might be evaluated empirically and incorporated in practice.

Defying the odds on gun regulation: The passage of bipartisan mental health laws across the states.

This article documents an important exception to the conventional wisdom that politicians just will not tighten gun laws. Over the past decade, and mostly under the radar, both state and federal legislators have enacted more than 80 laws designed to regulate access to guns by people with mental illness and to support programs to reduce gun violence within that population. This study begins with a brief overview and evaluation of the barriers to enacting firearms regulations (of all sorts) in America. The author next reviews lawmaking at the nexus of mental health and firearms over the past decade. The author provides an overview of the types of laws that have been enacted and the political circumstances that have facilitated their passage. The author concludes with some thoughts about whether these cases provide any generalizable lessons for consensus-based policymaking on guns. (PsycINFO Database Record Language: en

Introduction to Advancing Philanthropic Scholarship: The Implications of Transformation

Philanthropy—the voluntary dispensing of private wealth for public purposes—is undergoing a profound transformation and, in the process, changing how we confront public problems. In the July 2016 issue of this journal, seven political scientists argued that we should take philanthropy seriously because it is inextricably bound to many of our discipline’s core questions, including inequality, power, accountability, and governance (Berry 2016; Goss 2016; Hertel-Fernandez 2016; Reckhow 2016; Reich 2016; Skocpol 2016; Teles 2016). The articles in this issue take the next step by spotlighting how new forms of philanthropy—broadly understood—are crisscrossing the boundaries of the market, state, and civil-society sectors to address public problems—and doing so with little scrutiny by political scientists or policy makers. Embedded in this new philanthropy are normative assumptions about the role of the state that deserve greater attention and policy dilemmas that demand resolution. We often think of civil society, of which private philanthropy is a part, as a set of institutions that exist outside of the state or market and that offer a backstop against the failures of each. In reality, however, the boundaries among civil society, the state, and the market have been blurred, negotiated, and contested for most of American history (Hall 2006; Salamon 1987). The state both regulates civil society’s role in governance and depends on that sector as a partner in the delivery of statefunded services (Berry 2003; Salamon 1987; Smith and Lipsky 1993). Likewise, market capitalism generates the wealth that fuels large-scale philanthropy while also producing the negative externalities that philanthropic organizations often address. The sectors’ interdependence notwithstanding, it is tempting to see philanthropy as an independent force for good—society’s “passing gear” (Ylvisaker 1987) on the road to a more perfect union. As Forbes magazine recently intoned, “Governments no longer seem capable of executing big ideas. Ditto for major corporations. It’s left to entrepreneurial capitalism to innovate. And modern-day philanthropy taps the same skills, substituting public good for profit” (Lane 2013, 10). What is public good and how are we to produce it? As citizens and lawmakers grapple with these questions, philanthropists have stepped forward to answer them. In his famous essay Wealth, Andrew Carnegie (1899) argued that unfettered capitalism created a duty to distribute excess riches for the benefit of the community. The plutocrats of Carnegie’s generation built libraries, universities, and other engines of intellectual progress, and they pioneered “scientific philanthropy” to attack the root causes of poverty. Today’s billionaire plutocrats— more than 150 and counting—have issued a public “Giving Pledge” to distribute more than half of their wealth before they die (see www.givingpledge.org). The scientific philanthropy of yesteryear has given rise to today’s “philanthrocapitalism,” an engaged, metrics-driven approach that imagines philanthropy as risk capital in the public interest (Bishop and Green 2010; Edwards 2008; Freeland 2013). In an age of inequality, hyperpartisanship, and dysfunctional governance, philanthropic individuals and organizations are imagining and executing novel approaches to everything from gun violence prevention to alternative energy development to public school reform (Callahan 2017; Goss 2016; McGoey 2015; Reckhow 2016). As Angela Eikenberry and Roseanne Mirabella argue in this issue, today’s philanthropy is couched in the benign discourse of “effectiveness.” However, in its practical manifestations, the drive for effectiveness raises questions of concern to political

Broadening the Perspective on Gun Violence: An Examination of the Firearms Industry, 1990–2015

INTRODUCTION Firearm violence injures or kills 100,000 Americans each year. This paper applies the Host-Agent-Vector-Environment model to this issue. Research on firearm violence tends to focus on two elements-the host (i.e., victims of firearm violence) and the environment (i.e., gun policies)-but little attention has been paid to the agent (the gun and ammunition) or the vector (firearm manufacturers, dealers, and the industry lobby). METHODS Using Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives data, trends in firearm manufacturing were investigated from 1990 to 2015. Outcome measures included: (1) trends in domestic gun manufacturing by weapon type; (2) trends in production by firearm caliber; and (3) 2015 market share by type of firearm and company. Data were collected and analyzed in 2016. RESULTS Overall domestic firearms production decreased slightly from 1996 through 2004, and then steadily increased from 1.7% in 2005 to 13.8% in 2013, when >10 million firearms were produced for the domestic market. The increase in total firearm production was driven by the increased production of pistols and rifles. Within the pistol category, increased production was attributable to an increase in higher caliber weapons. Similar trends were observed in gun purchases and recovered and traced crime guns. CONCLUSIONS Trends in firearm manufacturing reveal a shift toward more-lethal weapons, and this trend is also observed in gun purchases and crime gun traces. This may reflect a societal shift in cultural practices and norms related to guns and could inform strategies to reduce firearm violence.