Lyke Thompson

Pathways to Family Empowerment: Effects of Family-Centered Delivery of Early Intervention Services

This study explores how the method of delivery for early intervention services impacts perceptions of empowerment among families. Analysis of data collected from 270 randomly sampled families participating in the State of Michigans Early On (Part H of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act) program suggests two paths by which empowerment is effected. Along one path, implementation of program components via a family-centered framework appears to help increase empowerment. An alternative path models how family-centered delivery may help to build a familys support network. This is related to reduced stress and increased empowerment. Findings support programs emphasizing family-centered methods of service delivery.

Democracy among Strangers: Term Limits' Effects on Relationships between State Legislators in Michigan

By truncating service, term limits create massive turnover in some state legislatures where they exist, bringing flocks of newcomers into office. With less time to get to know each other and to develop expertise and influence, how do legislators know who to consult and whose advice to rely on? We explore this and other questions about three relationships (influence, friendship, and policy consultation) with a longitudinal study of the Michigan House of Representatives, a highly professionalized body with stringent limits on legislative terms. We found that term limits lead to a more pronounced regional component of friendship, greater concentration of influence among caucus leaders, consulting networks with more prominent hubs that could control the flow of information, and a decline in relationships across party lines. We argue that these effects of term limits bode poorly for bipartisan negotiation and consensus-building among legislators representing diverse constituencies.

Testing the Differential Effect of Business Incubators on Firm Growth

This research examines whether business incubators produce a differential effect on the growth of firms. Given that there is no direct estimate for the counterfactual (simultaneously measuring the economic growth of a firm outside and inside of an incubator), the authors use a propensity score matching technique to control for the factors that are related to both firm growth and the probability that an incubator manager would accept that firm for incubation. The analysis indicates that incubators have a significant positive impact on firm job creation, and this impact is not reduced if a matched comparison group is used. Furthermore, this study finds that incubated firms receive five times as many business services (legal, financial, marketing, etc.) as their nonincubated cohort. This may account for the networking effect found in previous studies.

The Social Construction of a Legitimate Presidency

A recognized strength of modern constitutional democracies is their ability to insure legitimate political succession through the use of elections. For a review of the contribution of democratic theory to the succession problem, see: Peter Calvert, “The Theory of Political Succession” in The Process of Political Succession, ed. Peter Calvert (London: Macmillan, 1987), 245–66. We do not challenge this assessment; rather, we suggest that the process of producing a legitimate leader is a complex social construction with numerous variations. The pathway to political legitimacy can be conceived thus as a passage through a series of “gateways” and “rituals” that, when successfully confronted, confer political authority. The public, the press, and political elites participate in the process of conferring legitimacy on the “winner.” The 2000 presidential election is a prime illustration of this process because its contested nature clarifies and highlights gateways that have been less visible in other elections. We present an analysis of the social construction of legitimacy in the post-election and early weeks of George W. Bushs presidency, including examples of strategies designed to negotiate successful passage through these rituals. Finally, we note the capacity of these rituals to produce legitimate successions even when irregular events pose a challenge to democratic theory.

Dimensions of Collaboration and Family Impacts

Decentralized, market-based service systems provide services recipients with opportunities to choose services and service providers. Yet, for some service recipients, finding and arranging for services is so difficult that they do not receive the services they need. Collaboration between service providers and service recipients may reduce the costs and confusion of decentralized service delivery. This study explores the effects of interagency collaboration and collaboration between agencies and families on families’ experiences finding and arranging service to help them and their children with disabilities. It uses data collected from 317 randomly sampled families participating in the State of Michigan’s Early On program (Part C of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act). Higher levels of interagency collaboration were associated with increases in the quantity and quality of services provided. Different forms of collaboration between agencies and families were associated with more mixed service delivery impacts. These findings support continued experimentation with collaborative service delivery by policy makers.

Emergent design: Understanding and evolving measures of a family support system☆

Emergent design suggests that evaluators adapt their inquiry process as they come to understand the object of an evaluation better. This article provides a case study of the use of emergent design in the evaluation of a family support program. It traces the emergence of evaluation procedures through three phases. At each stage it portrays the evaluation problem, the procedures used to understand the program and presents the results of that stage of the analysis. This instance of emergent design produced, in two phases, data that policy makers found highly useful, though the third stage proved less useful. Impact upon policy making was substantial.

Dissin' the Deadwood or Coddling the Incompetents? Patterns and Issues in Employee Discipline and Dismissal in the States

Abstract Relying on several extensive databases, this study finds state employee dismissal rates to be low with many managers also complaining about discipline and dismissal processes as a management impediment. Although interstate variation was evident, extent of civil service coverage, the presence of collective bargaining, or past efforts to simplify dismissal processes had limited explanatory power, however. The implications of the findings for civil service reform and the adoption of at-will employment arrangements are discussed.

A Naturally Occurring Quasi-Experiment in the States: Research on Term Limits in Michigan

Term limits provide a rare opportunity to employ pre- and post-intervention research designs to investigate the effects of turnover in legislatures. This article describes a study of term limits in Michigan that takes advantage of this opportunity. With eight states implementing term limits in 2002 or soon thereafter, there are opportunities for other scholars to replicate all or parts of the study described here. The payoffs for such projects in terms of generating systematic answers to the impacts of legislative turnover and term limits are considerable.

Checks and Balances: Intragovernmental Relationships and Outside Influences

The notion of “checks and balance” is a fundamental tenet of American democracy that assumes that each branch of our government has powers that allow it to limit—check—the power of the other two branches. This system is based on the assumption that power is balanced between the three branches of government, and this balance prevents one branch from dominating policymaking. In part because of its highly professionalized legislature, Michigan’s government closely resembles the national system based on three co-equal branches of government. But under term limits, its highly professionalized legislature could be overshadowed by its professional bureaucracy headed by a strong governor.

Conclusions: Term Limits’ Report Card

Term limits illustrate the potential for seemingly simple changes in a political system to have far-reaching, unintended, and unanticipated impacts. Hence our discussion of their impacts has ranged over many facets of state politics. Before we begin to synthesize and integrate these findings, we summarize them briefly.