Sue E. S. Crawford

A Grammar of Institutions

The institutional grammar introduced here is based on a view that institutions are enduring regularities of human action in situations structured by rules, norms, and shared strategies, as well as by the physical world. The rules, norms, and shared strategies are constituted and reconstituted by human interaction in frequently occurring or repetitive situations. The syntax of the grammar identifies components of institutions and sorts them into three types of institutional statements: rules, norms, and shared strategies. We introduce the grammar, outline methods for operationalizing the syntax, apply the syntax to an analysis of cooperation in collective dilemma situations, and discuss the pragmatics of the grammar for analyses of behavior within complex institutional settings.

Changing Issue Agendas of Women Clergy

Using data from separate studies conducted in 1988-89 and 1998, we explore changes in the issue agendas of women clergy. Rosenstone and Hansen (1993) argue persuasively that mobilization often occurs due to a commitment to a particular political issue. Our data allow us to test three separate hypotheses about the evolution of women clergys issue agendas over the course of a decade that saw an unprecedented number of women enter the ministry. Shifts in the issue agendas of women clergy suggest a model of issue agenda evolution including four possible explanations for change: public agenda shifts, changes resulting from the growing number of women clergy, or ideological stability.

Understanding the Mobilization of Professionals

This article develops a Professional Mobilization Framework to guide research and discussion of the mobilization of nonprofit professionals in issue politics. We use the framework, together with literature on women clergy, to develop expectations about the issue interests and political mobilization of women clergy. We use qualitative interview data and aggregate survey data from 54 women clergy to test the expectations developed in the framework. The results of the study show that the women’s issue agendas focus on racism and intolerance, poverty, and gay rights, while their action agendas stress poverty, community organizing, and reproductive rights. Organizational mobilization and ease of entry appear to push women clergy into far more poverty and community-organizing activities than would be expected based on their interest in these issues alone. Meanwhile, organizational demobilization appears to result in less activity than interest on issues such as gay rights, women’s rights, and racism.

The Politics of Gay Rights and the Gender Gap: A Perspective on the Clergy

In this article, we explore the nexus of gender, religious leadership, and attitudes toward homosexuality and gay rights. Homosexuality has become a frontline issue in American politics, as illustrated most recently by gay marriage battles in the courts and state legislatures as well as state referenda campaigns designed to define marriage legally as the union of a man and a woman. Using survey data from a national random sample of 3,208 clergy who serve in six mainline Protestant denominations, we analyze the extent to which gender operates as a significant predictor of public speech on gay rights issues. Ordinal logistic regression allows us to demonstrate that women clergy are substantially more likely than their male counterparts to speak publicly on gay rights, as well as to model more generally the factors that compel clergy to take action to address this controversial issue in public.

A Community Problem Approach for Public Policy Courses.

This paper describes a set of assignments for upper-level undergraduate public policy courses, analyzes student evaluations of the assignments, and suggests modifications of the assignments to fit different curriculum needs. The assignments require students to connect policy analysis and scholarly research to a specific policy problem in a community selected by the student.