Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Through a qualitative comparative study of employees working in comparable jobs and hotels in Vancouver and Seattle, I examine the impact of the differences in the health care systems of Canada and the United States. Health care policy differences explain why a large percentage of hotel industry employees lack health insurance coverage in Seattle. Pattern analysis also reveals that the universal system of health insurance in Canada results in lower levels of financial stress associated with health emergencies and care as well as greater use of health services and preventative care for hotel workers in Vancouver as compared to Seattle.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Recent studies have found that high rates of incarceration concentrated in particular neighborhoods seem to increase crime and disorder within these neighborhoods. It’s suggested that removing and imprisoning a large number of neighborhood residents will weaken local institutions, disrupt families, and remove capable guardians and income providers. At the same time, released inmates enter the same neighborhoods with diminished human capital, particularly in terms of legitimate economic resources or opportunities. This forced population turnover, or coercive mobility, disrupts local networks and depletes the capacity for local social control. These mechanisms have been suggested but not yet tested using direct measures of these social processes. The present study has two goals. The first is to investigate a static model of local networks and informal social controls as mediators for the association of concentrated incarceration and violent crime. The second is to investigate change in these processes over time. The study employs 1990 and 2003 surveys of residents in Seattle neighborhoods along with census data, inmate release data from the Washington State D.O.C., and crime data from the Seattle police department. Preliminary results provide support for the hypothesis of reduced social control and increased crime in the face of coercive mobility.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: The occurrence of two Seattle stadium ballot measures with differing outcomes in the 1990s accommodates a natural case study of the capacity of pro- and anti-stadium interests to generate, evaluate, and adjust rhetoric in response to new policy ideas, changing issue attributes, and variation in the policy environment. The pro-stadium coalition displayed the organizational capacity to evaluate unsuccessful rhetorical strategy touting the economic impact of professional sports and the agenda-setting capacity to reframe the stadium conflict to highlight intangible policy benefits. The loosely formed anti-stadium group, on the other hand, had strong incentive to engage the economic dimension during the first campaign but failed to adjust to new policy attributes. These findings contribute to our understanding of growth regime influence over public spending initiatives and the more general interplay of policy ideas, policy problems, and the organizational and agenda-setting capacities of urban regimes.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This paper examines electoral behavior of Seattle voters who supported a monorail costing $1.75 billion in November, 2002 with no state or federal support. This paper tests voter behavior using spatial analytic techniques

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: The historical development of the Seattle Plan for Quality Integration, can be characterized as yet another example of the dismantling of desegregation policy. But to do so would dismiss the highly contingent and disjointed character of its path of development. Within Seattle’s policy for public school integration, the layered nature of public policies along with the dynamics between multiple political processes allowed space for continual changes in discourse concerning desegregation. The political capacity of those opposed to integration to continually, yet haltingly, gre in relation to those in favor of mandatory integration to slowly dismantle most pieces of racial integration as a result of these processes. They were able to articulate a version of colorblind conservatism throughout the 1980s that was increasingly aided by federal and court level commitments to ending desegregation.