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American Public policy is cloaked in many myths. Encompassing such issues as public subsidies to sports stadia, enterprise zones, and welfare migration, there are many ideas recycled from government to government over time with little thought given to the evidence supporting their empirical assumptions or their prospects for success. Drawing upon the diffusion literature and the belief that states are laboratories of innovation his paper examines several of the leading ideas and myths dominating American policy making, exploring the reasons for their repetition and the evidence for their failures. Overall, the paper questions both how innovative policy making is and what can be learned about the replication of failed policy ideas across borders. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A comparative survey of activist mobilizing to secure recognition of sexual diversity in Canadian and American public school systems, and of the extent to which public policy and schooling practice have responded. Until the 1990s, only scattered jurisdictions effected any significant change, often starting with ‘safe schools’ measures. Such change, and particularly in the area of anti-gay bullying, appears more widespread in the U.S. than Canada, not at all the pattern in other sexual diversity issues. Differences arise from religious, cultural, and institutional factors, and from Canadian-American contrasts in the extent to which sexual diversity provokes high stakes debates over other issues. As on all sexual diversity fronts, dramatic variation persists across U.S. regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A comparative survey of activist mobilizing to secure recognition of gay and lesbian relationships in Canada and the United States, and of the extent to which public policy, law, and institutional policy among private employers has moved in directions sought by such activism. Such movement as has occurred depends on developments at national, regional, and local levels of government, as well as in the courts. Shifts toward equity have come faster and more uniformly in Canada than in the U.S.. A few American states and several localities have seen marked progress, but are hampered by the relative absence of change at the federal level. Variation in outcome depends on constitutional, legal, and institutional context, on party configerations, on labour union support, and to some extent on public opinion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]