The rapid expansion of drug courts in California and the state's uncertain fiscal climate highlighted the need for definitive cost information on drug court programs. This study focused on creating a research design that can be utilized for statewide and national cost-assessment of drug courts by conducting in-depth case studies of the costs and benefits in nine adult drug courts in California. A Transactional Institutional Costs Analysis (TICA) approach was used, allowing researchers to calculate costs based on every individual 's transactions within the drug court or the traditional criminal justice system. This methodology also allows the calculation of costs and benefits by agency (e.g., Public Defender's office, court, District Attorney). Results in the nine sites showed that the majority of agencies save money in processing an offender though drug court. Overall, for these nine study sites, participation in drug court saved the state over $9 million in criminal justice and treatment costs due to lower recidivism in drug court participants. Based on the lessons learned in Phases I and II, Phase III of this study focuses on the creation of a web-based drug court cost self-evaluation tool (DC-CSET) that drug courts can use to determine their own costs and benefits.

This article quantitatively investigates racial “othering” in Thailand by using available World Values Survey proxies. We review racial “othering” in Thailand through inter-group threat theory. We investigate the proportion of Thais who are racially and/or ethnically prejudiced, the number of Thais who are racially and/or ethnically prejudiced compared with other countries’ citizens, whether Thais have become more racially and/or ethnically prejudiced from 2007 to 2013, the extent to which Thais are religiously discriminatory compared with other countries’ citizens, and whether Thais became more religiously discriminatory from 2007 to 2013. We find relatively high levels of racial prejudice by Thais.

Fusion energy could be part of sustainable energy development from approximately 2050. However, the international community does not possess a coherent global roadmap for managing fusion's global development from the science-oriented ITER phase, the 2020s-2030's, into the energy-oriented DEMO phase of demonstration fusion power plants (FPPs), the 2030s-2040s, nor a plan to scale up from the first working FPPs to second-generation fleets of devices. This article proposes an existing mechanism, an International Energy Agency-backed North-South global commission, as a management-focusing device. It suggests that, in addition to incorporating practices in commission design that facilitate them in producing useful evidence and recommending actions, commission construction should reflect the analytic power of the Quintuple Innovation Helix model, to arm it with deep democratic engagement across different domains. This ensures the commission's design, including membership and staffing, will facilitate the multi-stakeholder participation and deliberation needed to both form a management environment for fusion development and for supporting and accelerating the financial, technological, and other inter-sectoral and inter-regional (North/South) commitments. These are essential to incorporate fusion into a sustainable global energy future by 2100, significantly contributing to the energy transition. This approach also offers recommendations for future international commission design across different management domains.

This study compares research on evaluation of public policies in Brazil and the United States. To examine the extent to which evaluation research has been established in these countries, this article uses the methods of bibliometric and social network analysis to compare recent use of evaluation research in these countries. The results show that Brazil and the United States have focused on the same areas of research, especially the areas of health, education and social welfare. It was also observed that researchers from both countries use research methods, although American researchers make more use of quanti-quali methods, and that research networks on policy evaluation in the two country have similar characteristics, although the average size and density of networks in Brazil is less than that in the United States. On the basis of the evidence, it is concluded that evaluation research in Brazil evolved during the period investigated and is becoming consolidated as a field of study and practice.

Purpose: Municipal amalgamation (or merger or consolidation) is commonly employed in countries around the world to improve efficiency in public service. While mergers occur among jurisdictions of all sizes, the municipal amalgamation discourse is typically limited to one national setting and a focus on mergers of larger local jurisdictions. The existing municipal amalgamation literature pays little attention to predicate conditions for successful mergers. This study seeks to address these deficiencies by examining the premerger conditions and effects of municipal amalgamations that recently took place in four small jurisdictions of similar size in Thailand and the United States.Design/methodology/approach: A holistic multiple case study approach was employed. These two cases share a geographical attribute: one municipal jurisdiction encircled by another.Findings: The evidence indicates that factors associated with what the researchers refer to as “familiarity” facilitated both successful approval of and outcomes resulting from the amalgamation actions. While the study's findings align with international research regarding the potential for reducing administrative support costs through consolidation, its findings diverge from existing international evidence in that the evidence indicates operating effectiveness and efficiency improvements. Economies of scope and marginal economies of scale are in evidence. Although findings from this study indicate that there might be problematic effects regarding political representation and participation, in that the consolidated jurisdictions remain small in size, negative citizen engagement and participation consequences may be less than that evidenced in larger consolidated jurisdictions.Originality/value: The study introduces the “familiarity” theorem as a theoretical lens to assist in understanding the cases.