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38 Pol'y Stud. J. v (2010)

handle is hein.journals/plyssjnl38 and id is 1 raw text is: Editors' Introduction: Policy Studies Journal February 2010 This issue of the Policy Studies Journal (PSJ) covers a breathtaking variety of issue areas, ranging from the ascribed costs of protecting the United States from potential terrorist attacks to voluntary environmental programs to the migration and education standards of indigenous peoples. Seemingly, this issue truly does have something for everybody, including a commissioned counter and response to one of these articles. Permit us to elaborate. John Mueller of the Ohio State University, in Assessing Measures Designed to Protect the Homeland, depicts the great difficulties involved in protecting the United States from another terrorist attack. Professor Mueller argues that given the almost infinite number of potential targets, and that any of these targets is basically interchangeable in terms of affecting U.S. national security, even a resource- constrained opponent (especially in terms of manpower), if determined, can execute an attack on the U.S. homeland. In short, he argues that Homeland Security policies have not been subjected to systematically derived probabilities, and, by extension, he indicates ways in which U.S. national defense resources can be better allocated. While the Editors were impressed by the cogency of Professor Mueller's arguments, we were certain that the relative importance of the issue area and outspoken nature of his article was sufficiently crucial to the nation's welfare, so we commissioned a counterpoint to Mueller's perspective. Professors Brian Gerber (Louisiana State University) and Warren Eller (University of North Carolina Pembroke) provide a masterful response, in which they both agree with and counter Mueller's article, ultimately concluding that he has oversimplified the situation, which undermines his policy recommendations. Naturally, we offered Professor Mueller the opportunity to respond to the Gerber/Eller article, in which he points out a number of areas in which the counterpoint essay was misleading, perhaps misguided, and maybe even wrong. In summary, these three articles serve not only to increase the reader's analytic stock of homeland security issues, but also engages the reader in a real world policy debate. John Richards and Aidan Vining (Simon Frasier University), with David Weimer (University of Wisconsin Madison), have addressed Aboriginal Performance on Standardized Tests: Evidence and Analysis from Provincial Schools in British Columbia. Their findings-that cultural sensitivities do not necessarily support academic achievement-have, of course, relevance to many school systems with highly visible (and often underachieving) minority populations. Xinsheng Liu, Eric Lindquist, Arnold Vedlitz (all of Texas A&M University), and Kenneth Vincent (U.S. Energy Information Administration), in Understanding Local Policymaking: Policy Elites' Perceptions of Local Agenda Setting and Alternative Policy Selection, test the applicability of agenda-setting approaches, especially John Kingdon's Multiple Streams model, in the context of local government. Their data suggest, inter alia, that even on the local level, the mass media are relatively secondary