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1. Engaging Youth Environmental Alliance in Higher Education to Achieve the Sustainable Development Goals

   Whipple, S. ( September 2021 , Scholarship and practice of undergraduate research)

   null (Ed.)

   The authors present a new approach to show how interdisciplinary collaborations among a group of institutions can provide a unique opportunity for students to engage across the science-policy nexus using the framework of the Sustainable Development Goals and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Through collaboration across seven higher education institutions in the United States and Australia, virtual student research teams worked together across disciplines such as economics, ecology, and other earth and social sciences to address research questions centered on sustainable development goals. The teams presented their findings in person to diplomats and delegates at the 2019 United Nations Conference of the Parties meeting in Madrid, which also had strong qualitative impacts on their perceptions of international science-policy interfaces. 

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2. Institutions, Voids, and Dependencies: Tracing the Designs and Robustness of Urban Water Systems

   https://doi.org/10.4000/irpp.3455  

   Deslatte, Aaron ; Koebele, Elizabeth A. ; Bartels, Lauren ; Wiechman, Adam ; Vicario, Sara Alonso ; Coughlin, Celeste ; Rybolt, Desi ( July 2023 , International Review of Public Policy)

   Urban water systems across the United States are facing a variety of challenges to existing supply and demand dynamics. Responding to these challenges and working toward sustainability in these complex socio-environmental systems (SES) requires integrating various types of information – ranging from hydrologic data to political considerations and beyond – into policy and management decisions. However, the design of institutions, i.e. the formal rules in which urban water utilities are embedded, impact the flow of various types of information, especially across diverse actor groups critical to developing and implementing policy. Drawing on a neuroscience-informed Bayesian application of the Robustness of Coupled Infrastructure Systems (CIS) Framework, this study examines the institutional designs of two urban U.S. water systems. It aims to advance our understanding of these systems by: A) theoretically linking cognitive science and its action-oriented predictive processing approach to the institutional configurations that shape collective-action; and B) identifying potential institutional dependencies and voids that may limit the use of formalized climate-related guidance in systems facing increased risks. We utilize process-tracing along with an institutional analysis approach called the Institutional Grammar Tool (IGT) to parse the institutions into their semantic and syntactic components, identifying institutional dependencies, voids, or conflicts which may influence long-range performance of the systems. Our findings have important implications for the (re)design of institutions that better facilitate the flow of information among key policy actors and support policy changes that promote sustainable long-term urban water supply. 

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3. Assessing sustainability through the Institutional Grammar of urban water systems

   https://doi.org/10.1111/psj.12444  

   Deslatte, Aaron ; Helmke‐Long, Laura ; Anderies, John M. ; Garcia, Margaret ; Hornberger, George M. ; Ann Koebele, Elizabeth ( July 2021 , Policy Studies Journal)

   Urban water supply systems in the United States are designed to be robust to a wide range of historical hydrological conditions in both their physical infrastructure and in the institutional arrangements that govern their use. However, these systems vary greatly in their capacity to respond to new and evolving stressors on water supplies, such as those associated with climate change. Developing a more precise understanding of the complexity of interactions between the environmental and human components of urban water systems, specifically via their institutions, has the potential to help identify institutional design choices that can foster proactive transitions to more sustainable operating states. This article adapts the Institutional Grammar (IG) within the Robustness of Coupled Infrastructure Systems Framework to assess how a heavily engineered system's institutional configuration may impact its ability to transition to more sustainable management practices. While use of the IG has historically been limited in larger‐N studies, our application demonstrates its flexibility in revealing variation in specific components across cases. The analysis finds the structure of formal institutions shape the interactions between actors differently, and that institutional diversity exists across environmental contexts. The extent to which this institutional diversity drives transitions remains an open question. The results highlight both the importance of and challenges involved with developing longitudinal data on social and natural system interactions.

    

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4. Hierarchical Interactions and Compliance in Comparative Courts

   https://doi.org/10.1177/10659129231183915  

   Masood, Ali S. ; Bowie, Jennifer ( June 2023 , Political Research Quarterly)

   Given their place within the judicial hierarchy, judges on lower courts face a complex array of challenges including heavy caseloads, mandatory dockets, and the threat of Supreme Court reversal. Despite the extensive scholarship on the American courts, little is known about judicial interactions in comparative contexts. We articulate and evaluate a framework for lower court adherence to Supreme Court precedents by leveraging a cross-national design in three countries—Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States—with similar systems but meaningful institutional variability. We find that the mechanisms promulgating adherence to Supreme Court precedents do not substantially vary across design or institutional context. Instead, our results demonstrate that legal factors exert a consistent, homogeneous effect on lower court compliance across judicial systems. Our work offers new and important implications for studies on law and courts and comparative institutions, more broadly.

    

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5. Place Still Matters: Social Vulnerabilities, Place-Level Disadvantage, and Food Insecurity during COVID-19

   https://doi.org/10.3390/nu15061430  

   Fitzpatrick, Kevin M. ; Harris, Casey T. ; Willis, Don ; Obermaier, Amber ; Drawve, Grant ( March 2023 , Nutrients)

   COVID-19 variants continue to create public health danger impacting mortality and morbidity across the United States. The spillover effects of COVID-19 on the economy and social institutions pose a significant threat to broader wellbeing, including the food security of millions across the country. We aim to explore whether the context of place matters above and beyond individual and social vulnerabilities for food insecurity. To do so, we employ a multi-level framework using data from a survey of over 10,000 U.S. adults from March 2020 with American Community Survey (ACS) and John Hopkins COVID Dashboard county-level data. We find nearly two in five respondents were food insecure by March of 2020 with disparities across race, nativity, the presence of children in the home, unemployment, and age. Furthermore, we note that individuals living in more disadvantaged communities were more likely to report food insecurity above and beyond individual and social vulnerabilities. Overall, food insecurity is driven by complex, multi-level dynamics that remain a pressing public health concern for the current—but also future—public health crisis. 

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