"In Essence still a British Country": Britain's withdrawal from East of Suez

In the summer of 1967 Harold Wilson's Government announced the withdrawal of British forces from East of Suez. This article examines how Australian politicians and commentators responded to their changing geo-strategic environment and how Britain's withdrawal was seen as a crucial moment in the development of Australian nationhood. It shows that the dismantling of the links with Britain did not allow a dormant Australian national idea to (re)surface. While Australians emphasised the need to think harder about forging a distinctive Australian civic identity as the ties with Britain were finally dismantled, very few could define precisely what that might mean, except that it should somehow be "independent" and "new". The question, at a time when it was apparent that the British connection could have no practical meaning, remained whether being Australians meant something radically different from being Australian Britons. The strong emotional ties with Britain were not easily cut, even at a time when it had become fashionable to argue for a cool and practical relationship between the two countries. Thus, Prime Minister Harold Holt could maintain that, despite all the changes, Australia remained "in essence" British.     

Educational Outcomes After Serving with Electronic Monitoring: Results from a Natural Experiment

Objectives

The paper explores the effects of electronic monitoring (EM) on young offenders’ educational outcomes and contributes to the evaluation of EM as a non-custodial sanction with a new outcome measure.

Methods

The study is based on a natural experiment exploiting a reform in Denmark in 2006 introducing electronic monitoring to all offenders under the age of 25 with a maximum prison sentence of 3 months. Information on program participation is used to estimate instrument variable models in order to assess the causal effects of EM on young offenders’ educational outcomes. The empirical analyses are based on a comprehensive longitudinal dataset (n = 1013) constructed from multiple official administrative registers and including a high number of covariates.

Results

The EM-program increases the completion rates of upper secondary education by 18 % points among program participants 3 years post-release. The EM-program includes house arrest under electronic surveillance, labor market or education participation, unannounced drug and alcohol tests and a crime preventive program. It is not possible to separate the treatment effects of the different program elements in the empirical analyses.

     

Drugs in injured drivers in Denmark

As part of the project Impaired Motorists, Methods of Roadside Testing and Assessment for Licensing (IMMORTAL) under the European Commission's Transport RTD Programme of the 5th Framework Programme [I.M. Bernhoft, Drugs in accidents involved drivers in Denmark, D-R4.3 of the project Impaired Motorists, Methods Of Roadside Testing and Assessment for Licensing (IMMORTAL), www.immortal.or.at, 2005], a study regarding drugs in accident-involved drivers was carried out in Denmark. The main objectives of this study were: (1) to collect and analyse samples from injured drivers for the presence of drugs; (2) to give an indication whether drugs may have contributed to traffic accidents; and (3) to get information on the drug-positive drivers and their drug use. This paper focuses on objective 1. Injured drivers who were treated in hospital were asked to give a saliva sample, a blood sample or both. The samples were screened for the following substances: opiates, amphetamines, methamphetamines, incl. MDMA (ecstasy), cannabinoids and metabolites, cocaine and metabolites and benzodiazepines. Screenings were carried out by means of Cozart Microplate EIA kit. Positive screenings were confirmation analysed by gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC–MS) or liquid chromatography/tandem mass spectrometry (LC/MS/MS). In total, 26 out of 330 patients were confirmed positive for one or more of the six drug groups. However, three patients were excluded from the survey for various reasons. Of the remaining 23 drug-positive patients 15 were found positive for one drug group, and in five of these cases alcohol was present in a concentration over the legal limit in Denmark (0.05%). The other eight patients were found positive for two drug groups, and in four of these cases, alcohol was also present in a concentration over the legal limit. Alcohol was found both in combinations with medicinal drugs, with illegal drugs and with both. Based on the saliva or blood concentrations, we estimate that there is a strong suspicion of impairment in 9 out of 23 cases, and in another six cases it was likely that the drivers were impaired.     

Merging content analysis and the policy sciences: A system to discern policy-specific trends from news media reports

In this article we set out to bridge a surprising methodological gap between two time-honored research traditions – news media content analysis and the policy sciences analytic framework. Lasswell, a recognized pioneer of both the method and the framework, discussed the mutual benefits of each decades ago. But few researchers, if any, have formally linked the two. To that end, in this article we (1) make the case for using news media content analysis to inform research studies using the policy sciences analytic framework; (2) introduce an original content analysis categorical system for that purpose; (3) demonstrate that system with a study of 90 national news articles about the stratospheric ozone hole; and (4) compare our system to others used to examine news content. We report that our system, used by human coders, is well geared to describing and mapping trends in the social process surrounding the development of the Montreal Protocol ozone treaty during the intelligence gathering and promotion phases encompassed by our data sample. We argue that other content analysis systems fall short – in structure and purpose – of meeting the promise ours holds to the policy scientist.     

Revitalizing the Parramore heritage renovation area: Florida's state housing initiatives partnership program and Orlando's historic African‐American community

Abstract

Housing programs increasingly contribute to broader community revitalization efforts rather than strictly serving production‐oriented goals. As implementation of this strategy moves beyond the traditional housing leaders in cities such as Boston, Cleveland, and Baltimore, an assessment of other areas is instructive. This article examines how the nation's largest housing trust fund, which Florida directs primarily to local governments through the State Housing Initiatives Partnership (SHIP), contributed to Orlando's ambitious community revitalization effort in the Parramore neighborhood.

Given the consistency between SHIP goals and those of the Parramore project and Orlando's experience with developing partnerships and affordable housing initiatives, SHIP should have proven an effective tool. The initial findings demonstrate that housing programs need to be sufficiently flexible to permit a comprehensive approach to neighborhood revitalization. Such an approach should seek a balance between product‐based redevelopment and people‐based housing strategies, expand the role of community development corporations, and create housing choice.     

British Intelligence and the 1916 Mediation Mission of Colonel Edward M. House

Colonel Edward M. House, the close personal confidant of American President Woodrow Wilson, disembarked in Great Britain in January 1916 on a mission to bring the First World War to a close under the auspices of American mediation. Although his mission, which culminated in a secret pact between the United States and Great Britain known as the House-Grey Memorandum, has been studied by several scholars, the involvement of British intelligence with respect to that mission has never received more than cursory attention. Through a careful analysis of the surviving documents, this article reconstructs British intelligence's activities with respect to House's mission, examines the countermeasures that House employed as he attempted to protect the secrecy of his negotiations, delineates the role played by different British intelligence agencies and assesses their response to their findings.     

Democracy for the youth? The impact of mock elections on voting age attitudes

Should 16-year-olds be entitled to participate in elections? We theorize that mock elections for adolescents, who are not eligible to vote, affect the short-term support among the general public for lowering the voting age. To test our theoretical expectation, we utilize variation among municipalities in the organization of mock elections during the Danish local elections in 2009. Difference-in-difference estimates with data from the subsequent local elections in 2013 demonstrate that citizens in municipalities with mock elections for adolescents were more supportive of lowering the voting age and that their support was strongly rooted in ideological differences.     

Ethnic Heterogeneity and Public Support for Welfare: Is the American Experience Replicated in Britain,Sweden and Denmark?

The link between ethnic heterogeneity and public support for welfare policy is debated. The thesis of a negative relationship is supported by much American research. Historically the race issue has blocked a number of American welfare schemes; across the United States ethnically heterogeneous states have less generous benefits, and citizens having negative attitudes towards blacks often oppose welfare. The research question is: To what extent will increased ethnic heterogeneity in European countries establish the same mechanisms? Three theoretical positions are discussed: the position that the American experience is unique; the position that it is generalisable; and a middle position of it being contingent on institutional settings. The latter position predicts that the American experience can be avoided, especially in social democratic welfare regimes where the ethnicity issue has not been politicised. Empirically the article is based on survey data from the United Kingdom, Sweden and Denmark, in which a number of American items were directly replicated. Despite indications of American uniqueness and welfare‐regime effects, the findings support the position that the in‐group/out‐group mechanisms found in the United States are being replicated in Europe.