Citizen Involvement Efforts and Bureaucratic Responsiveness: Participatory Values, Stakeholder Pressures, and Administrative Practicality

This article addresses the efforts of local governments to involve citizens in administrative processes. In particular, we explore the following questions: What social and political groups in the community promote citizen involvement? Which groups awre likely to succeed? What barriers obstruct citizen involvement efforts? Do administrative attitudes make a difference in undertaking citizen involvement? Using survey data, this study tests a framework that assumes the decision to involve citizens in administrative processes reflects administrative responsiveness to salient community stakeholders, normative values associated with citizen involvement, and administrative practicality. The statistical results confirm the bureaucratic responsiveness framework and point to future directions for citizen involvement research and practice.     

Breaking the Cycle: Association of Attending Therapy Following Childhood Abuse and Subsequent Perpetration of Violence

Despite “cycle of violence” (Widom Psychological Bulletin, 106, 3–28, 1989, p. 4) theories prevailing for the past 30 years, few studies have looked at the empirical relationship between experiencing childhood physical abuse and becoming perpetrators of violence in adulthood. Those studies that do exist omit consideration of intervening therapeutic experiences. In the present study, archival data from an outpatient mental health clinic was used to examine whether therapeutic experiences mediate the relationship between experiencing childhood physical abuse by a parental figure and subsequent involvement as a perpetrator of physical violence. Treatment-seeking individuals (N?=?816) responded to three items about whether they had experiences of childhood physical abuse, whether they acted violently in adulthood, and whether they had ever before received counseling or therapy. Past counseling/psychotherapy treatment was a significant mediator between experiencing childhood physical abuse and perpetrating physical violence in adulthood, even after controlling for the effect of the victims’ gender. Findings suggest that psychotherapeutic experiences after experiencing childhood physical abuse may decrease the likelihood of perpetrating violence in adulthood. Limitations, implications, and directions for future research are discussed.