Responsibility and the Deliberative Citizen: Theorizing the Acceptance of Individual and Citizenship Responsibilities

The responsibilities of citizenship have, in recent years, become a central concern in political and policy debates. Nevertheless, the practical meanings of such responsibilities have remained opaque. This article examines these meanings by asking what theories of citizenship have to say about how people engage with, and accept, their responsibilities. An examination of how the liberal, communitarian, republican and deliberative democratic theories explain the way citizens engage with their responsibilities shows that only deliberative democratic theory provides a nuanced range of concepts that may explain the acceptance of responsibility. In specific, Habermas's deliberative democratic theory is underpinned by a model of how the individual may develop a range of mental capacities to accept the extensive responsibilities associated with the deliberative citizen. By explaining how the individual grapples with her personal responsibilities, this approach also explains how she can deal with her responsibilities as a citizen. Four discourses through which people accept their responsibilities are thereby identified. These include egotistical, conformist, reformist and reflexive discourses. These discourses are explored by drawing on interviews with groups for whom the privatization of responsibility may have particular meanings. Using these interviews, this paper explores how people accept their personal responsibilities, thereby unfolding the discourses people use to deal with their citizenship responsibilities. In particular, by accepting the deliberative democratic contention that the individual already has the capacities to act as the deliberative citizen, it is possible to come to a view of just how people accept both their personal and citizenship responsibilities.     

Government Selection and Executive Powers: Constitutional Design in Parliamentary Democracies

Provisions for a parliamentary investiture vote have become increasingly common in parliamentary democracies. This article shows that investiture provisions were largely introduced when new constitutions were written or old ones fundamentally redesigned. It also shows that the constitutions that endowed executives with strong legislative agenda powers also endowed parliaments with strong mechanisms to select the executive. It is argued that constitution makers’ decisions can be seen in principal–agent terms: strong investiture rules constitute an ex ante mechanism of parliamentary control – that is, a mechanism to minimise adverse selection and reduce the risk of agency loss by parliament. The findings have two broad implications: from a constitutional point of view, parliamentary systems do not rely exclusively on ex post control mechanisms such as the no confidence vote to minimise agency loss; parliamentarism, at least today and as much as presidentialism, is the product of conscious constitutional design and not evolutionary adaptation.     

The Influence of Stadia and the Built Environment on the Spatial Distribution of Crime

Journal of Quantitative Criminology - The aim of this study was to explore the influence of “micro-” (e.g., pubs and fast-food restaurants) and “super-facilities” on area...     

Meaning in Life Moderates Relations between Personality and Temperament and Nonsuicidal Self-Injury in Hospitalized Adolescents

Journal of Youth and Adolescence - Previous research indicates that sensation seeking, emotion dysregulation, and impulsivity are predictive of non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI). A body of research...     

Compulsory voting and the dynamics of partisan identification

Compulsory rules are known to have far‐reaching effects beyond boosting electoral participation rates. This article examines the relationship between compulsory voting and partisan attachments. A theory of attachment formation and strength is engaged that argues that compulsory voting boosts the likelihood that one will identify with a party and, in turn, the strength of party attachments among identifiers. The statistical model accounts for both the hierarchical structure of the data (individuals in elections) and the dual nature of the dependent variable (individuals report a strength of attachment only for the party with which they identify). Using data from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems, it is demonstrated that compulsory voting does indeed increase both the incidence and the strength of partisanship.     

Evaluation of operation swordfish: a near-repeat target-hardening strategy

Objectives

This paper reports an evaluation of a police-led target-hardening crime prevention strategy inspired by research concerned with space–time patterns of burglary.

Methods

A total of 46 neighbourhoods in the West Midlands (UK) were randomly allocated to treatment and control conditions. Within treatment areas, resources were delivered to recent burglary victims and their close neighbours. Resources included inexpensive target-hardening measures as well as the delivery of dedicated police advice. The evaluation consisted of both a resident survey and a statistical outcome analysis.

Results

Results suggested that residents in treatment groups were slightly more satisfied with the police and more likely to have been contacted by the police concerning burglaries. Although they had more awareness of burglary, their fear of crime was not heightened. Statistical analysis suggested a very modest positive effect of intervention on crime and rates of re-victimisation. In particular, a survival analysis revealed that homes in low-crime treatment areas were less likely to be re-victimised than were those in similar control areas. Effects were more evident in low- than high-crime areas.

Conclusions

Results suggest that a low-intensity target-hardening intervention which adopted a near-repeat victimisation targeting strategy had a modest positive effect on residential burglary without increasing residents’ fear of crime.

     

Comparative Toxicology of Intentional and Accidental Heroin Overdose*

Abstract: The demographic and toxicological characteristics of deliberate (SUI, n = 50) and accidental (ACC, n = 927) fatal heroin overdose cases were examined. SUI cases were more likely to be female, had lower body mass indices, were more likely to be enrolled in treatment and less likely to have hepatic pathology. The median blood morphine concentration of SUI cases was significantly higher than that of ACC cases (0.70 vs. 0.40 mg/L, p < 0.001). Blood morphine concentrations of >1 mg/L were seen among 38.0% of SUI cases compared to 13.9% of ACC cases. Being a member of the SUI group remained a significant independent predictor of higher morphine concentrations after controlling for the effects of potential confounders (p < 0.001), other significant predictors being the absence of alcohol (p < 0.001), the presence of methadone (p < 0.05), and the presence of cocaine (p < 0.05). The current data are consistent with the view that suicide forms a small, but distinct, category of heroin overdose cases, rather than overdose being a parasuicidal phenomenon per se.