Correction to: Age Patterns in Risk Taking Across the World

Journal of Youth and Adolescence - In the original publication, the legends for Figs 4 and 5 were incorrect, such that each regression line was mislabeled with the incorrect country. Below are the...     

From the French Citizens' Convention on Climate to the Conference on the Future of Europe: A participatory science and democracy perspective

The Citizens' Convention on Climate (CCC) gathered 150 people, randomly selected but representing the diversity of French society. Its mandate was to formulate a series of concrete measures aimed to achieve at least a 40% reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 (compared to 1990) while preserving social justice. The citizens auditioned experts on various topics from climate to economics and then formulated their own proposals, thus building an effective consensus, beyond individual specific interests. Moreover, proposals formed a coherent whole, and in this regard fare much better than previous attempts to tackle environmental and climate transition through public debates. This methodology shows how citizen science can produce efficient and quality outcomes. This opens new perspectives for democracy on the basis of new interaction channels between law‐makers, professional experts and citizens. This seems to be the approach chosen for the Conference on the Future of Europe as well. Gathering citizens from all EU countries to work on important topics for Europe and Europeans could be a way to build a common vision, and contribute to the creation of a true European common good. Citizens' direct involvement in science and democracy might be one of the keys to meaningfully and thus successfully address their shortcomings.     

Public Management and Educational Performance: The Impact of Managerial Networking

Policies are implemented in complex networks of organizations and target populations. Effective action often requires managers to deal with an array of actors to procure resources, build support, coproduce results, and overcome obstacles to implementation. Few large-n studies have examined the crucial role that networks and network management can play in the execution of public policy. This study begins to fill this gap by analyzing performance over a five-year period in more than 500 U.S. school districts using a nonlinear, interactive, contingent model of management previously developed by the authors. The core idea is that management matters in policy implementation, but its impact is often nonlinear. One way that public managers can make a difference is by leveraging resources and buffering constraints in the program context. This investigation finds empirical support for key elements of the network-management portion of the model. Implications for public management are sketched.     

Desperately Seeking Selznick: Cooptation and the Dark Side of Public Management in Networks

Most literature on public-sector networks focuses on how to build and manage systems and ignores the political problems that networks can create for organizations. This article argues that individual network nodes can work to bias the organization's actions in ways that benefit the organization's more advantaged clientele. The argument is supported by an analysis of performance data from 500 organizations over a five-year period. A classic theoretical point is supported in a systematic empirical investigation. While networks can greatly benefit the organization, they have a dark side that managers and scholars need to consider more seriously.     

Anchoring political preferences: The structural bases of stable electoral decisions and political attitudes in Britain

Abstract. The paper applies a structural perspective to the analysis of political preferences. Examining two British surveys, the 1987 cross–section of the electorate and a panel survey that covers the 1983 and 1987 elections, the research explores the bases of persistent voting for the same party, location on left–right scales, and the probability of holding the same policy views on a host of different issues over time. A set of structural variables rests at the heart of the paper's theory: discussion networks, patterns of interactions with members of political parties, social class networks, and location in the social structure. Several hypotheses guide the analysis: The effects of the structural variables on the probability of casting a ballot for the same political party in any one election and in adjacent elections will remain, even after controlling for party identification; political party socialization; location on left–right scales; positions taken on any and all political issues; age, and past levels of electoral stability. The effects of structural variables on left–right position will remain, even after controlling for locations on alternative left–right scales. Finally, reinforcing attitudinal context provides the only consistent determinant of stable policy positions, after controlling for a host of alternative explanations including level of education; age; interest in politics, and a general propensity to offer stable answers to political questions.     

The recall of elected officeholders the growing incidence of a venerable,but overlooked,democratic institution

Scattered case studies of recall procedures can be found in the literature on particular countries, and recent literature has drawn attention to the growth and diffusion of this family of practices. But the long genealogy, and the wide international distribution, of the recall process has been overlooked in the broader study of democratization, institutional design, and political representation. This article presents the two original country studies and situates them within the emerging field of comparative research. Four major themes are highlighted: the multiple and often subterranean sources of these experiments; their fluctuating profiles and (mostly) low external visibility; the relative weight of diffusion versus independent invention; and the resulting design pitfalls, as well as the potential benefits when carefully introduced.     

Meeting Hauteur with Tact,Imperturbability, and Resolution: British Diplomacy and Russia, 1856–1865

This article takes a broad view of Anglo–Russian relations in the years between the Peace of Paris, 1856, and the death of Viscount Palmerston, 1865, examining the shifts within that period in an essentially high-political diplomatic history. It traces a number of strands in geopolitics, offering a sense of the competing strategies of the European Great Powers, particularly the roles of British diplomats: the private and public communication amongst prime ministers, foreign secretaries, ambassadors, ministers-plenipotentiaries and consular officials concerning British policy towards Russia in the post-Crimean War period. It outlines the principles that underlay that policy and the ways in which the diplomatic network observed the tsar and his advisors and agents, assessed the developing situation in Russia, Central Asia, and the Ottoman Balkans, made decisions, and implemented policy. It focusses on the diplomatists’ attitudes and perceptions—how they thought about Russia and British interests and how they worked to protect them. It also analyses British policy in light of the European dimension. The years 1856 to 1865 not only witnessed Russian attempts to undermine the Crimean settlement, they also saw revisionist Bonapartist France work to destroy the constraining Vienna system of 1815—primarily in northern Italy. These policies complicated British attempts to maintain the status-quo and defend their interests in the East. The evolving situation was highly complex.