Hate Crime: Record or Perception?

Public policing in Northern Ireland has gone through a process of reform and governance change in reaction to the peace process and the requirement to shift from a police force, largely engaged in conflict-centred policing, to a policing service dedicated to civil policing and normalisation. During the past decade, Northern Ireland has witnessed a significant decline in recorded sectarian crime. This decline in ethnic conflict has been accompanied by a growth in support for the police, especially within the Catholic community. However, information pertaining to support for public policing is determined at national level and we know little about how residents of sites of previously high levels of political and sectarian conflict feel about policing reform and delivery. In this paper we show that the perception of sectarian crime is much greater than recorded sectarian crime. Moreover, the perception of sectarian crime is a significant predictor of negative attitudes regarding police performance. The paper offers a unique quantitative insight into perceptions of sectarian crime and posits a predicament that is not discussed or debated with regard to the delivery of community policing. The evidence presented offers a benchmark upon which such a debate could occur. We argue that knowledge of sectarian hate crime should not be centred at the national level, but at the more discrete scale of neighbourhood. Perceptions, whether linked to reality, signal or prejudice, can at times destabilise the peace-building process, yet are rarely attended to or discussed. Knowing the difference between recorded and perceived crime as either sectarian exaggeration or actuality would aid localised police-community interaction. Here we provide a statistical basis to stimulate such enquiry.     

Skill Specificity and Attitudes toward Immigration

Labor market competition theories explaining anti‐immigrant attitudes have received limited or no empirical validation in recent literature. This has led researchers to highlight education and cultural values as the main, if not the sole, drivers of attitudes toward immigration. We present a new labor market competition theory focusing on job availability rather than foreign labor supply. This theory predicts that individuals with low transferable skills in the labor market will articulate a subjective sense of job insecurity and higher hostility toward migrants. Our cross‐classified, longitudinal, and difference‐in‐differences models reveal that skill specificity is a strong driver of anti‐immigrant attitudes, and they suggest that economic competition theories cannot be dismissed. By shifting the attention from supply to demand in the labor market, and from actual to potential competition with migrants, we show that the highly educated are far from immune to anti‐immigrant attitudes.     

Cops,Teachers, and the Art of the Impossible: Explaining the Lack of Diffusion of Innovations That Make Impossible Jobs Possible

In their 1990 book Impossible Jobs in Public Management, Erwin C. Hargrove and John C. Glidewell argue that public agencies with limited legitimacy, high conflict, low professional authority, and weak agency myths have essentially impossible jobs. Yet some such positions have proven operationally possible. For example, over a 17‐year period, the New York City Police Department achieved dramatic reductions in crime. A second impossible job discussed by James Q. Wilson, the urban school superintendent, has also proven possible, with Washington, D.C., having considerable success educating disadvantaged children. However, these successes in urban crime control and public schooling have not been widely copied. Building on the work of Manuel P. Teodoro, the authors use these cases to discuss how the inflexibility of personnel systems and political costs of disruptive reforms combine with the professional norms and progressive ambition of agency leaders to limit the diffusion of innovations in law enforcement and schooling. The article concludes with hypotheses for future testing.     

Spillover Effects: Immigrant Policing and Government Skepticism in Matters of Health for Latinos

To what extent do people become less trusting of the government under threatening policy contexts? The authors find evidence that Secure Communities, a bureaucratic program that enhances immigrant policing through collaboration between local law and immigration enforcement agencies, spurs mistrust among Latinos but not non‐Latinos. This article focuses on the politics of immigration and health, two issue areas marked by large‐scale bureaucratic developments over the last 50 years. The authors argue that a major consequence of expanding immigrant policing is its trickle‐down effect on how individuals view public institutions charged with the provision of public goods, such as health information. The results indicate that Latinos in locales where immigrant policing is most intense express lower levels of trust in government as a source of health information. Through a policy feedback lens, the findings suggest that the state's deployment of immigrant policing conveys more widespread lessons about the trustworthiness of government .     

Voters' Perceptions of Policy Convergence and the Short‐term Opportunities of Anti‐immigrant Parties: Examples from Sweden

In contrast to previous studies on the political opportunity structures of anti‐immigrant parties, this article argues that voters’ perceptions of policy convergence between mainstream alternatives affect their short‐term propensity for supporting such partisan challengers. Drawing upon leading research in the field, two hypotheses about voters’ perceptions of policy convergence, in two policy areas (economic redistribution and immigration), are presented. The main findings in the article suggest that policy convergence between mainstream parties has a more immediate impact on the electorate than commonly recognised. Using unique data from Sweden, the article shows that perceived convergence between Swedish mainstream parties in the field of immigration policy increases potential support for the anti‐immigrant party, the Sweden Democrats (SD). Yet the results are the opposite when it comes to perceptions of convergence in the field of economic‐distributive policies. In contrast to widespread assumptions, the article thus finds that policy convergence between mainstream parties only appears to create short‐term opportunities for anti‐immigrant parties if it takes place on their own policy turf. These results indicate, in other words, that the potential electorate of the SD – which is a wider group than hard‐core xenophobes – is largely driven by preferences about immigration policy, rather than the short‐term urge to protest against mainstream parties. The article, therefore, concludes that the cordon sanitaire to isolate the SD in Sweden – which is underpinned by de facto convergence between mainstream parties on immigration policy – could improve, and is unlikely to curb, the short‐term electoral opportunities of this party.     

Xenophobic Rhetoric and Its Political Effects on Immigrants and Their Co‐Ethnics

Though political scientists generally understand the origins of native‐born reactions to foreigners, less is known about how anti‐immigrant contexts trigger a political response within immigrant groups. I address this question by studying the connection between xenophobic rhetoric and Latino politics. I claim that xenophobic rhetoric raises the salience of ethnic identity and impugns its worth. This identity threat leads high‐identifying group members to engage in political efforts that assert their group's positive value, whereas low identifiers shun political opportunities to bolster their group's devaluation. I test these claims with an experiment embedded in a nationally representative opinion survey of Latino adults. In light of xenophobic rhetoric, I find that relative to low identifiers, high‐identifying Latinos become less politically trusting, more ethnocentric, and increasingly supportive of policies that emphasize ingroup pride. These results clarify xenophobic rhetoric's role in amplifying the influence of ethnic identity on immigrant politics.     

E‐participation Opportunities and the Ambiguous Role of Corruption: A Model of Municipal Responsiveness to Sociopolitical Factors

Municipalities ostensibly scale the ladder of e‐participation improvement to gain legitimacy. However, research has not yet addressed how e‐participation initiatives are affected by serious legitimacy concerns such as corruption. One municipal response to corruption is to use e‐participation offerings as a remedial effort to gain citizen trust, but window‐dressing strategies might also be used. In this article, the authors attempt to make sense of this ambiguity by hypothesizing that the effects of perceived corruption on e‐participation offerings depend on the type of e‐participation as well as the level of local social capital and local public accountability demand. Analysis of data from 104 municipal websites in South Africa between 2013 and 2017 reveals support for two moderation mechanisms: (1) a positive remedial response to corruption in the presence of strong social capital and (2) a negative avoidance response to corruption in the presence of high demand for accountability.     

Political impediments to the resumption of labour migration to Western Europe

This article argues that traditional, labour migration flows to Western Europe are unlikely to resume in the near future and the commitment of the European Community to the free movement of labour is likely to erode as a consequence of anti‐immigrant illiberalism in Western Europe. Anti‐immigrant illiberalism in several, major labour‐importing states is evident in: the semipermanent politicisation of state immigration policy; increasing popular support for xenophobic political forces; the appropriation of anti‐immigrant votes by established political parties of the right; and the abandonment by left‐wing parties of liberal immigration and immigrant‐welfare policies.     

The limits of autocracy promotion: The case of Russia in the ‘near abroad’

In recent years, observers have raised concerns about threats to democracy posed by external support for authoritarianism coming from regional powers such as Russia, China and Venezuela. This article assesses the efficacy of autocracy promotion through a close examination of Russian efforts to shape regime outcomes in the former Soviet Union. It finds that while Russian actions have periodically promoted instability and secessionist conflict, there is little evidence that such intervention has made post‐Soviet countries less democratic than they would have been otherwise. First, the Russian government has been inconsistent in its support for autocracy – supporting opposition and greater pluralism in countries where anti‐Russian governments are in power, and incumbent autocrats in cases where pro‐Russian politicians dominate. At the same time, the Russian government's narrow concentration on its own economic and geopolitical interests has significantly limited the country's influence, fostering a strong counter‐reaction in countries with strong anti‐Russian national identities. Finally, Russia's impact on democracy in the region has been restricted by the fact that post‐Soviet countries already have weak democratic prerequisites. This analysis suggests that, despite increasingly aggressive foreign policies by autocratic regional powers, autocracy promotion does not present a particularly serious threat to democracy in the world today.     

Complex Contracting: Management Challenges and Solutions

Governments at all levels buy mission‐critical goods and services whose attributes and performance requirements are hard to define and produce. Many governments—and the public managers who lead them—lack experience and knowledge about how to contract for complex products. The contract management counsel provided to public managers is thin. Missing is a conceptual managerial framework to guide purchasing the complex products that are often so critical to public organizations' core missions. Drawing on perspectives from across the social sciences, the framework presented in this article provides guidance on how managers can harness the upsides of complex contracting while avoiding its pitfalls. The framework helps identify conditions that increase the likelihood of positive outcomes for the purchasing government and the vendor—the win‐win. To illustrate the framework, the article provides examples of successful and failed acquisitions for complex products such as transportation projects, social service systems, and information technology systems.     

Why do “teeth” need “voice”? The case of anti‐corruption agencies in three Australian states

Interactions between horizontal accountability agencies (e.g., anti‐corruption agencies [ACAs]) and social accountability actors (e.g., journalists, civil society activists, and complainants/whistleblowers) are recognized as important to horizontal agencies’ performance, but the reason(s) is not clear. This study therefore explores why horizontal accountability agencies need social accountability actors in performing their functions. The study analyses data from 30 key stakeholders in Australia, including ACAs staff members, social accountability actors, and other observers to report on the specific support roles social actors play to ACAs’ activities and operations. Through the conceptual lens of social accountability, evidence show that social actors play four key types of support roles to ACAs’ activities and operations: activate ACAs’ investigations; “amplify” ACAs’ operations; guard ACAs’ activities and operations; and defend ACAs’ independence and powers. These findings support the need for interactions and, also, affirm the potential for research into how these support roles can better be provided for effective anti‐corruption outcomes. The research is of value to public accountability agencies in Australia, and internationally.     

Public opinion for sale: The role of policy marketers in Greater Yellowstone policy conflict

This article develops a macro-level theory of framing to explain the intractable or ‘icked’ nature of environmental policy. Using conflict in the Greater Yellowstone Area (GYA) as a case study, we review how proposed solutions – technical, scientific, and economic – and cultural issues often lead to inadequate policy solutions. We then propose that interest groups, the media, and elected officials do not act solely as linkage mechanisms, but, rather, as policy marketers who market public opinion to citizens. The macro-level trends of a marketing culture in tandem with the rise of consumerism are explored in the context of GYA politics. Finally, we describe how our proposed macro-level theory of framing points to a rich research agenda for empirically testing questions about issue framing, policy marketers, and public opinion formation in environmental policy conflict.     

Anti‐elite parties and political inequality: How challenges to the political mainstream reduce income gaps in internal efficacy

There is growing interest in political inequality across income groups. This article contributes to this debate with two arguments about political involvement: poverty depresses internal political efficacy by undermining cognitive and emotional resources; and dissent in the party system reduces the efficacy gap to higher incomes. Specifically, conflict is to be expected between anti‐elite and mainstream parties to simplify political decisions and stimulate political attention among poor voters. These arguments are supported with comparative and experimental analyses. Comparative survey data shows that the income gap in efficacy varies with a novel measure of the anti‐elite salience in the party system. The causal impact of anti‐elite rhetoric is established though a representative survey experiment. Finally, the article investigates how these mechanisms affect both electoral and other forms of political participation.     

Prosecutorial regulation in the Global South: Environmental civil litigation by prosecutors in China compared to Brazil

Brazil's successful prosecutorial civil action against polluters could be a regulatory example for the Global South. This paper analyses whether such regulation could also develop without the major political, institutional, and legal reforms that spurred it in Brazil. To do so, it analyzes China, where similar reforms have so far not occurred, but where prosecutors have recently started to initiate civil litigation against polluters. It finds that prosecutorial civil litigation in China has only a limited regulatory effect or potential. Prosecutors in China are influenced by conflicting incentive structures that reward one‐off lower level test cases with an innovation bonus, while structurally stimulating a focus on general crime fighting. Ironically, as a result of such incentives, the recent legal reform, toward providing standing for prosecutors in public interest litigation, will, in contrast to Brazil, decrease rather than increase the regulatory effect of these cases. These findings have implications for understanding how the interaction between regulatory independence, legal reform, and regime type shapes possibilities for regulatory innovation in the Global South.     

WHAT ROLE FOR GOVERNMENT? THE PROMOTION OF CIVIL SOCIETY THROUGH FORESTRY‐RELATED CLIMATE CHANGE INTERVENTIONS IN POST‐CONFLICT NEPAL

This study examines rationales behind the choice of local interlocutors by forestry‐related climate change projects in post‐conflict Nepal. In their stated objectives, all projects claim to involve the government, and most project decision makers are in favor of government involvement, yet project resources overwhelmingly favor civil society institutions. Project decision makers' choices are shaped by a combination of donor conditionalities, contextual constraints, and beliefs about which institutional attributes matter and how to address historical marginalization. The projects' empowerment of civil society sidesteps opportunities to strengthen the local government, which is described as weak, disinterested, and lacking legitimacy owing to the absence of elections due to the unsettled post‐conflict situation. Through the choices made and their justifications, projects and donors further marginalize the local government materially and discursively and thereby entrench its perceived deficiencies. We argue that this privileging of civil society may have implications for government legitimacy and post‐conflict reconstruction and call for donors and the intervening institutions they fund to critically and collectively reassess the role of forestry‐related climate change projects in the larger process of post‐conflict reconstruction in Nepal. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The impact of Illicit Financial Flows on the South African political economy under Jacob Zuma, 2009–2018

South Africa has also fallen a victim of a greater major concern over the scale and negative impact of Illicit Financial Flows (IFFs) on the country's governance and developmental agenda. However, there is an unjustified observation that as one of Africa's biggest economies, South Africa is not a victim of IFFs. This observation shows that scholars and academic practitioners have not yet uniformly come to a cul‐de‐sac on this subject, and as such, this confusion constitutes a huge dichotomy on the subject matter. Based on Afrocentricity as the alternative lens, this article argues that there are after effects of the practice of IFFs in South Africa and that IFFs need to be given a special attention in order to curb them from destabilising South Africa's economic and political stability. Although this article discusses IFFs in general and how they come about, the central focus of this article is to unpack the impacts of IFFs under the Zuma administration and provide possible solutions. Methodically, this article relied on the prevailing continental and South African discourse circulating and thematic content analysis on conversations.     

Information Shocks and the Take‐Up of Social Programs

The causes of participation in social programs have been studied extensively, with prominent roles found for program rules and benefits. A lack of information about these programs has been suggested as a cause of low participation rates among certain groups, but it is often difficult to distinguish between the role of information sharing and other features of a neighborhood, such as factors that are common to people of the same ethnicities or socioeconomic opportunities, or uniquely local methods of program implementation. We seek to gain new insight into the potential role of information flows by investigating what happens when information is disrupted. We exploit rich microdata from Florida vital records and program participation files to explore declines in Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) participation during pregnancy among foreign‐born Hispanics in the “information shock” period surrounding welfare reform. We identify how the size of these reductions is affected by having a high density of neighbors from the same place of origin. Specifically, we compare changes in WIC participation among Hispanic immigrants living in neighborhoods with a larger concentration of own‐origin immigrants to those with a smaller concentration of own‐origin immigrants, holding constant the size of the immigrant population and the share of immigrants in the neighborhood who are Hispanic. We find strong evidence that having a denser network of own‐origin immigrants mediated the information shock faced by immigrant women in the wake of welfare reform.     

Mediterranean neo‐democracies and the opinion‐policy nexus

This article empirically evaluates the previously unresearched relationship between mass public opinion and public policy in the Mediterranean neo‐democracies. By studying almost 250 issues over the last decade, the nature of contemporary democracy in Spain, Portugal and Greece is revealed in relation to the overall consistency between majority preferences and government action. In addition, the opinion‐policy nexus is explored in regard to the potential impact of alternative institutional structures, landslide majorities, different categories of issues (e.g., redistributive, foreign policy), and the partisan composition of the government (i.e., socialist versus non‐socialist).     

PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION REFORM IN POST‐CONFLICT SOCIETIES: LESSONS FROM ACEH,INDONESIA

Post‐conflict reconstruction programs increasingly include components designed to strengthen the performance of the public service and to support public sector reform. Although there is a growing body of literature on the relationship between public administration, and peace and development, there have been few case studies of donor efforts to strengthen public administration as part of post‐conflict reconstruction. This study examines efforts to strengthen the civil service in Aceh, Indonesia, following the province's first post‐conflict elections in 2006. It examines the impact of a donor‐funded program designed to assist Aceh's first post‐conflict administration (2007–2012) to reform its personnel management practices. The case study sheds light on weaknesses in current donor approaches to public administration reform in post‐conflict situations. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.