Comparing Feminist Policy in Politics and at Work in France and Germany: Shared European Union Setting, Divergent National Contexts

This essay introduces the seven articles in the symposium. Placing this special issue within the purview of the new field of Feminist Comparative Policy, the analysis shows how the symposium contributes to comparative theories of feminist policy formation in Western postindustrial democracies. It then defines the three subareas of feminist policy covered in the rest of the volume—political representation, equal employment, and reconciliation—explains why the German and French cases were selected for comparative analysis, discusses the importance of the ongoing process of Europeanization for feminist policy in the two countries, and finishes with a presentation of the outline for the seven articles.     

AGE,PERIOD, AND COHORT EFFECTS ON DEATH PENALTY ATTITUDES IN THE UNITED STATES, 1974–2014

In this article, we further the understanding of both changes in public opinion on capital punishment in the United States and changes in the factors associated with public opinion on the death penalty. Support for the death penalty may be motivated by events happening during specific time periods, and it can vary across birth cohorts as a result of cohort‐specific socialization processes, demographic changes, and formative events that are specific to each generation. An explication of the sources of and variation in death penalty attitudes over time would benefit from the accounting for the age of the respondent, the year of the survey response, and the birth cohort of the respondent. We improve on previous research by using multiple approaches including hierarchical age–period–cohort models and data from the General Social Survey (N = 41,474) to examine changes in death penalty attitudes over time and across birth cohorts. The results showed curvilinear age effects, strong period effects, and weak cohort effects on death penalty support. The violent crime rate explained much of the variation in support for the death penalty across periods. The examination of subgroup differences suggests that support for the death penalty is becoming concentrated among Whites, Protestants, and Republicans.     

DOING HER OWN TIME? WOMEN'S RESPONSES TO PRISON IN THE CONTEXT OF THE OLD AND THE NEW PENOLOGY*

Assumptions about gender role socialization dominated explanations for gender differences in responses to incarceration. We suspend these gender comparisons, which produced the focus on homosexuality and kinship networks in women's prisons, to determine how women's pre‐prison experiences, in the context of two different institutions, influence the way they “do time.” We analyze in‐depth interviews with a diverse sample of 70 female inmates housed in the California Institution for Women (CIW)—the oldest prison for women in the state—and Valley State Prison (VSP)—the newest prison for women. These two institutions differ in structure, size, and management philosophy, and accordingly necessitate the consideration of moderating situational effects. We use qualitative analysis to examine how women do time and to determine whether individual variations in doing time are similar across very different institutions.     

BILEVEL DISPARITIES IN COURT DISPOSITIONS FOR INTIMATE ASSAULT*

Using data on cases of intimate assault, we offer a relatively rare examination of disparities in court dispositions across multiple stages of case processing. In this context we introduce the theoretical and empirical relevance of considering the characteristics of defendants' neighborhoods as possible extralegal influences on disposition severity. Bilevel analyses of 2,948 males arrested for misdemeanor assaults on intimates in Cincinnati reveal significant disparities based on neighborhood socioeconomic status (SES) in decisions related to charging, full prosecution, conviction, and incarceration, even when adjusting for compositional differences in defendant's race and SES across neighborhoods. Implications are discussed for the broader literature on extralegal disparities.     

Crawford v. Washington One Year Later: Its Practical Effects in Child Abuse and Domestic Violence Cases

A year after the United States Supreme Court decided Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36 (2004), the maelstrom that many legal scholars anticipated has failed to materialize. Crawford's abrogation of Ohio v. Roberts, 448 U.S. 56 (1980), and its articulation of the new standard for determining when the Sixth Amendment's Confrontation Clause applies to out‐of‐court statements, has had less effect than some predicted, regarding which statements are admissible and which are excluded. This article explores Crawford's practical effect as courts around the country have applied it, particularly in the context of child abuse and domestic violence cases.     

Drawing Comparative Lessons from France and Germany

The article reviews the lessons learned from a systematic comparison of the policy cases in France and Germany, presented in the previous articles, for building a theory of feminist policy formation and for the design of effective policy in this new arena of government action. It assesses the relative impact of Europeanization and different contextual factors found in each national setting—gender policy regimes, state–society relations, political party influences, structure of the state, women's movement mobilization, women's policy offices, and the role of women in political office. The analysis concludes the symposium with a reflection upon these findings in terms of our knowledge and under‐standing of feminist policy and the responsiveness of Western postindustrial democracies to demands for social justice and equality.     

INSTITUTIONAL INEFFECTIVENESS,ILLEGITIMACY, AND PUBLIC SUPPORT FOR VIGILANTISM IN LATIN AMERICA

Why do individuals or groups support vigilantism as a means of conflict resolution? Most researchers tend to agree that support for and participation in vigilantism occurs in “stateless locations,” that is, when formal justice institutions are weak or absent. Despite this general consensus, quantitative evidence of this relationship is limited to a handful of country‐specific studies that used only subjective survey‐based measures of institutional weakness. This study seeks to extend research on vigilantism by assessing the relationship between subjective and objective conditions of formal justice institutions and public support for vigilantism across 323 provinces in 18 Latin American countries by using the 2012 AmericasBarometer Survey. Specifically, this study uses multilevel logistic regression techniques to examine the variability of public support for lethal vigilantism within and across Latin American countries. When controlling for a wide range of potential confounds, the results show that the most robust predictors of support for violent vigilantism are subjective indicators of institutional illegitimacy, personal victimization, and punitive attitudes. Evidence also exists that objective insecurity, as measured by province‐level homicide rates, fosters public support for violent vigilantism in certain situations.