Evaluating City Financial Management Using Fuzzy Rule—Based Systems

Financial management is one of the most important management tasks of government. The complexity of financial management systems has discouraged overall evaluations of financial management. The objective of this article is to develop a method for evaluating government financial management that can handle this complexity. A fuzzy rule–based system (FRBS) is a methodology that can use many different types of data, produce robust input measures and can capture the complex contextual judgment of experts. Using data collected as part of the Government Performance Project survey of large cities, we develop an FRBS for city financial management.     

Never Pick a Fight with an Ugly Person,They’ve Got Nothing to Lose

In the 1970s, social psychologists conducted numerous studies analyzing physical appearance as a social variable. More recent studies in the social sciences appear to have abandoned this topic as unimportant; in any case, very few social scientific studies have been found that incorporate a measure of attractiveness into their analyses. The present study seeks to revive the emphasis on physical attractiveness as a social variable by testing the relationship between crime severity and physical attractiveness, i.e., by presenting evidence to suggest that physically unattractive men commit more serious offenses.

we say what we are and we do what we say: feminisms in educational practice in Aotearoa New Zealand

From four countries (Canada, England, New Zealand and the United States of America) and five disciplines (Counselling & Guidance, Adult Education, Early Years Education, Indigenous Education and Human Development), five feminists in academia come together to share how feminism affects their practice. Ranging in reflections on teaching, research, service and scholarship, this article describes a cooperative enquiry into feminism in action in Aotearoa, New Zealand.     

Elements Needed for Quality Batterer Intervention Programs: Perspectives of Professionals Who Deal with Intimate Partner Violence

Batterers intervention programs (BIPs) constitute a primary intervention for perpetrators of intimate partner violence (IPV). There is little understanding as to what elements are necessary for a good intervention program. We conducted 36 individual semi-structured interviews with professionals working with BIPs. Our results yielded three thematic categories: (1) optimal BIP structure—group size and program duration should foster change and interaction, (2) facilitator characteristics—co-facilitation is ideal, and facilitators should have IPV training, and (3) program approaches–programs should challenge their clients on their behavior, promote an environment of safety and openness, and strive to adapt to clients.     

The Political Implications of American Concerns About Economic Inequality

This article presents a national measure of Americans’ level of concern about economic inequality from 1966 to 2015, and analyzes the relationship between this construct and public support for government intervention in the economy. Current research argues that concerns about economic inequality are associated with a desire for increased government action, but this relationship has only been formally tested using cross-sectional analyses. I first use a form of dynamic factor analysis to develop a measure of national concern over time. Using an error correction model I then show that an increase in national concern about economic inequality does not lead to a subsequent increase in support for government intervention in the economy. Instead there is some evidence that, once confounding factors are accounted for, an increase in concern could lead to reduced support for government intervention.     

Public Attitudes Toward Immigration Policy Across the Legal/Illegal Divide: The Role of Categorical and Attribute-Based Decision-Making

Scholars debate the relative strength of economic and ‘socio-psychological’ sources of anti-immigrant sentiment. However, the literature often fails to distinguish legal from illegal immigration and therefore overlooks a major instance in which this debate is moot. To address this issue, we develop a theory that recognizes two different modes of evaluating immigrants: “attribute-based” judgment, in which respondents weigh immigrants’ desirability based on individual characteristics—human capital, race, language ability, and so on—and “categorical” judgment, which disregards these altogether. Categorical judgments arise when a policy issue triggers blanket considerations of justice or principle that obviate considerations about putative beneficiaries’ individual merits, instead evoking overriding beliefs about the desirability of the policy as a whole or casting the entire category as uniformly deserving or undeserving. We use experimental evidence from two national surveys to show that the principal distinction between attitudes toward legal and illegal immigration is not in the relative weight of immigrants’ attributes but the much greater prevalence of categorical assessments of illegal immigration policy, much of it rooted in rigid moralistic convictions about the importance of strict adherence to rules and laws.     

Science,passion and polemics

He has written thirteen books, including: The State of the Masses,with Richard Hamilton; Under the Gun,with Peter Rossi and Kathleen Daly; and, most recently, Homelessness and Health,with Dee Weber, and Address Unknown.