THE ROLE OF EXTERNAL INSPECTION IN THE PUBLIC SERVICES: THE CASE OF THE UK TRAINING MARKET

We consider two interpretations of the role of external inspection in the public services in the UK in the context of publicly funded, work‐based training programmes for young people. The first is that inspection provides substantive information to buyers concerning training quality, thereby improving efficiency in the ‘training market'. The second is that it provides procedurally oriented reassurance concerning service quality to government and the public, irrespective of substantive quality. Evidence is drawn from the inspection procedures and reports of the Adult Learning Inspectorate between 2001 and 2005. The inspectors rated training providers on various attributes, some clearly procedural, others potentially substantive. We find that while inspectors took both procedural and substantive dimensions of training into account in judging the quality of a provider's services, they attached considerably more weight to procedural than to substantive attributes. In particular, they undervalued the trainee completion rate, despite its potential association with the substantive quality of training and the priority the government attaches to raising it. These results are interpreted as evidence of limited validity in inspection findings, which do little to resolve information asymmetries in the UK training market.     

Childcare Policies and the Politics of Choice

Governments have intervened in two basic ways on childcare: via the provision of leaves to care (usually taken by mothers) and the provision or (often only partial) financing of childcare services. These policy options reflect the fundamental debate on how young children should be cared for. Labour has developed both policy areas since 1997, but there is a question mark over how far mothers and fathers have a ‘real choice’ to work and/or to care. Parents' choice in this policy area is a sensitive political issue and, this article suggests, requires a careful balancing of policy instruments. Policy goals may conflict with preferences and there is also the difficult issue that parents' choices may prejudice their future welfare in a work/welfare system that is tending to assume that there will be increasing capacity for self‐provisioning.     

Innovation and Innovators Inside Government: From Institutions to Networks

Innovation and innovators inhabit an institutional space, which is partially defined by formal positions and partially by informal networks. This article investigates the role of politicians and bureaucrats in fostering innovation inside government and provides an empirical explanation of who the innovators are, whether this is mostly an attribute of position or role, or mostly an effect of certain forms of networking. The study uses original data collected from 11 municipal governments in Australia in order to define and describe the normative underpinnings of innovation inside government and to show the importance of advice and strategic information networks among politicians and senior bureaucrats (n = 947). Social network analysis is combined with conventional statistical analysis in order to demonstrate the comparative importance of networks in explaining who innovates.     

The Third Wave: Muslim Migration to Europe

In this age of confrontation, the secular Turkish model has been seen as a bridge between Islam and the West as well as the link between Europe and Asia. Now that model faces the most severe test in its history. How the current crisis is settled will frame future relations between Islam and the West no less than the events of 9/11.     

SOCIAL INTEGRATION, VICTIMIZATION, AND ANOMIA

Durkheim argues that anomie occurs as a result of some temporary or longterm crisis that disturbs the collective order. Yet, at the individual level an event or events must be perceived as affecting immediate social relationships before anomia occurs. Previous victimization research reports suggest that crimes may cause interaction problems for the victims. This passibility was analyzed using two notional samples collected by the Notional Opinion Research Center in 1973 and 1974. Using regression to analyze the impact of robbery and burglary on anomia scores no significant relations were found. Bath are usually non-recurrent experiences that either do not have long-term effects on individuls, or anomia as measured here is too far removed to serve as an adequate measure.     

Intelligence Methodologies Applicable to the Madrid Train Bombings, 2004

You Gotta know when to hold

Aleksandr Fursenko and Timothy Naftali: "One Hell of a Gamble:” Khrushchev, Castro and Kennedy 1958–1964, W.W. Norton and Company, New York, 1997, 408 p., $27.50.

Encyclopedic hits and misses

Norman Polmar and Thomas B. Allen: Spy Book: The Encyclopedia of Espionage, Random House, New York, 1997, 633 pp., $30.00

Political arithmetic and cyberterrorism

Winn Schwartau: Information Warfare; Cyberterrorism: Protecting Your Personal Security in the Electronic Age, New York: Thunder's Mouth Press, (2nd ed., p.b.) 1996; 768 p. $16.95.

Snooping around Asia

Peter Elphick: Far Eastern File: The Intelligence War in the Far East, 1930–1945, Hodder and Stoughton, London, 1997, 510 p., S$47.95.     

STRESS,GENES, AND GENERALIZABILITY ACROSS GENDER: EFFECTS OF MAOA AND STRESS SENSITIVITY ON CRIME AND DELINQUENCY*

In the current study, we extend the gene‐by‐environment interaction (cGxE) literature by examining how a widely studied polymorphism, the MAOA upstream variable number tandem repeat (MAOA‐uVNTR) interacts with distal and proximal stressors to explain variation in crime and delinquency. Prior research findings have revealed that MAOA‐uVNTR interacts with single indicators of environmental adversity to explain criminal behavior in general‐population and incarcerated samples. Nevertheless, the genetically moderated stress sensitivity hypothesis suggests that increased risk for criminal behavior associated with variation in the MAOA‐uVNTR can be best understood in the context of both distal stress during childhood and proximal stress in adulthood. Therefore, we employed Tobit regression analyses to examine a gene–distal–proximal environment (CGxExE) interaction across gender in a sample of university students (n = 267) and with data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health; n = 1,294). The results across both sets of analyses demonstrate that variation in the MAOA‐uVNTR interacts with distal and proximal stress to lead to increased risk for criminal behavior in males. Although proximal life stress is associated with an increase in crime and delinquency, this effect is more pronounced among MAOA‐L allele carriers that have experienced distal stress.     

A TEST OF LATENT TRAIT VERSUS LIFECOURSE PERSPECTIVES ON THE STABILITY OF ADOLESCENT ANTISOCIAL BEHAVIOR*

Latent trait and life-course theories provide contrasting interpretations of the well-established finding that childhood antisocial behavior often precedes adolescent conduct problems and adult crime. Longitudinal data from 179 boys and their parents were used to test hypotheses derived from the two theoretical perspectives. The findings largely supported the life-course view. Oppositional behavior during late childhood predicted reductions in quality of parenting and school commitment and increased affiliation with deviant peers. These changes, in turn, predicted conduct problems during early adolescence. Although there was a moderately strong bivariate correlation between childhood antisocial behavior and adolescent conduct problems, there was no longer an association between these constructs when the effects of parenting, school, and peers were taken into account. Further, there was evidence that improved parenting, increased school commitment, or reduced affiliation with deviant peers lowered the probability that boys who were oppositional during childhood would graduate to delinquency and drug use during adolescence. Together, these findings suggest that the correlation between childhood and adolescent deviant behavior reflects a developmental process rather than a latent antisocial trait.