Victim Offender Overlap: Dual Trajectory Examination of Victimization and Offending Among Young Felony Offenders Over Seven Years

The relationship between victimization and offending has been shown consistently across different samples, settings, and crime types. This study uses data from the Pathways to Desistance Study to examine dual trajectories of offending between the ages of 15 and 24 in a sample of male felony offenders. The dual trajectory models demonstrate substantial convergence in victimization and offending. And while there are sizable numbers of youth who continue to be victimized, but desist or decrease in their offending behaviors, very few youth continue to offend in the absence of continued victimization. This study also proposes and tests three criminological theories that have been employed as explanations for the victim-offender overlap—low self-control, lifestyles/routine activities, and street-code attitudes. The logistic regression results indicate that involvement in risky and/or unstructured, unsupervised activities is a key correlate of the victim-offender overlap. The strength of the relationship between routine activity variables and the victim-offender overlap supports the provision of structured, supervised activities for youth and young adults as a way of preventing future victimization and offending, particularly among youth who have high exposure to violence.     

County and Township Cadres as a Strategic Group. A New Approach to Political Agency in China’s Local State

Linking up with and critically assessing the recent literature on the local state in China, this article introduces a new framework to understand group behavior and strategic agency in local policy processes. Conceptualizing county and township cadres as a ??strategic group??, the framework offers a number of analytical tools for better understanding the conditions of effective and ineffective policy implementation. Drawing on insights from development sociology, Bourdieu??s theory of capital formation and the garbage can model from organization theory, against a background of extensive fieldwork in numerous Chinese counties over the last years conducted by the authors, the article intends to theoretically substantiate the current knowledge of China scholars on the nexus between actors and their institutional environment in the Chinese local state.     

Towards a new European Taiwan policy? Some preliminary reflexions

  The so-called `Taiwan question' remains to be one of the most serious security issues in international politics. Although economic integration and cultural–scientific exchange between Taiwan and the Chinese mainland are intensifying, a future military conflict between the two sides can't be ruled out. The main obstacle for cross-Strait détente is the problem of Taiwanese sovereignty. This article argues that bilateral negotiations can't be brought back on track if they are not based on a conceptual framework that tackles Taiwanese sovereignty instead of avoiding it. By discussing some paradigmatic proposals made in recent years, it is held that the European experience of voluntary integration might serve as a suitable blueprint for a peaceful solution of the `Taiwan question'. The article pleads for a new EU Taiwan policy that is based on the promotion of integration between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait. This policy should be actively pursued in all relevant international fora, especially in the context of ASEM and the EU-China summits.     

Political Legitimacy in Contemporary China Revisited: theoretical refinement and empirical operationalization

In the first part of this article the author comments on Peter Sandby-Thomas' contribution and critically assesses his suggestion to focus on ‘legitimation’ instead of ‘legitimacy’ when investigating the Chinese political system. In the second part, the author, in an effort to refine his analytical model to study legitimacy presented in an earlier article published in this journal, argues for combining Eastonian systems analysis and policy analysis, particularly at the local level of the Chinese state. The systematic accumulation of knowledge on local policy implementation with regard to procedure, output effectiveness and public responses, undertaken from an Eastonian perspective, provides China scholars with a fruitful approach to the study of legitimacy even if some methodological pitfalls remain.     

Contents of Volume 9

Volume Contents

Contents of Volume 9     

Umwelt in schlechter Verfassung?

Im Koalitionsvertrag der gro?en Koalition ist eine F?deralismusreform bis in die Details der geplanten Verfassungs?nderung hinein vereinbart und – wie gewünscht – mit wenigen ?nderungen durch Bundestag und Bundesrat verabschiedet worden. Die wissenschaftliche Kritik, die Kritik aus den Wirtschafts- und den Umweltverb?nden sowie aus Berufsverb?nden insbesondere an der Reform der Verteilung der Gesetzgebungskompetenzen für den Umweltschutz hatte gegen die politischen Absprachen zwischen gro?er Koalition und den Bundesl?ndern keine Chance. Nachfolgend wird die Neuordnung der Gesetzgebungskompetenzen für den Umweltschutz analysiert, wobei die Verfasser insgesamt zu einer skeptischen Einsch?tzung gelangen.     

Bildung und subjektives Wohlbefinden im Zeitverlauf, 1984–2002:

This analysis of the change in subjective well-being attempts two aims. On the one hand, the change of subjective well-being over the time period from 1984 to 2002 will be considered. Effects of age, period and cohorts will be analyzed simultaneously. Education and educational expansion are considered as social mechanisms behind these processes of change and therefore introduced into the analyses. Methodologically, a multilevel approach is chosen. To analyze life satisfaction independently from health aspects, satisfaction with health will be controlled for. Hierarchical Linear Models (HLM) will be used for data analysis. Data structure, applicability and parameter estimations of HLM will be considered in detail. The data base is the German Socio-economic Panel data set, although only the West German subsample is used for analysis. Results indicate – beside a strong influence of health satisfaction – robust effects of education, a substantial age effect and a weak negative cohort effect on life satisfaction.