The Extent and Correlates of Public Support for Deterrence Reforms and Hot Spots Policing

As one approach to prison downsizing and criminal justice reform, scholars recommend altering the nature of policing by reallocating resources toward policing and increasing sentinel patrols and hot spots interventions. Public attitudes toward these reforms are unknown. In the current police crisis, shifting policies in ways disfavored by the public can impact police‐community relations, especially among those disproportionately affected. The current study uses survey data from a nationally representative sample of Americans to evaluate whether the public is receptive to the suggested reforms. Our results indicate that the majority of the general public believes policing is more cost‐effective than incarceration and supports a focus on sentinel patrols and crime hot spots, although there is less support for hot spots policing among blacks, Hispanics, and lower income individuals. The hot spots policing strategy most preferred is situational prevention, and the least supported is aggressive order‐maintenance policing.     

EU public affairs and the White Paper on Governance

The White Paper on Governance process[This analysis covers the period up to and including the publication of COM (2001) 428 of 25.7.2001, ‘European Governance: A White Paper’.] began life as a search for an issue by a new Commission President. The issue is packaged as enhancing/modernising democracy in the EU and legitimising EU institutions, and searches for further avenues of civil participation. The process ‘sells’ the concept of ‘democratic deficit’, though reveals a highly open and accessible system which is already severely overloaded by interest representation. Rather than escalating a ‘lobby free for all’, the opportunity could be taken to strengthen governance by organising EU interest representation. This could be done by accrediting associations that are able to meet strict criteria of representativity as ‘governance partners’, making them sufficiently attractive to their members to work through them rather than bypassing them, and which would strengthen their ability to contribute to EU governance as policy capable organisations. These associations could find a place in a revamped and reorganised Economic and Social Committee, which would be engaged at a much earlier stage in the EU policy process. Copyright © 2001 Henry Stewart Publications     

GitHub use in public administration in Canada: Early experience with a new collaboration tool

GitHub is a web‐based digital project hosting service that facilitates collaboration. We introduce how GitHub works and assess how it has been used in the public sector in Canada based on interviews with federal government leaders and a survey of Canadian public service GitHub users. With little research to date on public sector use of GitHub, and none on its use in Canadian governments, we explore the early experience with this collaboration tool and consider the possible implications for collaboration in government.     

Does rigidity matter? Constitutional entrenchment and growth

European Journal of Law and Economics - Should procedural barriers to constitutional amendment be more onerous than those to the policy changes of ordinary politics? – i.e., should...     

Digital dilemmas: the unintended consequences of election technology

Digital technologies are increasingly used in elections around the world. Where the resources and capacity of the state are limited, some have argued that such technologies make it possible to rapidly “leapfrog” to cleaner and more credible elections. This article argues that the growing use of these technologies has been driven by the fetishization of technology rather than by rigorous assessment of their effectiveness; that they may create significant opportunities for corruption that (among other things) vitiate their potential impact; and that they carry significant opportunity costs. Indeed, precisely because new technology tends to deflect attention away from more “traditional” strategies, the failure of digital checks and balances often renders an electoral process even more vulnerable to rigging than it was before. These observations are not intended as a manifesto against the digitization of elections; apart from anything else, we argue that the drivers of the adoption of these new methods are too powerful to resist. But the analysis draws attention to the importance of more careful assessments of the problems, as well as the benefits, of such technologies – and to the need for more careful planning in their deployment.     

Exaggerating good governance: Regime type and score inflation among executive survey informants

Researchers and policymakers often rely on executive surveys to understand and promote good governance. In doing so, they assume that the evaluations provided by these well‐informed respondents are not systematically influenced by regime type. However, regime‐embedded executives often have a personal stake in the survey outcomes, incentivizing them to exaggerate good governance. This paper compares World Economic Forum Executive Opinion Survey responses to corollary measures of key governance concepts in democracies, anocracies, and autocracies. It finds evidence of significant score inflation among executives in closed regimes. The individual‐level mechanisms are explored in one autocracy by comparing responses from regime‐embedded informants based at firms headquartered within the country with those managing businesses headquartered abroad. These micro‐level data likewise reveal evidence of widespread inflation, particularly on items related to governance. Finally, a closer look at Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index demonstrates the broader impact Executive Opinion Survey inflation for measuring governance within closed regimes.     

Why the U.S. Military Budget is ‘Foolish and Sustainable’

What defense budget the United States should have and what defense budget it can afford are separate questions. The debate raging in Washington about Pentagon spending ignores the distinction. Doves insist that we need a more modest military strategy because the current one is wasteful and economically unsustainable. Hawks say that the current approach is sensible and affordable. This article takes a third path, arguing that U.S. military policy is likely to remain extravagant because it is sustainable. We adopted our current strategy—which amounts to trying to run the world with the American military—because we could, not because it was wisest. Wealth and safety make the consequences of bad defense policy abstract for most U.S. taxpayers. So we buy defense like rich people shop, ignoring the balance of costs and benefits. We conflate ideological ambition with what is required for our safety. Unfortunately, the current political demand for austerity and fewer wars will only temporarily restrain our military spending and the ambitions it underwrites.