From the Halls of Congress to K Street: Government Experience and its Value for Lobbying

Lobbying presents an attractive postcongressional career, with some former congressional members and staffers transitioning to lucrative lobbying careers. Precisely why congressional experience is valued is a matter of ongoing debate. Building on research positing a relationship between political uncertainty and demand for lobbyists, we examine conditions under which lobbyists with past congressional experience prove most valuable. To assess lobbyist earnings, we develop a new measure, Lobbyist Value Added, that reflects the marginal contribution of each lobbyist on a contract, and show that previous measures understate the value of high‐performing lobbyists. We find that former staffers earn revenues above their peers during times of uncertainty, and former members of Congress generate higher revenue overall, which we identify by comparing revenues generated by individuals who narrowly won election to those who narrowly lost. These findings help characterize when lobbyists with different skillsets prove most valuable and the value added by government experience.     

Social Network Analysis to evaluate organisational networks on sexual health and rights

There are many challenges in evaluating international networks. The use of conventional tools can be difficult and often provides less than useful information. Social Network Analysis offers benefits for network evaluators by allowing for documentation and analysis of inter-relationships between individuals and organisations. This paper describes the use of this approach in the evaluation of a major international project entitled the Global Dialogues on Sexual Health and Well-being. It highlights the value of maps in enabling clear visual representations of networks, the identification of areas needing greater focus and the basis on which networks are constructed.

Analyse des réseaux sociaux pour évaluer les réseaux organisationnels sur les droits et la santé génésiques

L’évaluation des réseaux internationaux présente de nombreux défis. L'utilisation d'outils conventionnels peut être difficile et fournit souvent des informations qui ne sont pas des plus utiles. L'analyse des réseaux sociaux comporte des avantages pour les évaluateurs des réseaux, car elle permet la documentation et l'analyse des corrélations entre individus et organisations. Cet article décrit l'utilisation de cette approche dans l’évaluation d'un important projet international intitulé Global Dialogues on Sexual Health and Wellbeing (Dialogues mondiaux sur la santé et le bien-être génésiques). Il met en relief la valeur des cartes pour permettre des représentations visuelles claires des réseaux, l'identification de zones nécessitant un axe central plus marqué et la base sur laquelle les réseaux sont construits.

Análise de Rede Social para avaliar redes organizacionais sobre saúde sexual e direitos

Existem muitos desafios para se avaliar as redes internacionais. O uso de ferramentas convencionais pode ser dificil e frequentemente oferece informações que não são úteis. A Análise de Rede Social oferece benefícios para avaliadores de rede ao considerar a documentação e análise das inter-relações entre indivíduos e organizações. Este artigo descreve o uso desta abordagem na avaliação de um grande projeto internacional chamado Diálogos Globais sobre Saúde Sexual e Bem-Estar. Ele destaca o valor de mapas para permitir representações visuais claras de redes, a identificação de áreas que estejam precisando de um maior enfoque e a base sobre a qual as redes são construídas.

El Análisis de Redes Sociales para evaluar redes de organizaciones que trabajan en salud y derechos sexuales

A la hora de evaluar las redes internacionales surgen muchos retos. Los métodos tradicionales pueden presentar dificultades y a menudo proporcionan información poco útil. El Análisis de Redes Sociales presenta ventajas para los evaluadores de redes ya que ofrece la posibilidad de documentar y analizar relaciones entre individuos y organizaciones. El presente ensayo examina cómo se utilizó este método para evaluar un importante proyecto internacional llamado “Diálogos globales sobre salud sexual y bienestar”. También ilustra cómo los mapas son valiosos porque muestran una clara representación visual de las redes, revelan las áreas que necesitan mayor atención y señalan las bases sobre las que se construyen las redes.     

Female Defendants and Criminal Courts in Taiwan: An Observation Study

It has long been contended that the criminal justice system extends the influence of patriarchy in society. Feminist and critical criminologists have produced countless examples of the male domination in the criminal justice system. Critics of law and criminal justice point out that the system treats women the same way as does the mainstream society (MacKinnon 1989, 1991; Smart 1989). Therefore, criminal justice cannot be expected to remedy injustices legally before they are recognized as injustices socially. Sociological studies in crime and delinquency have also neglected gender issues. By employing the qualititaive research approach of field observation, this study focuses on how practitioners in three criminal courts in Southern Taiwan interact with female defendants. The findings point out that the court system was unbending in treating the observed defendants in a condescending manner, and expedited the trial process to pronounce the defendants’ guilt. The study aims to offer explicit and nuanced empirical evidence of how gender complicates courtroom interaction. Evidence from this study also forms the basis for policy recommendations and future reform in the criminal justice system.     

Public Health as Social Justice? A Qualitative Study of Public Health Policy-Makers’ Perspectives

Social justice is often described as the ‘foundation of public health.’ Yet, outside of the theoretical literature the polysemous nature of the concept is rarely acknowledged. To complement recent contributions to normative theory specifically motivated by questions of social justice in public health, this study explores public health policy-makers’ perspectives on the meaning and role of social justice in their practice. This study involved twenty qualitative, semi-structured interviews with public health policy-makers recruited from two programmatic areas of public health [chronic disease prevention (CDP) and public health emergency preparedness and response (PHEPR)] within public health organizations in Canada. Participants’ perspectives appeared to be influenced by the perceived goals belonging to the programmatic area of public health in which they practiced. Those involved in PHEPR indicated that justice-based considerations are viewed as a ‘constraint’ on the aims of this area of practice, which are to minimize overall morbidity and mortality, whereas those involved in CDP indicated that justice-based considerations are ‘part and parcel’ of their work, which seeks primarily to address the unique health needs of (and thus, disparities between) population groups. The aims and activities of different programmatic areas of public health may influence the way in which social justice is perceived in practice. More ought to be done (in theory and in practice) to interrogate how the unique contributions that individual programmatic areas of public health can and should cohere in order to realize the broader aim that public health has as an institution to promote social justice.

     

A Time-Series Analysis of Terrorism: Intervention,Displacement, and Diffusion of Benefits

This paper discusses the perception that displacement in terrorism is inevitable; that antiterrorism efforts merely relocate terrorism in some way. Using quarterly time-series data from the Global Terrorism Database (1994–2013) and the vector autoregression framework, we test the following hypothesis: the target-hardening efforts within the United States (US) after September, 11, 2001 reduce attacks on domestic US targets, but increase attacks on US targets abroad. To provide a more comprehensive test, we also provide dynamic impact factors and variance decompositions. The results of this intervention analysis show no support for displacement, and instead provide support for a diffusion-of benefits hypothesis. We also discuss how criminological and especially crime-prevention knowledge can guide and encompass the study of terrorism.     

Assessing the correctional orientation of corrections officers in South Korea

The correctional goal in South Korea has recently changed from the straightforward punishment of inmates to rehabilitation. Currently, emphases are being placed on education, counseling, and other treatment programs. These changes have consequently begun to also change the corrections officers' roles from a purely custodial role to a human service role, in which officers are expected to manage rehabilitation and treatment programs. Despite these changes, few studies have examined the attitudes of corrections officers toward rehabilitation programming. This is an important dimension to examine in rehabilitation programming, as corrections officers play a major role in the delivery of institutional programs. This study examines the attitudes of South Korean corrections officers toward rehabilitation programs. Approximately 430 corrections officers were sampled. Results show that correctional attitudes are largely influenced by not only officers' own motivations for joining corrections but also by institutional factors such as job stress. Policy implications are discussed.     

Experiencing and witnessing familial aggression and their relationship to physically aggressive behaviors among Filipino adolescents

The effects of family violence on children's aggressive behaviors have been the focus of much research. However, results have been equivocal in at least the following three areas: (a) the specific effects on aggression of child-directed violence versus child-witnessed violence, (b) the salience of family violence as an explanation of aggression when other theoretically relevant explanations of aggression are controlled (i.e., peers, attachments, or moral beliefs), and (c) the gender-specific effects of family violence. Using a probability sample of adolescents from a medium-sized city in the Philippines, this article assesses the effects of child-directed and child-witnessed violence between parents on aggressive behaviors of adolescents while controlling for theoretically relevant explanations of aggression. Results show that child-witnessed and child-directed violence are positively and significantly related to self-reported aggression, that child-witnessed violence accounts for most of the variance in adolescent aggression, and that neither measures of family violence interacts with gender.     

Patriotism,black politics and racial justice in America

Recent decades have seen an upsurge in interest in patriotism among progressive intellectuals and within progressive politics, while recent manifestations of black politics in the era of President Barack Obama have utilized patriotic narratives. We question this turn to patriotism on the grounds that it is a questionable manner in which to pursue racial justice in our post-Civil Rights political landscape. Patriotic appeals to civic virtue always invoke or imply the anti-patriot who lacks that virtue and is therefore less capable of exercising exemplary citizenship. This idea of the anti-patriot, however, easily coalesces with and buttresses the language of cultural pathology used historically to argue that African-Americans are deficient in civic virtue and key for reproducing racial inequality. The idea of the anti-patriot could thus provide another vocabulary for displacing responsibility for addressing racial inequality away from white Americans and onto black Americans. After illuminating this dynamic at work in some of the most successful African-American patriotic thinkers—Frederick Douglass, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Barack Obama—we conclude by arguing that those concerned with racial justice should reject patriotism in favor of three alternative traditions in African-American political thought: self-examination, prophecy, and rage.     

Between Identity Quest and Risk Aversion: lessons from the Chen Shui-bian presidency for maintaining cross-strait stability

This article argues that how President Chen Shui-bian's provocative initiatives have impacted cross-strait stability since 2003 generates crucial lessons, not available in the past, for understanding the propelling and constraining dynamics of a cross-strait military conflict in the long run. The lessons are grounded in three interrelated sets of interactive logic: between the Chen Administration and the Taiwan electorate; between Taiwan people's aspiration for an exclusive national identity and their risk-averse proclivity in the face of China's military threat; and between Washington's and Beijing's acts of signaling toward Taipei. Specifically, this article demonstrates that Taiwan's voters at first backed the Chen Administration's provocative initiatives in order to seek a national identity instead of de jure independence, and that such popular support receded dramatically once such initiatives came to be perceived, amidst domestic and international developments, by the voters as drifting away from the identity quest and toward evoking their choice between the status quo and independence. The risk-averse voters turned away from the altered character of the initiatives and thus restrained the reckless politicians, largely because of both Washington's signaling which highlighted the change and the ensuing risk of war, and Beijing's refraining from saber rattling toward Taiwan. The voters' decisions foiled the 2004 and 2008 referenda, and forestalled the DPP in 2004 from acquiring a parliamentary majority necessary for legislating its provocative initiatives such as renaming the country and creating a new constitution.