From Patriotic Memories to ‘Patriotic History’ in Zimbabwe, 1990 – 2005

This article examines how military veterans and political veterans of Zimbabwe's nationalist movements competed for power and access to state resources, using their distinctive contributions to legitimate their claims and de-legitimate others' claims. Drawing on parliamentary debates over state assistance for war veterans and state pensions for heroes, the article seeks to highlight previously unexplored continuities between the political discourses within the ruling party in the 1990s and the ruling party's brand of nationalism after 2000. More generally, the essay suggests a much longer pattern of nationalists using struggle credentials to legitimate themselves and de-legitimate others in competition for power and resources.     

Comparing Welfare Service Delivery Among Public,Nonprofit and For-Profit Work Agencies

Since passage of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) in 1996, there has been a proliferation of contracting for welfare services, specifically around Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) and related benefits and services such as child care. The services most commonly contracted include those around the work or employment function, such as training, education, job placement, and support services to promote job entry or retention.

The purpose of this article is to examine differences in the quality of service provision among public, nonprofit, and for-profit auspices in the delivery of work-based welfare reform services. The findings show that there are some differences in welfare programs across the three sectors. The significance of this issue relates to the critical question of whether social needs can be best met through competitive outsourcing.     

Evaluating the Potential of a Web-based Portal to Support the Leverage of Professional Expertise across Local Authority Boundaries

The national strategy for local e-government identifies joining up services and the sharing of information as key components in improving the quality and efficiency of public services. A project to design and evaluate a web-based portal to support leverage of professional health and safety enforcement expertise across local authority (LA) boundaries was undertaken. The project clearly demonstrated that there was support by operational officers for the concept of knowledge sharing but there was limited uptake of the portal, particularly those functions that were designed to facilitate collaborative working. The research identified the significance of management commitment to knowledge sharing and the importance of users understanding the rationale for, and benefits of, engagement with IT systems which are not developed in-house. It also indicated that whilst web-based systems can provide a means by which profession knowledge can be levered across LAs, the complexity of linking over 400 LAs with their pluralistic structures and cultures should not be under-estimated.     

Measuring violence risk and outcomes among Mexican American adolescent females

Central to the development of culturally competent violence prevention programs for Hispanic youth is the development of psychometrically sound violence risk and outcome measures for this population. A study was conducted to determine the psychometric properties of two commonly used violence measures, in this case for Mexican American adolescent females. The Conflict Tactics Scales (CTS2) and the Past Feelings and Acts of Violence Scale (PFAV) were analyzed to examine their interitem reliability, criterion validity, and discriminant validity. A sample of 150 low-risk and 150 high-risk adolescent females was studied. Discriminant validity was indicated by the perpetrator negotiation scale and by the victim psychological aggression and sexual coercion scales of the CTS2 and the PFAV. Analysis indicates that the CTS2 scales and the PFAV demonstrate adequate reliability, whereas strong criterion validity was evidenced by eight of the CTS2 scales and the PFAV.     

Women, power and ordination: A psychological interpretation of objections to the ordination of women to the priesthood

The ordination of women to the priesthood is a subject which still encounters strong antagonism from both men and women. In this paper, such antagonism is interpreted using the thesis of Dinnerstein (1978) which suggests that it may be an expression of the flight from maternal power. The experience of a woman as the first caretaker, coupled with the infant's primitive capacity to deal with the necessarily dependent and frustrating relationship with her, leads men and women to associate their ambivalent fantasies of maternal power with female authority. In particular, the ordination of women for a role which is itself mystically powerful provokes arguments and attitudes which can be interpreted as an expression of this irrational fear.     

Changes in young adults after peace corps experiences: Political-social views,moral reasoning,and perceptions of self and parents

A variety of changes in Peace Corps Volunteers (PCVs), 43 men and 34 women, are reported. Analyses were based on assessments made before and after an overseas tour of duty for political status, self and ideal-self constructions, perceptions of parents' child-rearing techniques, and moral reasoning. Comparisons with several samples of students and activists, studied earlier, indicated that initially the PCVs were a middle group politically, rather conventional personally, and family entrenched, the women more than the men. Evidence of their various but unitary shifts to political liberalization, greater intraceptiveness and self-determination, greater detachment from their parents, and increased incidence of principled moral reasoning suggests that the PCVs had undergone substantial self-redefinition.Received Ph.D. from California School of Professional Psychology, 1974. Interests lie in the areas of adolescent development, moral development, ego functioning, and political psychology.     

Forensic medical expert evaluation of lethal poisoning with narcotics

Morphological manifestations of lethal narcotic poisoning are analyzed on the basis of results presented in "Acts of Medical Examination of Corpse" and "Expert Conclusions" on 352 cases with lethal narcotic poisoning, suspected (with good grounds) poisoning, and combined poisoning with narcotics and other agents. Causes of failure to detect narcotics in forensic chemical analysis of biological material from the corpse are enumerated.     

Protesting a perceived injustice: Sex discrimination and the restoration of equity

In this paper we propose a theoretical model that examines the relationship between resources and significant others in people's attempts to restore equity. Viewing the restoration of equity as a complex process, we integrate resource mobilization and equity arguments in order to better understand how people come to dispute and settle fair terms of exchange in allocative relationships. With individual-level data, we examine sex discrimination complaints and show that protest reactions against a perceived injustice are influenced by the level of resources a person controls. We find that the more resources a person controls, the better able she or he is in managing the protest and negotiation for equity. Further, resources also protect complainants from reprisals by the source of the inequity. These findings provide insight into the process by which people attempt to restore equity, and they suggest that the examination of real-life inequitable relations enhances our understanding of reactions to inequity.     

Representative Bureaucracy: A Lever to Enhance Social Equity,Coproduction, and Democracy

Scholars and practitioners have long questioned whether the race, ethnicity, and gender of public bureaucrats matter to the efficacy and legitimacy of public services. Representative bureaucracy theory and research provide a growing body of empirical evidence that it does. This article examines some of the rich scholarly work that has been generated on representative bureaucracy and its implications for practice. A significant aspect of recent research focuses on the notion of symbolic representation, whereby the mere existence of a passively represented bureaucracy can itself improve outcomes by influencing the attitudes and behaviors of clients, regardless of bureaucratic actions or results. This article is intended to help both students and public managers understand the importance of representativeness in public organizations for a broad spectrum of practices and goals, from the coproduction of services to democratic rule.