Changing the design: cabinet decision-making in three provincial governments

Abstract: The subject of this investigation is cabinet decision-making in the provincial governments of Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and British Columbia. Specifically, it attempts to examine the forces that underlie the initiation and persistence of cabinet institutionalization in the postwar period. The postwar period has witnessed the replacement of the unaided (or traditional) cabinet by the institutionalized (or structured) cabinet. In other words, unstructured and relatively uncoordinated central executives have given way to those which are more structured, more collegial, and more prone to emphasize planning and coordination. The factors promoting initial cabinet institutionalization in the three provinces were a mixture of ideology, pragmatism, and historical precedent unique to each province. There were both endogenous factors (those growing from within government) and exogenous factors (those acting from without) which affected the persistence of institutionalized cabinets. They were common to more than one province but their relative weight differed between premiers. Not surprisingly, the institutionalization of provincial cabinets has had major effects on political actors and functions in the three provinces studied. Cabinet structure has both changed and been changed by power relations within cabinet. Full cabinet appears to have been overshadowed as a decision-making center. It is apparent that central agencies and central departments do not always yield similar political effects. Lastly, planning and budgeting have grown in both complexity and complementarily. Sommaire: Cette enquête traite du le processus décisionnel au sein du Conceal des ministers dans les governments provinciaux de la Saskatchewan, du Manitoba et de la Colombie-Britannique. Plus précisément, elle cherche B examiner les forces qui ont favorisé l'apparition puis le maintien de l'institutionnalisation des Conseils des ministres au cours de l'après-guerre.     

Assessing Correlates of Onset, Escalation, Deescalation, and Desistance of Delinquent Behavior

This article evaluates the utility of social development model constructs toassess the correlates of onset, escalation, deescalation, and desistance ofdelinquent behavior, from age 12 to age 15, using a dynamic classificationapproach. Dynamic classification places individuals into categories basedon changes in levels of delinquent behavior over time. These analyses assessthe extent to which specific constructs are associated with changes in thedelinquency status of individuals. Constructs of the social developmentmodel (SDM), including opportunities for conventional involvement, skillsfor conventional involvement, rewards for conventional involvement,proactive family management, bonding to conventional society, opportunitiesfor antisocial involvement, antisocial interactions, perceived rewards forantisocial involvement, and norms against drug use, were significantlyassociated with change in delinquent behavior over time. Many of theconstructs were particularly salient in distinguishing between youths whoremained involved in delinquency and youths who deescalated or desisted fromdelinquent behavior during this period. Implications for preventiveinterventions and criminological theory are discussed.     

The Ironies of Helping: Social Interventions and Executable Subjects

Law and society scholars have theorized about the link between capital punishment and the hegemony of individualism, but few offer empirical investigations to illustrate how individualism makes capital punishment possible (and vice versa) in the contemporary United States. In order to fill this gap, we analyze the legal and human service records that were compiled in the construction of one executable subject, Daniel Farnsworth. Using a critical discourse approach, we look at what was said and not said about Daniel in the records created by various helping agencies. In our analysis, we demonstrate how the helping agencies involved in Daniel's life repeatedly relied on an individuating psychological paradigm that led them to produce decontextualized catalogs of his actions and characteristics. Next, we illustrate how these pathologizing accounts were, ironically, later invoked in court in the name of preserving his life. Finally, we explain how "helping" discourses, along with the rules that regulate capital defense practice, straightjacket defense attorneys into reinforcing individualism in this context.     

Walking the walk vs. talking the talk： A comparative analysis of the ASA and ASPA ethics initiatives

The American Sociological Association and the American Society for Public Administration are widely recognized as being among the premier professional associations in their respective fields within academia and beyond. Although a commitment to the promotion of ethical competence among their members is clearly viewed by both organizations as being central to the accomplishment of their missions, their techniques for doing so have included both similar and unique initiatives. It is the purpose of this paper to provide a comprehensive, comparative inventory of their ethics-related programs with a view toward determining if the establishment of what would appear to be a mutually beneficial, collaborative relationship between the ASA and ASPA in the ethics arena should be pursued.     

Beyond Horror: Terrorist Atrocity and the Search for Understanding-- The Case of the Shankill Bombing

The old order has broken up. We have reached the end of a postwar world whose premises were based on terror, but whose conditions had become familiar, and even comforting, over the years. The waters we are now entering are unchartered and perhaps treacherous, and we are not likely to steer safely through them unless we have the courage to question the old assumptions which once seemed eternal and have now become so threadbare.     

Fear of a black planet: anarchy anxieties and postcolonial travel to Africa

Western travel to Africa has historically involved the construction and consumption of African otherness. In the postcolonial era this is most clearly evident in Western tourism to the continent, where Africa is frequently marketed as an exoticised destination to see and consume both ‘nature’ and ‘native’. The Western tourist gaze often requires fixing Africans, both in a spatial site (‘village’) and a temporal site (‘tradition’). Africans on the move (both spatially and temporally) are often seen as threatening to the Western‐established images of Africa, which are grounded in a long‐standing fear of ‘unorded’ and ‘chaotic’ African space. After 11 September and the USA's ‘war on terror’ retributive response, the political implications of these fears are evinced in the writings of Robert Kaplan and his popular ‘coming anarchy’ thesis. The article concludes with a critique of Kaplan's work and a discussion of its implications for Africa and African international relations.