FREEDOM OF INFORMATION IN AUSTRALIA, CANADA AND NEW ZEALAND

In 1982, Australia, Canada and New Zealand introduced freedom of information (FOI) laws. The author visited all three countries in 1986-7 to study how the legislation was being used, and its impact on the workings of Westminster-style government. A table summarizes the main features of the legislation. The article discusses the different appeal mechanisms; the implications for ministerial accountability; the level of take-up; the different categories of user; administrative costs and benefits; staffing requirements, refusal rates, fees, etc. Apart from requests for personal files, the level of demand has been relatively low; ministerial accountability remains unchanged; the legislation has successfully protected government secrets; and the overall cost has not proved too great. FOI has not realized its more ambitious objectives, such as increasing public participation in government decision-making; but at the same time, it has not fulfilled many of its opponents' worst fears.     

RATIONAL POLITICIANS AND RATIONAL BUREAUCRATS IN WASHINGTON AND WHITEHALL

William Niskanen's theory of Bureaucracy and Representative Government predicts that the interaction of rational vote-maximizing politicians and rational budget-maximizing bureaucrats will lead to an oversupply of bureaucratic goods and services. The demand, supply and motivational components of this model are all shown to be flawed; and the oversupply conclusion therefore fails to follow. A revised model constructed from the elements that can be salvaged from this critique suggests that rational mission-committed politicians and bureaucrats join in a policy-making oligopoly, run internally on the basis of trust and externally on the manipulation of information. This leads to a skewing (rather than a simple oversupply) of bureaucratic goods and services. Some evidence suggests that this model fits British as well as American policy-making.     

THE EFFECTS OF SELECTION SYSTEM ON JURY COMPOSITION

The Supreme Court and judicial scholars have argued that the demographic composition of grand and petit juries is important. To the extent that composition is a function of the selection system used, this suggests that the method of selecting grand and petit jurors is important. This article tests the link between selection system and composition by comparing the representation of blacks, Mexican-Americans, and women on grand juries selected by commissioners with the same three classes' representation on grand juries selected at random from the voter registration lists. For these jurisdictions, only female representation is consistently higher under random selection procedures.     

THE LINK BETWEEN OFFENDING AND VICTIMIZATION AMONG ADOLESCENTS*

Prior research on victimization in the United States has generally neglected two key areas—victimization among juveniles and young adults and the connection between offending and victimization. The research presented here fuses these two concerns by examining the effect of delinquent lifestyles on the criminal victimization of teenagers and young adults. An examination of longitudinal data from the first five waves of the National Youth Survey suggests that adolescent involvement in delinquent lifestyles strongly increases the risk of both personal and property victimization. Further, the analysis reveals that a significant proportion of the risk of victimization incurred by different demographic subgroups—especially males—results from greater involvement in lifestyles characterized by delinquency. The authors conclude that victimization patterns among youths cannot be understood apart from criminal and deviant activities.     

DRIVING WHILE BLACK: EFFECTS OF RACE,ETHNICITY, AND GENDER ON CITIZEN SELF‐REPORTS OF TRAFFIC STOPS AND POLICE ACTIONS*

Are African‐American men, compared with white men, more likely to report being stopped by police for traffic law violations? Are African‐American men and Hispanic drivers less likely to report that police had a legitimate reason for the stop and less likely to report that police acted properly? This study answers these questions using citizen self‐reports of their traffic stop encounters with the police. Net of other important explanatory variables, the data indicate that police make traffic stops for Driving While Black and male. In addition, African‐American and Hispanic drivers are less likely to report that police had a legitimate reason for the stop and are less likely to report that police acted properly. The study also discusses the validity of citizen self‐report data and outlines an agenda for future research.     

A Discourse-Theoretical Conception of Practical Reason*

Abstract
Contemporary discussions about practical reason or practical rationality invoke four competing views which can be named as follows by reference to their historical models: Aristotelian, Hobbesian, Kantian and Nietzschean. The subject-matter of this article is a defence of the Kantian conception of practical rationality in the interpretation of discourse theory. At the heart, lies the justification and the application of the rules of discourse. An argument consisting of three parts is pre sented to justify the rules of discourse. The three parts are as follows: a transcen dental-pragmatic argument; an argument which takes account of the maximisation of individual utility and an empirical premise about an interest in correctness. Within the framework of the problem of application, the article outlines a justification of human rights and of the basic institutions of the democratic constitutional state on the basis of discourse theory.     

THE EFFECT OF LONGITUDINAL ARREST PATTERNS ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF ROBBERY TRENDS AT THE NEIGHBORHOOD LEVEL *

Although the current resurgence of ecological deterrence research has addressed many of the methodological and theoretical problems of earlier studies, the question concerning the appropriate level of aggregation for such models has not been resolved. In this paper, we argue that there is strong evidence in the criminological literature that the neighborhood is the most meaningful level of aggregation for such studies. However, in an analysis of robbery incidents and arrests over 100 weeks in five Oklahoma City neighborhoods we did not find any significant support for the deterrent effect of arrests on subsequent illegal behavior. We propose that the lack of such a relationship reflects periods of short-term equilibrium in the local community, during which the levels of crime and arrests are relatively stabilized.     

Social democratic parties and EC integration

Abstract. This paper presents evidence of initial steps taken since 1989 towards the enhancement of social democratic transnational party co-operation, manifesting itself on both a programmatic and an organizational level. To explain this development, a thesis based on the neo-functionalist logic of political spillover together with a theory of party change is presented. An emerging European-level presence is explained by increased EC policymaking since the adoption of the Single European Act, interacting with the internal preconditions for organizational innovation present in many social democratic parties. Evidence of such trends is then submitted, focusing on the French Socialist, German Social-Democratic and British Labour Parties; the European Parliament Socialist Group; and the Socialist transnational party federation.     

STRUCTURAL SOURCES OF VARIATION IN RACE-AGE-SPECIFIC RATES OF OFFENDING ACROSS MAJOR U.S. CITIES*

Recently, much attention has been focused on the structural determinants of variations in crime rates across U.S. cities. Virtually all research in this area has utilized aggregate reported offense rates as the dependent variable. While it provides a good indicator of the total volume of crime, the aggregate crime rate suffers two major disadvantages-it obscures individual- and aggregate-level effects, and it does not allow testing of criminological theory which specifies differential effects of economic variables (for example, poverty, inequality) on offending rates for various population subgroups (for example, black adults, white adults). The present study addresses these issues by examining the economic determinants of age, race, and crime-specific offending rates for a sample of the nation's largest cities. The overall results suggest that income inequality has a direct positive effect on black offending rates for serious crime, whereas black poverty has no effect. In contrast, white poverty has positive effects on white violence, while inequality significantly increases white robbery and burglary. The implications of findings for recent theoretical developments of conflict and relative deprivation theory are assessed.