Special Section Introduction: Thriving in Context: Findings from the 4-H Study of Positive Youth Development

The positive youth development perspective, a strength-based relational developmental systems model that focuses on mutually influential relationships between individuals and contexts, has been used to study thriving across the second decade of life. However, more attention has been paid empirically to identifying the features of the individual (e.g., intentional self regulation, hope, or purpose) or to enumerating the role of context-general ecological assets than to the nature of individual-context relationships linked to thriving within specific contexts. The goal of this special section is to provide initial research reports about context-specific instances of the thriving process. The research focuses on two contexts where many youth spend a considerable amount, and often the majority, of their time—school and out-of-school time sports activities.     

Suffragette sisters in old age: unpublished correspondence between Christabel and Sylvia Pankhurst, 1953–57

Christabel Pankhurst (1880-1958) and Sylvia Pankhurst (1882-1960) were key figures in the fight for women's suffrage in Edwardian Britain but became estranged in 1914 over differences of view about policies and tactics for winning the vote. They had no contact with each other for almost forty years. In the spring of 1953, Sylvia had a severe heart attack and was not expected to survive. Christabel wrote a letter of sympathy to her which led, over the next four years, to intermittent correspondence between the two sisters. In these letters, which form the basis of this documentary article, the authors begin by reminiscing about their childhood and parents; later, they comment on what they perceive to be inaccuracies and/or malice in books about the suffragette movement that were published after the Second World War. In many of the letters, the sisters reflect on their memories of their involvement in the women's suffrage movement, some three decades earlier. The correspondence reveals, however, that the renewed contact between the sisters did not lead to any real meeting of minds. Two of the letters are reproduced photographically in full     

Public Sector Participation and Compliance across National and Global Transparency Regimes

Transparency has recently become a widely supported norm of information regulation within and among states. Transparency may be a widely accepted element of good governance, but it has a number of dimensions and manifestations. This article is among the first to examine the relationship between public sector transparency at the domestic and global levels. While the extant literature suggests that we should expect a strong relationship between the degree of a jurisdiction’s domestic and global commitments to public sector transparency, our sample of the 33 jurisdictions for which data are available finds no such correlation. The article develops an explanation of this unexpected finding, which highlights the varied incentives to implement transparency-promoting reforms that different jurisdictions experience. This analysis suggests that many developing countries engage in marginal participation across regimes. More concerning are possible cases of mock compliance where states participate in transparency regimes without the intention of fully implementing their commitments. Mock compliance is of particular concern in the sphere of global governance in which sovereignty is contested and compliance mechanisms face unique challenges.     

Five years after the Arab Spring: a critical evaluation

A new political geography has emerged in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) after the Arab Spring. The transformative impact of the popular upheavals appeared to put an end to long-term authoritarian regimes. Today, the region is far from stable since authoritarian resilience violently pushed back popular demands for good governance and is pushing to restore former state structures. However, the collective consciousness of the popular revolts endures, and a transformative prospect may emerge on the horizon. The chaotic situation is the result of an ongoing struggle between those who seek change and transformation and others in favour of the status quo ante. A critical evaluation of the Arab Spring after five years indicates a continuous process of recalculation and recalibration of policies and strategies. There are alternative routes for an eventual settlement in the MENA region, which are in competition against both regional and transregional quests for a favourable order.     

Marijuana medicalization and motor vehicle fatalities: a synthetic control group approach

Journal of Experimental Criminology - This paper reports a quasi-experimental evaluation of California’s 1996 medical marijuana law (MML), known as Proposition 215, on statewide motor vehicle...