Individual Popularity,Peer Group Popularity Composition and Adolescents’ Alcohol Consumption

Previous studies have convincingly shown associations between popularity and adolescent drinking. This study examined whether the popularity composition of the peer group and the relative difference in popularity between adolescents and their peers are also associated with adolescent drinking. Participants were 800 adolescents (M _age?=?14.73; SD_age?=?1.00; 51.6?% girls) from 31 classrooms who completed peer ratings of popularity and self-reports of alcohol consumption. Results showed that drinking was higher among popular than unpopular adolescents, higher among popular adolescents surrounded by less popular classmates, and lower in classrooms with more variability in popularity. Thus, beyond individual popularity, peer group popularity composition also should be taken into account when investigating antisocial and health risk behaviors in adolescence such as drinking.     

Weapons of the week,weakness of the weapons: Shifts and stasis in development theory

Over the past half century the theory, practice and politics informing development studies have followed contrasting trajectories, a tangled epistemological pattern displayed inadvertently by some of the contributions to three of the four books reviewed here. This inconsistency has resulted in confusion, not least where current Marxist approaches to the agrarian question are concerned. Unsurprisingly, therefore, misinterpretations of unfree labour plus the jettisoning of class analysis have led to the abandonment of socialism, and its replacement with nationalism and bourgeois democracy as desirable political objectives. By locating rural class formation and agrarian struggle in a global capitalist context, however, one of the four books demonstrates the continuing importance of socialist politics to the study of development.     

Crisis Management in the Catholic Church: Lessons for Public Administrators

The Catholic Church offers a timely, significant case study of institutional failure. Looking at an in‐depth examination of the sex abuse scandal conducted by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, the author discusses how the church crisis relates to classic public administration and crisis management theory. Given the similarities between the church and the government as public bureaucratic institutions, public administrations have much to learn from the case. Lessons include immediately sharing harsh truths with the public, accepting the stark realities of higher “public” expectations, establishing appropriate accountability systems, and fostering trust by building close community relationships. It is equally important to consider that church leaders neither fully considered nor absorbed key lessons from existing administrative theory. Concepts such as inappropriate organizational culture, bureaucracy, technicism, and goal displacement often blind leaders to adopting best practices based on well‐established theory.     

Metropolitan challenges and reform pressures across Europe – the perspectives of city mayors

Metropolitan governance arrangements and their policy purposes have been a matter of debate among researchers and practitioners around the globe. While we may trace three broad schools of metropolitan governance – reform school, public choice theory and new regionalism – with each still having its proponents, we are interested to learn whether there are assumptions on metropolitan governance that have today become general knowledge among urban political elites. By investigating the attitudes and perceptions of city mayors across Europe, we show that functional multipurpose governance bodies are indeed more generally associated with equitable service distribution, whereas the preconditions for cost-efficiency and sustainable development are more equivocally placed at different modes of governance. Moreover, we show that a perceived general lack of problem-solving capacities does not automatically translate into pressures for metropolitan reform, but it is only in combination with a general disaffection with the governance structures currently in place.     

From the Wembley Conference to the ‘McDonnell Amendment’: Labour's Leadership Nomination Rules

A recent change to the Labour party's nomination rules for leadership elections was the eighth such major modification of this brief clause in the party's rule book since 1981. These changes have provided a barometer of factional conflict over this period and indicate the importance of gate‐keeping powers in leadership selection. This article recounts the history of these eight rule changes. It shows how the proportion of Labour MPs (and later MEPs) required to nominate candidates in leadership elections has oscillated markedly, as the left has tried to reduce it while centrists have sought to increase it. The most recent change in 2017, when the threshold was decreased to 10 per cent of Labour MPs and MEPs, was a victory for the left. The article argues that the changes to Labour's nomination rules, while lower‐key than the extension of voting rights from MPs to ordinary members, have been just as significant.     

Social Citizenship of Young People in Europe: A Comparative Institutional Analysis*

This article explains the diversity of young people’s access to social welfare by distinguishing between two models of social citizenship in a comparative analysis of 15 Western European countries. On the one hand, social citizenship can be familialized, when young people are considered as children and therefore do not receive state benefits in their own name. This form of citizenship is found in Bismarckian welfare states, based on the principle of subsidiarity. On the other hand, it can be individualized, in which case young people can be entitled to benefits in their own right, insofar as they are considered as adults. This form of social citizenship is found more in Beveridgean welfare states.     

Policy learning and change during crisis: COVID-19 policy responses across six states

Whereas policy change is often characterized as a gradual and incremental process, effective crisis response necessitates that organizations adapt to evolving problems in near real time. Nowhere is this dynamic more evident than in the case of COVID-19, which forced subnational governments to constantly adjust and recalibrate public health and disease mitigation measures in the face of changing patterns of viral transmission and the emergence of new information. This study assesses (a) the extent to which subnational policies changed over the course of the pandemic; (b) whether these changes are emblematic of policy learning; and (c) the drivers of these changes, namely changing political and public health conditions. Using a novel dataset analyzing each policy's content, including its timing of enactment, substantive focus, stringency, and similar variables, results indicate the pandemic response varied significantly across states. The states examined were responsive to both changing public health and political conditions. This study identifies patterns of preemptive policy learning, which denotes learning in anticipation of an emerging hazard. In doing so, the study provides important insights into the dynamics of policy learning and change during disaster.     

Exclusionary School Discipline and Delinquent Outcomes: A Meta-Analysis

Journal of Youth and Adolescence - Excluding students from school remains a common form of punishment despite growing critique of the practice. A disparate research base has impeded the ability to...     

Inevitable Answers: The Joke and its Relation to Social Equilibrium in the Novels of Ivy Compton-Burnett

The majority of existing studies of Ivy Compton-Burnett’s comedy class her as either a ‘camp’ novelist, or a social satirist in whose novels jokes are used for either oppression or subversion. The present essay proposes a new reading of the social uses of jokes in Compton-Burnett’s novels. In these domestic fictions, family life is characterized by constant strife, most commonly of a verbal nature. As part of their daily struggle for power and position, her characters use aggressive jokes to keep each other in check. This process does not distinguish primarily between oppressors and oppressed, but between successful and unsuccessful egotists. As an ideal result, a social equilibrium emerges that is at least vaguely habitable to all. This way, Compton-Burnett’s comedy is essentially conservative; the ultimate function of the jokes employed by her characters is not to permanently transform social structures, but to maintain the delicate balance of power within the family.