The CAFTA Conflict and Costa Rica's Democracy: Assessing the 2007 Referendum

The process of ratifying CAFTA in Costa Rica required traversing a contentious political landscape involving intense legislative battles, massive public demonstrations, and finally a national referendum in October 2007. By employing the mechanism of direct democracy to ratify a free trade agreement, Costa Rica made history. But how did this experiment with direct participation affect Costa Rica's democracy? This article evaluates what the referendum achieved in terms of promoting citizen engagement, equipping voters to make informed choices, resolving the CAFTA conflict in a way viewed as legitimate, and shaping citizens' relationships to representative institutions. While the referendum had positive effects, it had several negative consequences for representative democracy, which raises questions about the limits of democratic control over economic policy in the era of globalization.     

The co-implementation of Compstat and community policing

Over the last twenty-five years Compstat and community policing have emerged as powerful movements in U.S. police reform. Despite their importance, there are virtually no studies on how they interact when implemented in the same police organization. Based on field work in seven police agencies, this article provides the first systematic research on this co-implementation issue. In doing so it examines the reform literature to illuminate and clarify the key doctrinal elements of Compstat and community policing, including where they are similar and where they differ. Next it describes the patterns of co-implementation that emerged across different sites, including the finding that these reforms operated largely independently. This leads us to consider a broader theoretical explanation for why this should be the case and to provide a basis for enriching future research on the co-implementation of these reforms.     

Book Reviews

Women and Public Policy: The Shifting Boundaries Between the Public and Private Spheres. Edited by S. Baker and A. Van Doorne‐Huiskes. Ashgate Publishing Ltd., 1999. Pp.234.

Environmental Movements: Local, National and Global. Edited by Christopher Rootes. Frank Cass. 1999. Pp 316. £39.50 hb; £17.50 pb.

Driving Forces ‐ The Automobile, its Enemies and the Politics of Mobility. By James A. Dunn JR. Brookings Institution Press, 1998. Pp.230. $18.95 pb; $44.95 hb.

Perspectives on British Rural Planning Policy 1994–97. By Andrew Gilg. Ashgate, 1999. Pp.154. £35 hb.

Power to the Parishes. Special issue of Local Governance. Edited by A. Coulson. Institute of Local Government Studies, University of Birmingham, 2000. £10.

The Changing Nature of Local Government in Developing Countries. Edited by Patricia L. McCarney. Centre for Urban and Community Studies, University of Toronto, 1996. Pp.314.

Planning Beyond 2000. Edited by P. Allmendinger and M. Chapman. John Wiley &; Sons, 1999. £22.50 pb.

Regional Policy and Planning in Europe. By P. Balchin, L. Sykora and G. Bull. Routledge, 1999. £15.99 pb.

Urban Policy and Politics in Britain. By Dilys M. Hill. Macmillan, 2000. Pp.254. £.14.99 pb.

Local Statesmen: The Story of Politics in Nottinghamshire County Council. By Peter Housden. The Local Government Centre, University of Warwick and Nottinghamshire County Council, 2000. Pp.219. £9.99 plus £2 postage and packaging.

County Borough Elections in England and Wales 1919–1938: A Comparative Analysis: Volume 1: Barnsley ‐ Bournemouth. By Sam Davies and Bob Morley. Ashgate, 1999. Pp.708. £80.

The British Police. Police Forces and Chief Officers 1829–2000. By Martin Stallion and David S. Wall. Police History Society, 1999. Pp.256. £15 pb.

Policing Provincial England 1829–1856: The Politics of Reform. By David Philips and Robert D. Storch. Leicester University Press, 1999. Pp.342. £55 hb.     

The Contradictory Effects in Efficiency and Citizens’ Participation when Employing Geo-ICT Apps within Local Government

Abstract

With the increasing use of web-based mapping applications, inter-mediation between public planning agencies and citizens is changing. This article investigates how one form of inter-mediation, geo-ICT-enabled apps (applications on mobile phones and/or internet that use maps or locations as basic references for any functional analysis), influences the degree of efficiency and participation in managing public space. The theoretical assumption here is that such apps encourage information disclosure and therefore have the potential to make a local government more responsive and transparent. Drawing on observation, interviews, and document and web content analysis conducted as part of a case study, this article suggests that the apps have indeed enhanced one municipality’s response and have made citizens more active in uploading their complaints. However, unexpected and contradictory effects include an increase in trivial complaints, which has made the handling of reports less efficient, and the emergence of opportunistic behaviour by third parties on the basis of the complaints, which has made the services less effective. Consequently, the assumed causal relation between enhanced citizen participation and increased transparency and information disclosure requires an adaptation that incorporates such wicked effects.     

Public relations,passive aggression and critical social auditing: reflections on organisational inaction in stakeholder engagement

This article explores issues associated with organisational governance in the context of stakeholder engagement. It argues that both public relations (PR) research and practice have yet to address systematically the challenges inherent in this area, particularly how organisations exert power over stakeholders. Prompted by a consideration of the situational theory of power put forward by the sociologist Steven Lukes, it introduces the concept of passive aggression to PR practice. This is cited as an example of a wider phenomenon, which the author calls dark dialogue. The insights generated by these perspectives are used to highlight how theoretical approaches in the PR field that seek to understand and promote the role of dialogue in organisational‐stakeholder relations face an empirical challenge. This insight is then used to highlight the limitations of what has been traditionally termed as social auditing. It is suggested that PR and social auditing practice share the same blind spots when it comes to assessing how organisations exercise power and behave towards their stakeholders. The article goes on to advocate collaboration between PR professionals and academics to practically address these issues through a reconfigured social auditing process. It ends by suggesting that action research provides a methodological framework through which these theory‐practice interactions can be facilitated productively. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Beyond static and dynamic risk factors: the incremental validity of release planning for predicting sex offender recidivism

Both desistance research and strengths-based approaches to offender rehabilitation suggest that attempts to reduce sex offender recidivism should attend to an offender's release environment. Recent research has demonstrated that better quality release planning is associated with reduced recidivism; however, whether release planning contributes significant incremental validity in predicting recidivism over and above static and dynamic risk factors is unclear. In the present study, release planning was retrospectively assessed for a sample of child molesters (n = 196) who had been released into the community following completion of a prison-based treatment program and its relative contribution to recidivism risk prediction was investigated. The average follow-up period was 11.08 years, during which 13.3% of the sample were convicted of a new sexual offence. Hierarchical Cox regression analyses showed that release planning contributed additional predictive validity for sexual recidivism after controlling for static and dynamic risk factors. Findings suggest that assessment of release planning might improve accuracy of sex offender risk assessments and that improved release planning should contribute to reductions in recidivism.     

City management,public administration and the American enlightenment

As the cost and size of government continues to escalate, there is a growing concern over increasing the efficiency and effectiveness in the delivery of public services. Productivity bargaining as one tool has Cained the attention of a small but growing number of public officials who see this technique as one rational method of resolving the conflicting pressures generated by the demand for government services on the one hand and limited resources on the other. The experience of one large metropolitan area with productivity bargaining is reviewed at some length.