Systems Changes Associated with Criminal Justice Treatment Networks

This article examines the ability of service networks to improve substance abuse treatment access and service delivery to adult, substance-abusing female offenders. In fiscal year 1995, the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment (part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services's Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration) funded four demonstration projects to establish Criminal Justice Treatment Networks to improve substance abuse treatment access and service delivery to adult female offenders while they were involved in the criminal justice system. This study seeks to determine whether the networks promoted systemic change in the community agencies and organizations where they are housed. This article is based on a series of annual site visits, reports, and regular communication with network staff and local evaluators. The findings indicate that networks can improve service delivery in criminal justice and substance abuse treatment systems.     

Giving Up (on) Rights? The Future of Rights and the Project of Radical Democracy

Debate over the theory of rights has recently reemerged, with a confrontation between postfoundational writings that challenge the very discourse of rights and Habermasians (and others) who insist on the foundational centrality of rights. This article will not enter such a debate directly, but rather will try to take seriously that challenge itself. The article asks what, exactly, is at stake in an argument for or against rights and queries whether this challenge to rights discourse entails giving up on rights as a tool of political leverage. In responding to such questions I indicate a future for rights and rights discourse, one found within the project of radical democracy. I not only insist that we cannot abandon the discourse of rights in contemporary theory and politics, but also go on to suggest that sustaining and reinvigorating the discourse of rights requires a significant displacement of that discourse from the dominant terms of liberalism and toward those of radical democracy.     

Accountability and Coercion: Is Justice Blind when It Runs for Office?

Through their power to sentence, trial judges exercise enormous authority in the criminal justice system. In 39 American states, these judges stand periodically for reelection. Do elections degrade their impartiality? We develop a dynamic theory of sentencing and electoral control. Judges discount the future value of retaining office relative to implementing preferred sentences. Voters are largely uninformed about judicial behavior, so even the outcome of a single publicized case can be decisive in their evaluations. Further, voters are more likely to perceive instances of underpunishment than overpunishment. Our theory predicts that elected judges will consequently become more punitive as standing for reelection approaches. Using sentencing data from 22,095 Pennsylvania criminal cases in the 1990s, we find strong evidence for this effect. Additional tests confirm the validity of our theory over alternatives. For the cases we examine, we attribute at least 1,818 to 2,705 years of incarceration to the electoral dynamic.     

Democracy and the Violation of Human Rights: A Statistical Analysis from 1976 to 1996

Most studies posit and identify a linear and negative relationship between democracy and the violation of human rights. Some research challenges this finding, however, suggesting that nonlinear influences exist. Within this article, we examine the structure of the relationship between democracy and repression during the time period from 1976 to 1996. To conduct our analysis, we utilize diverse statistical approaches which are particularly flexible in identifying influences that take a variety of functional forms (specifically LOESS and binary decomposition). Across measures and methodological techniques, we found that below a certain level, democracy has no impact on human rights violations, but above this level democracy influences repression in a negative and roughly linear manner. The implications of this research are discussed within the conclusion .     

Campaign-Finance Reform: A Public Choice Perspective

The Federal Election Campaign Act as passed in 1971 and amended in 1974represented landmark federal legislation. It imposed new restrictions oncampaign contributions and contained path-breaking provisions for the useof public funds to partially finance the campaigns of qualifyingpresidential candidates. The nominal intent of the legislation was torestrain the skyrocketing campaign costs and the feared abuses thatgrowing dependencies on such money engendered. Three decades later, withthe campaign spending ``arms race'' still raging. Congress sought toimpose further constraints on campaign spending with enactment of theBipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (BCRA). Competing theories ofgovernment regulation are reviewed to better understand the intent andlikely consequences of the 2002 legislation in particular and campaignfinance regulation in general. A simple model of the campaign spendingprocess highlights the likely causes of the rapid growth in campaignspending. Data and evidence are presented to test hypotheses concerningthe timing of and underlying motivations for BCRA.     

Social networks and non‐market strategy

To date, the field of non‐market strategy has little to offer in the way of an integrated perspective on the simultaneous management of strategic issues and corporate stakeholders. This paper employs social network analysis to make a number of theoretically grounded conjectures about the delicate relationships between stakeholder behaviour and issue evolution. It is found that social network analysis has the potential to enrich and integrate theoretical perspectives in the field of non‐market strategy, offering solutions to a set of previously unresolved puzzles. Copyright © 2004 Henry Stewart Publications     

Innovative approaches to reforming public services in Tanzania

Against the background of growing convergence amongst countries with regard to the focus on their public service reforms, the forces driving the same and communalities amongst approaches being adopted, the article assesses the various phases of Tanzania's public service reforms over 20 years. It concludes by posing two questions: first, how are the reforms contributing to improvements in poverty reduction and in service delivery? Second, why should ‘reform’ be treated as a priority in the allocation of budgetary resources by development partners? The answer is that direct links between Public Service Reform Programme (PSRP) interventions and poverty reduction remains elusive, and the challenge is how best to manage that situation. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.