Juvenile Offenders’ Alcohol and Marijuana Trajectories: Risk and Protective Factor Effects in the Context of Time in a Supervised Facility

The current study modeled trajectories of substance use from ages 15 to 20 among 1,095 male serious juvenile offenders (M age = 16.54; 42% African-American, 34% Latino, 20% European-American, and 4% other ethnic/racial backgrounds) and prospectively predicted trajectories from risk and protective factors before and after controlling for time spent in a supervised setting. Results indicated that supervised time suppressed age-related growth in substance use. Trajectories of offenders with no supervised time and low levels of supervised time increased in substance use across age, whereas offenders with high levels of supervised time showed no growth. Almost all risk and protective factors had effects on initial substance use but only adolescent history of substance use, impulse control, and psychosocial maturity had an effect on change in substance use over time. Findings highlight the importance of formal sanctions and interventions superimposed on normal developmental processes in understanding trajectories of substance use among serious juvenile offenders.

Individual and Contextual Predictors of Cyberbullying: The Influence of Children’s Provictim Attitudes and Teachers’ Ability to Intervene

Electronic social communication has provided a new context for children to bully and harass their peers and it is clear that cyberbullying is a growing public health concern in the US and abroad. The present study examined individual and contextual predictors of cyberbullying in a sample of 16, 634 students in grades 3–5 and 7–8. Data were obtained from a large cluster-randomized trial of the KiVa antibullying program that occurred in Finland between 2007 and 2009. Students completed measures at pre-intervention assessing provictim attitudes (defined as children’s beliefs that bullying is unacceptable, victims are acceptable, and defending victims is valued), perceptions of teachers’ ability to intervene in bullying, and cyberbullying behavior. Students with higher scores on provictim attitudes reported lower frequencies of cyberbullying. This relationship was true for individual provictim attitudes as well as the collective attitudes of students within classrooms. Teachers’ ability to intervene assessed at the classroom level was a unique, positive predictor of cyberbullying. Classrooms in which students collectively considered their teacher as capable of intervening to stop bullying had higher mean levels of cyberbullying frequency. Our findings suggest that cyberbullying and other indirect or covert forms of bullying may be more prevalent in classrooms where students collectively perceive their teacher’s ability to intervene in bullying as high. We found no evidence that individual or contextual effects were conditional on age or gender. Implications for research and practice are discussed.     

Performing the demos: towards a processive theory of global democracy

Debates on global democracy have tended to focus on the possibility of a global democratic entity based on the feasibility of institutional structures that, however inadvertently, take state-based conceptualizations of democracy as their reference point. More recently, however, some theorists have argued for a more ‘performative’ approach that focuses on the demos rather than the kratos and the capacity of political actors to ‘perform’ a role as members of a global demos (List and Koenig-Archibugi 2010 List, C. and Koenig-Archibugi, M., 2010. Can there be a global demos? an Agency-Based approach. Philosophy and public affairs, 38 (1), 76–110.10.1111/papa.2010.38.issue-1[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). While advancing global democracy debates, this ‘performative’ approach leans towards an overly mechanical, static account of performativity that defines democratic behaviour in terms of the functional requirements of political systems. Based on the ‘realist turn’ in contemporary political theory, this article argues for an alternative account of performativity. When coupled with a theory of political complexity, this implies a more processive theory of global democracy that is focused more on what it means for a demos to ‘perform’ democratically than the development of specific institutional configurations. A processive theory of global democracy concentrates more on the emergence of multilevel democratic practices that supplement existing state-based democratic procedures rather than conceiving global democracy as a new, fixed institutional configuration to replace existing democratic structures. Understood in these terms, the debate on the possibility or impossibility of global democracy, which takes as its reference point existing state-based institutional structures, deflects attention from the more pertinent and substantive matter of whether particular initiatives and processes in specific contexts are more or less democratic in global terms.     

COVID-19 Stressors and Latinx Adolescents’ Mental Health Symptomology and School Performance: A Prospective Study

Journal of Youth and Adolescence - This study addressed the need for research examining impacts of the Coronavirus-19 (COVID) pandemic on Latinx adolescents’ adjustment. Survey data for a...     

British Neutrality versus Offshore Balancing in the American Civil War: The English School Strikes Back

The American Civil War is an important test case for offensive realism because it was the last occasion when offshore balancing by Britain could have prevented the United States from becoming a regional hegemon. Instead, Britain drew on the norm of nonintervention to justify a policy of neutrality. Offensive realists reject the idea that Britain was constrained by normative considerations but disagree about why Britain failed to operate as an offshore balancer. I acknowledge the importance of the offensive realists' regionalized approach to the international system, but use English School thinking to argue that the normative framework that Britain and the United States subscribed to must be taken into account to provide a coherent explanation of Britain's response to the Civil War. Detailed archival research demonstrates that despite concern about u.s. regional hegemony, Britain was unequivocally constrained by normative considerations. The case study suggests, therefore, that societal constraints were stronger than systemic ones.     

Crossing the Great Divide: Dilemmas of U.K. Voluntary-Sector Leaders Who Move into Government

Evidence suggests the boundaries between the U.K. government and the voluntary sector are blurring because of an increasing emphasis on partnership between the two. One symptom of this changing relationship–or a contributing cause of it–is the practice of recruiting senior managers from the voluntary sector into government service. The intention is that these managers should play a significant role in formulating and implementing government strategy with regard to the voluntary sector and in other policy areas where voluntary‐sector organizations are seen as key players. This article addresses the issues that voluntary‐sector leaders face when they move into government–to what extent are they insiders, outsiders, or critical friends, and to whom? It concludes that the madness of the government machine is more than the sum of its parts: people, policy, and process.     

Thinking Big

Huge Hisense Appliance Industrial Park in South Africa entrenches the brand’s successful globalimage It’s 2:30 p.m. and the large red electronic counter board on the factory wall registers the day’s 439th flat-screen TV as it rolls off the assembly line. Above that figure glows the daily target of 700. The uniformed staff are bustling in the sanitized, climate-controlled environment-excitedly motivating each other to reach the target, eyes constantly flicking up to the counter.     

Wars in the Balkans: Personal recollections

An examination of South Africa's different foreign policy role conceptions under the administrations of Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki, highlighting the respective governments’ strategies in carving a niche for the country in global relations.     

Experiences of a learning organization in the public sector

This article explores the experience of a municipal government agency as it confronts the challenges and opportunities of meeting seemingly unlimited demands with limited resources. The City of Scottsdale, Arizona, enjoys a national reputation for innovative approaches to public policy issues. This article examines Scottsdale's efforts to create a learning organization, through a Venture Team which represents a core strategy for continuous improvement and lifelong learning.