Serving the State: Constitutionalism and Social Spending, 1860s-1920s

In the 19th century, courts supervised states' social spending by limiting taxation to public purposes. The focus of this article is the courts' approach to pensions. Under a 19th-century doctrine, states could pay money to those who had served the state or, under the rubric of charity, to those who were the indigent helpless. States first paid pensions to people for military service and for serving as firemen; later in the century, the doctrine from these cases provided a framework for expanding civil service pensions as states expanded their civil service. Courts characterized the earlier pensions as earned because the service had been dangerous, requiring bravery from men and possibly leaving helpless women and children without protection. This characterization later shaped evaluations of civil service pensions. The doctrine persisted as states enacted pensions for widowed mothers; when these pensions were challenged in state courts, the courts approved of them as payments to helpless people, not as rewards to those who had served. This characterization counters recent scholarship that argues that mothers' pensions rewarded service as military pensions did.     

Building Community One Relationship at a Time: Consequences for the Seeking and Acceptance of Help

Three studies test the hypothesis that a perceived relationship is relevant to seeking and accepting help. The results first indicate a direct effect for a perceived relationship on the extent to which people are willing to seek and accept help. The findings further indicate that perceiving a relationship increases the importance of procedural justice judgments in shaping the decision to seek and accept help. This was true both in vertical relations (e.g., student–professor, resident–police officer) and in horizontal ones (e.g., student–student). The research extends prior findings showing that common group membership increases the influence of procedural justice judgments on whether people cooperate with fellow group members. The results show a parallel with the effects of a perceived relationship, suggesting a comparability between “relational” and “collective” levels of identity.     

The Intensification of Hating: A Theory

Hate, a simple word, is easily understood by young children. But as a concept, hate is vast, complex, and slippery. The study of hate is not limited to one discipline; it is studied throughout the humanities and social sciences. This paper, which presents a psychological theory of hating, argues that hate is an understudied psychological construct and has particular relevance to justice research. Hate can trigger injustice, and injustice has the capacity to trigger derogation, violence, and hate. Relying on four literatures—justice, psychology, psychoanalysis, and criminal justice—we present a theory of hating that describes the formation, perpetuation, and expression of this influential emotional state. The Intensification Theory of Hating describes hate as a dynamic process that moves from antecedents to emotions, cognitions, morals, and behaviors. Hate, we argue, is not only an emotion; it becomes systemic when interactions among its components unfold over time to intensify hate. We conclude by proposing research approaches and questions that could address hate in psychological and justice research. Submitted to David De Cremer and Kees van den Bos, “Justice and feelings: An emotional revolution”. Social Justice Research, December 11, 2006     

Bushwhacking the Ethical High Road: Conflict of Interest in the Practice of Law and Real Life

A long‐standing scholarly tradition regards professions, in general, and ethics rules, in particular, as “projects” of market control. It is no surprise, critics charge, that in the latest assault on the monopoly of the American legal profession–waged by multidisciplinary professional service firms–lawyers are hiding behind their ethics rules to protect their turf. In this article, I report on an extensive empirical study of conflict of interest in private legal practice and look comparatively at other fiduciaries, among them, accountants, psychotherapists, physicians, journalists, and academics. I investigate the role of ethics rules that seek to insure fiduciary loyalty in structuring the delivery of services. How does social and institutional change, roiling the fiduciary world, threaten disinterestedness and loyalty and how, if at all, do fiduciaries respond? How is the regulation of conflict of interest accomplished? Where are the conflicts rules most likely to be honored or ignored? What incentive structures encourage compliance? What are the costs and unexpected consequences of compliance? What is foregone? And is it all worth it? In what might come as a surprise to many, I find that the legal profession takes conflict of interest more seriously than many of the rest of us. As the title implies, legal practitioners largely travel alone, bushwhacking through the underbrush snarling the ethical high road. As critical scholarship predicted, lawyers do enjoy a monopoly at the end of the road. But this monopoly is achieved, not by restraint of trade or some other artifice or stratagem of market control, but by lack of competition. It seems that no one else is trudging alongside the lawyers. Lawyers are not necessarily more ethical than the others; they just behave more ethically–at least with respect to conflict of interest. The question is why. And what difference does it make?     

Gardening and the cultivation of Australian national space: the writings of Ethel Turner

In the romantic stereotypes of the ‘Bush Myth’, Australian national identity is formed through the confrontation between the bushman and the natural environment, particularly as depicted in ‘realist’ literature. This myth has been displaced from its centrality in numerous ways. Less attention has been paid to the many other competing literary figurings of national identity at the turn of the nineteenth century, and in the early twentieth century. One of these tropes, often used by women writers, looked at the national space not as a hostile and alien environment but as a garden. By contrast, iconic fictions such as Lawson's ‘Water them Geraniums’ show gardening as a feminine pursuit antithetical to (masculine) Australian life. Australia as garden produced a different set of possibilities for the settler colonial plot. Instead of beleaguered fighters against an unyielding wilderness, fictions figuring the nation as a garden produced a potentially more fruitful and less doomed role for the protagonist, particularly the female protagonist. This plot also allowed some casting of urban space, particularly suburban space, as authentic Australian space, rather than second-hand European waste.     

The correlates of child physical abuse and neglect by adolescent mothers

Theoretical and empirical knowledge about the link between adolescent motherhood and child maltreatment is in an early stage of development. Research has produced contradictory findings as to a relationship between the two and has not focused on identifying correlates. To fill gaps in the knowledge base and generate hypotheses for future tests, this secondary analysis of data on a subset of 119 mothers who gave birth prior to their 18th birthday focused on identifying characteristics that discriminate among low-income adolescent mothers with maltreated children and comparable mothers whose children were not known to be maltreated. Bivariate analyses of 18 characteristics from several theoretically justified domains revealed that 11 were associated with neglect and four with abuse. Step-sise discriminant analysis identified six correlates of neglect that correctly classified 85% of the mothers and four for abuse that correctly classified 79% of the mothers. Discussion focuses on implications for future research and hypothesis generation.     

Embracing marginality: place-making vs development in Gardenton,Manitoba

Based on a two-year, multi-method study of ‘development’ in one small community in rural Manitoba, Canada, the article examines how the community and people's reasons for living there have both changed and remained consistent since the beginning of the area's settlement by Ukrainian immigrants in the late nineteenth century. The community has much in common with marginalised areas of the global South, in terms of its treatment at the hands of those in the centre and those who promote ‘development’. The author argues that the concept of ‘place-making’ allows for both a greater understanding of the dynamics in the community and greater possibilities for building sustainable, liveable places, than does the concept or practice of ‘development’.     

Physical restraint and the therapeutic relationship

The role of the forensic mental health nurse has led to many debates due to the conflicts between security and therapeutic aspects of their role. Physical restraint is a security element of the role which may have an impact on their ability to work therapeutically with patients. This study examined the impact of physical restraint on the nursing staff–patient therapeutic relationship. This was investigated in a secure unit in the North of England. Eight semi-structured interviews were conducted with patients across the service, and thematic analysis was undertaken. Five themes were identified from the data which highlighted the impact of the physical restraint as a power imbalance, the experience as traumatic, the importance of justification, the negative attributes and motives of some staff and the impact of coping with powerlessness. Clinical implications and research recommendations are discussed further in this article.     

PAR’s Social Equity Footprint

During the 75th anniversary of Public Administration Review (PAR), this article examines the social equity scholarship published in PAR from 1940 to 2013. Less than 5 percent of all articles published in PAR since its inception focus on social equity. The articles published in PAR are primarily concentrated within the areas of personnel and public policy. Very few articles were published in the areas of budgeting or ethics. While social equity scholarship published in PAR has made a valuable contribution to understanding the career inequities of women and minorities in the public sector, scholars and professionals need to more thoroughly examine the black box of agency practice and structural inequities to examine why they persist. The challenge for future social equity research in public administration is to examine broader dimensions of equity and to understand how social inequities in administration can be mitigated.     

Reconceptualizing Early Ghana

At the time of his death, Nehemia Levtzion had initiated a project to revise Ancient Ghana and Mali in the light of new scholarship since its original publication in 1973. He proposed that the question of origins and early development of Sudanic polities such as Ghana should be thoroughly reconsidered with regard to findings from research in archaeology and related disciplines. In this article, I discuss four topics (climate variability, sedentary-mobile interactions; external / internal dynamics; and organizational variability) central to Levtzion’s 1973 account of Ghana’s origins and the implications of research results to date for our understanding of early political consolidation in the Sahel.