Success in slow motion: The Europeanization of Romanian child protection policy

This paper analyzes the influence of the European Union (EU) through a qualitative case study of child protection policy in Romania. This is a particularly tough case for the growing “Europeanization” literature. Prior research has called attention to several factors that promote Europeanization, including the presence of a pro-reform domestic coalition, the clarity and consistency of the EU’s own legislative targets, a state’s own prior involvement in the setting of European standards, a strong consensus among EU member states backing the European position, and strong non-European support for EU initiatives. According to these propositions, Romanian child protection seemed to provide a worst case scenario for Europeanization, as initially none of these conditions held. And yet the paper shows that substantial Europeanization occurred anyway. We argue that the EU experienced a very slow start with Romania but that it cultivated an opposition that responded to EU initiatives when that opposition took power. Moreover, the EU found three “workarounds” to the obstacles just noted: it asserted legislative targets it did not possess itself, invented new policy tools, and drew protection for its most controversial policy from another international organization, the ECHR. Our central theoretical claim is that external pressure requires internal accommodation in order to have lasting effects. The claim has important implications for the diffusion and conditionality debates.

New frontiers in delivering public infrastructure

Delivering infrastructure in a timely and efficient manner to provide public value remains challenging despite the theoretical developments that have been made. What do we know that could help to deliver quality and energy-efficient infrastructure, what are current challenges and how could we overcome them? This State-of-the-Art Review article attempts to uncover underlying themes, including the governance of large infrastructure projects, the importance of innovation and contractual arrangements, and social and environmental acceptability. A current review of major Canadian contributions is offered, and promising research avenues are proposed.     

Gender Differences in Posttraumatic Stress and Related Symptoms Among Inner-City Minority Youth Exposed to Community Violence

This study examined gender differences in levels of violence exposure, and in levels of posttraumatic stress (PTS) and related symptomatology in a sample of inner-city predominantly African American youth. Because such youth are at risk for exposure to chronic community violence, they are likely to experience considerable distress and clinical or subclinical levels of posttraumatic stress and related symptoms. Previous research has found that although boys are exposed to violence more frequently than are girls, girls are more likely to express posttraumatic stress and related symptoms as a result of violence exposure. Thus, we examined gender as a moderator of the relation between violence exposure and symptoms. A stronger positive association of anxiety and depression symptoms with extent of community violence exposure for girls than boys was found. It was also found that while girls do not appear to differ in their responses to witnessing violence versus being a victim of violence, boys appear to be more distressed by being a victim of violence than by witnessing violence.     

Gehörige Verfahrensfortsetzung iSd § 1497 ABGB bei 14-monatiger Untätigkeit?

Eine Unt?tigkeit des Kl?gers nach Klagseinbringung ist verj?hrungsrechtlich nur insoweit relevant, als sie in die Zeit nach Ablauf der (ursprünglichen) Verj?hrungsfrist f?llt. Trifft das an sich zust?ndige ausl?ndische Gericht eine Forum-non-conveniens-Entscheidung und wird die daraufhin eingebrachte inl?ndische Klage mangels internationaler Zust?ndigkeit zurückgewiesen, bleibt die Unterbrechungswirkung nach § 1497 ABGB aufrecht, wenn der Kl?ger das ausl?ndische Verfahren unverzüglich fortsetzt und auch noch, wenn er in Folge aufgrund einer zwischenzeitig getroffenen Gerichtsstandsvereinbarung neuerlich im Inland klagt. Werden mit einer Schadenersatzklage auch Ansprüche nach § 394 EO (Ersatz der durch eine einstweilige Verfügung verursachten Verm?gensnachteile) geltend gemacht, sind diese aus dem Prozess auszuscheiden und entweder nach § 44 Abs 1 JN dem Sicherungsgericht zu überweisen oder nach § 17 Abs 7 Geo der nach der Gesch?ftsverteilung zust?ndigen Gerichtsabteilung abzutreten. Der Ersatzanspruch nach § 394 EO muss nicht bei sonstigem Verfall innerhalb der 14-t?gigen Frist des § 400 EO erhoben werden; für ihn gilt vielmehr, jedenfalls soweit es sich nicht um reinen Verfahrenskostenersatz handelt, die dreij?hrige Verj?hrungsfrist des § 1489 ABGB.     

Learning and Opinion Change, Not Priming: Reconsidering the Priming Hypothesis

According to numerous studies, campaign and news media messages can alter the importance individuals place on an issue when evaluating politicians, an effect called priming. Research on priming revived scholarly interest in campaign and media effects and implied, according to some, that campaigns and the media can manipulate voters. There are, however, alternative explanations for these priming findings, alternatives that previous studies have not fully considered. In this article, I reanalyze four cases of alleged priming, using panel data to test priming effects against these alternatives. Across these four cases, I find little evidence of priming effects. Instead, campaign and media attention to an issue creates the appearance of priming through a two-part process: Exposing individuals to campaign and media messages on an issue (1) informs some of them about the parties' or candidates' positions on that issue. Once informed, (2) these individuals often adopt their preferred party's or candidate's position as their own.     

Politische Soziologie in Deutschland — Forschungsfelder, Analyseperspektiven, ausgewählte empirische Befunde

This paper provides an overview of the state of the art in the field of Political Sociology in Germany. It turns out that Political Sociology has been established as an independent sub-discipline in Political Science. The theoretical approaches predominantly follow an empirical-analytical perspective. In terms of methodology, a quantitative approach is prevailing. The number of research fields has significantly broadened. Major research topics are: democracy and the transformation of political systems, political parties, political participation and voting behaviour, political values and attitudes, political communication.     

Predictive Crime Mapping: Arbitrary Grids or Street Networks?

Objectives

Decades of empirical research demonstrate that crime is concentrated at a range of spatial scales, including street segments. Further, the degree of clustering at particular geographic units remains noticeably stable and consistent; a finding that Weisburd (Criminology 53:133–157, 2015) has recently termed the ‘law of crime concentration at places’. Such findings suggest that the future locations of crime should—to some extent at least—be predictable. To date, methods of forecasting where crime is most likely to next occur have focused either on area-level or grid-based predictions. No studies of which we are aware have developed and tested the accuracy of methods for predicting the future risk of crime at the street segment level. This is surprising given that it is at this level of place that many crimes are committed and policing resources are deployed.

Methods

Using data for property crimes for a large UK metropolitan police force area, we introduce and calibrate a network-based version of prospective crime mapping [e.g. Bowers et al. (Br J Criminol 44:641–658, 2004)], and compare its performance against grid-based alternatives. We also examine how measures of predictive accuracy can be translated to the network context, and show how differences in performance between the two cases can be quantified and tested.

Results

Findings demonstrate that the calibrated network-based model substantially outperforms a grid-based alternative in terms of predictive accuracy, with, for example, approximately 20 % more crime identified at a coverage level of 5 %. The improvement in accuracy is highly statistically significant at all coverage levels tested (from 1 to 10 %).

Conclusions

This study suggests that, for property crime at least, network-based methods of crime forecasting are likely to outperform grid-based alternatives, and hence should be used in operational policing. More sophisticated variations of the model tested are possible and should be developed and tested in future research.