Whose life is it anyway?

In this article, I discuss the way in which I am using reflection as an integral part of my research into the experiences of Jewish women teachers of European descent in non-denominational secondary schools in England. I acknowledge that through reflection on my role as a researcher I am learning and developing as the research proceeds and I use adaptations of the Johari Window (The Open University, 1995) to analyse the nature of the interviews for myself and the participants both in terms of our personal engagement in the process and the process itself. The second half of the article considers ways in which the interview process could be seen to be affecting both my own life and that of the participants. I deal with several issues which are concerning me as indicated by the title. I explore whose life is being researched—mine or my informants—and the issues concerning the implications for me as a feminist insider-researcher making use of (some would say exploiting) other people's lives, words and experiences.     

Seeing around Corners: Crafting the New Department of Homeland Security1

The development of the nation's homeland security agenda, including building the behemoth new Department of Homeland Security, will for decades to come provide a rich laboratory for scholars, public managers, consultants, and other observers and analysts. In this article, we begin to describe some of the history, key players and institutions, major policy instruments, and organizational challenges in the rapidly evolving arena of homeland security. This article carries with it two primary purposes: (1) to identify some of the key documents and federal-level initiatives since September 11, and (2) to suggest several areas that beg for additional attention from those who care about effective public policy and administration, whether the particular bent be toward scholarship or practice.     

The Power of Prestige: Explaining China’s Nuclear Weapons Decisions

ABSTRACT

The majority of the nuclear proliferation literature is dedicated to understanding why states acquire nuclear weapons. While this question remains important, it is also advantageous to push beyond this inquiry to ask what motivates a state’s nuclear decisions after acquisition. Recent research indicates that a state’s nuclear force structure is heavily influenced by its threat environment. But what explains decisions relating to specific nuclear weapon systems? If security is a sufficient explanatory variable, then why would a state pursue nuclear weapons with high development and production costs but relatively low security gains? Using China as a case study, this article explores the power of prestige in explaining such decisions.     

Physical health and crime among low-income urban women: An application of general strain theory

Purpose

Although studies of General Strain Theory (GST) typically include measures of physical health in multi-item indices of strain, no work has investigated the independent influence of physical health on criminal offending. The current research explores the relationship between physical health and criminal offending among low-income women living in disadvantaged neighborhoods.

Methods

Using data from the Welfare, Children, and Families (WCF) project, criminal behavior is predicted over two years with measures of physical health, depression, anxiety, competing strain, and relevant background factors.

Results

Poorer physical health at baseline and declines in physical health increase the odds of offending onset among previous non-offenders and reduce the odds of decreased offending among previous offenders. In offending onset models, higher levels of anxiety and depression at baseline and increases in these symptoms partially mediate the effect of poorer baseline health and fully mediate the effect of the loss of physical health. In decreased offending models, increases in anxiety and depression fully mediate the effect of poorer baseline health and partially mediate the effect of the loss of physical health.

Conclusions

The data suggest that poor health and declines in physical health influence both offending onset and offending escalation directly and indirectly through increases in anxiety and depression.     

Useful ignorance: The benefits of uncertainty during power shifts

This paper develops a formal model exploring how declining states allocate scarce military resources across multiple commitments under uncertainty. The model reveals that under certain conditions, states might actually benefit from their own uncertainty. In the model, a declining state’s uncertainty creates incentives for a revisionist rising power to misrepresent its intentions. But importantly, this misrepresentation requires the rising state to act cooperatively, implementing policies that immediately benefit the declining state. The model reveals how declining states can exploit these incentives in order to maximize the short-term benefits of their counterpart’s cooperation. Under some conditions, the benefits of this deceptive cooperation can outweigh the long-term costs of being deceived. These dynamics do not operate when the declining state is certain of the rising state’s type. I illustrate this logic through a case study of Great Britain’s pre-WWI naval withdrawal from East Asia.