Temporal Patterns of Crime in Singapore

The authors abstracted and studied information from the Daily Crime Information for the crimes of armed robbery, sexual offenses, theft outside dwelling, theft of motor vehicles, theft of bicycles, theft in dwelling and housebreaking for the year 1975. Frequency by time of day and day of week were determined and analyzed for statistical significance. Long term trends of selected crimes were also calculated. The authors advance explanations for the observed patterns.

The limitations of classification, ambiguity in terminology, etc., made comparison with other countries difficult. Comparison could be made only with Korea and the U.S.A. in respect to the crimes of housebreaking and theft of motor vehicles.     

Political generations in Northern Ireland

Since the late 1980s, Northern Ireland has seen a radical electoral shift away from the historically dominant parties in the Catholic and Protestant blocs – the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) and Ulster Unionist Party (UUP), respectively – towards the traditionally more ‘extreme’ parties – Sinn Fein and the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP). This change in aggregate support has been accompanied by increasing differences between generations as older cohorts of UUP and SDLP supporters have been replaced by newer cohorts of DUP and Sinn Fein partisans. This is not a result of increased polarisation in values and attitudes (whether overtly political or simply communal intolerance) among younger cohorts who are, if anything, slightly more moderate than their forbears. Rather, this results from the changing political context in which new generations have been socialised – in particular the expanded choice sets facing voters as they have reached voting age. This in turn has positive implications for the consolidation of devolved democratic governance.     

Tendential Autonomy and Conflict Containment in Nonstate Governance Mechanisms

Environmental certification programs have emerged and matured in many resource industries. Program autonomy is a central strategic problem in assessing program effectiveness and legitimacy. The article treats the problem of autonomy by drawing on Teubner's heuristic, strategic reconceptualization of Luhmann's conception of autopoiesis. Emergent autonomy can be inferred in different ways at different stages of program development. It is concretely expressed both in a distinct circularity in internal referral, deferral, and appeals procedures, and in institutional capacities to develop such procedures. Procedural circularity is often taken as evidence of program failure, but it may instead be an indicator of early strength. Periods of acute crisis are privileged circumstances for observing such capacities.     

MANAGING CITIZENS' EXPECTATIONS OF PUBLIC SERVICE PERFORMANCE: EVIDENCE FROM OBSERVATION AND EXPERIMENTATION IN LOCAL GOVERNMENT

Citizens' expectations of public service performance influence their attitudes and behaviour towards services, including satisfaction, choice of service and political voice about them. However, there has been little research on what sets expectations. This paper assesses the effects of prior service performance and information about prior performance on two forms of citizen expectations, positive expectations of what performance will be and normative expectations of what performance should be. In an observational study, prior performance is positively related to expectations of what performance will be. Prior performance is positively related to high normative expectations but is unrelated to low normative expectations. The resilience of normative expectations suggests that poor performance will trigger dissatisfaction and citizen response rather than lowering expectations creating passive acceptance. In a field experiment, performance information effects are found for positive but not normative expectations. Providing information about excellent performance raises positive expectations and providing information about poor performance lowers positive expectations; negativity bias is evident with information about poor performance having a larger effect. Performance information that is credible to citizens can be used to manage citizens' positive expectations but their normative expectations are less amenable to influence by this route.