Substance abuse minimization: Conceptualizing prevention in adolescent and youth programs

This article provides an overview of the historical and theoretical work on adolescent substance abuse with implications for preventive interventions. The focus is on an illustration of the use of four basic prevention tools: education, competency promotion, community mobilization, and natural care giving.Research interests include mental health, family relations, adolescence, and primary prevention.Research interests include family and social relations, adolescent personality social development.     

Policy divergence in multicandidate probabilistic spatial voting

Existing models of multicandidate spatial competition with probabilistic voting typically predict a high degree of policy convergence, yet in actual elections candidates advocate quite divergent sets of policies. What accounts for this disparity between theory and empirical observation? I introduce two variations on the basic probabilistic vote model which may account for candidate policy divergence: 1) a model which incorporates candidate-specific variables, so that candidates may enjoy nonpolicy-related electoral advantages (or disadvantages); 2) a model which allows nonzero correlations between the random terms associated with voters' candidate utilities, thereby capturing situations where voters view two or more candidates as similar on nonpolicy grounds. I report candidate equilibrium analyses for each model, which show far greater policy divergence than exists under the standard probabilistic vote model. I then analyze the strategic logic which underlies these results.

     

Perceptional foundations of deterrence: The case of prostitution

The authors conducted a survey to determine community perceptions about the certainty, celerity, and severity of punishment with regards to the crime of prostitution. A representative random sample of Mecklenburg County, which includes Charlotte, North Carolina, was taken and 850 individuals responded. The results revealed that (1) citizens perceive sanctions against prostitution violations as being applied only infrequently; (2) most respondents perceive the time from violation to arrest as being relatively short but slower as the offenders proceed through the system, and (3) the severity of punishment is not perceived as being harsh. The authors argue that the low likelihood of apprehension, both actual and perceived, plus the mild sanctions may partially account for prostitution’s continued survival.     

Transdisciplinary public leadership theory: Between the extremes of “traditional public administration” and “new public management”

The 21st century public organization is faced with complex problems, informed stakeholders, and information flows, which necessitate a corresponding open system view of leadership. The traditional notions of public administration and new public management had been structured by strict bureaucratic rules and managerial flexibility, respectively. This paper begins by theorizing two hypothetical constructs (helicopter and deadbeat leadership), which engage in extreme micromanagement/surveillance and negligence/indifference, respectively. Those form basis for designing an optimal (transdisciplinary) leadership, which forges synergistic link between leaders, subordinates, and external actors in codesigning objectives and strategies to address societal problems. Strategies to promote transdisciplinary leadership are discussed.     

How Values Shape Program Perceptions: The “Organic Ethos” and Producers’ Assessments of U.S. Organic Policy Impacts

Among the more recognizable programs related to natural and sustainable food is the United States Department of Agriculture’s National Organic Program. Although the robustness of the organic food market is difficult to contest, many debate the extent to which U.S. organic policy outcomes adequately serve consumers and the organic agriculture producers they rely on. This paper engages the debate from the perspective of certified organic producers. Drawing on the results of a nationwide survey of USDA‐certified producers, we first provide a snapshot of how producers assess the environmental, consumer, and market impacts of U.S. organic food policy. We then examine the extent to which organic producers’ policy impact perceptions are associated with their alignment with an “organic ethos”—understood as producers’ commitment to core organic principles and the organic movement. The paper highlights producers’ values as perceptual filters and cognitive mechanisms that help shape producers’ policy impacts perceptions, illustrating a contributing factor to the enduring nature of organic policy debates.     

Consolidating democracy by containing distribution: “sandwich tactics” in Indian political development, 1936–96

How did Indian democracy avoid the fate of other Third World democracies that collapsed in the face of distributional conflicts, when such conflicts were in ample evidence in India? The traditional answer is that the inclusiveness of the Indian National Congress during the independence movement gave the party legitimacy after independence and allowed it to contain social conflict. This argument fails to account for the persistence of Indian democracy after the 1960s. This article suggests that the pre-independence Congress did not accommodate challengers from below as is commonly suggested, but rather outflanked them by championing still weaker groups further down the social ladder. This “sandwich tactic” has been used repeatedly by Congress leaders during successive crises and accounts for the party's long innings in power, its continued strength today, and, inter alia, the acquiescence of Indian elites in electoral democracy.     

How voters' perceptions of junior coalition partners depend on the prime minister's position

Recent studies document that voters infer parties' left‐right policy agreement based on governing coalition arrangements. This article extends this research to present theoretical and empirical evidence that European citizens update their perceptions of junior coalition partners' left‐right policies to reflect the policies of the prime minister's party, but that citizens do not reciprocally project junior coalition partners' policies onto the prime minister's party. These findings illuminate the simple rules that citizens employ to infer parties' policy positions, broaden understanding of how citizens perceive coalition governance and imply that ‘niche’ parties, whose electoral appeal depends upon maintaining a distinctive policy profile, assume electoral risks when they enter government.