Living Conditions,Social Exclusion and Recidivism Among Prison Inmates

Swedish drug policy has according to official declarations been successful. The picture has recently been challenged through rising drug use and rising drug related mortality. This development has taken place in spite of the restrictive Swedish policy with further penalization of drug consumption, increasing number of police officers working with drug crime and rising number of persons sentenced to prison for drug offences. The question to be explored here is then what strategies the Swedish Government has chosen in the light of the development and how these strategies should be explained. The analysis is based on central Government documents as well as statements from Government ministers, public authorities and voluntary organizations. The picture that emerges is a denial of the failure of the old Swedish model but at the same time an alarmist stand with demands for increases of resources for information, treatment and control. The strategies chosen can be derived from two central themes in Swedish drug debate: ‘a drug‐free society’ and ‘total rehabilitation’. The two in turn seem to be aspects of an underlying vision—the vision of the good and integrative welfare society.     

The School-to-Work Transition in Developing Countries

Youth bulges in developing countries may carry both a potential for growth via demographic dividends, and ticking political time bombs, depending on the success of authorities in providing youth with adequate opportunities as they transit into the labour markets of the twenty-first century. In this article I examine the theoretical and empirical research on school-to-work transitions (SWT) in developing countries. After a discussion of the attempts at operationalising the concept of school-to-work transitions from a statistical point of view, I review the theoretical settings suitable for analysing the SWT. Despite an extensive search and matching literature, few models seem adapted to developing countries’ labour markets, and even fewer are empirically tested. I then examine the determinants of transition lengths at the individual and macro level. Findings indicate that education is not always associated with shorter durations to first employment, and that the reasons may be higher expectations, reservation wages, or queuing. Women generally experience longer transitions in the labour market, and evidence from labour market interventions is mixed. Many factors likely to influence the school-to-work transition have not been studied from the point of view of school-to-work transitions, however, and potential directions for future research are presented.     

Subnational Economic Nationalism? The contradictory effects of decentralization in Peru

Across the third world, transnational corporations (TNCs) and subnational governments (SNGs) are coming into new forms of contact as a result of liberalization and decentralization. Despite scholarly expectations that subnational governments will respond by seeking out foreign direct investment, in much of Latin America these governments are confronting rather than courting transnational corporations. Conceptualizing this phenomenon as ‘subnational economic nationalism’, the article explores both how subnational governments are challenging neoliberalism and why these challenges often fail to subvert neoliberal outcomes. By examining two struggles against transnational capital that had different outcomes but that took place within a single subnational jurisdiction (Arequipa, Peru), the article argues that decentralization can work at cross purposes. While voters are increasingly demanding that elected subnational officials adopt nationalist positions vis-à-vis TNCs, these same officials often seek financial support from TNCs so that they can compete successfully in the subnational elections that have been introduced by political decentralization.     

Development of the Social Issues Advocacy Scale-2 (SIAS-2)

The 21-item Social Issues Advocacy Scale (SIAS; Nilsson, Marszalek et al. in Educ Psychol Meas 71(1):258–275, 2011) was developed as a concise measure of social justice advocacy for people in the helping and health professions. Recent scholarship has indicated a need for a broader measure. The present study seeks to continue development of the SIAS into an expanded version, the SIAS-2. A sample of 284 helping and health professionals and college students in related fields was administered 117 items, which was reduced to 78 items for the final instrument through item analysis and exploratory factor analysis. Eight factors emerged explaining 61.5% of the item variance. Corresponding subscales ranged in reliability from .88 to .94. Additional validity evidence is discussed.     

Differentiating identity theft: An exploratory study of victims using a national victimization survey

Despite the widespread attention given to identity theft, there is much confusion on how best to define and measure it. Recent attempts to measure its extent through victimization surveys or law enforcement files have varied considerably in the types of crimes included as identity theft. Some studies include credit card fraud, while others exclude it. This inconsistency in data collection has made it difficult to assess properly the extent of the crime. The current study uses data from the National Public Survey on White Collar Crime to determine the degree to which including credit card fraud as a type of identity theft affects victim profiles encompassing demographic characteristics, risky activities, and reporting decisions. Specifically, we compare victim profiles for victims of existing credit card fraud, new credit card fraud, and existing bank account fraud. Findings from our exploratory study suggest that including existing credit card fraud may obscure the fact that those who are female, black, young, and low income are disproportionately victimized by existing bank account fraud, which is the type of identity theft most financially damaging and most difficult to clear up for individuals.     

International regimes and environmental policy integration: introducing the special issue

Pressure is mounting for states to become better at integrating its environmental policies into sector policy, a challenge often referred to as environmental policy integration (EPI). Policy research on EPI has grown to become a distinct and substantial field of study at the national and EU levels, where political commitment and interest in the topic have been large. In the study of international regimes, EPI analytical concepts have so far not been applied although the EPI quest is at least as important and critical at this level. This special issue addresses this gap, by combining these two sets of literature and examining various aspects of EPI in international regimes, its manifestations and its challenges. This introductory paper introduces key conceptual discussions underlying the development of this special issue, distils and discusses some of the key findings and messages from the four ensuing research articles and presents directions for future research. It finds that many EPI challenges and institutional barriers are strongly accentuated at international levels of governance, but also that similarities with the national level suggest that closer interactions between the two fields of study are warranted. At both levels, the EPI “game” is full of inherent tensions and goal conflicts, institutional constraints abound, and cognitive interactions and learning processes appear as key mechanisms to advance EPI. Suggestions for how to enhance EPI in international regimes are still tentative, and analysis beyond international relations and regime theory is needed to capture potential institutional innovations for advancing EPI.     

Regulated and unregulated insider trading around earnings announcements

This paper analyses insider trading behaviour around annual and interim earnings announcements during changing legislative environments in Sweden from 1980 to 2003. Using a unique data set, we are able to explore the nature of insider trading patterns from unregulated to strongly regulated insider trading markets. We find limited evidence of opportunistic insider trading. Insiders seem to be reluctant to sell stocks before positive earnings announcements. They also tend to time their trades in conjunction with an immediate post-announcement period, i.e. “safety trading”, which becomes more evident within stronger legislation environments. Some support for contrarian trading behaviour is also found.

After the Truth Commission: Gender and Citizenship in Timor-Leste

This article explores the relationship between truth commissions and gendered citizenship through a case study of Timor-Leste. It examines how, 10 years after the Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation (CAVR) has completed its work, women’s citizenship remains constrained by, and negotiated within, deeply gendered narratives of nation-building that are informed by historical experiences of the resistance struggle. The power of these narratives—which foreground heroism rather than victimisation—underscores the need to situate truth commissions as part of an ongoing politics of memory. Despite the power of political elites to shape this politics, the continued marginalisation of sections of society within official narratives is also providing an impetus for alternative truth-telling efforts that seek to broaden public perspectives on the past. By promoting new narratives of women’s experiences of the conflict, these projects might be understood as attempts to negotiate and transform gendered conceptions of citizenship in the present and for the future.