Building the Evidence Base for Intensive Family Preservation Services

This article examines the state of intensive family preservation services (IFPS) research. Using studies of IFPS in five states, this article seeks to establish whether IFPS can be regarded as an evidence-based practice, an increasingly important standard for publicly funded services. While reporting rates of repeat child maltreatment, the analysis uses placement rates as the main outcome measure and compares effect sizes using Cohen's arcsine transformation for data reported as proportions. Significant differences in rates of child out-of-home placement and repeat maltreatment were found in some studies, particularly for higher risk families. The findings also underscore the difficulty of identifying which families to serve (targeting), ensuring treatment fidelity, and employing rigorous and appropriate evaluation methods. Overall, additional research is needed to move IFPS from a promising practice to an evidence-based practice.     

Recidivist criminal behaviour and executive functions: a comparative study

This study sought to analyse the relation between executive functions and criminal recidivism. We assessed a set of cognitive abilities associated with executive functioning in a group of recidivist offenders (n = 19), primary offenders (n = 25) and non-offenders (n = 30). Our results, tested with nonparametric statistics and Monte Carlo method, revealed that there were no executive differences between both groups of offenders but, when compared with non-offenders, the recidivists showed a worse performance in Trail Making Test part B, and the primary offenders presented a significant lower score on Porteus Maze Test Age score. This study suggests that there can be a different pattern of executive functioning deficits associated with the offenders’ criminal record: recidivism may be more related to mental flexibility impairments and primary offenders’ antisocial behaviour may be aggravated by planning deficits.     

Keeping face in the public sphere: recognition,discretion and Uzbekistan's relations with the United States and Germany, 1991–2006

The manner in which President Karimov's roles were recognized in the global arena affected how Uzbekistan's international relations developed – a perspective that highlights both the form and the content of bilateral relationships. While mutual interests are crucial to beginning a relationship, it is also important to understand how those relations were recognized in public and dealt with in private. If partners managed to recognize Karimov's agenda publicly, or at least act with discretion, this tended to create an atmosphere favouring cooperation. As such, recognition and discretion reveal much about Karimov's concerns with international equality and self-reliance, pointing to the reasons why Uzbekistan's relations fluctuated more with some actors than others. The United States and Germany are ideal examples of that ambivalent situation: Washington often cooperated with Uzbekistan on security matters, but then saw its military personnel excluded from Qarshi-Qanabad after the 2005 Andijan crisis; whereas Berlin witnessed little change in its relationship with Uzbekistan and continued to lease a base in Termez after 2005. This difference in outcomes can be explained in part by a dynamic of recognition and discretion.     

Competing for Foreign Direct investment: Efforts to Promote Nontraditional FDI in Costa Rica, Brazil, and Chile

This article examines government efforts in Costa Rica, Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil, and Chile to promote nontraditional foreign direct investment (FDI). Rather than attempting to account for the overall level of FDI attracted, this article seeks to explain the ability of governments to develop a well-targeted, responsive, and sustained strategy specifically to attract nontraditional FDI. It concludes that three independent variables play an important role in making some governments more effective than others at developing strategies to promote nontraditional FDI. These are the extent of the government's autonomy from special interest groups, both domestic and foreign; the extent of the government's transnational learning capacity; and the extent to which there is an ideological consensus among political parties in the country or state in favor of working closely with the business community. Roy C. Nelson is an associate professor of International Studies at Thunderbird, the Garvin School of International Management. He is currently completing a book entitledHarnessing Globalization: The Promotion of Nontraditional Foreign Direct Investment in Latin America.     

Capgras syndrome and dangerousness

This article discusses Capgras syndrome and its association with harmful and potentially harmful behaviors. Phenomenological and psychodynamic analysis of a series of cases will highlight danger signals that may be present in Capgras patients.     

The Changing Structure of Opportunity: Recruitment and Careers in Large Law Firms

Growth and bureaucratization have begun to transform patterns of recruitment and career development in large law firms. Based on a case study of four large Chicago firms, this article examines these changes and their implications. The findings indicate that the social composition of large firms has become substantially more heterogeneous with respect to the status of law school attended, gender, and ethnoreligious background. However, data on lawyers' careers suggest that associates entering firms today face an increasingly bureaucratic organizational context marked by higher levels of turnover, earlier and more intensive specialization, decreased levels of client responsibility, and more frequent assignment to large-scale litigation. The article also addresses the dynamics of individual choice over type of work performed in firms. Lawyers initially working in litigation fields are far more likely to change fields of practice than are lawyers who begin in office practice fields, reflecting the increased tendency for firms to assign new associates to litigation as well as the alienating propensity of large-firm litigation for many associates. Paradoxically, a greater proportion of lawyers in traditionally organized, general service firms than in bureaucratically organized, specialty firms report that their choice of work was dictated by the firm. Also, somewhat surprisingly, the frequency with which firms explicitly direct lawyers into particular fields has not increased from earlier periods. The article concludes that these anomalies result from the fact that firms control the career choices of lawyers, and always have, but that the way such control is exercised varies across firms and historical periods.