The Feminisation of the Conservative Parliamentary Party: Party Members' Attitudes

Under David Cameron's leadership reforms have been made to the Conservative party's parliamentary selection procedures and distinct women's policy initiatives have been developed. This article, based on focus group data with party members, explores attitudes towards measures designed to recruit more women Conservative MPs. Broadly, we find that, despite widespread support for the principle of greater social diversity among PPCs, members are uncomfortable with the specific measures that have been introduced. This is largely on the grounds that anything approaching 'positive discrimination' should be eschewed in favour of the 'meritocratic' selection of candidates. Further, the members tend to resent central party 'interference' in what has traditionally been the domain of local Constituency Associations.     

European Union transgovernmental networks: The emergence of a new political space beyond the nation‐state?

Abstract. Does the European Union (EU) represent a new political order replacing the old nation‐states? The assessment of the real character of political orders requires the identification of political key actors and of the specific structure of their interactions. Transgovernmental networks have been considered to be one of the most important features of EU integration. Unfortunately, the network structures, processes and the impact of these informal horizontal inter‐organisational relations between nation‐states are mostly unknown. The main objective of this article is to measure and explain the selective pattern of informal bilateral relations of high officials of the EU Member States’ ministerial bureaucracies on the occasion of an EU Intergovernmental Conference. The quantitative data used rely on standardised interviews with 140 top‐level bureaucrats. The statistical estimation of network choices is based on recent developments of exponential random graph models.     

NEW MODES OF CONTROL IN THE PUBLIC SERVICE

Controversy exists regarding whether recent changes in the organization of the public services in the UK and elsewhere constitute a paradigm shift towards a post-bureaucratic form. This article argues that in Britain three fundamental but interlocking strategies of control have been implemented over the last decade. First, there has been a pronounced shift towards the creation of operationally decentralized units with a simultaneous attempt to increase centralized control over strategy and policy. Second, the principle of competition (often attached to the development of market relations but sometimes not) has become the dominant method of co-ordinating the activities of decentralized units. Third, during the most recent period there has been a substantial development of processes of performance management and monitoring (including audits, inspections, quality assessments and reviews), again a phenomenon largely directed towards operationally decentralized units.
Taken together these three strategies do not describe a simple movement from a bureaucratic to a post-bureaucratic form, rather they combine strong elements of innovation with the reassertion of a number of fundamentally bureaucratic mechanisms. This may be a peculiarly British phenomenon, certainly the excessive elements of centralization and formalization appear to depart from the ideal-type of the post-bureaucratic organization. It is argued that this'British trajectory'can best be understood in terms of the continued relative decline of the British economy and the Conservative response to it, i.e. the drive to create a'high output, low commitment'workforce.     

INFORMAL SURVEILLANCE AND STREET CRIME: A COMPLEX RELATIONSHIP*

The systemic crime model predicts that informal surveillance of space reduces street crime. Conversely, community decline theory posits that street crime reduces informal surveillance by increasing residents' perception of risk and fear. Moreover, functions of crime theory suggests that some types of crime may increase surveillance. Using data for 100 urban neighborhoods, the analysis examines these predictions and disentangles reciprocal effects. Baseline recursive equations indicate that informal surveillance is inversely associated with robbery/stranger assault, and that robbery/stranger assault is inversely associated with informal surveillance. In contrast, burglary rates are not affected by informal surveillance, but burglary has a positive effect on surveillance when robbery/stranger assault is controlled. Simultaneous equations indicate that robbery/stranger assault has a moderately strong inverse effect on informal surveillance, and that it is mediated by residents' perceptions of risk. When risk perception is controlled, informal surveillance has an inverse effect on robbery/stranger assault. The latter analysis also indicates that burglary increases surveillance, suggesting that some types of crime serve positive functions. The results, therefore, lend support to systemic, community decline, and functions of crime theory, and they suggest that the relationship between informal surveillance and crime is complex. Implications for community crime research are discussed.     

FEAR OF CRIME IN RESIDENTIAL COMMUNITIES

Three variables were hypothesized to cause a fear of crime and a potential change in behavior. These were: (1) crimes against a person rather than crimes against property; (2) a crime committed in an area frequented rather than a crime occurring in an area one never entered; (3) a recurring crime rather than a crime that occurred once. Two different samples of female subjects (n = 249) were approached at their residences and were asked to read one of a number of fictitious crime stories that the news media supposedly had not reported and to complete two scales measuring: (1) an emotional response to crime and (2) a potential behavioral response to crime. The results indicate that a physical assault produces both more fear and more potential behavioral change than a burglary. A crime that occurs eight times causes people to consider taking precautions in comparison to a crime that occurs once. There is some evidence that a crime in an area one frequents causes more fear than a crime occurring in an area one never enters.     

Blair's Commission for Africa: Problems and Prospects for UK Policy

This article examines the recommendations contained within the Commission for Africa's report Our Common Interest , and asks what they might mean for the UK's Africa policies. After discussing the choice of the Commissioners and summarising the main recommendations made in their report, the article identifies some of the central problems raised but not resolved by the Commission in the relation to issues of security, political economy and governance. The article concludes that the Commission's report raised the profile of an important set of issues but neither resolved them conceptually nor set out a persuasive plan to implement its numerous recommendations. In particular, the Commission did not convincingly explain how neo-patrimonial regimes in Africa could be reformed to ensure that they pursue genuinely national development policies instead of the current strategies that benefit their supporters and weaken their political opponents.     

The Pracademic: An Agenda for Re-Engaging Practitioners and Academics

The synergy between theory and practice is a much sought after, but sometimes elusive, touchstone for the development of public administration programs in the United States. A healthy relationship is vital to the success of both practitioners and academics alike. While the field of public administration was in no small part premised on sustaining a healthy academic-practitioner connection, there has been a retreat from engagement due to deeply rooted trends in both academic and practitioner environments. This article reviews these trends and suggests an agenda for reconnection of these vital linkages.     

The Logic of Time in Law and Legal Expert Systems*

Abstract. Research on an expert system regarding unemployment insurance law has pointed to the difficulties of explicitly representing temporal relations. The question has been addressed in the artificial intelligence literature with respect to planning systems and linguistic analysis. The approaches adopted do not appear to be directly transposable to legal discourse. The problem seems so far to have escaped notice amongst researchers attempting to develop legal expert systems. The paper explores in a preliminary way how lawyers use temporal concepts. It is submitted that “legal time” only partly overlaps with real time. A sketch of a formalization of temporal relations in law, following J. F. Allen's approach, is presented.