THE ELUSIVE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN COMMUNITY ORGANIZATIONS AND CRIME: AN ASSESSMENT ACROSS DISADVANTAGED AREAS OF THE SOUTH BRONX

Several theoretical perspectives posit a negative association between the extent of a neighborhood's organizational infrastructure and crime; yet, empirical support for this proposition has been limited in that researchers generally examine only a few types of organizations or combine them into one aggregate measure. Studies with few measures may omit organizations that are effective at reducing crime, whereas those using aggregate measures obscure differences across organizations in their ability to control crime. Using data from 74 block groups in the South Bronx, NY, this research seeks to specify more clearly the relationship between organizations and crime in a disadvantaged urban environment. We examine the relationship among nine different types of organizations and violent and property crime controlling for prior crime, land use, and area sociodemographic characteristics. Consistent with theories that highlight the importance of organizations for establishing ties outside the neighborhood, we find that block groups with more organizations that bridge to the larger community experience a decrease in crime. Property crime also is reduced in block groups with more organizations that promote the well‐being of families and children. We find that schools are associated with an increase in property crime, whereas the effects of other organizations are context specific and vary based on neighborhood racial composition, commercial land use, and disadvantage.     

Forecasting General Fund Revenue: An Analysis of Idaho FY 1998 to FY 2011

Forecasting state general fund revenue (GFR) though business cycles means possibly confusing a cycle with an underlying long‐run trend. Relative to the actual revenue, the mean squared error of the academic, legislative, governor's, the growth path (GP), and Holt‐Winters (HW) forecasts for Idaho GFR was not significantly different than the naïve forecast's; the Combined GP‐HW forecast has significantly smaller mean square error. The GP model (ARIMA 1, 2, 1) produced a short‐run elasticity of revenue with respect to income of 1.05 (±0.05). The best GFR forecasts combined a HW two‐step‐ahead level with a GP one‐step‐ahead trend that provided a forecast of GFR with the smallest root mean square error between FY 1998 and FY 2009. A budget stabilization fund needs to be 34–40 percent of GFR for GFR to sustain growth at the state's long‐run expansion rate during a contraction.     

Assessing Need in the United States, Germany, and Sweden: The Organization of Welfare Casework and the Potential for Responsiveness in the "Three Worlds"

An ongoing challenge for the administrative state is balancing the programmatic values of responsiveness and accountability. Few studies have examined these policy issues cross-nationally for social assistance, a needs-based form of income support where these tensions are especially significant. Based on street-level case studies, this article demonstrates persistent diversity among welfare states in how these programmatic tradeoffs are made, contrasting a U.S. approach that emphasizes programmatic control via a bureaucratic, flat-grant system, with German and Swedish programs in which individualized assessments of need are a core organizational task. In each European case, legal frameworks, expertise, and work arrangements have evolved in nationally specific ways to contend with the challenges frontline discretion poses to program integrity.     

EXPERTISE AND POLICY‐MAKING: LEGAL PROFESSIONALS IN LOCAL GOVERNMENT

Professional influence in policy‐making is generally believed to rest on professionals successfully laying claim to access to expertise – knowledge, understanding or experience – not available to others, above all politicians. On the basis of a 2005 survey of nearly 800 lawyers serving in local authorities in England and Wales, this article explores the relationship between specialization and political influence. Lawyers who shape policy use conventional routes for political influence, establish contacts with political officeholders, tend to identify less with the profession at large and are less likely to see themselves as specialists in any field of law. This means that the relationship between expertise and political power is complex and that the notion that professionals use their expertise to shape policy should be treated with some caution.     

Representing the compromise: How institutions serve government support coalitions in European Union policy making

This article presents an original model of policy making by multiparty coalitions at the international level. Specifically, it analyses how domestic institutions serve parties in enforcing policy compromises onto national ministers negotiating legislation in the European Union (EU). In contrast to existing research on coalition politics, the model accounts for the benefits of not only legislative but also executive institutions and incorporates opposition parties as pivotal actors under minority governments. Ministers propose policy positions at the EU level that represent domestic coalition compromises when cabinet participation, executive coordination and parliamentary oversight of EU affairs make it cheap for coalition partners to challenge the minister's position and when ideological divisiveness increases the incentive to do so. Statistical analyses of 1,694 policy positions taken by ministers from 22 member states in the Council of the EU provide strong empirical evidence for the model. The results support the claim of executive dominance in EU policy making but also highlight that, where institutions are strong, ministers represent domestic coalition compromises rather than their own positions.     

Bad History

If history is a sort of radar for the ship of state, then the machine has broken down, just at the point where Gordon Brown, trained as a historian, takes over control. Caught up in the best-seller business, popularised on TV, it has come to reflect metropolitan commercial drives, the obsessions of The Hitler Channel or the 'publish or be damned' ethos of the Research Assessment Exercise. Fashionable discourses about identity and postmodern consumerism, and the palsied traditions of Fogeydomboth remote from the basic business of getting, spending and governing-may offer a niche-marketing future, but are more likely to speed the vessel towards the rocks.