Budgeting during the Clinton Presidency

This article assesses the Clinton administration record of budgeting. During President Clinton's two terms, the federal government moved from an era of large deficits to one of equally large surpluses. This turnaround was caused by both the strong economy and the deficit reduction deals of 1990, 1993, and 1997. Defense spending and interest declined as a percentage of the budget, whereas mandatory spending and nondefense discretionary spending increased. Acrimonious interbranch budgetary relationships dominated, with Clinton ultimately winning far more fights than he lost. Executive branch budgetary and financial management capacity improved during the Clinton administration.     

Feminism and Contemporary Liberal Citizenship: The Undecidability of 'Women'

Liberal citizenship has been seen as posing a dilemma for feminists. Either women are taken to be equal to men, in which case their specific capacities as women are unrecognised and their citizenship is substantively unequal; or else women are taken to be different, with the consequent risk that the rights citizenship allows and the obligations it imposes will again be substantively unequal. On this view, women cannot simply be included in liberal citizenship because the meaning of the liberal public sphere is constructed in opposition to the private sphere of natural feminine care and women's subordination to male heads of household. Using Derridean deconstruction to examine three significant moments in liberalism, this paper argues that the term 'women' is more productively seen as 'undecidable' in this tradition, working both to construct the binary opposition between public and private on which it depends but also to disrupt it. While the feminist critique of liberalism is important to analysing the logic by which women have been positioned outside full citizenship rights, in practice feminists have made some gains by reconfiguring the terms of liberalism around this undecidability. The aim of the paper is to carry out something like a genealogy of contemporary liberalism in order to discern its multiple origins and contingent development; we will then be in a better position to understand the practical possibilities for women's citizenship in Britain today.     

Dimensionen der Disproportionalität – Erststimmen und Direktmandate in den Bundestagswahlen von 1953 bis 2009

This article looks at how candidate votes have been translated into district mandates in the plurality tier of Germany’s mixed electoral system in all Bundestags-elections since 1953. Two questions in particular are addressed: How has disproportionality changed over time? And: What are the main determinants of disproportionality? To answer these two questions the article employs a modified version of the cube rule that accounts for the fact that the number of district parties in a mixed electoral system is higher than in a pure majoritarian system. The article identifies the effective number of district parties as the most important determinant of the disproportional translation of candidate votes into district mandates, i. e., the higher the number of district parties, the less proportional the translation.     

Self-reported personality traits in forensic populations: a meta-analysis

The current study covers a systematic review and meta-analysis of the prevalence of self-reported deviant or disruptive personality traits: anger, aggression, hostility, antisocial traits, psychopathy, and impulsivity in forensic populations worldwide. A computer-based search of titles was carried out using the PubMed electronic database for articles published in English that included a self-report instrument for personality characteristics in combination with a forensic population (i.e. detained in remand, sentenced and/or in enforced treatment, or on parole). The final sample consisted of 39 studies (N?=?11,716) that together used 17 different instruments and reported on 32 subscales or constructs that fitted our current interest. Results showed significantly higher levels of self-reported antisocial and psychopathic features in forensic samples, including a significant effect of the assessment instrument and subscale used. No significant differences were found for self-reported impulsivity, anger, aggression, or hostility in forensic populations compared to norm scores of non-forensic samples. Possible explanations, including suggestions that forensic populations are prone to providing socially desirable answers on self-report questionnaires, possibly to gain advantages such as a lower prison sentence or to avoid enforced treatment, are discussed, as well as limitations, and suggestions for future research and clinical practice.     

The nuclear family,ideology and AIDS in the thatcher years

Thanks to Willem De Haan, Pompe Institute, Utrecht University, for his regular intellectually corrective efforts and to my colleague Gillian Douglas for encouraging the solo rewrite and for her helpful suggestions.     

The Confluence of Domestic and International Interests: U.S. Policy Toward Cuba, 1998–2001

This article examines the confluence of forces at work to shape U.S. policy toward Cuba since the late 1990s. Our approach examines four key factors involved in policymaking toward Cuba in this period: (1) the entry of new interest groups into the Cuba policy process and an "entrepreneurial" Congress; (2) the executive's constitutionally based interests; (3) bureaucratic interests; and (4) pressure from outside the United States. We examine U.S.–Cuba policy by describing each determinant in isolation and then by looking at the dynamic interaction among them, showing how they are linked together. In doing so, we argue that an analysis including multiple factors better explains U.S. policy toward Cuba than one that focuses on a single factor such as the power of the Cuban-American community.     

The Obama Administration and PBB: Building on the Legacy of Federal Performance‐Informed Budgeting?

The administration of President Barack Obama, like those of his immediate predecessors, is focused on trying to improve the quality of, and use of, performance data. The federal government has been pursuing performance‐informed budget reforms for more than 50 years. Most recently, the Bush administration reforms included the President’s Management Agenda and the Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART). The Obama administration reforms include: measuring the effects of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act; reducing or eliminating poorly‐performing programs; setting a limited number of short‐term, high‐priority performance goals; and funding detailed program evaluations. The administration is taking a more agency‐driven approach than the Bush administration, but continues to find it challenging to move beyond production of performance data to its use. There should be opportunities to show how performance information can be used for decision making, given the change in the political climate and the needs to reduce spending and the deficit. Historically, there has been little appetite in the Congress for evidence‐based decision making. The administration, however, can continue to demonstrate how federal agencies can use performance information to more effectively manage programs.     

To protect and collect: a nationwide study of profit-motivated police crime

This study is part of a larger research project on police crime in the United States. Police crimes are those criminal offenses committed by sworn law enforcement officers who have the general powers of arrest. Profit-motivated police crime involves officers who use their authority of position to engage in crime for personal gain. This study reports the findings on 1,591 cases where a law enforcement officer was arrested for one or more profit-motivated crimes during the seven-year period 2005–2011. The profit-motivated arrest cases involved 1,396 individual officers employed by 782 state, local, special, constable, and tribal law enforcement agencies located in 531 counties and independent cities in 47 states and the District of Columbia. Our data is the first systematic study of profit-motivated police crime. The study describes the nature of this form of police misconduct in terms of several dimensions, including the characteristics of police who perpetrate these crimes, where it occurs, the specific criminal charges, and the contexts within which profit-motivated police crime is punished through police agencies and the criminal courts.