The Impact of Timing of Exposure to Violence on Violent Behavior in a High Poverty Sample of Inner City African American Youth

A growing body of research has linked exposure to violence to violent behavior, but few studies have examined the impact of the timing of exposure to violence on violent behavior among inner city, minority youth. Theoretical insights derived from developmental psychology and psychopathology (DPP) and Agnew’s general strain theory (GST) give contrasting accounts of whether exposure to violence has a short term or long term impact on violent behavior. Five waves of data collected from African American youth living in twelve high poverty inner city neighborhoods was used to examine how the timing of exposure to violence over a four year time period impacts year five violent behavior. Multivariate results support GST’s contention that more proximal exposure to violence has a larger impact on violent behavior. The theoretical and practical implications of the findings for adolescent development in high poverty settings are discussed.

Public Opinion on U.S. Federal and Intergovernmental Issues in 2006: Continuity and Change

A 2006 trend survey found that Americans most often select localgovernment as giving them the most for their money, followedby the federal and state governments. African Americans aremost supportive of the federal government as giving them themost for their money; Hispanics are most supportive of localgovernment. As in many previous years, the local property taxwas viewed as the worst tax, followed by the federal incometax, state sales tax, and state income tax. Americans displayedreduced trust and confidence in the federal government; however,trust in all three spheres of government—federal, state,and local—dropped between 2004 and 2006, possibly reflectiveof the poor response of all governments to Hurricane Katrina.Analysis of surveys since 1972 reveals that there has been along-term decline in the public's support for the federal governmentand a corresponding increase in support of state and especiallylocal governments.     

Assessing the Impact of Bureaucracy Bashing by Electoral Campaigns

The literature on the implications of electoral "bureaucracy bashing" for public management is thin. This is partly because of the difficulty of defining basic terms and measuring results in meaningful ways. Using focus group data, this article explores how senior federal managers perceive campaign bureaucracy bashing and assess its consequences. The participants perceive that candidate-based bashing affects federal management on two levels: one emotional, the other programmatic. The emotional impact is pronounced, producing frustration and hostility from senior managers toward political candidates, political appointees, and the media. Senior managers report that bashing adversely affects policy implementation through low morale, poor recruitment, and training and by fostering an environment of distrust toward bureaucracy. Grounded in a diverse literature relating to public administration, the presidency, campaigns and elections, and political communication, this inquiry finds that senior managers confirm many of the speculations these works raise about how bashing affects public employees and public policy.     

Does Performance Budgeting Work? An Examination of the Office of Management and Budget’s PART Scores

In this paper, the authors use the Bush administration's management grades from the Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART) to evaluate performance budgeting in the federal government—in particular, the role of merit and political considerations in formulating recommendations for 234 programs in the president's fiscal year 2004 budget. PART scores and political support were found to influence budget choices in expected ways, and the impact of management scores on budget decisions diminished as the political component was taken into account. The Bush administration's management scores were positively correlated with proposed budgets for programs housed in traditionally Democratic departments but not in other departments. The federal government's most ambitious effort to use performance budgeting to date shows both the promise and the problems of this endeavor.     

Incrementalism before the Storm: Network Performance for the Evacuation of New Orleans

Hurricane Katrina revealed a lack of preparedness in disaster management networks covering the New Orleans area. This paper focuses on the operation of networks in preparing to evacuate residents in advance of a major disaster. There are two cases: the relatively successful evacuation of residents who left by private conveyance and the widely publicized failure to provide for those who could not or would not leave on their own. We trace the actions and inactions of various players to reach conclusions about the strengths and weaknesses of networks in the special circumstances of disaster preparation.     

The Institutional Context of Tolerance for Ethnic Minorities: A Comparative, Multilevel Analysis of Western Europe

Drawing on recent insights in the nationalism and citizenship regime literatures, this article develops a macrotheoretical framework for understanding cross-national variations in tolerance of ethnic minorities. Specifically, it tests the hypothesis that the degree to which the dominant ethnic tradition or culture is institutionalized in the laws and policies of a nation-state affects citizen tolerance of ethnic minorities. Employing a multilevel regression model, it systematically tests the framework, as well as competing individual and country-level explanations, for all member states of the European Union in 1997. Results confirm a strong relationship between the laws governing the acquisition and expression of citizenship, that is, citizenship regime type, and individual tolerance judgments. Moreover, citizenship regime type has a strong mediating effect on three individual-level variables previously shown to predict tolerance: ingroup national identity, political ideology, and satisfaction with democracy.     

Institutional determinants of the largest seat share

The degree of predominance of the largest party in a representative assembly affects government formation and survival. The seat share of the largest party, in turn, is constrained by the interaction of assembly size and electoral district magnitude in the following way. When all S seats in an assembly are allocated in districts of magnitude M, a logical quantitative model proposes that the largest fractional share is s₁ = (MS)^−1/8. As a curve, the model is found to fit with R² = 0.509, considering data from the averages of 46 periods in 37 countries, during which the electoral rules were essentially steady. As a worldwide average, the expression s₁(MS)^1/8 = 1 holds within 1%. Deviations from this average express the impact of various country-specific political and socio-cultural factors that can be investigated once the basic institutional constraints are controlled-for. This means that the degree of largest party predominance may be engineered to hover around a desired average by adjusting assembly size, and district magnitude, while keeping country-specific factors in mind.