SYMPOSIUM OVERVIEW: CONCEPTUALIZING NEW GOVERNANCE ARRANGEMENTS

This symposium, ‘Conceptualizing New Governance Arrangements', takes up the challenge of refining governance theory to better integrate work in several disciplines, most notably politics, public administration and law. To this end, we argue for a theoretical framework that profiles three key dimensions of governance: institutional, political and regulatory. This framework, in our view, offers new insights into the nature and operation of various governance arrangements, and offers the potential to assess and measure change within such arrangements over time. After describing our methodology for selecting and analysing the case studies profiled in the symposium, we introduce each of the articles that apply our three‐dimensional governance framework. These articles employ the framework to consider a variety of contemporary governance scenarios that vary widely by sector (environmental, climate change, forestry and education policy) and level of analysis (sub‐national, national, and bi‐national).     

PROBLEM-ORIENTED POLICING IN VIOLENT CRIME PLACES: A RANDOMIZED CONTROLLED EXPERIMENT*

Over the past decade, problem-oriented policing has become a central strategy for policing. In a number of studies, problem-oriented policing has been found to be effective in reducing crime and disorder. However, very little is known about the value of problem-oriented interventions in controlling violent street crime. The National Academy of Sciences' Panel on the Understanding and Control of Violent Behavior suggests that sustained research on problem-oriented policing initiatives that modify places, routine activities, and situations that promote violence could contribute much to the understanding and control of violence. This study evaluates the effects of problem-oriented policing interventions on urban violent crime problems in Jersey City, New Jersey. Twenty-four high-activity, violent crime places were matched into 12 pairs and one member of each pair was allocated to treatment conditions in a randomized block field experiment. The results of the impact evaluation support the growing body of research that asserts focused police efforts can reduce crime and disorder at problem places without causing crime problems to displace to surrounding areas.