Patriotism,black politics and racial justice in America

Recent decades have seen an upsurge in interest in patriotism among progressive intellectuals and within progressive politics, while recent manifestations of black politics in the era of President Barack Obama have utilized patriotic narratives. We question this turn to patriotism on the grounds that it is a questionable manner in which to pursue racial justice in our post-Civil Rights political landscape. Patriotic appeals to civic virtue always invoke or imply the anti-patriot who lacks that virtue and is therefore less capable of exercising exemplary citizenship. This idea of the anti-patriot, however, easily coalesces with and buttresses the language of cultural pathology used historically to argue that African-Americans are deficient in civic virtue and key for reproducing racial inequality. The idea of the anti-patriot could thus provide another vocabulary for displacing responsibility for addressing racial inequality away from white Americans and onto black Americans. After illuminating this dynamic at work in some of the most successful African-American patriotic thinkers—Frederick Douglass, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Barack Obama—we conclude by arguing that those concerned with racial justice should reject patriotism in favor of three alternative traditions in African-American political thought: self-examination, prophecy, and rage.     

The Australian Experience of Municipal Amalgamation: Asking the Citizenry and Exploring the Implications

Debate over municipal amalgamations in Australian continues to dominate local government reform agendas, with the putative need to achieve economies of scale and scope consistently set against anti‐amalgamation arguments designed to preserve extant communities. Following from an examination of recent episodes of consolidation in Australia, this paper reports on citizens' attitudes to amalgamation garnered from a national survey of 2,006 individuals. We found that generally, citizens are ambivalent toward amalgamation, although attitudes were influenced by particular demographic characteristics and attitudes to representation, belonging, service delivery requirements and the costs thereof. The results suggest that, away from the local government sector itself, structural reform may not be the vexatious issue it is often portrayed as. The implications of this are explored here.     

Police,Crime and the Problem of Weak Instruments: Revisiting the “More Police,Less Crime” Thesis

Objectives

A key question in the general deterrence literature has been the extent to which the police reduce crime. Definitive answers to this statement, however, are difficult to come by because while more police may reduce crime, higher crime rates may also increase police levels, by triggering the hiring of more police. One way to help overcome this problem is through the use of instrumental variables (IV). Levitt, for example, has employed instrumental variables regression procedures, using mayoral and gubernatorial election cycles and firefighter hiring as instruments for police strength, to address the potential endogeneity of police levels in structural equations of crime due to simultaneity bias.

Methods

We assess the validity and reliability of the instruments used by Levitt for police hiring using recently-developed specification tests for instruments. We apply these tests to both Levitt’s original panel dataset of 59 US cities covering the period 1970–1992 and an extended version of the panel with data through 2008.

Results

Results indicate that election cycles and firefighter hiring are “weak instruments”—weak predictors of police growth that, if used as instruments in an IV estimation, are prone to result in an unreliable estimate of the impact of police levels on crime.

Conclusions

Levitt’s preferred instruments for police levels—mayoral and gubernatorial election cycles and firefighter hiring—are weak instruments by current econometric standards and thus cannot be used to address the potential endogeneity of police in crime equations.

     

Governing strategically: the New Zealand experience

This article describes the evolution of New Zealand's approach to the strategic direction of its public service during a decade of reform. Problems of atomization and short-termism which emerged from the first phase of reform were addressed through the adaptation of the Cabinet and central agency processes for policy, budget and management. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Supplier behaviour and public contracting in the English agency nursing market

The worldwide expansion in the use of private firms to deliver public services and infrastructure has promoted a substantial literature on public sector contract and relationship management. This literature is currently dominated by the notion that supplier relationships should be based upon trust. Less prominent are more sceptical approaches that emphasize the need to assiduously manage potential supplier exploitation and opportunism. This article addresses this imbalance by focusing upon the recent experience of the English National Health Service (NHS) in its dealings with its nursing agencies. Between 1997 and 2001, the NHS was subjected to considerable exploitation and opportunism. This forced managers to adopt a supply strategy based upon an assiduous use of e-auctions, framework agreements and quality audits. The article assesses the effectiveness of this strategy and reflects upon whether a more defensive approach to contract and relationship management offers a viable alternative to one based upon trust.     

Penal Units in the Red Army

This article compares German and Soviet ideas behind raising penal units on the Eastern Front during World War II and their employment in combat, but focuses on Soviet practice. In an attempt to tighten discipline in the Red Army, Stalin adopted the basic draconian measures used by Leon Trotsky, his most bitter rival, during the Civil War of 1918–1922 but he considerably intensified the scale and scope of repressions thus elevating the brutality on the Eastern Front to new heights.

U strafnikov odin zakon, odin konets:

Koli, rubi fashistskogo brodyagu!

I esli ne poimaesh v grud’ svinets,

Medal’ na grud’ poimaesh ‘Za otvagu’.

[Penal soldiers know only one law:

Kill the fascist bastard!

And if you remain alive,

You will get a medal ‘For Valour’.]

(Vladimir Vysotsky, Shtrafnye batal'ony[Penal Battalions])

Listen First: a pilot system for managing downward accountability in NGOs

This article reports on a research project intended to develop systematic ways of managing downward accountability in an international NGO. Innovative tools were developed and trialled in six countries. The tools comprised a framework, defining downward accountability in practical terms, and three management processes. They were successfully used to (a) encourage staff to improve downward accountability in ways relevant to their context; (b) hear beneficiaries' assessments of the level of accountability achieved and the value of the NGO's work; and (c) generate quantified performance summaries for managers. Taken together, they form a coherent draft management system. Areas for further research are identified.     

Testing a Model of Universal Prevention Effects on Adolescent Relationships and Marijuana Use as Pathways to Young Adult Outcomes

There are several interrelated knowledge gaps in the literature on skills-building interventions for middle schoolers designed to prevent initiation of substance use, all of which concern the limited study of the adolescent pathways of those intervention effects on distal young adult outcomes. Among the most important yet understudied pathways of influence on long-term effects are positive youth relationship outcomes of middle-school interventions. Other influential pathways for long-term effects are reductions in adolescent substance misuse, particularly marijuana use, considering the long-term consequences of early marijuana initiation. To address these knowledge gaps, data from a randomized controlled trial were used to test a longitudinal, developmental model positing pathways of intervention effects on age 21 illicit drug use and positive relationship affect, via earlier effects on adolescent relationships and marijuana use. Sixth-graders and their families enrolled in 22 Iowa schools were randomly assigned to the Iowa Strengthening Families Program or a control group (N?=?446). The average age of students at baseline was 11.3 years (10–13 year age range); 48% were male and 98% were Caucasian, reflective of the demographics in the participating rural Midwest communities. Measures included middle-school relationships (parents, peers, school), high school marijuana use, plus age 21 illicit drug use and relationship affect (parents, work, school), 10 years past intervention implementation. As expected, intervention effects on young adult variables were indirect, through effects on adolescent outcomes, with higher-risk participants showing greater intervention impact. The findings suggest preventive interventions with young adolescents have potential to demonstrate effects into young adulthood.