The Perils of Politics: Why Staying Apolitical is Good for Both the U.S. Military & the Country

This article seeks to answer several vital questions about contemporary American civil- military relations. For example, why might the most professional military in United States history seem to be especially likely to engage in public dissent and advocacy? Why might political dissent and activity hold appeal for current and upcoming generations of military officers? And, how can present day officers be persuaded that retaining an apolitical ethos is fundamental to the American military, not just because of tradition but because public dissent can do real damage to the military institution and to the country it serves?     

Researching Democracy and Terrorism: How Political Access Affects Militant Activity

Strikingly, little systematic study of the relationship between democracy and terrorism has been undertaken. This article addresses this lacuna by laying some groundwork for further analytical study of the issues. It does so, first, by suggesting a family of independent variables related to the concept of political access that might be employed in this research; and second, by introducing a more expansive set of dependent variables, which will help capture the diverse effects of political access on militant group activity. The bulk of the paper examines the variety of causal logics that could potentially connect democracy and terrorist group activity, drawing from five analytical approaches to understanding terrorist motivation evident in the literature. Two major conclusions follow from the analysis. First, the democracy and terrorism debate constitutes not one research question, but many. Second, the prediction that follows from many approaches to terrorist motivation is not that democracy should promote an easy, inevitable lessening of terrorism. Rather, a more refined understanding of when democracy, or other forms of political access, may reduce violence or yield other desirable (and undesirable) outcomes is essential.     

Differential effects of high‐quality child care

In policy research a frequent aim is to estimate treatment effects separately by subgroups. This endeavor becomes a methodological challenge when the subgroups are defined by post‐treatment, rather than pre‐treatment, variables because if analyses are performed in the same way as with pre‐treatment variables, causal interpretations are no longer valid. The authors illustrate a new approach to this challenge within the context of the Infant Health and Development Program, a multisite randomized study that provided at‐risk children with intensive, center‐based child care. This strategy is used to examine the differential causal effects of access to high‐quality child care for children who would otherwise have participated in one of three child care options: no non‐maternal care, home‐based non‐maternal care, and center‐based care. Results of this study indicate that children participating in the first two types of care would have gained the most from high‐quality center‐based care and, moreover, would have more consistently retained the bulk of these positive benefits over time. These results may have implications for policy, particularly with regard to the debate about the potential implications of providing universal child care. © 2002 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

U.S. psychiatrists' beliefs and wants about involuntary civil commitment grounds

This article presents results of a national U.S. survey of psychiatrists' views about legal grounds for involuntary civil commitment. Data from 739 Respondents revealed strong support for "danger to self," "danger to others," and "grave disability" as grounds, but weak support for "illness relapse." Psychiatrists did not support commitment for addiction to drugs or alcohol nor for sexual predators. Logit regression revealed few significant associations between Respondents' choice of grounds and other variables, such as race, employment setting, experience with commitment, and political climate of the state. Respondents' support for the various commitment grounds was found to be most significantly associated with what Respondents believed the law to be in their state; Respondents tended to support the grounds they believed to be the law. The reasons for the strong association between Respondents' beliefs and wants concerning commitment grounds is explored. It is suggested that Respondents have adopted their states' commitment grounds as their preferences through a process of internalization of norms. Implications of this hypothesis are discussed.     

Corporate Security: Identifying and Understanding the Levels of Security Work in an Organisation

The study undertook an examination of corporate security through the lens of the broader socio-organisational literature to understand its organisational stratum, seating, and function. The methodology applied a survey questionnaire to security practitioners, incorporating two measurement tools to assess work level and time-span of discretion. Findings identified work levels across the corporate security function. These work levels indicate that the corporate security function operates at the operational and tactical strata, with limited strategic executive impact. Furthermore, the corporate security function is positioned within the technostructure, providing analytical support to business operations. The study identified a significant disconnect between the corporate security literature—as written by security practitioners and academia—and the socio-organisational literature, with many points of divergence. These findings suggest the need for study replication and a review of the security literature in regards to executive influence.     

Does Spatial Variation in Heterogeneity Matter? Assessing the Adoption Patterns of Business Improvement Districts

Because they supplement the municipal provision of local public goods, Business Improvement Districts (BIDs) provide an opportunity to examine the space, scope, and determinants of the provision of local public goods. A BID is formed when a group of merchants or commercial property owners in a neighborhood vote in favor of package of self‐assessments and local public goods to be funded with those assessments. These districts solve a collective action problem in the provision of public goods because once a majority has voted in favor, participation is compulsory for all merchants or commercial property owners in the neighborhood. I use a unique dataset on adoption patterns of BIDs in California to test two main claims suggested by the theoretical literature: first, that businesses respond to individual heterogeneity that determines the quality of local public goods, and second, that the type of heterogeneity—overall or spatial—matters. In contrast to the literature on residents, this study finds at best a weak correlation between a city's adoption of a BID and heterogeneity. In addition, despite the theoretical preference for spatial over overall heterogeneity, BIDs are not more likely to be adopted by spatially heterogeneous cities.