An indirect legitimacy argument for a directly elected European Parliament

Can a directly elected European Parliament help deliver standards by which the European Union can be indirectly legitimated through its component national democracies? This article argues that the Union can be indirectly legitimate where it helps member state democracies meet their own obligations to their own publics. The Union can do just that by managing externalities in ways needed to secure core values of justice, democracy and freedom from arbitrary domination within member states. Yet that poses a predicament: for if any one member state has an interest in imposing negative externalities or in freeriding on positive externalities provided by another, then so may its voters and democratic institutions. The article argues a directly elected European Parliament can help manage that predicament both by identifying externalities and by ensuring their regulation meets standards of public control, political equality and justification owed to individual national democracies.     

THE HELPING HAND OF THE LAW: POLICE CONTROL OF CITIZENS ON REQUEST*

This study examines how patrol officers respond to citizens' requests that officers control another citizen—by advising or persuading them, warning or threatening them, making them leave someone alone or leave the scene, or arresting them. Data are drawn from field observations conducted in Indianapolis, Indiana, in 1996 and St. Petersburg, Florida, in 1997. Officers granted the request for the most restrictive form of control requested by the citizen in 70% of the 396 observed cases. Several factors were modeled to determine their influence on officers' decisions to grant or deny the most restrictive request. These factors include legal considerations, need, factors that attenuate the impact of law or need, the social relationship between the requester and target of control, and personal characteristics of the officer. Multivariate analysis shows that the most influential factors were legal considerations. When citizens requested an arrest, the likelihood that the police would be responsive dropped considerably. However, as the evidence of a legal violation against the targeted citizen increased, so did the odds of an arrest. Officers were less likely to grant the requests of citizens having a close relationship with the person targeted for control, disrespectful of the police, or intoxicated or mentally ill. The race, wealth, and organization affiliation of citizen adversaries had little impact on the police decision. Male officers, officers with fewer years of police experience, and officers with a stronger proclivity to community policing, had significantly greater odds of giving citizens what they requested. The implications of the findings for research and policy are discussed.     

PRIVATIZING UK TAX LAW ENFORCEMENT?

Tax law enforcement in the UK has long been dominated by public bureaucracies of the 'classic' type. This article reviews some current problems of tax law enforcement in that style, and looks at some possible ways of mitigating those problems. These include a change in penalty schedules and some measure of 're-privatization' of tax law enforcement, harking back to pre-bureaucratic enforcement styles. Six problems likely to be associated with privatization of tax law enforcement are discussed. These are not trivial, but it is argued that they may be somewhat less severe in the case of tax law enforcement than in that of law enforcement in general.     

USING BUREAUCRACY SPARINGLY

'Using bureaucracy sparingly' (UBS) is a well-known and traditional canon of good public administration — but one that has a number of meanings which are not wholly compatible with one another. Looking at the interface between government administration and the outside public (rather than at the internal operations of government bureaux), this essay identifies three rather different senses of UBS, all of which are in common currency. The implications of two of these are then explored, in terms of the kinds of preferences they imply for the use of government's administrative instruments. Finally, there is a brief discussion of what the different senses of UBS have in common and of the extent to which they have divergent implications, posing dilemmas for those who might wish to 'use bureaucracy sparingly'.     

THE NEGLECTED SITUATION: A CROSSNATIONAL STUDY OF THE SITUATIONAL CHARACTERISTICS OF CRIME*

Although it is generally recognized in the social sciences that the “situation” is indispensable for understanding behavior, thus far criminologists have not devoted systematic attention to situational analysis. This paper contributes to the development of a situational perspective on crime by defining the concept of situation, developing four hypotheses about the situational characteristics of selected personal contact crimes, and then testing those hypotheses using victimization survey data from the United States and Venezuela. The research shows that coercive crimes are less situationally clustered than noncoercive crimes and that instrumental crimes are more situationally clustered than character crimes. Despite tremendous differences in crime rates for the two countries, substantial similarity is found in situational crime patterns. The implications of the research for criminological theory are discussed.     

DOES MARRIAGE REDUCE CRIME? A COUNTERFACTUAL APPROACH TO WITHIN‐INDIVIDUAL CAUSAL EFFECTS*

Although marriage is associated with a plethora of adult outcomes, its causal status remains controversial in the absence of experimental evidence. We address this problem by introducing a counterfactual life‐course approach that applies inverse probability of treatment weighting (IPTW) to yearly longitudinal data on marriage, crime, and shared covariates in a sample of 500 high‐risk boys followed prospectively from adolescence to age 32. The data consist of criminal histories and death records for all 500 men plus personal interviews, using a life‐history calendar, with a stratified subsample of 52 men followed to age 70. These data are linked to an extensive battery of individual and family background measures gathered from childhood to age 17 — before entry into marriage. Applying IPTW to multiple specifications that also incorporate extensive time‐varying covariates in adulthood, being married is associated with an average reduction of approximately 35 percent in the odds of crime compared to nonmarried states for the same man. These results are robust, supporting the inference that states of marriage causally inhibit crime over the life course.     

INVESTIGATING THE STABILITY OF CO‐OFFENDING AND CO‐OFFENDERS AMONG A SAMPLE OF YOUTHFUL OFFENDERS*

Scholars have long argued that delinquency is a group phenomenon. Even so, minimal research exists on the nature, structure, and process of co‐offending. This investigation focuses on a particular void, namely the stability of 1) co‐offending and 2) co‐offender selection over time, for which divergent theoretical expectations currently exist that bear on issues central to general and developmental/life‐course theories of crime. By relying on individual‐level, longitudinal data for a sample of juvenile offenders from Philadelphia, we find that distinct trajectories of co‐offending exist over the course of the juvenile criminal career. This inquiry also develops an individualized measure of co‐offender stability, which reveals that delinquents generally tend not to “reuse” co‐offenders, although frequent offenders show a greater propensity to do so. The discussion considers the theoretical and policy implications of these findings as well as provides some avenues for future research.