E Pluribus Unum: fostering a new era of citizenship by teaching civic engagement and healthy civic discourse

• In a time of profound national challenge and change, it is important to promote a new definition of active citizenship locally, nationally and globally. As the effects of economic, political and social globalization continue to underscore interdependence, the imperative of fostering democratic minds among a citizenry is evermore important. It is essential to conceive a common future that encourages the participation of all American citizens; inviting diversity as an asset and broadly reawakening the call to leverage the rich potentials of pluralism in search of common solutions. However, many schools are retreating from basic civics lessons and are not teaching students how to become active citizens. More importantly, public institutions overall do not appear to be advancing the fundamental awareness and skills required for sifting through political hucksterism, opinion masquerading as news and political spin. It is essential for our schools and public institutions to teach the responsibilities and joy of active citizenship. To meet the challenges of democratic cooperation and social cohesion, leaders and citizens alike should be taught and encouraged to openly question, to critique and even to criticize the status quo. The means for cultivating and institutionalizing such habits on a broad scale involves educational reformation and initiatives in civics and citizenship education to increase opportunities for meaningful public engagement. These are by no means the only answer, but they are a critical component for meeting the challenges of truly inclusive and active representative democracy where out of many, we are one.

Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Risk assessment and suicide prevention in primary care

General practitioners (GPs) are assumed to occupy an important position in the prevention of suicide through the introduction of risk assessment techniques commonly used in psychiatric practice. Despite this theoretical role for primary care services, it remains unclear how frequently GPs implement risk assessment in patients who may be vulnerable to suicide. To address this, a retrospective survey of probable suicides was conducted within a primary care setting utilizing a questionnaire of GPs who had experienced a patient suicide and was augmented by hospital and coroners' records. 85% of questionnaires were returned and 61 deaths were adjudged as suicides during the year long census period. 75% of suicides were male and 54% were aged under 35.28% were in contact with psychiatric services prior to death, although 60% had some diagnosis of mental disorder. GPs had little knowledge of a patient's life circumstances in up to half of cases. Recording of risk assessment occurred in 38% of subjects, was positively associated with prior psychiatric contact (p = 0.001) but negatively associated with presence of physical illness (p = 0.004), older patient age (p = 0.04), and GPs length in practice (p = 0.05). One GP felt their suicide case was preventable. The low rate of risk assessment and limited knowledge of patient lifestyle point to the need for active engagement of GPs in future suicide prevention strategies and should influence the content of training programs in primary care.     

Introduction: Meritocracy in Perspective. The Rise of the Meritocracy 60 Years On

Sixty years after its publication, Michael Young’s The Rise of the Meritocracy remains one of the most important texts for understanding the changing intellectual politics of postwar Britain. Young’s fictional vision of a meritocratic society explores the consequences of a society where each citizen is judged according to the formula ‘I.Q. + Effort = Merit’. The successful meritocrats hoard ever-greater rewards for themselves, crystallising into a rigid and repressive elite who rule over an increasingly powerless and depressed underclass. While the concept has evolved and adapted, the language of meritocracy is one of the great survivors of postwar British politics. In an age characterised by the rise of populist leaders and movements, as well as a backlash against educated ‘liberal elites’, revisiting, reinterpreting and re-evaluating Young’s influential satire and the central place the concept of meritocracy occupies in the history of postwar Britain has never been more important.     

Is Representation Enough? Racial Disparities in Levels of Force and Arrests by Police

The research in representative bureaucracy that examines the extent to which racial congruence impacts bureaucrats’ decisions is mixed. This study adds to this literature by examining the impact of representative bureaucracy on the level of force that police officers use and whether they make an arrest in use of force encounters, while taking into consideration key situational conditions. Using individual-level data from New Orleans to estimate this impact, the authors find that racial congruence and incongruence impact policing outcomes even in the presence of situational shortcuts that cue decision-making. The findings show that the benefits of representation are conditional on the outcome. Black officers are less likely to use higher levels of force on Black civilians. Yet both Black and White officers are less likely to arrest White civilians in use of force encounters. This suggests that interactions in which bureaucrats have less discretion (e.g., arrests) may offer limited opportunities for active representation.     

Designing a Choice Architecture for Regulators

The emergence of behavioral public administration has led to increasing calls for public managers and policy makers to consider predictable cognitive biases when regulating individual behaviors or market transactions. Recognizing that cognitive biases can also affect the regulators themselves, this article attempts to understand how the institutional environment in which regulators operate interacts with their cognitive biases. In other words, to what extent does the “choice architecture” that regulators face reinforce or counteract predictable cognitive biases? Just as knowledge of behavioral insights can help regulators design a choice architecture that frames individual decisions to encourage welfare-enhancing choices, it may help governments understand and design institutions to counter cognitive biases in regulators that contribute to deviations from public interest policies. From these observations, the article offers some modest suggestions for improving the regulatory choice architecture.     

Identity as Dependent Variable: How Americans Shift Their Identities to Align with Their Politics

Political science generally treats identities such as ethnicity, religion, and sexuality as “unmoved movers” in the chain of causality. I hypothesize that the growing salience of partisanship and ideology as social identities in the United States, combined with the increasing demographic distinctiveness of the nation's two political coalitions, is leading some Americans to engage in a self-categorization and depersonalization process in which they shift their identities toward the demographic prototypes of their political groups. Analyses of a representative panel data set that tracks identities and political affiliations over a 4-year span confirm that small but significant shares of Americans engage in identity switching regarding ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, and class that is predicted by partisanship and ideology in their pasts, bringing their identities into alignment with their politics. These findings enrich and complicate our understanding of the relationship between identity and politics and suggest caution in treating identities as unchanging phenomena.     

论涵括（一）：一种初步探索

经验法则是司法证明中的一项基础性法则,大陆法系司法证明理论对其进行了概括论述,其理论形态具有较高的概括性、抽象性。英美国家的司法证明学者在“涵括”概念下也具体探讨了经验法则相关的内容,与大陆法系学者对经验法则的概括论述有所区别,英美学者在阐述“涵括”理论时,更注重其在证据能力和证明力评断以及具体司法推论过程中的方法论和工具作用,为我们研究经验法则的内容、作用机制提供了一个新的观察视角。