Sexually abusive behaviour in juveniles: Deviant and non-deviant pathways

Abstract

In this paper a theoretical framework is presented in an attempt to find an answer to the question of why some juveniles display sexually abusive behaviour and others do not. Until recently, this question has been approached mainly in terms of the presence of psychiatric illness, deviant sexual interests and/or impaired psychosocial development. Empirical research has as yet generally failed to demonstrate this approach to be adequate. It is estimated that only about 40% of juvenile sex offenders appear to show some kind of psychological or developmental deviance. The theoretical framework that is presented here approaches sexual abuse committed by juveniles in terms of normal developmental processes, next to deviant processes. It describes this behaviour, and its presence or absence, as a result of the interaction of biological, psychological and situational factors.     

Lawmaking and News Making: Different Worlds after all? A Study on News Coverage of Legislative Processes in the Netherlands

Over the last decades the importance of the media for understanding the functioning of democracy in the contemporary world has become evident. Yet despite the developing body of knowledge on political communication and newsworthiness there is little research about why and how the media cover legislative processes in a European context. Therefore this study analyses media coverage of lawmaking in the Netherlands and investigates which characteristics of legislation influence the amount of news coverage. It shows that only one out of five laws is covered at all and that no more than one out of 10 laws receives substantial media attention. This leads to the question why some laws get extensive news attention, whereas most laws are completely ignored. Press coverage for the legislative process turns out to be both selective and predictable. Traditional news values such as political conflict and significance are good predictors of media coverage for lawmaking. In addition, laws are largely ignored when they are part of the budgetary cycle.     

Labour of love: Female juvenile prostitution in the Netherlands

Summary

Although the number of young prostitutes increases, little systematic research has been undertaken to gain more insight into the trafficking of these young women. The main object of the present study was to describe the processes (that is, grooming, incorporation, and maintenance) that underlie the trafficking of young women for prostitution. Police records of 16 adolescent prostitutes were analysed. Results show that these prostitutes were recruited by so-called ‘lover boys’ who applied various seduction techniques to make the vulnerable young women fall in love with them. In general, the young women were incorporated into prostitution by means of physical violence. To protect and secure their income and organization, the pimps used a wide range of power and control tactics, of which the use of physical violence can be considered the most effective.     

How Europe’s Political Leaders Made Sense of the Euro Crisis: The Influence of Pressure and Personality

The Greek announcement of its excessive debts led to one of the most severe crises the EU has faced since its inception. The crisis soon evolved into a full leadership crisis as European political leaders struggled to come up with a common solution to the challenges they faced. Theories of leadership and crisis management identify several factors that may contribute to these differences. This article examines to what extent leaders’ personal traits and external pressure influenced how six political leaders made sense of the situation. The study finds that a leader’s belief that they can control events, their self-confidence, as well as economic pressure provide a partial explanation of how European leaders make sense of the crisis. The traits of cognitive complexity and openness to information do not exert an influence in the cases discussed here. These findings indicate that any comprehensive understanding of how leaders make sense of crises should take note of specific individual as well as contextual factors.     

Making Good Use of Partners: Differential Effects of Managerial Networking in the Social Care Domain

ABSTRACT

Public managers engage in networking relationships with a wide variety of external actors and organizations from which they can draw different types of support and resources. Most empirical studies on managerial networking merely present different intensities of external networking in general, as if it were a unidimensional concept. In practice, however, public managers strategically differentiate between functional or task-related groups of external partners, based on the specific policy context. Moreover, such differentiation in networking behavior can be expected to systematically impact agency and public program performance outcomes. This article derives contextualized hypotheses on how managerial networking affects the performance of Dutch local governments in the social care domain. Multilevel structural equation analyses of 3,257 social care clients in 71 local governments provide evidence that bilateral client-interest networking is more beneficial to the Social Support Act's overall goal of improving the level of social participation of clients than professional networking. Moreover, the effect is indirect: managerial networking with client interest groups improves the physical self-reliance of clients, enabling them to engage in social activities.     

The 1981 Netherlands election

The Left in France. By Neill Nugent and David Lowe. London: Macmillan, 1982. Pp. xi + 275. £15.000.

Contemporary French Political Parties. Edited by David S. Bell. London: Croom Helm, 1982. Pp. 199, £13.95.     

Boundary riding: Cross‐cultural analysis,national cinema and genre

This paper addresses the relation between rhetoric and politics through a reading of the term ‘queer’ as it circulated in three different communities in the 1990s: the activist group Queer Nation; the (American) field of study now known as Queer Theory; and an underground queer‐punk press (fanzines'). Reflection on the specific uses of the term ‘queer’ indicates widely divergent and conflicting meaning‐making processes. For some people, the term ‘queer’ signifies all people outside of normative heterosexuality, while for others, the term only refers to lesbians and gay men. Within both Queer Nation and Queer Theory, a metaphorical association is established among ‘queers’ and ‘lesbian/gays’. By contrast, queer‐punks employ the term catachrestically, as a metaphor for which no literal referent exists. Rhetorical theory can clarify these different employments of the same term. Theories of metaphor and catachresis help us to understand how relations of association are established among queers and lesbian/gays, and how particular rhetorical strategies relate to specific political agendas.     

Changing Planning by Changing Practice: How Water Managers Innovate Through Action

ABSTRACT

In this study, we show how water managers who were not in strategic decision-making positions strategized in order to innovate water management practice. They undertook actions in order to infuse water management with a pragmatic logic that in their view would be better able to handle complexity. They addressed the requirements of an organizational context dominated by rational comprehensive planning as the model for acceptable action and associated forms of organizing that honor formally regulated responsibilities. Existing organizational practices and the logics grounding these were the counterpoint of their strategy, as well as the source on which they drew. Conventional forms of planning and organization were changed from within, through insider action woven into existing organizational process and form. Although acting from a logic that competed with established practices, these managers avoided confrontation and battle on the level of logic. They rather strategized by harnessing existing practices.