The evolving discipline of public affairs

• Approaching the tenth anniversary of this Journal of Public Affairs, as the editorial team we offer this extended literature review as our reflection on the evolution and development of public affairs, both as an academic discipline and a professional practice. It is a necessarily personal and subjective contribution, highlighting the issues and areas which we believe represent significant continuing debates. The article considers how public affairs is, and should be, defined; examines the range of activities which theorists and practitioners understand as falling within the scope of corporate public affairs; analyses the relationship between public affairs and corporate political activity as different though complementary fields; discusses the importance of the public issues life cycle and the issues management models; and calls upon the public affairs community to defend the position of public affairs as the fundamental bridge between the organisation, society and government, in the face of challenges from other organisational functions.

Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Pictures at an exhibition revisited: reflections on a typology of images used in the construction of corporate social responsibility and sustainability in non‐financial corporate reporting

• Strategic corporate and public affairs communication about Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has emerged as a major component of corporate efforts to interact with their stakeholders and society at large. Non‐financial reporting, and CSR reporting in particular, is now seen as an essential corporate communication process by most members of a company's stakeholder community. This growth in CSR reporting has been driven by the need to increase corporate transparency and accountability concerning social and environmental issues. Arguably, the European Union is the most progressive region in adopting CSR reporting. Almost all of Europe's top 100 companies report on social and environmental performance, whilst figures for the USA and the rest of the world are much lower. The latest Accountability Rating concludes that ‘Europe leads, America lags’ after measuring companies' social and environmental impacts.
• The authors argue that visual communication is as important as words and numbers in creating meaning and assess UK and German Companies' non‐financial performance. Utilizing a range of research methods including content analysis and semiotic interpretation the authors propose a typology of images used in non‐financial reporting. This typology and associated conceptual development can used to more accurately define and interpret CSR and sustainability.

Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

‘Death is painful so it is better to be holding a gun’: the socio-ecologically situated dis/rearmament decisions of formerly abducted persons in northern Uganda

In northern Uganda, children and youth once abducted by the notorious Lord's Resistance Army now live in internally displaced persons camps, facing challenging social, economic and security conditions. Within this context, former combatants state they would prefer to rearm than face a ‘painful’ and inevitable death. Drawing on qualitative interviews and focus group discussions with over 300 former combatants, we apply a socio-ecological lens to determine the push/pull factors that influence their decision to rearm or disarm. A lack of personal security, levels of stigmatisation and poor economic and educational opportunities are among the highest push factors toward rearmament. These findings point to a broad range of causes and actors responsible for child and youth militarisation and call for more holistic DDR approaches.     

Coming to Terms with Separatist Insurgencies

Although insurgencies may begin their rebellions with expressed desires for outcomes unacceptable to opposing governments, the desired insurgent outcomes sometimes undergo modification, creating conditions that can make governments more amenable to external mediation. In certain separatist conflicts, the likelihood of external mediation increases when the political redefinition of the state insisted upon by the insurgents undergoes a revision, from secession to self‐determination, understood as a variant of autonomy. In the same vein, although it may not happen concurrently, insurgent movements become more amenable to external mediation if and when opposing governments revise the preferred conflict outcome from a military defeat of the insurgents to a containment of the movement. These two developments can serve as objective referents helping external parties to identify a ripe moment in the conflict and initiate mediation. But the implementation of an agreement ending separatist conflict may not occur if the government fails to submit the proposed territorial bounds of autonomy to prior review by constituents. Potential spoilers among government constituents should be identified and recruited to participate in the negotiations so that the likelihood of agreement rejection is reduced. In some states, however, the legal mechanisms and political opportunities for constituents to act as spoilers do not exist.     

Working with children as stakeholders in development: the challenges of organisational change

This article considers the challenges of promoting children's participation in development programming. It argues against the tendency to see the main obstacle to achieving this aim as technical. Instead it explores the institutional dimensions of change that may be required. The experience of a four-year process of training and organisational review within Save the Children Denmark provides the substance for reflection about the kinds of cultural and structural change that are implicated in enabling a development organisation to become capable of engaging young people as stakeholders in a meaningful and sustainable manner.     

Breaking up is hard to do: the economic impact of provisional funding contingent upon evidence development

Funding contingent upon evidence development (FED) has recently been the subject of some considerable debate in the literature but relatively little has been made of its economic impact. We argue that FED has the potential to shorten the lag between innovation and access but may also (i) crowd-out more valuable interventions in situations in which there is a fixed dedicated budget; or (ii) lead to a de facto increase in the funding threshold and increased expenditure growth in situations in which the programme budget is open-ended. Although FED would typically entail periodic review of provisional or interim listings, it may prove difficult to withdraw funding even at cost/QALY ratios well in excess of current listing thresholds. Further consideration of the design and implementation of FED processes is therefore required to ensure that its introduction yields net benefits over existing processes.     

An exploration of burglary in the criminal histories of sex offenders referred for civil commitment

Commission of nonsexual crimes generally antedates officially recorded sexual offenses. In particular, burglary has been hypothesized to be a potential ‘stepping stone’ in the development of one's sexual criminal career in the same way that marijuana has often been considered a ‘gateway drug’ to more serious drug-related offenses. The present study examined the officially recorded criminal histories of 828 male sex offenders to determine the relevance of burglary in their criminal histories. One third of the men in the sample (n=281, 34%) had been charged at least once for burglary. These 281 men committed a total of 762 separate incidents of burglary. Offenders with at least one officially recorded charge for burglary (BSOs) were compared with those with no such charges (SOs). Next, the characteristics of each burglary were examined and four distinct types of burglary were identified: nonsexual, covertly sexual, overtly sexual, and combination burglary/rape. BSOs accrued twice as many charges as the SOs and were significantly more likely to have an earlier age of onset, a longer criminal career, more employment problems, elementary school problems, antisocial behavior, and substance abuse.     

The children’s programme: a description of a group and family intervention for children engaging in problematic and harmful sexual behaviour and their parents/carers

ABSTRACT

Children under 10 are increasingly being referred to services for concerning problematic or harmful sexual behaviour, but information about interventions to support these children and their families is limited. A 3-year pilot of a group cognitive–behavioural intervention for children and their parents/carers is described. Forty-nine children were referred to the programme with 27 completing the programme in this period. This is the first intervention of its kind to be delivered with a UK population and demographic information is provided about the children who have been assessed, including information about age, gender, family composition and abuse history. Outcome data from the Trauma Symptom Checklist for Children, Child Sexual Behaviour Inventory, Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire and the Parental Stress and Social Support Scale is reported. The available outcome data indicates the group has been largely beneficial in reducing problematic sexual behaviour. Key learning and implications for practice are discussed.     

“Ragged urchins play on marquetry floors”: The discourse of filtering is reconstructed, 1920s–1950s

The idea of filtering has played a key role in our understanding of housing markets and in framing federal policy. The origins of the idea, however, and of the term itself, are poorly understood. Drawing loosely on the approach of discourse analysis, this article clarifies both issues, arguing that language shapes how we think about housing policy, and indeed policy itself. The concept of filtering emerged in Great Britain in the late nineteenth century where, by 1900, it informed arguments in favor of municipal (public) housing. It became influential in the United States in the 1920s but in 1938 was still referred to in different ways, notably as “hand-me-down housing.” Here, it was understood more narrowly, as an alternative to public housing. After 1939, the Federal Housing Administration, though not its leading consultant Homer Hoyt, popularized the term “filtering.” The neutral connotations of this metaphorical term suited the agency's goal of developing an apparently objective discourse of housing markets and market analysis. The term was normalized by the early 1960s.