Associations Between Caregiver Support, Bullying, and Depressive Symptomatology Among Sexual Minority and Heterosexual Girls: Results from the 2008 Boston Youth Survey

Although sexual minority (SM) youth are at an increased risk for being bullied and experiencing depression, it is unclear how caregiver support is interrelated with those variables. Therefore, we sought to assess: (a) the prevalence of nonphysical bullying, depressive symptomatology, and caregiver support among heterosexual and SM girls, (b) the association between caregiver support and bullying in both groups, and (c) whether sexual orientation moderates the interactive effect of caregiver support and bullying on depressive symptoms. Data come from a survey of students in 22 Boston public high schools; 99 of the 832 girls in the analytic sample were SM. We used chi-square statistics to examine group differences, and multiple regression to estimate the association between the caregiver support, sexual orientation, being bullied, and depressive symptomatology. SM girls reported similar levels of caregiver support as heterosexual girls, but reported higher levels of depressive symptomatology. They were also more likely to report nonphysical bullying. Tests for interactions were not statistically significant, suggesting that bullying, caregiver support, and sexual orientation are independently associated with depressive symptomatology.     

The Party Faithful: Partisan Images,Candidate Religion,and the Electoral Impact of Party Identification

We argue that the factors shaping the impact of partisanship on vote choice—“partisan voting”—depend on the nature of party identification. Because party identification is partly based on images of the social group characteristics of the parties, the social profiles of political candidates should affect levels of partisan voting. A candidate's religious affiliation enables a test of this hypothesis. Using survey experiments which vary a hypothetical candidate's religious affiliation, we find strong evidence that candidates’ religions can affect partisan voting. Identifying a candidate as an evangelical (a group viewed as Republican) increases Republican support for, and Democratic opposition to, the candidate, while identifying the candidate as a Catholic (a group lacking a clear partisan profile) has no bearing on partisan voting. Importantly, the conditional effect of candidate religion on partisan voting requires the group to have a salient partisan image and holds with controls for respondents’ own religious affiliations and ideologies.     

Patterns of victim marginalization in victim-offender mediation: some lessons learned

This article discusses issues that restorative justice programs may face during implementation and lessons learned from an exploratory study. We examined various perspectives of multiple participants who experienced a Victim-Offender Mediation (VOM) program in a mid-sized Midwestern city in the U.S. The primary data source comprised 34 interviews with 37 participants including adult crime victims, juvenile offenders and their parents, mediators, and representatives from referring agencies. Observations complemented the interview data. Findings revealed patterns of victim marginalization during the processes used: victims were not prepared appropriately; were at times pressured by mediators to behave in certain ways; and, occasionally felt intimidated by offenders and/or their families. We discuss some factors that may have influenced the emergence of these patterns. This study revealed gaps between the guiding principles of restorative justice theory and field practices, particularly sensitivity toward victims to meet their needs. We suggest that restorative justice programs should consider using a monitoring system to ensure that the processes used remain consistent with the values and principles of restorative justice.     

O.D. at the U.N.: facilitating global change

Expanding our OD horizons to the global level means not only carrying abroad what we know, but also being sensitive to diverse clients who may operate from cultural assumptions very different from our own. Both formal and informal change is possible at international gatherings if practitioners follow a few key guidelines. Seven such observations are discussed by the author, who includes a discussion of “expert” and “process” consultation methods. The article concludes that OD skills are needed in the international arena, but are often unappreciated or unknown. Hence, OD professionals must be educators in addition to their interpersonal practice of superior communication skills.

OD is only beginning to stretch its full imaginative power and practice to the international arena, as is reflected in my experiences at a conference of 122 countries held at the United Nations in Vienna, Austria. The conference was the first convening of nations to discuss the topic of old age in light of the policy and organizational implications of global demographic change.     

Challenges of Evaluating Democracy Assistance: Perspectives from the Donor Side

A large number of multilateral and bilateral donors have become engaged in the area of democracy and governance (DG) assistance over the last 15 years, stimulated by a series of trends and events. Despite the maturation of DG assistance as an important development area and the high profile of democracy promotion as a key foreign policy goal, research on the impact of this assistance and the effectiveness of different types of programming has been limited. Donors are constantly in need of feedback on the effectiveness and impact of their programming in order to revise programme designs, re-strategize aid portfolios, or address new DG issues. Moreover, legislatures increasingly require government aid agencies to be able to measure the results of their programmes, thereby demonstrating a ‘return on investment’ that would guide future assistance. Quality research is hampered by a daunting political, logistical, and methodological context, however. In 2005 a donor-sponsored workshop was organized to discuss challenges facing the evaluation and assessment of DG programming and assistance. The purpose of this article is to share insights from the workshop with a wider audience of scholars, practitioners and other policy-makers in the hope that this will stimulate additional research and thinking in this area.     

Measuring the quality of election administration

How do we distinguish between a ‘genuine’, ‘free and fair’, or ‘legitimate’ election and an election that is something less? In this article, we offer an answer to this vexing question: the Election Administration Systems Index (EASI). EASI is a practical, transparent, and sustainable tool for measuring the quality of elections in the developing world. The following pages describe the current limitations in measuring election quality, detail the EASI approach, and provide a comparative analysis of the results of its pilot implementation. EASI scores are drawn from a survey of experts on elections in the target country following a recent nationwide election. The analytical framework is comprised of three electoral dimensions: participation, competition, and integrity of the process. We also divide these dimensions temporally according to the electoral cycle: either pre-election, during the election, or post-election. The final product is a set of six primary scores displayed across dimension and time. By aggregating the survey data in this fashion, we provide for a nuanced assessment of an election by each dimension and across the cycle. As our pilot results demonstrate, EASI is a diagnostic tool for identifying electoral strengths and weaknesses and serves well for comparative assessments.     

Analysing legislative performance: a plebeian perspective

Legislative performance can be understood in terms of results (the quality of the laws enacted) or in terms of the literal performativity of legislators (the quality of their appearances on the public stage). This article examines two different ethical frameworks for evaluating legislative performance in this latter, performative sense: a deliberative model, which restricts just political performances to deliberative exchanges among citizens, and a plebeian model, which expands just political performances to include those where political and economic elites endure special burdens as a condition of their elevated status. Given certain drawbacks of the deliberative model and parallel advantages of the plebeian model, I endorse the plebeian approach to political performativity. The article concludes by elaborating one of the key contrasts between the two models with regard to political communication, namely the plebeian model's embrace of a distinct form of legislative disruption. Beyond the way deliberation itself disrupts non-communicative forms of power and beyond the way protests physically disrupt governmental processes, plebeianism invokes a third kind of disruption – non-deliberative speech – intended to rebuke and humble leaders rather than reach mutual understanding about issues.     

Does Dworkin Commit Dworkin's Fallacy?: A Reply to Justice in Robes

In an article entitled ‘Dworkin's Fallacy, Or What thePhilosophy of Language Can't Teach Us about the Law’,I argued that in Law's Empire Ronald Dworkin misderived hisinterpretive theory of law from an implicit interpretive theoryof meaning, thereby committing ‘Dworkin's fallacy’.In his recent book, Justice in Robes, Dworkin denies that hecommitted the fallacy. As evidence he points to the fact thathe considered three theories of law—‘conventionalism’,‘pragmatism’ and ‘law as integrity’—inLaw's Empire. Only the last of these is interpretive, but each,he argues, is compatible with his interpretive theory of meaning,which he describes as the view that ‘the doctrinal conceptof law is an interpretive concept’. In this Reply, I arguethat Dworkin's argument that he does not commit Dworkin's fallacyis itself an example of the fallacy and that Dworkin's fallacypervades Justice in Robes just as much as it did Law's Empire.