CHANGES IN CRIMINAL OFFENDING AROUND THE TIME OF JOB ENTRY: A STUDY OF EMPLOYMENT AND DESISTANCE

Does employment promote desistance from crime? Most perspectives assume that individuals who become employed are less likely to offend than those who do not. The critical issue has to do with the timing of employment transitions in the criminal trajectory. The turning point hypothesis expects reductions in offending after job entries, whereas the maturation perspective assumes desistance to have occurred ahead of successful transitions to legitimate work. Focusing on a sample of recidivist males who became employed during 2001–2006 (N = 783), smoothing spline regression techniques were used to model changes in criminal offending around the point of entry to stable employment. Consistent with the maturation perspective, the results showed that most offenders had desisted prior to the employment transition and that becoming employed was not associated with further reductions in criminal behavior. Consistent with the turning point hypothesis, we identified a subset of offenders who became employed during an active phase of the criminal career and experienced substantial reductions in criminal offending thereafter. However, this trajectory describes less than 2 percent of the sample. The patterns observed in this research suggest that transition to employment is best viewed as a consequence rather than as a cause of criminal desistance.     

WEBER AND KAFKA: THE RATIONAL AND THE ENIGMATIC BUREAUCRACY

Max Weber's and Franz Kafka's respective understandings of bureaucracy are as different as night and day. Yet, Kafka's novel The Castle is best read with Max Weber at hand. In fact, Kafka relates systematically to all the dimensions in Weber's ideal type of bureaucracy and give us a much‐contemplated parody, almost a counter‐punctual ideal type, based on four key observations: bureaucratic excesses unfold in time and space; a ‘no error’ ideology generates inescapable dilemmas; inscrutability is a life condition in bureaucracy; civil servants end up walking on the spot, just like the figures in Escher's painting: Ascending and Descending. Nevertheless, Weber and Kafka can both be right. While Kafka looks at the bureaucratic phenomenon through persons who are marginalized, Weber's perspective is historic‐comparative and top‐down. Are the observations of the one more correct than the other? The question is meaningless. As two opposite poles, Weber and Kafka ‘magnetize’ each other.     

Political parties and the transnational mobilisation of the emigrant vote

The relationship between political parties and voters is usually analysed in a national framework. However, the majority of states worldwide allow their emigrant citizens to have an absentee vote. This article analyses how parties confront the challenge of mobilising voters across borders. It presents an analytical framework for comparing the scope of party transnational mobilisation strategies across different electoral systems. Drawing on a contextualised qualitative analysis, the article analyses transnational electoral mobilisation of the emigrant vote in recent elections in Spain, France, Italy and Romania. The analysis shows that a cost–benefit analysis of electoral incentives explains the scope of transnational campaign efforts of many of the political parties. Yet the article also suggests locating the analysis of party strategies in the particular context of the transnational electoral field, including the high dispersion, uncertainty and volatility of the emigrant vote and the overlap between the electoral arenas among emigrants and at home.     

UNDERSTANDING LOCAL GOVERNANCE: INSTITUTIONAL FORMS OF COLLABORATION

The article discusses institutional forms of governance, understanding governance as hybrid forms of collaboration, involving government, market actors and/or civil society actors. By utilizing data from a study made of three Norwegian cities, six collaborative efforts are presented, and discussed in relation to analytical characteristics derived from both network theory and organizational theory. This analysis illustrates that these collaboration efforts can, on the one hand, be understood as something located between networks and organizations. On the other hand, one may argue they belong to none of the two theoretical categories, implying the need for new theories regarding collaboration. These observations are followed by some theoretical reflections about how democratic governments can influence collaborations, and ensure that the common will can actually become real.     

The 2006 Landtag Election in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania

The election of the fifth state parliament in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania was, for the first time since 1990, a ‘true’ state election because it did not take place on the same day as the federal election. The opportunity for thrusting this state's own political topics into the limelight was, however, not used by any of the parties. Both the SPD which had been part of a red-red coalition with the PDS since 1998 and the CDU left the coalition question open during the campaign. Partially because of this, there was no polarization among voters. The voter turnout was quit low. Despite great losses, the SPD emerged as the strongest party. The Linkspartei.PDS made only minimal advances and the CDU dropped to a record low of less than 30 per cent of the vote. In addition to the FDP which was able to re-enter parliament for the first time since 1990, the right-extremist NPD managed to overcome the five percent hurdle. Thus, the previous three party system ended. Due to the narrow majority, Prime Minister Harald Ringstorff (SPD) decided against a continuation of the red-red coalition and instead formed a grand coalition with the CDU.     

Youth culture and European integration in Germany: back to European basics?

Using data of a representative survey among young people in Germany, the present article detects significant shifts in attitudes towards European integration over a relatively short time-span. Surveying these changing attitudes, the article explores the idea that these changing attitudes could signal more than mere short-term reactions to singular political events, but rather point to a reorientation towards the initial conceptualization of European integration as a peace project. Gudrun Quenzel is Lecturer at the Institute for Sociology at the University of Duisburg-Essen. Mathias Albert is Professor of Political Science at Bielefeld University.