The role of donors: how to combine sector programme support with devolution? A comment from a practitioner to James Wunsch: ‘decentralization,local governance and “recentralization” in Africa’

An Erratum has been published for this article in Public Administration and Development 22(1) 2002, 95. In commenting on ‘Decentralization, Local Governance and ‘Recentralization’ in Africa’ (Wunsch, 2001 ), this article concurs with the general thesis of Wunsch that the actual implementation as distinct from the rhetoric of decentralization in Africa has featured lingering central retention of power and resources and that genuine local control over important services and investments remains elusive. However, there is evidence that this is not invariably the case and that donors may have decisive roles to play in encouraging local assertiveness in the medium term in providing leverage for change through budget support and technical assistance to civic education, training local councillors, monitoring local government elections and encouraging local government associations to put to the test the national commitment to genuine local governance. These roles include helping to ensure the transparency of central transfers and, as in Uganda and Malawi for example, assisting with the development of intermediary fiscal mechanisms in this regard. Learning from such promising experiences will be vital in nurturing the longer term optimism heralded by Wunsch. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Social-Demographic,School, Neighborhood,and Parenting Influences on the Academic Achievement of Latino Young Adolescents

Using data from a national sample of 388 Latino young adolescents, this study identified the social-demographic characteristics, influences in the broader social environment, and parenting practices that predict youth academic achievement. Youths who were Mexican American, older, and had an English language problem had lower levels of reading and mathematics achievement. Youths of mothers who began childbearing at older ages, had higher levels of intellectual abilities, and reported no English language problem scored better on both types of achievement tests, but poverty was related only to reading achievement. Attendance in higher-rated schools was associated with higher reading and mathematics scores, but residence in better quality neighborhoods was related only to reading achievement. Three parenting practices—providing cognitive stimulation, parent–youth conflict, and academic involvement—predicted both types of achievement. The effect of poverty on reading achievement was explained by residence in lower quality neighborhoods, lower levels of cognitive stimulation, and parent–youth conflict.Associate Professor, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Received PhD in Social Welfare from the University of Wisconsin – Madison. Research interests include examining the effects of poverty and other risk factors on the well-being of children, adolescents, and families.     

Studying Adolescent Male Sexuality: Where Are We?

This article critically reviews the literature about adolescent males’ sexuality in order to describe the state of the science and to identify promising concepts and research designs that have the potential to guide the next generation of research. A critique was conducted on 94 peer-reviewed studies of sexual behaviors that included a sample of adolescent males; 11 scholarly texts and 2 dissertations. Most studies lacked a theoretical foundation and had cross-sectional designs. For those studies with a theoretical base, 3 perspectives were most often used to guide research: cognitive, biological, or social-environmental. Studies frequently relied on older adolescents or young adult males to report behaviors during early adolescence. Male-only samples were infrequent. Findings include (a) the measurement of sexual activity is frequently limited to coitus and does not explore other forms of “sex”; (b) cognitive factors have been limited to knowledge, attitudes, and intent; (c) little is known about younger males based on their own self-reports; (d) little is known about the normative sexuality development of gay adolescent males; and (e) longitudinal studies did not take into account the complexities of biological, social, and emotional development in interaction with other influences. Research on adolescent sexuality generally is about sexual activity, with little research that includes cognitive competency or young males’ sense of self as a sexual being. The purpose of the paper is to critically review the literature about male sexuality in order to describe the state of the science as well as to identify potential directions to guide the next generation of adolescent male sexual being research.Assistant Professor in the School of Nursing at Oakland University. Received her PhD in Nursing from the University of Michigan, with a specialization in Health Promotion and Risk Reduction. Research interests include adolescent health behaviors, male sexuality, and fostering youth through community-based, asset-building interventions.Associate Professor and Director for Undergraduate & Non Traditional Programs in the School of Nursing at the University of Michigan. Inducted as a Fellow in the Academy of American Nurses. Received a PhD in Nursing from New York University. Research interests include female adolescent health and health-compromising behaviors, specifically the influence of contextual environments on adolescents’ participation in health promoting or health-compromising behaviors.Professor Emeritus in the School of Nursing and Center for Nursing Research at the University of Michigan. Received a PhD in Public Health from the University of Michigan. Research interests include women’s and men’s contraceptive use behaviors, development of nursing in China, and health policy.     

Hot spots policing and crime prevention: A systematic review of randomized controlled trials

Crime scholars and practitioners have argued that police actions should be focused on high-risk crime places rather than spread thinly across the urban landscape. This review examines five randomized controlled trials of the effects of concentrating police enforcement efforts on crime hot spots. The findings of these evaluations suggest that focused police actions can prevent crime and disorder in crime hot spots. A meta-analysis of the effect sizes from the five experiments reveals a statistically significant mean effect size for hot spots policing interventions; this suggests overall reductions in citizen calls for service in the treatment hot spots relative to the control hot spots. These studies also suggest that focused police actions at specific locations do not necessarily result in crime displacement. Although these evaluations reveal that these programs work in preventing crime, additional research is needed to unravel other important policy-relevant issues such as community reaction to focused police enforcement efforts.     

Political decentralisation and conflict: The Sharia crisis in Kaduna,Nigeria

When states in northern Nigeria started processes for implementing Sharia laws in 1999, it triggered sentiments all over the country. In Kaduna State, the proposal led to demonstrations and violent clashes. The article examines the ways in which different scales of politics are mutually constituted in the Sharia case and how the Sharia proposal subsequently resulted in clashes in Kaduna. It is argued that the Sharia initiative, even though it started as a sub-national question, was connected to a national power contestation. However, the federal government remained passive and diverted the issue to local political space. In Kaduna, the issue took dimensions that incurred with apprehensive local political contention that made it escalate into violence and polarising people according to religion. An analysis of the crisis in Kaduna is offered that does not regard the conflict as locally confined, but as inherently related to wider political and historical processes.     

Strategic voting in open primaries: evidence from?Rush?Limbaugh��s ��operation chaos��

Open primaries create the possibility of strategic crossover voting. On his March 3, 2008 program and subsequent broadcasts, radio personality Rush Limbaugh called on his listeners to extend the Democratic presidential contest by crossing over to vote for Sen. Hillary Clinton. Using voter registration data from North Carolina and election return data from Indiana, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania (states with open, semi-closed, and closed primaries, respectively), I find no evidence of a Limbaugh-motivated switch in political party registration or of a large or statistically significant Limbaugh-motivated increase in voting for Sen. Clinton.     

Perceived Social Support and Academic Achievement: Cross-Lagged Panel and Bivariate Growth Curve Analyses

As students transition to post-secondary education, they experience considerable stress and declines in academic performance. Perceived social support is thought to improve academic achievement by reducing stress. Longitudinal designs with three or more waves are needed in this area because they permit stronger causal inferences and help disentangle the direction of relationships. This study uses a cross-lagged panel and a bivariate growth curve analysis with a three-wave longitudinal design. Participants include 10,445 students (56% female; 12.6% born outside of Canada) transitioning to post-secondary education from ages 15–19. Self-report measures of academic achievement and a generalized measure of perceived social support were used. An increase in average relative standing in academic achievement predicted an increase in average relative standing on perceived social support 2 years later, but the reverse was not true. High levels of perceived social support at age 15 did not protect against declines in academic achievement over time. In sum, perceived social support appears to have no bearing on adolescents’ future academic performance, despite commonly held assumptions of its importance.     

Efficacy of an Intervention to Reduce the Use of Media Violence and Aggression: An Experimental Evaluation with Adolescents in Germany

Several longitudinal studies and meta-analytic reviews have demonstrated that exposure to violent media is linked to aggression over time. However, evidence on effective interventions to reduce the use of violent media and promote critical viewing skills is limited. The current study examined the efficacy of an intervention designed to reduce the use of media violence and aggression in adolescence, covering a total period of about 12 months. A sample of 683 7th and 8th graders in Germany (50.1% girls) were assigned to two conditions: a 5-week intervention and a no-intervention control group. Measures of exposure to media violence and aggressive behavior were obtained about 3 months prior to the intervention (T1) and about 7 months post-intervention (T2). The intervention group showed a significantly larger decrease in the use of violent media from T1 to T2 than the control group. Participants in the intervention group also scored significantly lower on self-reported aggressive behavior (physical aggression and relational aggression) at T2 than those in the control group, but the effect was limited to those with high levels of initial aggression. This effect was mediated by an intervention-induced decrease in the normative acceptance of aggression. No gender differences in program efficacy were found. The results show that a 5-week school-based intervention can produce changes in the use of media violence, aggressive norms, and behaviors sustained over several months.     

The Myth of Female Credit Discrimination in African Manufacturing

Abstract

We examine credit constraint differentials between male and female manufacturing entrepreneurs using firm data from 16 sub-Saharan Africa countries. Small enterprises owned by female entrepreneurs are less likely to be credit constrained compared to their male counterparts, while this is reversed for medium-sized enterprises. A generalised Oaxaca–Blinder decomposition shows that the gap is predominantly a pure gender effect. We argue that this finding is mainly due to female favouritism in loans to micro and small firms because the gap is reversed for medium-sized enterprises and because we find no sign of superior female entrepreneurial performance in observable indicators.     

Evidence for the crime drop: survey findings from two Finnish cities between 1992 and 2013

In this article, results from self-report studies in two Finnish cities, Helsinki and Turku, are presented. The aims are to compare the prevalence of youth crime between these cities and changes in delinquency during the observation period. In Helsinki, the surveys took place in 1992, 2006 and 2013, and in Turku, the surveys took place in 1992, 2001, and 2013. With the exception of the Turku 2001 survey, all datasets have been collected under the auspices of the International Self-Report Delinquency Study (ISRD). The most recent survey, ISRD3, targeted comprehensive school pupils from grades 7–9 (ages 13–16), while some of the former studies excluded 7th and/or 8th grades. The results show that (1) the delinquency rates are generally higher in Helsinki than in Turku and (2) the prevalence of both property- and violence-related crimes has decreased, while drug use manifested fluctuating or increasing trends. Overall, the findings are consistent with the observation that there has been a relatively general crime drop in the Western world since the 1990s.