Leadership for public value: Political astuteness as a conceptual link

Both leadership and public value are increasingly seen as concepts highly relevant to public administration, not only because of complex societal challenges but also as ways to address pluralistic interests in society. This article explores in detail the varied conceptualizations of public value and of public leadership. Furthermore, we argue that political astuteness provides an important conceptual linkage between leadership and public value, enabling actors to read, understand and foster coalitions around diverse and sometimes competing interests. In this introduction to the symposium, we analyse the different conceptualizations of public value, of leadership, and also show how the six articles explicitly or implicitly draw on the linking concept of political astuteness. The article assesses how the six articles of the symposium contribute to each of these three concepts.     

Russia’s ministry of ambivalence: the failure of civic nation-building in post-Soviet Russia

This article argues that the sources of official and societal ambivalence towards civic nationhood in today’s Russia are found in the institutional instability and personalist dynamics of hybrid regime politics in the 1990s. Successful civic nation-building should institutionalize inclusive criteria for citizenship as a basis for policymaking, which in turn should create incentives for dominant ethnicities to embrace civic nationhood. While the shifting views of Boris Yel’tsin on nationalities policy and the constant turmoil in the government’s nationalities ministry have received little scholarly attention, they illuminate the endogenous sources of regime instability in relation to civic nation-building. Russia’s experience thus challenges the traditional view of ethnic nationalism as fostering authoritarianism and civic nationalism as fostering democracy: rather, competitive authoritarianism in the 1990s confounded the regime’s own efforts toward civic nation-building and laid the groundwork for the “ethnic turn” in Russian politics under Vladimir Putin.     

Protective Families in High- and Low-risk Environments: Implications for Adolescent Substance Use

This study used data from a sample of 6th to 12th grade students (N = 48,641, 51% female), nested in 192 schools, to determine if the influence of family-based protective factors varied across different school contexts. Hierarchical logistic regression models were used to examine the effects of individual-level family protective factors, relative to school-level aggregates of the same factors, on recent (past 30 days) use of cigarettes, alcohol, and marijuana. Cross-level interactions indicated that the effect of the student’s level of family protection, relative to other students in their school, differed depending on the aggregated school level of family protection. The results suggested that the benefit of belonging to a well-functioning family was more influential for students attending schools characterized by higher-than-average aggregated levels of protection compared to students attending schools of lower-than-average protection. Thus, family-level factors offered less protection for students in relatively high-risk school contexts. These results were consistent with a protective–reactive interaction and suggest that a thorough understanding of adolescent substance use must consider the complex interplay among adolescents, their families, and their social environments.     

Profiles of a Developmental Asset: Youth Purpose as a Context for Hope and Well-Being

While having a purpose in life has been theorized as a developmental asset, the extent to which adolescents cultivate a meaningful sense of direction is not well understood. In the present study, cluster analysis was used to classify adolescents by levels of purpose exploration and commitment. The sample (N = 318; 55% female) consisted of youth aged 14–18 and was predominantly White/non-Hispanic (76.3%). Results supported four meaningful yet distinguishable profiles of youth purpose that are largely consistent with theories on identity formation: Achieved, Foreclosed, Uncommitted, and Diffused. Hypothesized linkages with affect and hope were established across the profiles such that positive emotions and goal-directed thinking were most apparent among Achieved and Foreclosed youth and least apparent among Diffused and Uncommitted youth. Overall, findings demonstrate the inherent complexity in adolescents’ engagement with purpose and suggest a correspondence between stronger commitments to purpose and youths’ sense of personal agency and well-being.     

Identifying Trajectories of Adolescents’ Depressive Phenomena: An Examination of Early Risk Factors

Few studies have examined risk factors of childhood and early adolescent depressive symptomatology trajectories. This study examined self-report depressive symptomatology across a 6-year time period from 2nd to 8th grade to identify latent groups of individuals with similar patterns of depressive phenomena in a sample of 951 children (440 girls, 511 boys). Analyses, using semiparametric group modeling (SGM), identified 5 trajectory groups for girls and boys: low depressed stables, low depressed risers, mildly depressed stables, moderately depressed changers, and moderately depressed risers. Individual risk factors, with the exception of shy/withdrawn behavior, were significantly different across trajectory group membership for boys and girls, as was low-income status for boys. Boys in the low depressed and mildly depressed stable trajectory groups had significantly higher levels of antisocial behavior, attention problems, and lower social competency compared to girls in similar groups. These results suggest that universal prevention programs implemented in early elementary school that target selected risk factors may be helpful in reducing future adolescent mental health problems, specifically depressive symptomatology.     

The Impact of Multiple Types of Child Maltreatment on Subsequent Risk Behaviors Among Women During the Transition from Adolescence to Young Adulthood

The purpose of this study was to investigate how different types of child maltreatment, independently and collectively, impact a wide range of risk behaviors that fall into three domains: sexual risk behaviors, delinquency, and suicidality. Cumulative classification and Expanded Hierarchical Type (EHT) classification approaches were used to categorize various types of maltreatment. Data were derived from Wave III of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health). Our sample consisted of White, Black, Hispanic, and Asian females ages 18 to 27 (n = 7,576). Experiencing different kinds of maltreatment during childhood led to an extensive range of risk behaviors within the three identified domains. Women experiencing sexual abuse plus other maltreatment types had the poorest outcomes in all three domains. These findings illustrate that it may no longer be appropriate to assume that all types of maltreatment are equivalent in their potential contribution to negative developmental sequelae.