Lost in Translation: Doing (And Not Doing) Ethnographic Research in Village India

This paper is a reflection on the difficulties of conducting criminological research in rural India. It tells the story of two periods of ethnographic fieldwork (1999 and 2002) conducted in one North Indian village (pseudonym: Nagaria). This article is written in the ‘tales from the field’ narrative tradition, relying primarily on my own fieldwork experience and later reflections, and intentionally making little reference to the methodological literature. Much of the paper - particularly the fieldwork extracts - is written in the ‘ethnographic present’. A dramaturgical approach is adopted (Goffman 1959), with a focus on the ways in which social interaction may be understood as performance. Theatrical terminology is used to underscore the ways in which field relationships may be stage managed. Contrary to conventional notions of the power of the researcher, in this tale from the field it becomes clear that the superior acting skills of gatekeepers and key informants led to the upstaging of this ethnographer.

Decoding Deficits of Different Types of Batterers During Presentation of Facial Affect Slides

The ability to decode emotional cues is associated with both personality disorders and violence. This study investigated whether subtypes of intimate partner abusers differ in their ability to label facial affect displays. Intimate partner violent (IPV; n = 69) and nonviolent (NV; n = 32) men were asked to label slides of facial affect. Cluster analyses classified the IPV men into three different types as per the Holtzworth-Munroe and Stuart (1994; Typologies of male batterers: three subtypes and the differences among them. Psychological Bulletin, 116, 476–497) typology: family-only (FO), borderline or dysphoric (BD), and generally violent or antisocial (GVA). Overall, IPV men did not make more errors decoding facial affect slides than did NV men. However, GVA batterers showed deficits while BD batterers were particularly accurate in identifying emotions. Clinical implications are that emotional recognition skills training techniques may be useful for GVA batterers only.     

Can Callous-Unemotional Traits and Aggression Identify Children at High-Risk of Anti-Social Behavior in a Low Socioeconomic Group?

Frick et al. (2005) proposed that Callous-Unemotional (CU) traits may be an important personality dimension associated with youth offending. The goal of the present study was to examine whether CU traits were associated with risk factors for offending in a low SES sample of children aged 10 years to 11 years in New Zealand. Two subgroups were identified: one high (High-CU/Agg group) and one low (Low-CU/Agg group) on CU traits and aggression. Results showed that scores for the High-CU/Agg group were significantly worse compared to the Low-CU/Agg group on a range of measures including stress management, caregiver criminal convictions, and dysfunctional parenting. However, analyses revealed that the measure of aggression accounted for more unique variance compared to CU traits. Further research is needed with youths from low SES communities to develop a more robust profile of potential youth offenders.     

Budgeters' Views of State Performance-Budgeting Systems: Distinctions across Branches

Given that a majority of states have had some sort of performance‐budgeting initiative on the books for several years, how has implementation of such reform progressed? To answer this question, we surveyed legislative and executive budgeters from the 50 states, asking them for their impressions of performance‐budgeting implementation in their state. Specifically, we asked these budget officers about the reasons for introducing performance budgeting in their state; the types of activities required of their system; responsible oversight bodies; extent of application across state agencies and departments; and perceived levels of effectiveness and problems experienced with implementation of the budget reform. Our findings indicate that implementation of performance‐based budgeting systems is proceeding slowly. While there are some benefits to highlight, results show that implementing performance budgeting is not without problems—perhaps the greatest being differing perceptions of use and success among budget players, particularly across branches of government.     

Propping up dictators? Economic cooperation from China and its impact on authoritarian persistence in party and non‐party regimes

This article investigates how China's economic cooperation affects authoritarian persistence elsewhere. For the period 1998–2008, the article assesses quantitatively whether the effects of economic cooperation from China vary, conditioned by the regime type of the recipient. The analysis finds that China's economic cooperation is associated with regime durability in party‐based regimes. In non‐party regimes, in contrast, it is associated with regime collapse.     

How Policy Rules Shape the Structure and Performance of Collaborative Governance Arrangements

Local food system governance increasingly occurs in collaborative venues at the local, state, and regional levels. Prominent examples of such are food policy councils (FPCs). FPCs take a systemic approach to improve local food systems by including diverse stakeholders to advise on policy development. The authors study public FPCs to understand how policies structure the stakeholder composition and goals of FPCs and how FPCs’ stakeholder composition facilitates and/or impedes performance. Data come from a content analysis of policies that mandate the structure and functions of public FPCs and interviews with FPC representatives. Findings indicate that FPCs connected to a broader array of food policy actors in their communities produce more diverse policy outputs, but this outcome is tempered by whether council members represent personal or organizational interests.