THE SOCIAL ECOLOGY OF URBAN HOMICIDE: AN APPLICATION OF THE "ROUTINE ACTIVITIES" APPROACH

The purpose of this paper is to use the recently developed "routine activities" approach to help interpret patterns of homicide in a major metropolitan area—Manhattan, New York We argue that the routine activities perspective suggests several distinctive hypotheses about the relationships among sociodemographic characteristics of victims, temporal features of the situation, and the probability of being involved in different kinds of homicide. More specifically, we hypothesize that the sociodemographic characteristics of age, sex, race, marital status, and employment status, along with temporal factors such as time of day, day of week and time of year, will be related systematically to the location of homicide (that is, The geographical proximity to the victim's household) and to the victim-perpetrator relationship (that is, the social proximity of participants: family members, friends, strangers). Detailed data on all recorded homicides occurring in Manhattan during 1981 are examined to evaluate the hypotheses. The results are generally consistent with expectations, indicating that the routine activities approach does indeed provide a useful framework for interpreting the social ecology of urban homicide.     

State of the Field

Although scholars of West European politics have long debated whether the region's highly institutionalised party systems were becoming de‐aligned and electorally unstable, the political fallout from the post‐2008 financial crisis has lent a new sense of urgency to the debate. The threats posed to party systems by economic crises are hardly unique to Europe, however. The Latin American experience with the debt crisis of the 1980s and 1990s suggests that party system upheaval was not simply a function of retrospective economic voting during the period of crisis. It was also attributable to programmatically de‐aligning policy responses to crises – namely the ‘bait‐and‐switch’ imposition of austerity and adjustment measures by labour‐based, left‐leaning parties that were traditional champions of statist and redistributive policies. Such patterns of reform made it difficult for party systems to channel societal resistance to market orthodoxy in the post‐adjustment era, setting the stage for convulsive ‘reactive sequences’ when such resistance arose outside and against mainstream parties through varied forms of social and electoral protest, typically on the left flank. This article explores the political fallout from the European and Latin American economic crises from a comparative perspective, arguing that it is essential to think beyond the short‐term political dynamics of crisis management to consider the longer‐term institutional legacies and fragilities of the different political alignments forged around crisis‐induced policy reforms.     

THE DOG THAT DIDN'T BARK: HOW PUBLIC MANAGERS HANDLE ENVIRONMENTAL SHOCKS

Do negative budgetary shocks reduce performance in public organizations? If so, by how much and in terms of which criteria? Are public managers able to make internal management choices to limit or eliminate the effects of such shocks? These questions are investigated in a set of hundreds of organizations over an 8‐year period. For the most part, budgetary shocks of 10 per cent or more have only limited or no negative impacts on performance in the short term. The most salient policy objective and production for more disadvantaged clientele are especially insulated from shocks. Decisions about internal resource allocation and personnel management can be shown to protect core production while sacrificing more peripheral activities and capital investment. Questions that remain to be investigated include whether short‐term protection comes at the expense of some longer‐term losses, and—ironically—whether effective management under such circumstances weakens over time the political case for adequate budgets.     

MANAGERIAL GOALS IN A PERFORMANCE‐DRIVEN SYSTEM: THEORY AND EMPIRICAL TESTS IN HIGHER EDUCATION

Factors influencing managerial goals and decision‐making processes have been debated for decades among public administration scholars. Previous literature has explained goal setting through theories of performance gaps, bureaucratic control, and isomorphic rationality. However, there exists no direct empirical test of these theories to determine which theoretical expectation may have more or less weight with managers when setting organizational goals. Using an original survey of university presidents, this study tests how public managers prioritize competing performance goals. Findings suggest that the goal setting decisions of these public managers is primarily driven by political control mechanisms.     

Chinese Dream and China＇s Governance

正WHILE many specifics remain unclear at this point,the new Chinese leadership has provided some broad guidelines to major components of the Chinese Dream.A partial list of these includes:Fairer distribution of the benef its of