Latin American Democracy. What to Do with the Leaders?

The democratic deficit, or the gap between citizens' aspirations and their level of satisfaction, is increasing in Latin America. Such dissatisfaction helps to understand many of the region's presidential crises: since 1985, 23 Latin American presidents have left government abruptly. While civil society may have been able to provoke the fall of presidents, it has not managed to avoid the re‐emergence of deep‐rooted political practices under subsequent administrations. Extreme presidentialism, clientelism and populism have re‐emerged strengthened after deep political crises. This article offers some ideas regarding the impact that different types of political leaders can have on how well democracy works.     

The Role of Case Complexity in Judicial Decision Making

The literature on ideology and decision making offers conflicting expectations about how judges' ideology should affect their votes in cases that raise many legal issues. Using cases from the U.S. courts of appeals, I examine the strength of ideology as a predictor of sincere voting in single and multi‐issue cases, and test whether the same effect for ideology can be seen for liberal and conservative judges. For all judges, ideology yields a larger effect as the number of issues increases; however, conservative judges are much more likely than liberal judges to cast sincere votes at all levels of complexity.     

Identifying Strengths as Fuel for Change: A Conceptual and Theoretical Framework for the Youth Competency Assessment

Juvenile justice lacks an agreed‐upon assessment tool blending strength‐based approaches with rehabilitative and punitive measures. The recently‐piloted Youth Competency Assessment (YCA) is presented as one way to offer a strength‐based tool compatible with traditional risk‐ and problem‐based approaches. YCA's development and piloting processes are described, and the theoretical underpinnings supporting its three domains are summarized and analyzed.     

INTERFACING INDICATORS AND CONSTRUCTS IN CRIMINOLOGICAL RESEARCH: A NOTE ON THE COMPARABILITY OF SELF-REPORT VIOLENCE DATA FOR RACE AND SEX GROUPS

This paper examines issues in using self-reports of involvement in violent acts to measure a latent construct (propensity toward violence). Three issues are addressed. First, the meaning of latent variables and the factor-analytic approach to modeling latent constructs are discussed. Second, the comparability of self-report violence measures across race and sex groups is assessed. Third, the consequences are discussed of estimating factor analytic models on pooled samples of data where the measurement component of the model does not apply equally for different subsets of the sample.     

THE EFFECT OF CRIMINAL VICTIMIZATION ON A HOUSEHOLD'S MOVING DECISION*

Only a small body of research addresses the impact of criminal victimization on moving (Skogan, 1990; Taub et al. 1984). Knowledge of this under-researched relationship is important for three reasons. First, moving is costly to the victim both in monetary and psychological terms. Second, if a victimization-mobility relationship exists, then it may partially explain why people migrate to suburban areas from cities. Third, because residential mobility reduces social control that, in turn, potentially results in more crime, evidence that criminal victimization leads to more mobility may help explain a cycle that perpetuates disorder and neighborhood decline (Bursik and Grasmick, 1993; Horwitz, 1990; Miethe and Meier, 1994; Skogan, 1990; Skogan and Maxfield, 1981). This study uses a longitudinal version of the National Crime Survey that includes 22, 375 households to test the hypothesis that criminal victimization is associated with an increased probability that a household moves.