QUEER(Y)ING PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

Queer theory, understood here as a set of political/politicized practices and positions which resist normative knowledge and identities, has emerged as a theoretical perspective having important emancipatory and explanatory power in the arts, humanities and social sciences. Queer theory resists definition ipso facto, residing as it does within a postructuralist paradigm. It has not hitherto featured within the discipline of public administration and we argue the case for its utilisation in this field by first explicating the theory. Here we develop a way of using queer theory to analyse data, notably through the identification of the ‘moments’ of a queer theory analysis: identification of the norms that govern identity, analysis of what is allowable within those norms, and exploration of what is unspeakable. We demonstrate its use via an empirically‐based case study. The lessons from this exercise are then applied to some of our earlier work which we re‐read through a queer theory lens. This shows the great explanatory power offered by the theory, in that it can develop insights that previously have been inaccessible. We conclude with recommendations for its broader application and wider use within public administration.     

STRAINED LIVES AND CRIME: EXAMINING INTRA‐INDIVIDUAL VARIATION IN STRAIN AND OFFENDING IN A SAMPLE OF INCARCERATED WOMEN*

When applied to the study of changes in an individual's offending, general strain theory posits that individuals will be more likely to offend during periods of high strain. Using 36 months of retrospective data collected from female inmates, we explore the relationship between intra‐individual changes in strain and changes in offending and drug use. We also examine how different dimensions of strain‐recent composite strain, duration, clustering and accumulation, contribute to the explanation of offending. We find that changes in strain are associated with changes in violence, drug use, and property crime and that these relationships remain after the addition of control variables. Moreover, the strain‐crime relationship holds when the correct causal order is specified. When modeling offending, taking various dimensions of strain into account does increase the amount of variation explained for some outcomes, but other dimensions are highly correlated. We conclude that conceptualizing the interaction between strain and crime as a dynamic process is constructive and that general strain theory will be improved if criminologists move beyond static conceptions of strain.     

CIVIC COMMUNITY IN THE HINTERLAND: TOWARD A THEORY OF RURAL SOCIAL STRUCTURE AND VIOLENCE*

Drawing on the civic community literature, this article explicates a theoretical model to explain variation in rates of violence across rural communities. It is hypothesized that rural communities with a stable population base that is locally invested, a vibrant participatory civic culture with a well‐developed noneconomic institutional base, and a robust economically independent middle class will have lower rates of violent crime. Results from the analysis of data for more than 1,000 rural counties reveal that the 11 variables used to operationalize the theory are empirically distinguishable from indicators of resource disadvantage and form three well‐defined indices: a residential stability/local investment factor, a local capitalism/independent middle class factor, and a civic engagement factor. Negative binomial regression models confirm that violent crime rates are generally much lower in communities that score high on these dimensions. Implications of these findings for future macrolevel criminological research are discussed.     

Reforming Justice by Geography; Organizational Responses to the Problem of Juvenile Crime

Growing public sentiment over the problem of juvenile crime has resulted in an administrative focus on "toughening" and rationalizing the sanctions for serious offenders. Our analysis of ten states examines two measures of organizational power, discretion and jurisdiction, to specify the changing mandate of juvenile justice. A typology of reorganization strategies is developed which consists of three "policy change" categories—regulation, negotiation, and displacement. Our findings have implications for defining the recent reforms in juvenile justice, distinguishing patterns within seemingly random geographical variation, and anticipating further directions in the control of serious youthful offenders.     

THE RULE OF LAW AND EXPERIENCE OF THE KOREAN JUDICIARY

As a social norm, law in a democratic society should be established in the form of positive law by collecting opinions of people. In order for the rule of law to be properly practiced in a democratic country, the doctrine of separation of powers requires that the legislative, executive, and judicial functions should not be consolidated in a single body. However, even within a perfectly established legislative system, the principle of the rule of law may be distorted depending on the role of the judiciary. The experience of the Korean judiciary shows that even though it is designed to be a completely independent organ of the lawmaking National Assembly and the law-enforcing executive branch; it would fail to properly give effect to the country’s governing principle of the rule of law. It may be thought that the fundamental reasons lie in the endemic tendency towards the rule of man in East Asian societies. Nowadays, those who received education in a democratic society without experiencing the authoritarianism have begun to make inroads into the leadership of the judicial branch. They can be firmly determined to prevent freedom and rights of every single person from being infringed upon. In this way, they can be confident that the judiciary has fulfilled its roles in shaping a democratic country where the rule of law is exercised properly as a governing principle.