MEASURING THE THREAT OF GLOBAL CRIME: INSIGHTS FROM RESEARCH BY THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS INTO THE TRAFFIC IN WOMEN*

Despite increasing concern about the threat of global crime, it remains difficult to measure. During the 1920s and 1930s, the League of Nations conducted the first social‐scientific study of global crime in two studies of the worldwide traffic in women. The first study included 112 cities and 28 countries; researchers carried out 6,500 interviews in 14 languages, including 5,000 with figures in the international underworld. By drawing on archival materials in Geneva and New York, this article examines the role of ethnography in developing a social‐science measure of global crime threats. The discussion covers the Rockefeller grand jury and formation of the Bureau of Social Hygiene; the League's research in Europe, the Americas, and the Mediterranean; controversy concerning the use of undercover researchers; the League's research in Asia; and the end of the Bureau. The League's experience demonstrates the promise of multisite ethnography in research about global crime as well as the difficulty of mapping crime on a global scale.     

Peruvian Infotainment: From Fujimori's Media Dictatorship to Democracy's Satire

This article explores how Peruvian sensational and spectacular media served the authoritarian discourse of Alberto Fujimori's government (1990–2000), and how TV infotainment evolved under democracy after 2000. Through interviews with producers and hosts of the TV shows and by reviewing specific episodes and media events, this article analyses five of the most representative Peruvian infotainment TV shows of the last two decades in Peru. Building upon a theory on media spectacle, infotainment and tabloidisation, this research shows how an increasing process of media hybridity–the blending of journalism, entertainment, politics, and popular culture–has challenged traditional notions of journalism and has become a prevalent strategy of new political communication forms in Peru, connecting with the global trend towards political infotainment in the media.     

ONSET AGE,PERSISTENCE, AND OFFENDING VERSATILITY: COMPARISONS ACROSS GENDER*

Offending specialization has received considerable attention in past research on criminal careers. Relatively little attention has been given to examining the relationships between various sub‐group differences and the extent to which individuals tend toward specialization or versatility in their criminal careers. In the present analysis, we examine hypotheses derived from Moffitt's recent developmental theory that bear directly on offending specialization. Our analysis examines direct relationships between gender, onset age, persistence and offending specialization as well as the interaction of these influences and offending specialization. Our findings reveal results that are both consistent and inconsistent with Moffitt's dual taxonomy of offending behavior.     

Bilateralism or the median mandate? An examination of rival perspectives on democratic governance

Michael McDonald and Ian Budge have recently advanced an interpretation of democratic governance based on what they term the 'median mandate'. This perspective locates the key element of liberal democracy in a close correspondence between government policy and the policy preferences of the median voter on the left-right scale. The cross-national evidence they produce in favour of this interpretation is impressive, but it largely hinges on a method for measuring the median voter position in each election that relies on the positions of the various parties in the election and the vote shares they received. This article examines the validity of the median mandate hypothesis when median positions are measured more directly from public opinion surveys (particularly, the Eurobarometer and Comparative Study of Electoral Systems series). The findings show that choice between distinct alternatives, rather than conformity to the median, more accurately characterises governance in democratic systems.     

WHAT IS THE PUBLIC VALUE OF GOVERNMENT ACTION? TOWARDS A (NEW) PRAGMATIC APPROACH TO VALUES QUESTIONS IN PUBLIC ENDEAVOURS

There has been a resurgence of interest in values in recent public administration research, based on two distinct arguments. For different reasons, neither approach is likely to secure a robust normative basis for public endeavours. These reasons are assessed, using an alternative body of theory rooted in contemporary social theory that we term, ‘new pragmatism’. New pragmatic ideas are deployed to critique the divorce of values from facts; the abstraction of values from concrete situations; the anthropocentric foundation to social choice; the poorly developed understanding of the process of governance, with its inherent pluralism; and the seeming reluctance to articulate principles of political discourse.