Foreign aid and global governance: Buying Bretton Woods �C the Swiss-bloc case

Power in the world??s preeminent international financial institutions??the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund??resides in their Executive Boards. How do governments get elected to these international committees? This study quantitatively explores whether wealthy governments provide more foreign aid to poor governments that offer them political support. The focus is on Switzerland, which is elected to the Executive Board of the Bretton Woods Institutions by a group of countries from Central and Western Asia, and Eastern and Southern Europe. Results confirm the hypothesis. Implications for governance in a multipolar world are discussed.     

Explaining the unpopularity of public funding for congressional elections

This article uses data from the 2008 Cooperative Congressional Election Study to explain weak support for public financing of congressional campaigns. Previous studies lack theory to explain variation in support and use a flawed measure of the dependent variable. We argue that low support reflects a failure resulting from a collective action dilemma. Citizens desire a campaign finance system that weans politicians from private donors, but are unwilling to pay a small amount in taxes to support public financing. In contrast to conventional wisdom, we show that support for public financing is highest among those perceived to benefit the most from the current system. Our results suggest that most Americans would rather not pay for politics, and that reform proposals must avoid incurring transparent costs on individual citizens to pay for reform.     

An exploration of burglary in the criminal histories of sex offenders referred for civil commitment

Commission of nonsexual crimes generally antedates officially recorded sexual offenses. In particular, burglary has been hypothesized to be a potential ‘stepping stone’ in the development of one's sexual criminal career in the same way that marijuana has often been considered a ‘gateway drug’ to more serious drug-related offenses. The present study examined the officially recorded criminal histories of 828 male sex offenders to determine the relevance of burglary in their criminal histories. One third of the men in the sample (n=281, 34%) had been charged at least once for burglary. These 281 men committed a total of 762 separate incidents of burglary. Offenders with at least one officially recorded charge for burglary (BSOs) were compared with those with no such charges (SOs). Next, the characteristics of each burglary were examined and four distinct types of burglary were identified: nonsexual, covertly sexual, overtly sexual, and combination burglary/rape. BSOs accrued twice as many charges as the SOs and were significantly more likely to have an earlier age of onset, a longer criminal career, more employment problems, elementary school problems, antisocial behavior, and substance abuse.     

Risk,Reflexivity and Sub-politics: Environmental Politics in Hong Kong

Increasing attention has been drawn to the risk posed by air pollution, a risk that has wide-ranging effects (on the environment, health, the economy, culture, urban design and politics). New environmental movements and political agendas have emerged in the past 10 years. A growing number of social groups have been formed to express their concerns and challenge established laws and rules. This paper will borrow Ulrich Beck's concepts of risk, reflexivity and sub-politics to analyse the new social movement that addresses air quality in Hong Kong. While previous environmental problems were considered manageable, air pollution is a risk that seems to defy solution. As a result of the institutional failure to deal with this risk, there has been a new alignment of interests and the emergence of a new form of politics—a sub-politics that leads to a sharing of power between established and informal politics, and the government and society. Although established political institutions have been receptive, altering the rules and increasing public participation, the extent of sub-politicization is still limited. This is due, in part, to the overall absence of reflexive self-regulation among individuals in the society, which might lead to a state of ‘disorganized irresponsibility’.     

Competence Trust,Reflexivity and Risk Management in Hong Kong

Abstract

Trust is an essential element of governance. Lack of trust in government engenders doubts regarding its competence, weakens its legitimacy, and creates difficulties in the process of governing. As suggested, declining trust was related to reflexivity. This article, based on a Hong Kong study, confirms that a lack of competence trust in the government's ability to manage work-related risks correlated with reflexivity. Self-identified social status also influences the degree of reflexivity and competence trust. The conventional approach to cultivating trust through managed social participation has been widely practiced, but the results have not led to an increase in competence trust in Hong Kong, even when the policy outcomes are positive. While recognizing that reflexivity and its impacts on trust are inevitable, this article argues that efforts should be made to develop critical trust through meaningful participation in the deliberative process.