Whatever Gets you Through the Night: Officer Coping Strategies after the High-Profile Line of Duty Deaths in Dallas and Baton Rouge

The policing profession has recently experienced events that affected officers across the nation. Several high-profile cases involving police and members of minority communities intensified the tensions among these groups. Amid public criticisms of policing, law enforcement officers have become targets of attacks. Multiple cases of officer ambushes and assassinations have further troubled the already stressful occupational position of law enforcement. This study investigates what coping strategies officers used after the deadly attacks on police in Dallas, Texas and Baton Rouge, Louisiana that occurred in July, 2016. We also investigate how the coping strategies used affects job motivation among officers. Our findings suggest officers turned to three coping strategies: support networks, stoic self-help, and self-medication. These coping strategies were found to be ineffective mechanisms for protecting officer job motivation; however, some strategies adversely affected motivation more than others. Understanding how officers are coping and why effective strategies are not being employed adequately is imperative for both the safety of officers and the public.     

Determinants of Government Effectiveness

The direct relationship between government effectiveness and the population's well-being has generated a growing interest about the explanatory factors of governance quality. Thus, the aim of this study is to determine the determinants of government effectiveness, in relation to the organizational environment and political and internal characteristics of public administrations. For this, we used a sample composed by 202 countries observed between 2002 and 2008. A World Bank governance indicator represents the government effectiveness. We estimated a panel data dependence model by the Generalized Method of Moments estimator to avoid heterogeneity and endogeneity problems. Furthermore, a CHAID algorithm provides a classification of governance quality according to the predicted determinants.

The results show that government effectiveness is initially explained by the organizational environment, related to economic development and educational status. Later, and according to countries’ income distribution, political constrains and some organizational characteristics, such as gender diversity and government size, may improve governance quality.     

Discussion Content and Perception of Deliberation in Western European Versus American Juries

Jury research has dealt almost exclusively with the American system wherein 6-12 laypersons decide verdicts under a unanimity or non-unanimity rule. However, most Western European countries follow the escabinado system, in which laypersons and judges together decide verdict and sentence, under a non-unanimous rule. We experimentally compared the processes and outcomes of both types of juries. Under the guise of a Student Judicial panel, seven undergraduate students in Spain comprised 10 juries, whereas five undergraduates and two fifth-year Law students comprised 10 escabinado juries. We assessed pre- and post-discussion verdict, penalty, and confidence, discussion content, and subjective reactions to the discussion and outcome. Escabinado jury deliberations were driven by the imbalance of power between trained and lay jurors. Escabinado and lay juries differed in their perception of the deliberation but not in their outcomes. Implications for the impact of cultural differences and task requirements in jury decision-making are drawn.     

A note on the effects of graduation under the US GSP on Africa

The Trade and Tariff Act of 1984 includes a new measure, country graduation, designed to shift a greater share of the benefits of the US Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) from the more advanced developing countries to poorer beneficiary countries. This note presents estimates of the effects of graduating Hong Kong, South Korea, Singapore and Taiwan on the poorest countries of Africa. Our results show that the removal of these four countries will do little to increase the GSP benefits of the African beneficiary countries.     

On the Relationship between Violent Conflict and Wages in Colombia

We analyse how forced displacements caused by violent conflict are related to the wages of workers in Colombia. Using data from the Quality of Life Survey (2011–2014), we analyse the differences in wages between those forced by violence to move to other regions, and those who moved for other reasons. We apply Propensity Score Matching techniques to compare workers from the two groups, finding that forced displacement is related to decreases of between 10 and 29 per cent in the wages of males, and between 18 and 37 per cent in the wages of females, relative to their counterparts. Thus, forced displacements are related to poorer labour market outcomes in terms of wages.     

Radicalization in Prisons? Field Research in 25 Spanish Prisons

This article has two principal objectives: (1) to study the behavioral dimensions of Muslim prisoners which predict their Islamist radicalism and (2) to study whether the behavior manifested by them is higher in prisons with a greater concentration of Muslims and a higher presence of prisoners convicted for Islamist terrorism than in prisons with fewer Muslims and no convicted Islamist terrorists. We conclude that some Spanish prisons may provide favorable social environments for jihadist radicalism and that the questionnaire utilized is a useful diagnostic tool for evaluating the magnitude of this phenomenon.     

Is Local Development Good Politics? Local Development Expenditures and the Re-Election of Governors in the Philippines in the 1990s

Abstract

Are incumbent governors who put more weight on development spending likely to be re-elected? To answer this question, an economic model of a re-electionist local chief executive is introduced and validated with a panel data of provincial governors who ran for another term of office during the election years 1992, 1995 and 1998 in the Philippines. It is found that incumbent governors improve their re-election chances with higher spending on economic development services, other things being constant. Moreover, governors who are members of political clans also have higher development spending especially when faced with rival clans. Thus, elections are still an effective disciplining device, more especially when rivalry is intense among political clans. The policy implication then is to enhance political competition rather than just ban political dynasties to improve the performance of elected officials under decentralization.     

Are older workers really different ? the effects of age,tenure, and education on work preferences of registered nurses

The aging of the workface has generated interest in the special needs of older workers. This research on registered nursed in nursing homes investigated the relationship between nurses' age and their work preferences, as well as the effects of tenure and education on this relationship. Older nurses assigned greater importance to work flexibility and lesser importance to development, career advancement, and socialization than did younger ones. Tenure and education contributed to the predictive power of age but did not moderate the relationship.     

Citizen Participation Models in the Local Government

This research pretends to propose and test a new explanatory model relating to citizen participation, which will help us to implement participatory public policies in the local government scheme, comparing with the models of citizen participation derivatives of structural theories and choice theories. The author refers to the case of Spain and he tests five hypotheses derived from these theories, using structural equations. This study used an open and cross-sectional design. He uses ＂Citizenship, Participation and Democracy Survey＂ from Sociological Research Center of Spain. The model proposed in this study has taken into account both structural variables from the macro context of participation （political opportunity structure） and individual variables （individual resources）, thus considering that the most recent literature on citizen participation tells us that it is necessary to overcome the reductionist perspectives limited to individual factors. Based on the above, we saw the importance of structural variables and individual variables for the participation of people. In line with that, we find that a citizen is involved in participatory policy when they have individual resources such as education, interest in politics, non-political disaffection, civic social norms, personal effectiveness, and community pride. Another find from this research, according to the empirical results, is that structural variables are predictive of citizen participation： resources, mobilization, membership of deprived group, economic deprivation, interpersonal trust, membership of associations, ties to the local community, and membership of an informal network.     

Punitive Attitudes in Latin America

The purpose of this paper is to describe, initially, the population’s perception regarding some aspects related to the phenomenon of crime, the criminal system and the punitive response the State should supply (the population’s disapproving attitudes), bearing in mind the role of the mass media, since the latter perhaps represents the most important link providing feedback between social demand and the activity of the State with regard to subjective perceptions of criminality and the construction of a State with greater punitive reaction. A second part will analyze the scope of the expansive tendencies in criminal matters in Latin America and particularly in Argentina. With this aim, after outlining the phenomenon — from several theoretical perspectives — and summarising its characteristics in Latin America, we shall specify its distinctive features in our midst, as a way of sounding the main problems entailed in this legislative inflation — decidedly influenced by the multiplying effect of the mass media. This diagnosis is necessary in order to intuit possible strategies for criminal policy.