The growing challenges of providing pensions to state and local civil servants in an aging society

Much hope has been placed in the ability of Supreme Audit Institutions (SAIs) to enhance public accountability. SAIs' independence and professionalism lend promise to the chance that they might succeed where program budgeting, program evaluation, performance measurement and strengthened legislative oversight have failed. Little attention has been paid in the literature to political and organizational constraints on the ability of SAIs to enhance public accountability. The article examines the contribution of Israel's State Comptroller to enhanced accountability across three measures: audit coverage; type of audit coverage; and use of audit reports by the Knesset (Israel's parliament). Programs connected with crisis situations, large programs and direct provision programs are found to receive significantly more audit attention. The Comptroller conducted few audits of program effectiveness. The few reports used by the Knesset were almost all connected with crisis situations. Exploration of the reasons for these patterns reveals that: organizational politics considerations limit the willingness of state auditors to conduct effectiveness audits and relate to controversial issues; logistical and political considerations of Members of Knesset limit their interest in using audit reports; and the paucity of audit resources relative to the scope of government means that much activity is not scrutinized.     

Basic Personal Values Underlie and Give Coherence to Political Values: A Cross National Study in 15 Countries

Do the political values of the general public form a coherent system? What might be the source of coherence? We view political values as expressions, in the political domain, of more basic personal values. Basic personal values (e.g., security, achievement, benevolence, hedonism) are organized on a circular continuum that reflects their conflicting and compatible motivations. We theorize that this circular motivational structure also gives coherence to political values. We assess this theorizing with data from 15 countries, using eight core political values (e.g., free enterprise, law and order) and ten basic personal values. We specify the underlying basic values expected to promote or oppose each political value. We offer different hypotheses for the 12 non-communist and three post-communist countries studied, where the political context suggests different meanings of a basic or political value. Correlation and regression analyses support almost all hypotheses. Moreover, basic values account for substantially more variance in political values than age, gender, education, and income. Multidimensional scaling analyses demonstrate graphically how the circular motivational continuum of basic personal values structures relations among core political values. This study strengthens the assumption that individual differences in basic personal values play a critical role in political thought.     

Love at First Sight

正If you rent an apartment in Beijing,you also rent the landlord or landlady for at least a year.It is somewhat like getting hitched,so it’s important you fi nd a good match because you have to deal with them in the long term.For me,it was love at first—or at least second—sight with the elderly couple who owns my apartment.It was quite an odyssey trying to fi nd the right apartment when I fi rst arrived in Beijing     

A Study of Methadone Maintenance For Male Prisoners: 3-Month Postrelease Outcomes

This study examined benefits of methadone maintenance among prerelease prison inmates. Incarcerated males with preincarceration heroin dependence (n = 197) were randomly assigned to (a) group educational counseling (counseling only); (b) counseling, with opportunity to begin methadone maintenance on release (counseling + transfer); or (c) counseling and methadone maintenance in prison, with opportunity to continue methadone maintenance on release (counseling + methadone). At 90-day follow-up, counseling + methadone participants were significantly more likely than counseling-only and counseling + transfer participants to attend drug treatment (p = .0001) and less likely to be reincarcerated (p = .019). Counseling + methadone and counseling + transfer participants were significantly less likely (all ps < .05) to report heroin use, cocaine use, and criminal involvement than counseling-only participants. Follow-up is needed to determine whether these findings hold over a longer period.     

FATHER INVOLVEMENT AND LONG‐TERM YOUNG ADULT OUTCOMES: THE DIFFERENTIAL CONTRIBUTIONS OF DIVORCE AND GENDER

The present study investigated the relationship between retrospectively reported father involvement and current reports of psychosocial outcomes in an ethnically diverse sample of 1,989 young adults. Outcomes included subjective well‐being, which has been traditionally used as an outcome of divorce, and desires for more or less father involvement, which have only recently been conceptualized as an outcome of divorce. The present results indicate that reported father involvement was related to subjective well‐being primarily in children from intact families, whereas it was related to desired father involvement primarily in children from divorced families. Among participants from divorced families, young women were more likely than young men to desire more expressive father involvement than they received. Implications for family court practices are discussed.     

Authority,Nationality, and Minorities

Prominent normative theories for accommodating minority national groups appeal to the value of national cultures and/or the psychology of group recognition. This article aims to show that an argument from political authority provides a better justification. Building on Joseph Raz's theory of authority, the article argues that members of minority national groups are disadvantaged in relation to their majority counterparts under standard democratic institutions; such institutions do not provide minority national groups with comparable access to the conditions for legitimate political authority. Constitutional arrangements for accommodating minority national groups—such as territorial self‐government or power‐sharing—are justified insofar as they might offset this disadvantage.