Book Reviews

Book reviewed in this article: The System: The Misgovernment of Modern Britain. By Max Nicholson Emerging Pattern in Health. Care. By Robert Kohn.     

SOCIAL SUPPORT,INEQUALITY, AND HOMICIDE: A CROSS‐NATIONAL TEST OF AN INTEGRATED THEORETICAL MODEL*

Social support, institutional anomie, and macrolevel general strain perspectives have emerged as potentially important explanations of aggregate levels of crime. Drawing on insights from each of these perspectives in a cross‐national context, the analyses show that 1) our measure of social support is inversely related to homicide rates, 2) economic inequality also maintains a direct relationship with homicide rates, and 3) social support significantly interacts with economic inequality to influence homicide rates. The implications of the analysis for ongoing discourse concerning the integration of these criminological theories and the implications for the development of effective crime control policies are discussed.     

Friedrich Hayek's Moral Science

Abstract. F. A. Hayek's defense and analysis of the liberal state built on rule of law is both a moral and a scientific enterprise. The author shows that Hayek favors rule of law because it seeks to protect moral agency. It is procedurally rather than morally restrictive because men cannot easily know moral truth. Markets are included in Hayek's analysis not because they produce wealth but because they promote moral agency.     

Competitive Government in the United States: Policy Promotion and Divided Party Control

Divided party control of the executive and legislative branches of American government has traditionally been thought to contribute to the system's tendencies toward policy stalemate and paralysis. Based on a series of brief case studies over the past twenty-five years, this article argues that, under certain circumstances, divided party government may promote rather than hinder the enactment of legislation. It sketches an analytical framework that suggests a range of policymaking outcomes may result from party competition under conditions of divided government, including stalemate, neglect, accommodation, and promotion.     

INCOME INEQUALITY AND HOMICIDE RATES: CROSS-NATIONAL DATA AND CRIMINOLOGICAL THEORIES

Previous studies have identified but failed to explain satisfactorily the positive relationship between income inequality and homicide rates. This paper proposes an explanation based on the concept of relative deprivation, but also reviews the criminological literature in a search for other theoretically relevant variables. After assessing problems of sampling and measurement, and using a considerably larger sample than used in previous studies, multiple regression analyses reveal positive net effects of both inequality and population growth (reflecting a higher proportion of young people) on homicide rates. Further analyses show that the effects of inequality on homicide are more pronounced in more democratic nations, a finding supporting the relative deprivation explanation. Income inequality also has stronger effects in more densely populated countries, in wealthier nations, and in countries with larger internal security forces.     

The Imperial Judiciary Meets the Impotent Congress?

The continuing debate over an activist judiciary frequently overlooks the issue whether majoritarian institutions such as Congress can be the principal policy makers for a democracy as well as whether they ought to be. An explicit comparison of the institutional capacities of the Congress and federal courts on abortion funding suggests that Congress is capable of developing representative, responsible, and educative policies. However, a retreat by the "Imperial Judiciary" from an activist posture would not necessarily transfer power from the courts to the Congress but from the courts to unelected bureaucracies within the Congress and the Presidency.     

ECONOMICS AND THE POVERTY OF SOCIAL PLANNING

This article examines the reasons for the dismal state of social planning in Britain today. Several different explanations for this situation are discussed including its poor track-record, official reluctance to contemplate the future, the circumscribed and narrowly conceived way it is approached, and the ill coordinated and fragmented structure of the social services. While all these are seen to offer part of the answer, it is argued that the main obstacle to social planning lies in the subordination of social goals to economic objectives; a fact itself rooted in the persistence of the 'public burden model' of social expenditure. Finally, the implications of this analysis for social policy research are discussed.