Treatment Profiles of Troubled Female Adolescents: Implications for Judicial Disposition

Increasing numbers of girls are entering the juvenile justice system. This growing number of females creates a dilemma for judges concerned with appropriate disposition to treatment and diversion: since current intervention methodologies were developed primarily for males, how effective are they for females? The current paper describes a research process that addressed this issue. A sample of troubled adolescents was selected from a residential treatment facility. Data were collected from 137 youth between the ages of 12 and 17 (65 female [47%] and 72 male [52%]) regarding variables related to twenty-three behavioral and psychosocial problems. These data were then subjected to a cluster analysis. Two distinct treatment profiles were formed, each differing in composition by gender. Based on the results of the cluster analysis, the researchers conducted a literature review to determine the implications of those profiles for successful disposition and treatment.     

The Influence of Citizen Satisfaction with Police Behavior Upon Public Support for Increases in Police Authority

This study examines the influence of citizen satisfaction with police behavior in citizen-police encounters upon citizen support for increases in the authority granted to the police. The results suggest that satisfaction has no influence upon support for increases in police authority. Instead, views about police authority are related to political/social values.     

Multiple roots of the populist radical right: Support for the Dutch PVV in cities and the countryside

Populist radical right parties are considerably more popular in some areas (neighbourhoods, municipalities, regions) than others. They thrive in some cities, in some smaller towns, and in some rural areas, but they are unsuccessful in other cities, small towns, and rural areas. We seek to explain this regional variation by modelling at the individual level how citizens respond to local conditions. We argue that patterns of populist radical right support can be explained by anxiety in the face of social change. However, how social change manifests itself is different in rural and urban areas, so that variations in populist radical right support are rooted in different kinds of conditions. To analyse the effects of these conditions we use unique geo-referenced survey data from the Netherlands collected among a nationwide sample of 8,000 Dutch respondents. Our analyses demonstrate that the presence of immigrants (and particularly increases therein) can explain why populist radical right parties are more popular in some urban areas than in others, but that it cannot explain variation across rural areas. In these areas, local marginalization is an important predictor of support for populist radical right parties. Hence, to understand the support for the populist radical right, the heterogeneity of its electorate should be recognized.     

Macroeconomic performance,political trust and the Great Recession: A multilevel analysis of the effects of within‐country fluctuations in macroeconomic performance on political trust in 15 EU countries, 1999–2011

Recent cross‐national comparative studies have found no effect of countries’ macroeconomic performances on trust in national political institutions, once political explanations (most notably corruption) are taken into account. Although political trust is not determined by the comparison of national economic performance to other countries, it is argued in this article that it is affected by comparisons to their own past performance. In a multilevel, fixed effects analysis of Eurobarometer data (21 waves in 15 European Union Member States between 1999 and 2011) the extent to which within‐country variations in economic performance affect political trust longitudinally is tested. Three major conclusions are reached. First, within‐country, longitudinal changes in performance (growth, deficits, unemployment and inflation) affect political trust. Second, the impact of macroeconomic performance is stronger among the lower educated. Third, even in times of economic duress, budgetary deficits tend to undermine political trust.     

HOW TO ASSESS ADMINISTRATIVE REFORM? INVESTIGATING THE ADOPTION AND PRELIMINARY IMPACTS OF THE NORWEGIAN WELFARE ADMINISTRATION REFORM

This article addresses how to assess public-sector reforms using a reform in the Norwegian welfare administration as a case study. This reform represents a complex hybrid organizational form and a challenging combination of political control and local autonomy. We examine first how the reform has addressed its three main goals. These were to get people off welfare and back into work, to bring about more service-orientation, and to increase efficiency. We also address the side-effects of the reform by describing operational effects, process effects and system effects. Second, we examine how effects can be understood from an instrumental, cultural, and environmental perspective. A main finding is that context is significant for effects, and that it has so far proven difficult to discern clear overall effects concerning the main goals of the reforms and their side-effects.