The Reform Bubble Bursts

Books reviewed in this article:
Columbia Accident Investigation Board, Report, Volume One     

Predicting suicidal risk in a cohort of depressed children and adolescents

Background: In children and adolescents with a depressive disorder, predicting who will also go on to exhibit suicide-related behaviors (SRBs), including suicide attempt or self-harm, is a key challenge facing clinicians. Aims: To investigate the relative contributions of depressive disorder severity, hopelessness, family dysfunction, and perceived social support to the risk of suicide-related behaviors. Methods: This was a cross-sectional study of a group of 10-16-year-olds with major depressive disorders and dysthymic disorder. Results: Child-rated depressive disorder symptom severity emerged as the greatest predictor of risk. Hopelessness and family dysfunction were also significant predictors of SRBs. In combination these variables were strong predictors, accounting for 66% of the variance. This is a cross-sectional study design, rather than longitudinal, therefore risk prediction over time was not possible. Conclusions: Understanding the child and adolescents depressive disorder symptom severity from their perspective, their level of hopelessness, as well as their family context is critical in understanding the risk of SRBs. These findings may help to provide direction for targeted interventions to address these clinical risk factors.     

The Multidimensional Poverty Assessment Tool: a new framework for measuring rural poverty

The Multidimensional Poverty Assessment Tool (MPAT) measures fundamental dimensions of rural poverty in order to support poverty-alleviation efforts in the less developed world. This article's primary purpose is to introduce MPAT and describe its theoretical rationale. It begins with an overview of the importance of creating enabling environments for rural poverty alleviation before describing MPAT's purpose and structure. The article goes on to address some of the advantages and shortcomings of surveys and indicators as means of measuring poverty, and concludes with a few caveats on using MPAT, and a focus on its added value to practitioners and academics.     

Questions About Policy Transparency

Book reviewed:
Neal Finkelstein, ed., Transparency in Public Policy: Great Britain and the United States .     

The value of pointillism? Integrating trade and development and the European Union as a global actor

As the contributions to this volume make clear, the intersection between the European Union's (EU) trade and development policies is populated by a diverse array of policies. The EU's selection of policies reflects, in part, the level of development of the developing country and competing understandings of how to best foster development. The contributions also hint at significant contributions to wider debates about the EU as a global actor, particularly the extent to which it is motivated by normative considerations and how affective it is in achieving its objectives. This article reviews the main findings of the contributions to this volume and advances some suggestions so as to enable a clearer picture to emerge that could more readily inform wider debates.     

Sequential angulation,spatial dispersion and consistency of distance attack patterns from home in serial murder,rape and burglary

Abstract

Three related measures of spatial movement (sequential angulation, spatial dispersion and consistency of distance in attack target) were compared across three serial offence types: serial homicide (n=35), serial rape (n=41) and serial burglary (n=30). In each case, each offender had committed at least five offences. “Spatial dispersion”, defined as the extent to which an offender distributes his offences across either a focused or relatively more evenly distributed area, revealed that burglary was less evenly distributed (i.e. more focused) than rape and murder. “Sequential angulation”, defined as the degree of rotational movement around the home of the offender from one offence to the next, revealed that serial murderers have higher angulation scores than do rapists who, in turn, have higher angulation scores than burglars. Lastly, a comparison of the offender's consistency in the relative distance travelled from home to each attack site (“consistency of distance in attack target”) was relatively similar across the three groups. This was despite the comparison of different serial offence types from disparate geographical areas. The supposition that differences in dispersion and sequential angulation scores across crime types are related to the perceived risk of the crime has been confirmed. The specificity and the mobility of the targets are also discussed.     

‘We care about you,but …’: the politics of EU trade policy and development

The European Union (EU) is one of the most important markets for developing countries, and trade policy has long been one of its most important instruments for promoting development. There is, however, a paradox at the heart of the relationship between the EU's trade policy and development. On the one hand the EU's trade as development policy has undergone a paradigm shift, the objective shifting from supporting the former colonies of the EU's member states to addressing poverty and with a greater emphasis on reciprocal liberalization. On the other hand, the EU's conventional trade policy initiatives—particularly its market access objectives in the Doha Round and in commercially motivated bilateral trade agreements—have adverse consequences for developing countries, as does its tendency to adopt stringent product regulations. We argue that this paradox is explained by differences in how much traction the emphasis on the development implications of trade has had in the EU's various trade policy subsystems.