Did they ‘Read Before Burning’? The Coalition and Quangos

Attitudes to quangos are paradoxical. On the one hand they are perceived to be undemocratic, unaccountable organisations, while on the other they are seen to improve effectiveness, limit political interference and increase public confidence in government. This paradox is reflected in the behaviour of political parties, which generally adopt a harsh line towards quangos in opposition, but come to rely on these bodies in office. Ahead of the 2010 general election it was, however, noticeable that the Conservative party rejected this dynamic by promising to pursue ‘a more sophisticated approach’. This article explores the Coalition government's subsequent ‘public bodies reform programme’, assessing its progress against recommendations contained within the Institute for Government's Read before Burning report of July 2010. It concludes that while the Coalition has addressed long‐standing concerns about the day‐to‐day governance of public bodies, it has failed to resolve a set of broader and strategic (metagovernance) issues.     

LIFESTYLE,RATIONAL CHOICE,AND ADOLESCENT FEAR: A TEST OF A RISK‐ASSESSMENT FRAMEWORK*

Criminological research on fear of crime primarily has been based on, and supportive of, an opportunity framework. The current research tests an expanded risk‐assessment model of fear, which is rooted in an opportunity framework, by incorporating a measure of delinquent lifestyle, which is a known risk factor for victimization, using a sample of youth aged 10–16 years. The findings from longitudinal structural equation models do not support the applicability of a risk‐assessment model of fear in adolescence. Namely, although increased involvement in a delinquent lifestyle is associated strongly with an increase in victimization over time, no such association exists with the perceived risk of victimization. Most importantly, as adolescents become more involved in a delinquent lifestyle and are victimized at a higher rate than nondelinquent youth, their fear of victimization actually decreases at a significantly higher rate than more prosocial youth.     

DO PARENTS MATTER IN CREATING SELF‐CONTROL IN THEIR CHILDREN? A GENETICALLY INFORMED TEST OF GOTTFREDSON AND HIRSCHI'S THEORY OF LOW SELF‐CONTROL*

Gottfredson and Hirschi's general theory of crime (1990) has generated an abundance of research testing the proposition that low self‐control is the main cause of crime and analogous behaviors. Less empirical work, however, has examined the factors that give rise to low self‐control. Gottfredson and Hirschi suggest that parents are the sole contributors for either fostering or thwarting low self‐control in their children, explicitly discounting the possibility that genetics may play a key role. Yet genetic research has shown that ADHD and other deficits in the frontostriatal system are highly heritable. Our research thus tests whether “parents matter” in creating low self‐control once genetic influences are taken into account. Using a sample of twin children we find that parenting measures have a weak and inconsistent effect. We address the conceptual and methodological issues associated with the failure to address genetic influences in parenting studies.     

ENGLISH METROPOLITAN GOVERNMENT SINCE ABOLITION: AN EVALUATION OF THE ABOLITION OF THE ENGLISH METROPOLITAN COUNTY COUNCILS

The Local Government Act 1985 abolished the Greater London Council (GLC) and the six English metropolitan county councils (MCCS); but it did not abolish the services for which they were responsible. It transferred them: some directly to the lower-tier borough or district councils, others to a variety of joint boards, joint committees, residuary bodies, and special purpose agencies. As a result, there are, in at least some of the former MCC areas, many services still operated wholly or partially on a county-wide basis. The first part of this article compares the contrasting approaches adopted in the six metropolitan areas to the retention or re-creation of county-wide services after abolition. The second part attempts to explain these contrasting approaches: why, for instance, significantly more county-wide institutional arrangements were voluntarily negotiated by the districts in West Yorkshire and Greater Manchester than by those in South Yorkshire and Merseyside.     

STICK-UP,STREET CULTURE,AND OFFENDER MOTIVATION*

Motivation is the central, yet arguably the most assumed, causal variable in the etiology of criminal behavior. Criminology's incomplete and imprecise understanding of this construct can be traced to the discipline's strong emphasis on background risk factors, open to the exclusion of subjective foreground conditions. In this article, we attempt to remedy this by exploring the decision-making processes of active armed robbers in real-life settings and circumstances. Our aim is to understand how and why these offenders move from an unmotivated state to one in which they are determined to commit robbery. Drawing from semistructured interviews with 86 active armed robbers, we argue that while the decision to commit robbery stems most directly from a perceived need for fast cash, this decision is activated, mediated, and shaped by participation in street culture. Street culture, and its constituent conduct norms, represents an essential intervening variable linking criminal motivation to background risk factors and subjective foreground conditions.     

NEW GOVERNANCE ARRANGEMENTS AT THE INTERSECTION OF CLIMATE CHANGE AND FOREST POLICY: INSTITUTIONAL,POLITICAL AND REGULATORY DIMENSIONS

This article investigates emerging governance arrangements at the intersection between forest management and climate policy. The authors deploy the symposium's three‐dimensional framework to describe and evaluate developments within two distinct policy sectors (forestry/climate change adaptation and mitigation) at several levels of governance (bi‐national, national, and sub‐national) to explore the nature and operation of the emerging governance arrangements, and assessing and measuring change within these arrangements over time. Drawing on four contemporary case studies from the US and Canada, New Zealand, British Columbia and Alaska, the authors discern little evidence of a generalized, linear trend from ‘government to governance’. Instead, they conclude, across institutional, political and regulatory dimensions of governance, a more variegated and diverse picture emerges. Their analysis also lends support for the Trubek and Trubek (2007) hypothesis that emerging governance arrangements typically interact with extant ones through modalities of rivalry, complementarity and transformation.