Psychological Distress,Substance Use,and HIV/STI Risk Behaviors Among Youth

Psychological distress has been inconsistently associated with sexual risk behavior in youth, suggesting additional factors, such as substance use, may explain this relationship. The mediating or moderating role of substance use on the relationship between psychological distress and sexual risk behaviors was prospectively examined over the four high school years in a sample of urban youth (N = 850; 80% African American; 50% female). Growth curve modeling was used to estimate changes in sexual risk across adolescence and to test its association to psychological distress symptoms and frequency of substance use. Substance use was associated with psychological distress. Greater psychological distress was associated with increased sexual intercourse frequency, decreased condom use, and increased number of partners. Substance use fully mediated the relationship between psychological distress and intercourse frequency and condom use, and partially mediated the relationship between psychological distress and number of partners. We found no differences in mediation by sex or race/ethnicity and no evidence to support moderation of psychological distress and substance use on sexual risk. Findings suggest that psychological distress is associated with sexual risk because youth with greater psychological distress are also more likely to use substances. Practical implications for adolescent HIV/STI prevention are discussed.     

Toward the usable recognition of individual benefits and costs in regulatory analysis and governance

Regulatory agencies in the United States and Europe have well‐deserved reputations for fixating on the total benefits and costs of proposed and final regulatory actions, without doing any more than anecdotally mentioning the subpopulations and individuals who may bear disproportionate costs or reap disproportionate benefits. This is especially true on the “cost” side of the cost–benefit ledger, where analysts exert little effort to even inform decisionmakers and the public that the costs of regulations might be distributed either regressively or progressively. Many scholars and advocates have observed that regulation can increase the efficiency of market outcomes, but caution about its untoward (or suboptimal) effects on equity. Here, we argue that without considering distributional information about costs and benefits, regulatory policies in fact can also cause violence to notions of efficiency, for two reasons: (i) society cannot hope to approach Pareto‐efficient outcomes without identifying those who must lose so that others can gain more; and (ii) because the harm experienced by involuntary risks and by imposed regulatory costs is likely non‐linear in its magnitude (at the individual level), efficiency is, in fact, a strong function of the shape of the distribution of these effects. This article reviews evidence about the distribution of regulatory costs and benefits, describes how agencies fail to incorporate readily available distributional information, and sketches a vision for how they could analyze costs and benefits to promote more efficient regulatory choices and outcomes.     

Foreign policy as a socially divisive issue: the KORUS free-trade agreement

While the Korea–United States (KORUS) free-trade agreement negotiations were concluded in 2007, and ratified in 2011, the agreement has remained deeply controversial. Labor unions, civil society groups, and opposition politicians in South Korea have criticized the agreement as being unfair, and also in the United States have voices spoken out against the agreement. The process of negotiation by South Korea was deeply flawed, and the conclusion of the agreement, that included a unilateral ratification by the ruling party in National Assembly, was forcefully opposed by many groups in South Korean society with violent demonstrations leading almost to the collapse of the Lee Myung-bak government. This article argues that it was not only the perception of potential economic damage to, in particular agricultural, domestic interest that was the main cause of the public resistance to the agreement, but that the unique nature of the relationship with the United States, and how this influenced the progress of negotiating and ratifying the agreement in South Korea, was a leading course of the divisiveness of the agreement and the massive resistance it faced. This is also why while the conservative Park Geun-hye government has expressed its willingness to re-negotiate other free-trade agreements, it has remained adamant in its refusal to even consider reopening the KORUS agreement. It is not only the apparent trade benefits that accrued to South Korea that is behind this refusal. With the ruling party having lost the April 2016 National Assembly elections and presidential elections scheduled for December 2017, the conservative elite, concerned about its electoral fate, has no interest in re-opening such a divisive issue as the KORUS free-trade agreement.     

Engineering the Competition: Affirmative Action as Subsidized Mobility

Equality of opportunity, or equality of individuals in a competition to reach unequal positions, has emerged as a fundamental cultural value over the course of American history. However, the ability of individuals to achieve desired occupations and statuses is limited by the structure of available opportunities and by the social origins of individuals. Affirmative action is an effort to engineer equality of opportunity by government intervention to promote the upward mobility of individuals with disadvantaged backgrounds. In the past, this effort has been directed primarily at compensating for the historical consequences of slavery and racial discrimination, but more recently socio-economic affirmative action has taken on the task of compensating for all disadvantages of social origin. This attempt faces several serious problems, though. It assumes that government is capable of continually re-engineering the competition. Beyond that, it aims at directing everyone toward a relatively small number of socially desired positions, promoting chronic shortages in the less-desired but necessary occupations.     

Integrated justice: privatizing the fundamentals

Abstract: Growing interest in using automation to link components of the justice system has led four provincial governments to consider private-sector partnerships in which the upfront cost of automation initiatives is borne by a private contractor who is compensated out of a benefit pool of future savings and revenue. Integrated justice systems thus reverse the standard approach to alternative service delivery, since broadly defined development work is privatized while routine implementation remains in public hands. In practice, provinces have abandoned and scaled down their most ambitious projects, although Ontario has begun perhaps the largest project ever undertaken. Sommaire: Face à l'intérêt que présente l'automatisation des liens entre les éléments du système de justice, quatre gouvernements provinciaux ont décidé d'envisager des partenariats avec le secteur privé, l'entrepreneur privé devant défrayer le coût initial des initiatives d'automatisation mais recevant en contrepartie les retombées positives provenant des konomies et des revenus qui en dékouleront. Les systèmes de justice intégrés inversent ainsi la méthode standard de prestation de services, puisqu'on privatise l'effort de mise au point tout en laissant au secteur public le soin de la mise en oeuvre. En réalité, les provinces ont abandonné ou réduit leurs projets les plus ambi-tieux, mais l'Ontario vient de lancer le projet le plus important jamais entrepris.     

Congressional Preemption During the George W. Bush Administration

President Bush approved 64 preemption acts during 2001–2005.Fifteen acts were responses to the September 11, 2001, terroristattacks, and five acts extended sunset provisions. The otheracts removed specified powers from states in the fields of banking,commerce, energy, environmental protection, finance, foreigncommerce, health, intellectual property, safety, taxation, telecommunications,and transportation. Only the two Internet taxation prohibitionacts have a major impact on state governments by depriving themof billions of dollars in tax revenues that could be used toexercise their reserved powers. The other acts are minor oneson the periphery of state exercised powers compared to lawsenacted in the period 1964–1999.