You gotta move: advancing the debate on the record of dispersal

This paper summarizes the social science research on the record of housing dispersal programs since 1995. The research shows a consistently disappointing record of benefits to low-income households. Households moved out of high-poverty neighborhoods, voluntarily and involuntarily, show few or no beneficial effects in terms of economic self-sufficiency, health benefits, or social integration. The benefits of dispersal are confined to feelings of greater safety and satisfaction with neighborhood environmental conditions. We offer a framework for understanding the disappointing record of dispersal, highlighting its translation from social science diagnosis to policy, problems in the policy's implementation, its underlying theory of poverty, and the political context within which dispersal has been applied.     

Action in adversity: Responses to unemployment in Britain and Germany

A ‘satisficing’ model of response to adversity is used to compare the reaction of Britain and Germany to the common stimulus of large and visible increases in structural unemployment since the mid‐1970s. Initially, both countries responded similarly, spending lots more money on existing programmes. However, as dissatisfaction persisted, responses differed: British governments sought to achieve satisfaction by a trial‐and‐error search, introducing (and repealing) many programmes. By contrast, Germany tried virtually no new measures. The conclusion considers why the two governments should respond differently. It rejects explanations of economic differences or party differences. Institutional differences linked to legal requirements and budgets ‐ reducing flexibility in Germany and facilitating it in Britain ‐provide a better explanation, indicating that state structure is an important independent influence on the capacity of a government to respond to signals of dissatisfaction.     

Incomplete Democratization and the Outbreak of Military Disputes

Whereas most research on the democratic peace has focused on relations within pairs of states, research on the relationship between democratization and armed conflict has centered primarily on the behavior of individual states. Moreover, the existing literature has placed primary emphasis on explaining the effects of democratization on war, rather than military disputes more generally. In this article, we find that certain types of democratic transitions markedly increase the risk of such disputes within dyads, even when economic and political relations between states are taken into account. Particularly prone to violence are dyads in which either state undergoes an incomplete democratic transition; that is, a shift from an autocratic to a partially democratic (or anocratic) regime that stalls prior to the establishment of consolidated democratic institutions.     

Congressional Voting on Term Limits

Between 1990 and 1995,twenty-three states unilaterally imposedterm limits on their own delegations toCongress. In 1995 the House ofRepresentatives defeated a constitutionalamendment that would have limited the termsfor all of Congress. Only weeks later, theSupreme Court struck down the individualstate laws. In 1997 the House againbrought the issue to a vote, which alsofailed. This paper models congressionalvoting on term limits with a simple gamewithin an interest-group theory withlegislators as imperfect agents ofconstituents. The game foremost predictsthat members from term-limited states wouldbe more likely to support term limits inthe first vote but no more likely on thesecond vote. The empirical section employsprobit, multinomial logit, and orderedprobit maximum likelihood estimations toconfirm the stated hypotheses. Among otherresults, in particular both the joint andconditional probability of a `yea' on thefirst vote and a subsequent `nay' on thesecond vote is higher for members fromstates that had unilaterally self-imposedterm limits. The results are robust tomodel specification, estimator, andalternative sampling. Implications areproposed in the concluding comments.     

Municipal shared service collaboration in the Alberta Capital Region: The case of recreation

Abstract: This article examines the determinants of participation of Edmonton‐area municipalities in shared services arrangements for recreational and cultural services. Potential determinants emerge from the literature on inter‐municipal collaborative arrangements, but this analysis extends the empirical work on the determinants of participation to encompass small municipalities and to consider the appeal of potential partners. The major finding is that, in the Edmonton environment (and likely in many others), municipal population size is the critical determinant of participation, and participation is inversely related to population size. Sommaire : Le présent article examine les facteurs déterminants de la participation des municipalités de la région d'Edmonton dans les ententes relatives aux services partagés en ce qui concerne les services récréatifs et culturels. Les déterminants potentiels proviennent de la littérature sur les ententes de collaboration entre les municipalités. Cependant, l'analyse prolonge le travail empirique sur les facteurs déterminants de la participation pour y inclure les petites municipalités et pour tenir compte de l'appel à des partenaires potentiels. Le principal résultat est que, dans la région d'Edmonton (et vraisemblablement dans de nombreuses autres régions), la taille de la population municipale est le déterminant critique de la participation, et la participation est inversement proportionnelle à la taille de la population.     

Predicting outcome with the Level of Service Inventory-Revised: The importance of implementation integrity

Correctional agencies face increasing pressure to provide more services for increasing caseloads with fewer resources. The Level of Service Inventory-Revised (LSI-R) is a risk/need assessment instrument that was designed to assist correctional agencies in classifying offenders based upon risk of re-offending, thereby allowing agencies to assign appropriate levels of risk/need and develop intervention/case-plans accordingly. Although predictive validity of the LSI-R has been demonstrated, very little attention has been paid to the effect that staff training and agency experience have on the validity of this comprehensive, dynamic risk/need assessment tool. The use of formalized training and agency experience were found to be important factors that may determine the validity of the risk/need scores that are gleaned from the LSI-R assessment process.