Does public policy respond to public opinion? Previous research suggests dynamic representation occurs in the aggregate. Yet, most of the evidence for policy response is limited to the policy intentions of elected officials on issues related to more or less government spending. We examine policy response to an alternative dimension of public mood, public preferences for more or less punitive criminal justice policies, using multiple indicators of policy from various stages of the policy-making process. Criminal justice policy should be responsive to public preferences given the public’s concern about crime and the negative social construction of criminals. Thus, there is an electoral incentive for public officials to respond to public preferences along this alternative dimension of public sentiment regarding criminal justice policy. We estimate a DYMIMIC model of federal criminal justice policy as a function of the multiple dimensions of public policy mood using Kalman filtering. The results indicate that criminal justice policy responds to the second, not the first, dimension of public mood. We find evidence that policy-makers at multiple stages of the policy process are able to differentiate among multiple signals from the public and respond appropriately. The results present a more sophisticated portrait of democratic responsiveness. 相似文献
A heated debate developed in South Africa as to the meaning of ‘deliberative democracy’. This debate is fanned by the claims of ‘traditional leaders’ that their ways of village-level deliberation and consensus-oriented decision-making are not only a superior process for the African continent as it evolves from pre-colonial tradition, but that it represents a form of democracy that is more authentic than the Western version. Proponents suggest that traditional ways of deliberation are making a come-back because imported Western models of democracy that focus on the state and state institutions miss the fact that in African societies state institutions are often seen as illegitimate or simply absent from people's daily lives. In other words, traditional leadership structures are more appropriate to African contexts than their Western rivals. Critics suggest that traditional leaders, far from being authentic democrats, are power-hungry patriarchs and authoritarians attempting to both re-invent their political, social and economic power (frequently acquired under colonial and apartheid rule) and re-assert their control over local-level resources at the expense of the larger community. In this view, the concept of deliberative democracy is being misused as a legitimating device for a politics of patriarchy and hierarchy, which is the opposite of the meaning of the term in the European and US sense. This article attempts to contextualise this debate and show how the efforts by traditional leaders to capture an intermediary position between rural populations and the state is fraught with conflicts and contradictions when it comes to forming a democratic state and society in post-apartheid South Africa. 相似文献
Asia's growing share of the global economy provides one of the strongest themes in contemporary analysis of international affairs. The remarkable economic achievements of Japan, Korea, and Taiwan over the past 50 years have been compounded more recently by the rise of the Chinese and Indian economies. While the significance of this change in the way international wealth is shared was beyond doubt before the onset of the current global financial crisis, many commentators expect that when the world eventually emerges from the crisis Asia's share of the global economy will have grown even further.
This shift clearly has strategic importance: economic decisions made in Asia, whether by governments or business, are now more important for the rest of the world than they have been for centuries. If military power were moving in the same direction, and at the same pace, the strategic consequences would be even greater.
This paper examines trends in Asian military spending and modernisation. It begins with a summary of defence spending among Asian countries.1In this paper the term “Asia” is used to include the 22 countries from Pakistan to Japan. It does not include Afghanistan or any of the countries of central Asia, or Russia, Australia, New Zealand, or the Pacific Island countries. As explained above, data is not equally available for all 22 countries.View all notes It next considers the nature of the capabilities and equipment they are acquiring, and comments on the way in which forces are being structured, commanded, and managed. It then comments on the range of different factors that are driving military spending and modernisation in Asia, and offers particular comment on China in this regard. The paper then concludes with brief comments on United States and Australian military spending and development. 相似文献
Adolescent networks include parents, friends, and romantic partners, but research on the social learning mechanisms related
to delinquency has not typically examined the characteristics of all three domains simultaneously. Analyses draw on data from
the Toledo Adolescent Relationships Study (n = 957), and our analytic sample contains 51% male and 49% female as well as 69% white, 24% African-American, and 7% Latino
respondents. Parents,’ peers,’ and partners’ deviance are each related to respondents’ delinquency, and affiliation with a
greater number of deviant networks is associated with higher self-reported involvement. Analyses that consider enmeshment
type indicate that those with both above average romantic partner and friend delinquency report especially high levels of
self-reported involvement. In all comparisons, adolescents with deviant romantic partners are more delinquent than those youths
with more prosocial partners, regardless of friends’ and parents’ behavior. Findings highlight the importance of capturing
the adolescent’s entire network of affiliations, rather than viewing these in isolation, and suggest the need for additional
research on romantic partner influences on delinquent behavior and other adolescent outcomes.
Growth curve analyses were used to investigate parents’ and peers’ influence on adolescents’ choice to abstain from antisocial
behavior in a community-based sample of 416 early adolescents living in the Southeastern United States. Participants were
primarily European American (91%) and 51% were girls. Both parents and peers were important influences on the choice to abstain
from antisocial behavior. Over the four-year period adolescents relied increasingly on parents as influences and relied less
on peers as influences to deter antisocial behavior. Significant gender differences emerged and suggested that female adolescents
relied more on social influences than did male adolescents but that as time progressed male adolescents increased the rate
at which they relied on peers. Higher family income was associated with choosing peers as a social influence at wave 1, but
no other significant income associations were found. Understanding influences on adolescents’ abstinence choices is important
for preventing antisocial behavior.
Emily C. CookEmail:
Emily C. Cook
is in her final year of doctoral studies in human development and family studies at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.
Her research interests include peer influences and parental influences on adolescents’ problem behaviors, parental influences
on adolescents’ social development, and effective prevention and interventions for adolescents who exhibit problem behaviors.
Cheryl Buehler
is a professor of human development and family studies at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Her research interests
include marital conflict, marital relations, parenting, and adolescent well-being.
Robert Henson
is an assistant professor of educational research methodology at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Dr. Henson’s
research interests include educational measurement, cognitive diagnosis models, hierarchical linear models, and mathematical
statistics. 相似文献
Self-determination theory emphasizes the importance of school-based autonomy and belongingness to academic achievement and psychological adjustment,
and the theory posits a model in which engagement in school mediates the influence of autonomy and belongingness on these
outcomes. To date, this model has only been evaluated on academic outcomes. Utilizing short-term longitudinal data (5-month
timeframe) from a set of secondary schools in the rural Midwest (N = 283, M age = 15.3, 51.9% male, 86.2% White), we extend the model to include a measure of positive adjustment (i.e., hope). We also
find a direct link between peer-related belongingness (i.e., peer support) and positive adjustment that is not mediated by
engagement in school. A reciprocal relationship between academic autonomy, teacher-related belongingness (i.e., teacher support)
and engagement in learning is supported, but this reciprocal relationship does not extend to peer-related belongingness. The
implications of these findings for secondary schools are discussed.
Sociometric nominations, social cognitive maps, and self-report questionnaires were completed in consecutive years by 327
students (56% girls) followed longitudinally from grade 7 to grade 8 to examine the stability of social standing in peer groups
and correlates of changes in social standing. Social preference, perceived popularity, network centrality, and leadership
were moderately stable from grade 7 to grade 8. Alcohol use and relational aggression in grade 7 predicted changes in social
preference and centrality, respectively, between grade 7 and grade 8, but these effects were moderated by gender and ethnicity.
Changes in social standing from grade 7 to grade 8 were unrelated to grade 8 physical aggression, relational aggression, and
alcohol use after controlling for the grade 7 corollaries of these behaviors. Results are discussed in terms of their implications
for understanding links between social standing and problem behaviors during adolescence.
Experiences with racism are a common occurrence for African American youth and may result in negative self perceptions relevant
for the experience of depressive symptoms. This study examined the longitudinal association between perceptions of racism
and depressive symptoms, and whether perceived academic or social control mediated this association, in a community epidemiologically-defined
sample of urban African American adolescents (N = 500; 46.4% female). Structural equation modeling revealed that experiences with racism were associated with low perceived
academic control, which in turn was associated with increased depressive symptoms. Findings suggest that experiences with
racism can have long lasting effects for African American youth’s depressive symptoms, and highlight the detrimental effects
of experiences with racism for perceptions of control in the academic domain. Implications for intervention are discussed.