Teenagers and their Parents: Parental Time and Parenting Style—What are the Issues?

Two recent reports, from the ippr and UNICEF have provided disturbing evidence on the behaviour and well‐being of young people in the UK. The ippr's Report suggests that a significant explanatory factor is the lack of time children spend with parents and other adults. But is mere ‘presence’ the key? The paper briefly reviews the possibilities parents in the UK have to spend time with their children by exploring how much and when they work in relation to parents in other European countries, and goes on to report on evidence from interviews with parents and children, which signal the importance of parenting style. I suggest that time with children is not unimportant, which has implications for Government's decision not to extend the right to request flexible working patterns to parents with older children, but that it is far from being the only factor at stake. The increasing difficulties parents face in negotiating the transition to independence with their teenage children indicate a need for parenting to be on the policy agenda.     

DO NEIGHBORHOODS GENERATE FEAR OF CRIME? AN EMPIRICAL TEST USING THE BRITISH CRIME SURVEY*

For a long time, criminologists have contended that neighborhoods are important determinants of how individuals perceive their risk of criminal victimization. Yet, despite the theoretical importance and policy relevance of these claims, the empirical evidence base is surprisingly thin and inconsistent. Drawing on data from a national probability sample of individuals, linked to independent measures of neighborhood demographic characteristics, visual signs of physical disorder, and reported crime, we test four hypotheses about the mechanisms through which neighborhoods influence fear of crime. Our large sample size, analytical approach, and the independence of our empirical measures enable us to overcome some of the limitations that have hampered much previous research into this question. We find that neighborhood structural characteristics, visual signs of disorder, and recorded crime all have direct and independent effects on individual‐level fear of crime. Additionally, we demonstrate that individual differences in fear of crime are strongly moderated by neighborhood socioeconomic characteristics; between‐group differences in expressed fear of crime are both exacerbated and ameliorated by the characteristics of the areas in which people live.     

Special Elections to the U.S. House of Representatives: A General Election Barometer?

Vacancies in the U.S. House of Representatives are filled using special elections. These elections occur off the usual American electoral cycle, and their results are routinely portrayed by the American mass media as indications of what to expect in the next general election. We examined the predictive power of special elections results with respect to the general election outcomes for the U.S. House of Representatives from 1900 to 2008. We found that special elections that yield a change in partisan control do have predictive power regarding general election results.     

‘A Natural and Voluntary Dependence’: The Royal Academy of San Carlos and the Cultural Politics of Art Education in Mexico City, 1786–1797

In this article, I explore the controversies that characterised the foundational years of the Royal Academy of San Carlos of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture in Mexico City (1786–1797). They provide provocative insights into questions of competing agendas and ambitions among the artists and bureaucrats of the royal academy. They also illuminate contemporary understandings about the hierarchical relationships between a metropolitan power, Spain, and its American colonies and their visual culture and artistic production, which mirror broader political hierarchies and relationships of power and subordination.     

A Framework for Understanding State Balanced Budget Requirement Systems: Reexamining Distinctive Features and an Operational Definition

Studies of state fiscal and budgetary policies often use balanced budget requirements (BBRs) as explanatory variables. While current measures laid the crucial groundwork for a basic understanding of state BBRs, their lack of comprehensiveness threatens the validity of empirical work. Based on comprehensive legal research, this article offers a framework for analyzing state requirements: each state's BBRs form a coherent system for achieving budget balance through budget cycles; a fully developed BBR system offers a three‐line construct against imbalance; and the more complete, developed, and explicit a BBR system is, the more stringent it will be in achieving budgetary balance.     

HOW POLICY‐MAKERS (REALLY) UNDERSTAND GLOBALIZATION: THE INTERNAL ARCHITECTURE OF ANGLOPHONE GLOBALIZATION DISCOURSE IN EUROPE

There is a growing acceptance in the literature of a potentially significant causal role for ideas about globalization in shaping the trajectory of policy and institutional reform in contemporary Europe. Yet we still know remarkably little about policy‐makers' understandings of globalization, save those they choose to declare publicly. This paper contributes to the important task of operationalizing empirically this key set of ideational variables. Using factor analysis of new survey data collected by the authors it maps and compares UK and Irish policy‐maker's understandings of, and orientations towards, globalization. The analysis reveals considerable similarities in the ordering of assumptions and attitudes towards globalization between the two country cases and between civil servants and parliamentarians. Yet it also shows some subtle and intriguing differences between policy‐makers' responses in the UK and Ireland and between elected and unelected officials. Intriguingly, it also suggests a significant disparity between politicians' private understandings and public discourses of globalization, with the former less necessitarian in tone than the latter. Above all, it suggests that Anglophone globalization discourse in Europe is principally structured in terms of a number of dimensions which relate to the acceptance or rejection of a series of core neoliberal premises. In effect, the terms and internal architecture of globalization discourse in the UK and Ireland are defined by neoliberal assumptions, to the extent that they provide the core point of reference and orientation for even the most sceptical and critical of views.