Social Capital and Local Government Capacity

Local authorities vary considerably in their capacity for governance. The dimensions of this capacity can only be developed by drawing on local stocks of social capital. The seminal theories of social capital tend to conceive it as a community resource that is built up through a long tradition of civic engagement. We take issue with the laissez–faire implications of these theories, highlighting ways in which local governments can positively contribute to social capital formation by opening their 'political opportunity structure' and engaging voluntary organisations and community groups in trust–based partnership arrangements.     

Constructing Subjects and Making Experts: Reading the Politics of the Psychotherapy Novel

This paper examines the ideological and political basis of the practice of psychotherapy in contemporary culture. Psychotherapy is argued to be both inherently political and intimately concerned with the construction of subjectivity. These arguments are examined through interrogating the representation of psychotherapy in the works of Lindner ( The Fifty-Minute Hour , Bantam, New York, 1955) and particularly in Yalom's fictional text Lying on the Couch (HarperPerennial, New York, 1996). The implications within psychotherapy for representing normality, negotiating power, and locating and constructing subjectivity are highlighted through the critical treatment of these texts.     

The Ada Sheriffs Youth Foundation: The development of a decentralized youth program

This article describes the Ada Sheriffs Youth Foundation (SYF), a program that provides after-school enrichment activities carried out by individual schools. At the time of evaluation, the Foundation had organized early intervention action (EIA) teams in thirty-one elementary schools. The teams identified and linked troubled youth to local community programs. The program, similar in principle to comprehensive prevention programs, differed in that decision making about participants was decentralized, youth were not grouped, and the participants themselves decided what programs they wanted to participate in. An analysis of youths' at-risk scores before and after program participation showed significant improvement in many dimensions of risk. The article concludes with a discussion of issues related to the integrity of program delivery.     

Experiencing impartiality to invoke fairness in the n-PD: Some experimental results

Subjects play a 5-person Prisoner's Dilemma both from an impartial point of view and in a regular fashion to determine whether 1) Concerns for fairness increase cooperative behavior; 2) Play of a Prisoner's Dilemma from an impartial point of view results in significantly higher levels of cooperation than does normal play; 3) Concern for fairness has greater explanatory force in explaining cooperation in impartial plays of the Prisoner's Dilemma than in normal plays; and 4) Experience with impartial play of a Prisoner's Dilemma sensitizes subjects to normative imperatives and results in higher levels of cooperation in subsequent normal plays of Prisoner's Dilemmas. The first and second hypotheses are supported, the third is inverted, and the fourth is not supported. Concern for fairness is demonstrated to play a complex role in explaining cooperative behavior in regular plays of the game. An earlier version was presented at the Annual meetings of the Public Choice Society, 1993 Monteleone Hotel, New Orleans; 20 March 1993.