The Complex Relationship Between Motherhood and Desistance

Using a sample of 118 drug-involved women originally released from prison in the 1990s and re-interviewed between 2010 and 2011, this paper examines the role motherhood played in the desistance process from crime and substance abuse. Interview narratives revealed that motherhood rarely functioned as a turning point per se that activated desistance, but caring for children did serve to solidify prosocial identities once offenders had transformed their addict/criminal identities. Despite their identity transformations, however, the journey of desistance for the majority of mothers was still a long and arduous path. The reality for these mothers most often resembled a hostile terrain marked by the competing demands of battling addiction, finding employment and suitable housing with a criminal record, establishing visitation and custody rights in family court, and regaining the trust of children and family members who had long ago lost faith in their commitment to their families. This research illuminates the complexities inherent in the desistance process for a contemporary sample of drug involved adult women entrenched within the criminal justice system.     

Price policy,poverty, and power within rural West African households

This paper explores the impact of agricultural price policy on poverty in West Africa, a region in which prices are an important tool for raising rural household incomes. A game-theoretic, collective model of household income generation and resource allocation is developed that incorporates three features typical of West African rural households: preference heterogeneity among women and men, individual resource control, and power-mediated bargaining over resource control in the face of changes in households' economic environments. To explore price effects, the model is used to simulate the income impacts of large increases in cotton prices accompanying fast-paced agricultural liberalisation in Burkina Faso in the 1980s. The paper shows that where resources are controlled individually by household members, rather than pooled, Pareto efficiency in income generation does not hold. The impact of agricultural price policy on poverty is mediated by bargaining over resource control within households. Both the relative bargaining power of women and men and the degree of preference heterogeneity between them play fundamental roles in the outcome of such bargaining. The results point to a lower ability of households to take advantage of price incentives and thereby raise their incomes than a unitary household model, in which preferences do not differ and resources are pooled, predicts. They suggest that the effectiveness of price policy in reducing poverty in the region would be enhanced by taking into account the incentive structure within households as well as individual household members' ability to bargain over the benefit and cost streams flowing from price changes.     

No staff,no time,no money: Can budget reform work in a rural county?

Budget reforms directed toward providing more information and analysis for management and policy making appear to be most widely used by larger jurisdictions. Reforms such as performance budgeting, program budgeting, and zero based budgeting are associated with professionalism, management information systems, budget staffs, and a lengthy budget preparation and planning phase. This article addresses the question of whether it is possible to implement budget reform without the staff and financial resources that so often goes hand-in-hand with it. The experience of one rural county government in attempting budget reform is examined.     

Every Kingdom Divided Against Itself Will Be Ruined: A Reflection,a Deflection,and a Qualified Reinterpretation of the Global Jihad

Much analytical commentary implies that a generic West is the principal target of jihadist activism. This study contends that this is a misconception fostered by jihadist groups like Al Qaeda in order to accentuate their stature in the Islamic world and to obscure their true aims, which are first and foremost to secure the dominance of the Salafist interpretation of Islam. The analysis situates Al Qaeda in the tradition of Islamic reform movements and shows that a violent Sufi/Salafist conflict pervades nearly all current examples of strife within the Muslim world. In these conflicts, the role of the “West” is instrumental, not central to the struggle. Consequently, this study offers a qualification to notions of a “global jihad” and suggests this has important considerations for policymakers in determining the nature of the threat posed by Islamist militancy.     

Counter-COIN: Counterinsurgency and the Preemption of Strategy

The notion of “counterinsurgency” (COIN) has for some years been the central concept driving military operations in Afghanistan, and before that, in Iraq. It constitutes the dominant idea influencing much current military planning of the major Western powers. This study questions the assumptions and relevance of the thinking behind counterinsurgency doctrine. It suggests that the ultimate effect of its dominance is to reduce the highly contingent nature of war to a list of techniques, the application of which are regarded as a sufficient precondition whenever states deem that they are confronted by conflicts that can be described as an “insurgency.” Such assumptions are both arbitrary and risk crowding out necessary, although by their nature very difficult, political judgments that are required for the effective construction and implementation of strategies that seek to ensure that the ends sought are proportional to the means employed.     

Toulmin's philosophy of argument and its relevance to offender profiling

This study sought to identify the extent to which claims about the probable characteristics of offenders in ‘offender profiles’ were based on substantive arguments. Because Toulmin's (1958) philosophy of argument has been demonstrated as a useful way of breaking down arguments into their constituent parts (Burleson, 1979) we examined the extent to which profiles contained grounds, warrants, backing and rebuttals to support or refute various claims about offenders. Twenty-one profiles, representing a range of ‘profiling styles’, were obtained from a variety of sources. All of these had been used in major criminal investigations either in the UK or internationally. Of the nearly 4,000 claims made, nearly 80% were unsubstantiated. That is, they contained no grounds, warrant, backing or rebuttal. Moreover, less than 31% of the claims were falsifiable. We argue that (a) this demonstrates the need for a careful, systematic evaluation of profiling advice (b) Toulmin's structure is one useful method for evaluating such material and for providing a possible framework for such advice.     

Democratic legitimacy in the European Union: Fulfilling the institutional logic

The European Union's delicate institutional balance between intergovern‐mentalism and supranationalism has been the source of both the EU's successes and its problems. This balance is under scrutiny as representatives of Member States and EU institutions pursue their particular visions of democratic legitimacy in the course of the 1996–97 Intergovernmental Conference. This essay examines three competing conceptualisations of democratic legitimacy: the Gaullist view, which associates legitimacy narrowly with national sovereignty; a national culture perspective that posits a unique correspondence of national character and national parliaments; and a parliamentary view that associates legitimacy with the role played by parliaments in scrutinising the behaviour of executives, whether at national or European level. Only the last of these perspectives acknowledges that democratic legitimacy is a continuous variable rather than an all‐or‐nothing concept, and that the EU may therefore accumulate legitimacy by improving both the process and substance of policy making within the logic of existing institutional structures.