Making a Nation in Kenya

The address that follows was given by in the Hon. Michael BlundellM.L.C. former Minister of Agriculture, Kenya, at a joint meetingof the Royal African Society and the Royal Commonwealth Societyon May 7,1959. Mr. Brian Macdona, Vice Chairman of the Councilof the Royal African Society, took the chair.     

State Debt Limits: How Many Are Enough?

There is a growing concern among state policy makers that unrestrained debt may exceed politically acceptable or financially sustainable levels of debt. Many states have established limits to restrict debt, but many of these limits are circumvented through issuing more complex and specialized bonds. In this article, we focus on the use of debt limits as an instrument to manage a state's debt in context of two key questions: (1) under what circumstances should a state consider multiple debt limits and (2) if multiple limits are established, what factors should be considered in setting such multiple limits. In addressing these issues, we consider the theoretical and conceptual issues associated with setting debt limits, we highlight current state debt limit policies, and discuss factors that appear to be influencing decisions to establish and set multiple limits.     

Learning from Second‐Hand Experience: Methodology for Extrapolation‐Oriented Case Research

Critics of public management reform complain that governments copy legitimated foreign practices. Recent work by Eugene Bardach helps to explain why: neither government analysts nor academic researchers possess an adequate methodology to examine practices in source sites, with a view toward adaptation in target sites. Rather than complain, Bardach takes steps to develop such a methodology, drawing analogies with reverse engineering. This article offers specific guidance about how researchers can effectively investigate practices in source sites to prepare the ground for disciplined and ingenious extrapolation of practices from source to target sites. The resulting translation is illustrated by an extrapolation‐oriented case study.     

FEMALE AND MALE HOMICIDE VICTIMIZATION RATES: COMPARING TRENDS AND REGRESSORS*

This study compares national female and male homicide victimization rates (HVRs) during 1930–1995. The trends are almost the same, even when separated by race, in spite of large gender differences in HVR levels. When regressing female and male HVRs on demographic, economic, social control, and other variables, the coefficients differ between the sexes only to the extent expected by chance. The important predictors relate to offenders and are independent of the type of victim; the incapacitation impact of prison populations is especially strong for all HVRs. This is consistent with others' findings that men who murder women, and even those who commit sexual and partner assaults, have criminal records nearly as bad as offenders generally. These findings have implications for several broader topics: the usefulness of data dis-aggregation, the usefulness of crime situation theories, the reasons for declining homicide rates, and strategies for reducing violence against women.     

Inside Moves and Outside Views: An Australian Case Study of Elite and Public Perceptions of Political Corruption

The search for a definition of political corruption that adequately captures the nuances of governmental activity has been a long one. This article defends social or attitudinal definitions of corruption against some recent criticisms. It examines the value of Arnold Heidenheimer's widely cited distinctions among "black,""gray," and "white" corruption using empirical evidence from an interview study of over 100 Australian politicians and 500 voters. The results show that the broad dimensions of corruption — the official, the donor, the payoff, and the favor — identified by John Peters and Susan Welch affect the views of both politicians and voters alike.
Nonetheless, elites and the public come to judgments from different perspectives, and they judge some acts differently. Put another way, some corruption is gray. Politicians judge actions more subtly than do voters, who are more likely to see corruption in all acts. As Michael Johnston has suggested, the different experiences of political insiders and outsiders explain this disparity in their moral outlooks. Insiders are socialized to see at least some actions as functional and therefore not corrupt. Outsiders, unaware of the insiders' rules, tend to judge political action by moral absolutes. Thus the structure of liberal democratic government contributes to conflicting elite and public views of political right and wrong.     

DOES UNDOCUMENTED IMMIGRATION INCREASE VIOLENT CRIME?*

Despite substantial public, political, and scholarly attention to the issue of immigration and crime, we know little about the criminological consequences of undocumented immigration. As a result, fundamental questions about whether undocumented immigration increases violent crime remain unanswered. In an attempt to address this gap, we combine newly developed estimates of the unauthorized population with multiple data sources to capture the criminal, socioeconomic, and demographic context of all 50 states and Washington, DC, from 1990 to 2014 to provide the first longitudinal analysis of the macro‐level relationship between undocumented immigration and violence. The results from fixed‐effects regression models reveal that undocumented immigration does not increase violence. Rather, the relationship between undocumented immigration and violent crime is generally negative, although not significant in all specifications. Using supplemental models of victimization data and instrumental variable methods, we find little evidence that these results are due to decreased reporting or selective migration to avoid crime. We consider the theoretical and policy implications of these findings against the backdrop of the dramatic increase in immigration enforcement in recent decades.