Intergovernmental Relations in the UK: Time for a Radical Overhaul?

Brexit and the coronavirus pandemic have put relationships between the UK government and its devolved counterparts under growing strain. Tensions generated by both of these developments have exposed the inadequacies of the existing, under-developed system for bringing governments together in the UK. The limitations of the current system include the ad hoc nature of intergovernmental meetings, and their consultative rather than decision-making character. Drawing upon an analysis of how intergovernmental relationships are structured in five other countries, the authors offer a number of suggestions for the reconfiguration of the UK model. They explore different ways of enabling joint decision making by its governments, and argue against the assumption that England can be represented adequately by the UK administration. Without a serious attempt to address this dysfunctional part of the UK’s territorial constitution, there is every prospect that relations between these different governments will continue to deteriorate.     

The Impact of Multiple Types of Child Maltreatment on Subsequent Risk Behaviors Among Women During the Transition from Adolescence to Young Adulthood

The purpose of this study was to investigate how different types of child maltreatment, independently and collectively, impact a wide range of risk behaviors that fall into three domains: sexual risk behaviors, delinquency, and suicidality. Cumulative classification and Expanded Hierarchical Type (EHT) classification approaches were used to categorize various types of maltreatment. Data were derived from Wave III of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health). Our sample consisted of White, Black, Hispanic, and Asian females ages 18 to 27 (n = 7,576). Experiencing different kinds of maltreatment during childhood led to an extensive range of risk behaviors within the three identified domains. Women experiencing sexual abuse plus other maltreatment types had the poorest outcomes in all three domains. These findings illustrate that it may no longer be appropriate to assume that all types of maltreatment are equivalent in their potential contribution to negative developmental sequelae.     

The Five Cs Model of Positive Youth Development: A Longitudinal Analysis of Confirmatory Factor Structure and Measurement Invariance

The understanding of positive development across adolescence rests on having a valid and equivalent measure of this construct across the breadth of this period of life. Does the Positive Youth Development (PYD) construct based on the Five Cs model have satisfactory psychometric properties for such longitudinal measurement invariance? Using longitudinal data derived from the 4-H Study of PYD, we assessed 920 youth (61.6% female) from a racially and ethically diverse sample (67.3% European American) who participated in three waves (Grades 8–10) of data collection. Building on prior findings that the Five Cs (i.e., Competence, Confidence, Connection, Character, and Caring) model of PYD was a robust measure that could be assessed comparably during early adolescence, we tested a hierarchy of second-order confirmatory factor analysis models to assess the extent to which PYD can be measured equivalently across middle adolescence. Evidence was found for strict measurement invariance across three measurement occasions, including equivalence of first-order and second-order factor loadings, equality of intercepts of observed variables, and equality of item uniqueness and disturbances of the first-order factors. These results suggest that PYD can be measured in the same way across measurement occasions, a prerequisite for the study of development. Implications for research and application of being able to measure PYD equivalently across adolescence are discussed.     

Protective Families in High- and Low-risk Environments: Implications for Adolescent Substance Use

This study used data from a sample of 6th to 12th grade students (N = 48,641, 51% female), nested in 192 schools, to determine if the influence of family-based protective factors varied across different school contexts. Hierarchical logistic regression models were used to examine the effects of individual-level family protective factors, relative to school-level aggregates of the same factors, on recent (past 30 days) use of cigarettes, alcohol, and marijuana. Cross-level interactions indicated that the effect of the student’s level of family protection, relative to other students in their school, differed depending on the aggregated school level of family protection. The results suggested that the benefit of belonging to a well-functioning family was more influential for students attending schools characterized by higher-than-average aggregated levels of protection compared to students attending schools of lower-than-average protection. Thus, family-level factors offered less protection for students in relatively high-risk school contexts. These results were consistent with a protective–reactive interaction and suggest that a thorough understanding of adolescent substance use must consider the complex interplay among adolescents, their families, and their social environments.     

The Role of Intentional Self Regulation,Lower Neighborhood Ecological Assets,and Activity Involvement in Youth Developmental Outcomes

Extracurricular activities provide a key context for youth development, and participation has been linked with positive developmental outcomes. Using data from the 4-H Study of Positive Youth Development (PYD), this study explored how the intentional self regulation ability of youth interacted with participation in extracurricular activities to affect PYD among adolescents living in neighborhoods with relatively low ecological assets. In total, 545 youth were included in the study (50.3% female). Most of the youth were European American (41%) or Latino (37%; African American, 10%; Asian American, 7%; Native American, 4%; and other, 1%). In general, youth with the greatest capacity to self regulate benefitted the most, as compared to their peers with less capacity to self regulate, from involvement in extracurricular activities. Consistent with a developmental systems perspective, and specifically with bioecological theory, the findings from this study confirmed that, within lower asset settings, children with the most positive person-level factors (intentional self regulation) benefit the most from proximal processes such as extracurricular activity involvement.     

Intentional Self Regulation in Middle Adolescence: The Emerging Role of Loss-based Selection in Positive Youth Development

Intentional self regulation describes how people make choices, plan actions to reach their goals, and regulate the execution of their actions, making processes of intentional self regulation central to healthy human functioning. Prior research has confirmed the presence of three processes of intentional self regulation—elective selection (ES), optimization (O), and compensation (C)—in middle adolescence (Grades 8 through 10) and concurrent and predictive relationships with measures of Positive Youth Development (PYD). A fourth process, loss-based selection (LBS), should also develop by the end of middle adolescence. The present study used data from the 4-H Study of PYD to confirm the presence of a four-scale structure of intentional self regulation (ES, O, C, and LBS) in a sample of 2,357 racially diverse Grade 10 youth (63% female) and examine its covariation with indicators of positive and problematic development. Results supported the identification of a four-part structure of intentional self regulation, and scores covaried positively with indicators of PYD and negatively with substance use, delinquency, and depressive symptoms. Implications of the findings for the understanding of self-regulatory actions in adolescence and for future research are discussed.     

Regionalisierung und Dezentralisierung in Mittel- und Südosteuropa 1997–2007

The review essay takes stock of the last decade of decentralisation and regionalisation research in Central and South Eastern Europe. Classifying the existing scholarship with regard to its focus of analysis, its explanatory programme, and methodological predilections, we suggest to distinguish three different agendas: system transformation, EU conditionality and subnational governance. We argue that scholarly interest in regionalisation and decentralisation issues from the perspective of state transformation or Europeanisation is vanishing. Instead, we witness the emergence of a subnational governance approach which is rooted in comparative politics and policy analysis. The debate about decentralisation and regionalisation in CEEC is thus in a process of “normalising” and converging with the Western European subnational political discourse.     

Individual campaign contributions and candidate ideology

Individual citizens are the largest source of contributions for congressional candidates in the United States. This paper investigates if and how fundraising from this source is related to the ideological positions of candidates. Specifically, we ask whether the amount of contributions depends on: (1) the extremity of candidate ideology; and (2) the level of candidate divergence in the same race. These results have important implications for candidate positioning strategies, as well as for evaluating the effects of recent campaign finance reforms.