Legislative Transparency and Credit Risk

Open governance requirements are designed to improve accountability, which implies that transparent governments are more trustworthy stewards of their publicly invested power. However, transparency may also reduce institutional effectiveness and inhibit political compromise, diminishing the capacity to manage resources responsibly. We assess empirical support for these competing perspectives in the context of American state legislatures, many of which have become exempt from state sunshine laws in recent decades. We leverage variation in the timing of these legislative exemptions to identify the effect of removing transparency in a crucial governing institution on investors’ risk perceptions of states’ general obligation bonds. Our analysis of these data during the period 1995–2010 suggests that removing legislative transparency reduces state credit risk. We conclude that while openness in government may be normatively desirable, shielding legislative proceedings from public view may actually be better for states’ debt repayment capacity, improving their overall fiscal health.     

The Relation of Antisocial Behavior Patterns and Changes in Internalizing Symptoms for a Sample of Inner-city Youth: Comorbidity within a Developmental Framework

Research examining the relationship between internalizing symptoms and antisocial behaviors has generally been cross-sectional in design. Thus, although extant data have substantiated a strong correlation between internalizing symptoms and antisocial behaviors, few studies have focused on describing the nature of the co-occurrence over time. This study examined the relation between growth in internalizing symptoms and longitudinal patterns of antisocial behavior in a sample of 283 inner-city males and their caregivers assessed as part of a longitudinal developmental risk study. Participants were assessed annually in four waves. Non-offenders and escalating offenders had lower levels of internalizing problems at wave 1 than did chronic minor and serious-chronic-violent offenders. Results revealed a developmental trend of decreasing internalizing problems across study years for most participants, as would be expected, with adolescents participating in serious, chronic, and violent patterns of antisocial behavior displaying greater internalizing problems than those participating in stable patterns of less serious or no antisocial behavior. Further, when there was escalation of seriousness and frequency of antisocial behavior, there also was increased internalizing problems relative to non-escalating juveniles. Results are discussed in the context of developmental psychopathology.

Predicting Children’s Depressive Symptoms from Community and Individual Risk Factors

Community, demographic, familial, and personal risk factors of childhood depressive symptoms were examined from an ecological theoretical approach using hierarchical linear modeling. Individual-level data were collected from an ethnically diverse (73% African-American) community sample of 197 children and their parents; community-level data were obtained from the U.S. Census regarding rates of community poverty and unemployment in participants’ neighborhoods. Results indicated that high rates of community poverty and unemployment, children’s depressive attributional style, and low levels of self-perceived competence predict children’s depressive symptoms, even after accounting for demographic and familial risk factors, such as parental education and negative parenting behaviors. The effect of negative parenting behaviors on depressive symptoms was partially mediated by personal variables like children’s self-perceived competence. Recommendations for future research, intervention and prevention programs are discussed.

The global importance of ‘illiberal moderates’, an exchange: partners in peace to precede a concert of democracies

The following is an exchange concerning the concept of ‘illiberal moderates’ and its implications for a new global architecture as well as for a worldview that sees the evolution of a global core of shared values which favour domestic and international security, in sharp contrast to the ‘clash of civilizations’ thesis. The original statement was published in the Cambridge Review of International Affairs (Etzioni 2006). A more extensive treatment can be found in Part III of Security first: for a muscular, moral foreign policy (Etzioni 2007b), which examines texts of four religious and two secular belief systems as well as review of relevant public opinion polls and ‘traveller notes’. Here follows a brief summary of the main thesis, followed by comments from prominent scholars and Etzioni's response to these comments.     

Can Administrative Measures Resolve a Political Conflict?

The current controversy over the politicization of science by the Bush administration is, by definition, a political controversy. As such, it must be addressed by political measures as well as the administrative strategies that Dr. Lambright suggests. The administration's actions go beyond the bounds of "business as usual" and reflect the interests of its powerful constituencies, as well as the unease of many citizens with some scientific and technological advances. Scientists need to engage these citizens and take their concerns into account in order to build trust between the scientific community and the public, as well as to impede unscrupulous politicians from distorting scientific information to suit their purposes.     

The Importance of Trust in Government for Public Administration: The Case of Zoning

Many scholars argue that citizens with higher levels of political trust are more likely to grant bureaucratic discretion to public administrators than citizens with lower levels of trust. Trust, therefore, can relieve the tension between managerial flexibility and political accountability in the modern administrative state. Unfortunately, there is little empirical evidence showing that trust is actually associated with citizens' willingness to cede policy-making power to government. This article tests theories about political trust and citizen competence using the case of zoning. Trust in local government is found to be an important predictor of support for zoning, but trust in state government and trust in national government have no effect. These findings suggest that trust affects policy choice and helps determine how much power citizens grant to local administrators.