Who is Diverted? Case Selection for Court‐Monitored Mental Health Treatment

Specialized courts raise questions about the decisions that bring some defendants into such courts and keep others out. Because of risks perceived in diverting mentally ill defendants, decisions to select defendants for mental health courts are especially interesting. I estimate a model of the decision to divert defendants into court‐monitored mental health treatment. I find that gender and age combine to disadvantage young male defendants and older female defendants. The findings point to the importance of structuring selection processes in the design of specialized courts. They shed light on the consequences of including treatment personnel in justice system decisions.     

Ministerial Leadership and Endorsement of Bureaucrats: Experimental Evidence from Presidential Governments

Scholars have debated what constitutes effective ministerial leadership with respect to administrative competence versus political influence. The authors contribute experimental evidence to this debate through a unique survey design of endorsement experiments. Using original data from 949 national civil servants in South Korea, this article examines civil servants’ assessments of ministerial leadership in three central dimensions of public management: internal management, interbranch coordination, and policy formulation/implementation. Further, existing variation in the characteristics of agencies is used to test whether such variation induces systematic differences in civil servants’ responses. Findings show that that civil servants’ attitudes toward ministerial leadership are asymmetric in nature. Ministers with civil service backgrounds are endorsed in all three dimensions, whereas ministers with legislative backgrounds receive increased support only for interbranch coordination skills. The levels of support for ministers with different backgrounds also vary across agency types. This analysis has implications for public management practice and agency control in presidential governments.     

Remaining Vigilant Can even a one-sided collapse crash China's economy?

正The topic of shadow banking has nowbecome the topic du jour of what willcrash the Chinese economy.Beforethat,it was the real estate bubble,and beforethat,the rising cost of cheap labor.Of course,many wrong predictions later,the bears ofChina continue to prognosticate that China     

Comparing the Life-Cycle Costs of New Construction and Acquisition-Rehab of Affordable Multifamily Rental Housing

The cost of producing multifamily affordable housing may differ based on development type. Past attempts to compare the costs of producing multifamily housing through new construction or acquisition-rehab have been limited by an inability to adjust for variations in unit quality among different projects. The authors overcome this challenge by estimating the costs of developing and maintaining a property over a 50-year life cycle. Applying this approach to a convenience sample of 269 properties, the authors find new construction associated with life-cycle costs that are 25% to 45% higher than those of acquisition-rehab.     

A Day in the “Swamp”: Understanding Discourse in the Online Counter-Jihad Nebula

The counter-jihad scene can be understood variously as a collection of parties, pundits, and movements all linked by a common belief that the West is being subjected to takeover by Muslims. In this article, I seek to improve academic understanding of this collection of movements, parties, and ideas by analyzing the discourse presented by a collection of online advocates whom I describe as the counter-jihad nebula. The findings suggest a need to at least partially re-evaluate the role of the nebula within the wider counter-jihad scene as well as the relationship between the wider counter-jihad scene and mainstream political discourse as expressed through various media outlets.     

W.E.B. Du Bois in Turn-of-the-Century Atlanta, 1897–1910

In the decade and a half between the completion of his Harvard Ph.D. (1895) and his founding of The Crisis for the NAACP (1910), African American historian and sociologist W.E.B. Du Bois laid the empirical foundations for modern sociology and the revisionist interpretation of history. Despite his prodigious academic efforts, he eventually lost faith in the ability of scholarship to help African Americans and he left academe for the NAACP and the world of advocacy.     

IMF and the crisis of the marginalized urban sector in Korea

The “Asian economic crisis” brought with it horrendous social consequences in Korea such as mass unemployment, unparalleled rises in poverty, diminished social services, rising school dropouts, increasing suicide rates, divorce and domestic violence. The primary aim of this study is to identify policies that would ameliorate these effects on the urban poor in Korea. In order to do so, we clarify how the nature and magnitude of urban low-income households in Korea have changed since the economic crisis. After providing an overview of macroeconomic events associated with the crisis and the main links between these events and economic conditions of the urban poor, we identify the socioeconomic characteristics and changes of household income for the urban poor during the crisis periods, 1997–1999. We investigate how the IMF program has changed the lives of the low-income households by adopting regression analyses and the decomposition method. The study concludes with key policy issues that would help prevent or offset the deterioration of the urban poor in Korea.     

Eastern industrialization and its effects on the west

There have always been factions within the Chinese Communist Party. Four recent books on China show that the pragmatic basis for the Party's continuing rule is the success of its economic policies and the preservation of law and order. Economic progress has been remarkable, but the political system is not well suited to cope with popular resentment at corruption and the abuse of power by officials. Nor is the concept of. Human Rights well understood. But with more and more |Chinese students studying overseas and the influence of the internet, ideas and influences from abroad are bound to be reflected in the increasing debate about the future of the political system. The recent dismissal and disgrace of Bo Xilai lifts the curtain on the realities of the struggle for power at the top. But a far greater challenge would arise if there were to be any marked and prolonged slowing of economic growth.     

Do Traffic Tickets Reduce Motor Vehicle Accidents? Evidence from a Natural Experiment

This paper analyzes the effect of traffic tickets on motor vehicle accidents. Ordinary least squares (OLS) estimate may be upward biased because police officers tend to focus on areas where and periods when there is heavy traffic and thus higher rates of accidents. This paper exploits the dramatic increase in tickets during the Click‐it‐or‐Ticket campaign to identify the causal impact of tickets on accidents using data from Massachusetts. I find that tickets significantly reduce accidents and nonfatal injuries. I provide suggestive evidence that tickets have a larger impact at night and on female drivers.