The discipline of international relations: still an American social science?

This article reviews the state of the discipline of international relations. It starts from statements made by the editors in their editorial published in the first issue of this journal. The editors noted that there seemed to have been less adherence to positivism in international relations than in other areas of political science and that there was both more opposition to positivism and more methodological and epistemological openness in international relations than in political science generally. The article outlines the current state of the field, focusing on the rationalist mainstream and then on the reflectivist alternatives, before looking at social constructivism, seeing it as the likely acceptable alternative to rationalism in the mainstream literature of the next decade. It then turns to examine whether international relations is still an American social science, before looking at the situation in the United Kingdom. It concludes that the editors' comments were indeed accurate, but that the fact that there is both more opposition to positivism in international relations and more openness in the UK academic community does not mean that the mainstream US literature is anything like as open or pluralist. The UK community is indeed more able to develop theory relevant to the globalised world at the new millennium, but the US academic community still dominates the discipline.     

New Labour: what's published is what counts

Books reviewed in this article:
Barrett-Brown, M. and Coates, K. (1996) The Blair Revelation: Deliverance for Whom?
Blackburn, R. and Plant, R. (eds) (1999) The Labour Government's Constitutional Reform Agenda.
Blair, T. (1996) New Britain: My Vision of a Young Country.
Brivati, B. and Bale, T. (eds) (1997) New Labour in Power: Precedents and Prospects.
Crewe, I., Gosschalk, B. and Bartle, J. (1998) Political Communications: Why Labour Won the General Election of 1997
Denver, D., Fisher, J., Cowley, P. and Pattie, C. (1998) British Elections and Parties Review, Volume 8: The 1997 General Election.
Driver, S. and Martell, L. (1998) New Labour: Politics after Thatcherism.
Ellison, N. (1994) Egalitarian Thought and Labour Politics: Retreating Visions.
Gamble, A. and Wright, T. (1999) The New Social Democracy.
Geddes, A. and Tonge, J. (eds) (1997) Labour's Landslide: The British General Election 1997.
Giddens, A. (1998) The Third Way: the Renewal of Social Democracy.
Hay, C. (1999) The Political Economy of New Labour: Labouring under False Pretences?
Hazell, R. (ed.) (1999) Constitutional Futures: A History of the Next Ten Years.
Jones, T. (1996) Remaking the Labour Party: From Gaitskell to Blair.
Shaw, E. (1996) The Labour Party Since 1945.
Taylor, G. (1997) Labour's Renewal? The Policy Review and Beyond.
Thompson, N. (1996) Political Economy and the Labour Party: The Economics of Democratic Socialism 1884–1995.
Worcester, R. and Mortimore, R. (1999) Explaining Labour's Landslide.     

An Examination of Strategies for the Prevention of Gender-Based Violence at Four-Year Institutions of Higher Education

ABSTRACT

Although gender-based violence prevention programs at institutions of higher education (IHEs) are mandated by federal legislation, research focusing on the prevalence or content of programming is limited. The present exploratory research examines campus websites for a nationally representative sample of Title IX eligible IHEs that offer at least a four-year degree (n = 389), assessing whether IHEs offer prevention programs and whether programs include information cited in federal legislation or adhere to best practices. Differences in programming are also examined across IHE types. Results demonstrate that most IHEs report offering prevention pro- grams (86%), but that differences do exist across IHE type: 97% of public nonprofit IHEs report programming compared to 46% of tribal institutions. Disparities also exist across IHE types regarding the content of programming. Results highlight the need to advance prevention programming to better align with “what works” in prevention science or what is expected by federal legislation.     

Keys to Implementation of Child Welfare Systems Change Initiatives

While the research base on implementation in child welfare has grown, applying implementation science to child welfare system change is still relatively new. There is a gap in knowledge of what factors are most important in different implementation stages and system contexts. This study examines 12 implementation keys that support building infrastructure, developing inter-organizational networks, and addressing contextual issues in child welfare system change initiatives in three states. Research questions address which keys are most important in different implementation stages, the major components and context of these keys during implementation, and the overlap between implementation keys.     

Penal Boundaries: Banishment and the Expansion of Punishment

We use this article to argue for greater recognition of legally imposed spatial exclusion—banishment—as a (re)emerging and consequential social control practice. Although the new social control techniques that entail banishment are buttressed by a blend of civil, administrative, and criminal law, they are best understood as punitive in nature. This argument is supported by two empirical findings. First, interviews with the banished indicate that spatial exclusion often has significant negative consequences akin to those identified by Sykes (1958 ) in his seminal account of the pains of imprisonment. Second, court data show that the growing use of civil and administrative banishment has increased the number of criminal cases involving allegations of noncompliance. These findings suggest that analysts of punishment might usefully broaden their focus to include phenomena that combine civil, criminal, and legal authority, and are not defined as punishment by their advocates.     

Policy influences on community trail development

This study explores processes and policies that facilitate the development of community trails. With funding from Active Living Research and the research framework of the Physical Activity Policy Research Network (PAPRN), we conducted a multiple-site case study. A total of six trails in Hawaii, Massachusetts, Missouri, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Washington were chosen for study. The goals of this case study were to identify the policy influences on trail development, explore the roles of key players in trail development, and compare and contrast findings from the different trails. Trail development can be a long process. Some of the trails took over a decade to complete because of funding, opposition, and roadblocks in the form of design standard policies. Work in trail development requires a team of many players, and it is necessary to balance their varied motives to accomplish a shared overall goal. Foresight through the master planning process is also a vital component of successful trail development. Finally, community involvement is key. Communities contemplating trail development should explore the effects of policy on the trail projects reported here to proactively identify potential influence.     

Money with a Mean Streak? Foreign Economic Penetration and Government Respect for Human Rights in Developing Countries

This study examines the relationship between foreign economic capital and the level of government respect for two types of human rights in developing countries. Two opposing schools of thought offer explanations as to what this relationship might be like. According to the liberal neoclassical school, the acceptance of liberal economic doctrine will provide positive political benefits to developing countries. The "dependency" school, on the other hand, argues that because ties between core and periphery elites give governments in developing nations an incentive to repress, human rights conditions will worsen as foreign economic penetration increases. The results of previous empirical queries into this matter have been mixed. In contrast to most studies, we focus on a broader measure of foreign economic capital, including foreign direct investment, portfolio investment, debt, and official development assistance. Using ordered logit analysis on a cross-national sample of forty-three developing countries from 1981 to 1995, we discover systematic evidence of an association between foreign economic penetration and government respect for two types of human rights, physical integrity rights and political rights and civil liberties. Of particular interest is the finding that both foreign direct investment and portfolio investment are reliably associated with increased government respect for human rights.