THE NEW GOVERNANCE ARRANGEMENTS FOR NHS FOUNDATION TRUST HOSPITALS: REFRAMING GOVERNORS AS META‐REGULATORS

New governance arrangements for NHS Foundation Trusts (FTs) aimed to replace centralized state ownership of acute English hospitals with a new form of social ownership. Under this, trusts would exist as independent public interest organizations on the model of mutuals and co‐operative societies. Assessing the impact of the new arrangements on the management structure of four acute hospitals, we demonstrate that FTs have failed to deliver social ownership and local accountability on this model. We suggest that policy‐makers should re‐frame the governance apparatus associated with mutualism and social ownership in terms of the concept of meta‐regulation. By re‐framing governors as meta‐regulators, regulatory institutions would acquire new powers to steer FTs towards sustainable forms of compliance via non‐coercive, non‐intrusive means.     

THE EFFECTS OF SOCIAL TIES ON CRIME VARY BY CRIMINAL PROPENSITY: A LIFE‐COURSE MODEL OF INTERDEPENDENCE*

Previous studies have explained the transition from criminal propensity in youth to criminal behavior in adulthood with hypotheses of enduring criminal propensity, unique social causation, and cumulative social disadvantage. In this article we develop an additional hypothesis derived from the life‐course concept of interdependence: The effects of social ties on crime vary as a function of individuals' propsensity for crime. We tested these four hypotheses with data from the Dunedin Study. In support of life‐course interdependence, prosocial ties, such as education, employment, family ties, and partnerships, deterred crime, and antisocial ties, such as delinquent peers, promoted crime, most strongly among low self‐control individuals. Our findings bear implications for theories and policies of crime.     

Electoral turnout and income redistribution by the state: A cross-national analysis of the developed democracies

Abstract.  This article explores the sources of variation in state redistribution across 13 developed democracies over the period 1979–2000, drawing upon data from the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, the Luxembourg Income Study and the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems. The discussion begins with the median voter hypothesis, which predicts that the extent of state redistribution in a country will be positively related to the degree of pre-government inequality. In seeking to extend the median voter approach, the article takes into account two additional variables: the level of electoral turnout and the degree to which turnout is skewed by income. The analysis confirms that pre-government inequality is indeed positively related to state redistribution. However, the predictive power of the median voter approach is significantly improved when account is taken of the level of electoral turnout and the extent to which the turnout rate reflects an income skew – variables that are themselves related. The link between turnout and redistribution is especially strong for social transfers as opposed to taxes, and for the lower and middle, as opposed to the upper, part of the income spectrum.     

GENDER,STREETLIFE AND CRIMINAL RETALIATION*

Recent work in criminology has highlighted the central role of retaliation in shaping criminal violence in America's inner cities. Most of this work, however, has been based on male offenders. It has also failed to consider whether and how gender structures payback in real‐life settings and circumstances. In this paper, we analyze in‐depth, semi‐structured interviews with forty men and twelve women who recently engaged in one or more episodes of retaliatory violence to examine the ways in which gender shapes vengeance. We hope to provide an insider's view of how gender frames the context and dynamics of retaliatory events for both men and women.     

Regulatory Capitalism and the UK Labour Government's Reregulation of Commissioning in the English National Health Service

Today, policy analysts and regulatory governance scholars are sceptical about the capacity of the regulatory state hypothesis to describe change at the institutional level. For many, the hypothesis is a convenient oversimplification that fails to account for the hybridity of institutional arrangements within individual policy sectors and also for the divergence of reform trajectories across different national and sector‐based policy contexts. This article assesses the influence of the key themes of the regulatory state on the UK Labour government's reregulation of National Health Service (NHS) commissioning organizations. Following the critics, it argues that these themes are only partially evident in the programme. While the government has codified previously informal relationships with policies like Patient Choice and has also subjected commissioning organizations to metaregulatory techniques, its reforms have neither displaced public ownership and the direct supply of commissioning services with markets and new mechanisms for rule making and standard setting, nor have the reforms divided labour within the state by creating an independent agency to regulate NHS commissioning organizations via technocratic means. Under the reforms, NHS commissioning continues to take place within a structure of bureaucratic relationships. However, the article suggests that the hybridity of regulatory techniques at work within the UK Labour government's reregulation of NHS commissioning lends weight to the claim that the current era is one of regulatory capitalism. It concludes with a discussion of the consequences of this finding for the public policy and regulatory governance literatures.     

LOW SELF-CONTROL,SOCIAL BONDS,AND CRIME: SOCIAL CAUSATION,SOCIAL SELECTION,OR BOTH?*

This article examines the social-selection and social-causation processes that generate criminal behavior. We describe these processes with three theoretical models: a social-causation model that links crime to contemporaneous social relationships; a social-selection model that links crime to personal characteristics formed in childhood; and a mixed selection-causation model that links crime to social relationships and childhood characteristics. We tested these models with a longitudinal study in Dunedin, New Zealand, of individuals followed from birth through age 21. We analyzed measures of childhood and adolescent low self-control as well as adolescent and adult social bonds and criminal behavior. In support of social selection, we found that low self-control in childhood predicted disrupted social bonds and criminal offending later in life. In support of social causation, we found that social bonds and adolescent delinquency predicted later adult crime and, further, that the effect of self-control on crime was largely mediated by social bonds. In support of both selection and causation, we found that the social-causation effects remained significant even when controlling for preexisting levels of self-control, but that their effects diminished. Taken together, these findings support theoretical models that incorporate social-selection and social-causation processes.     

MANAGING RETALIATION: DRUG ROBBERY AND INFORMAL SANCTION THREATS*

The notion that informal sanction threats influence criminal decision‐making is perhaps the most important contribution to neoclassical theory in the past 15 years. Notably absent from this contribution is an examination of the ways in which the risk of victim retaliation—arguably, the ultimate informal sanction—mediates the process. The present article addresses this gap, examining how active drug robbers (individuals who take money and drugs from dealers by force or threat of force) perceive and respond to the risk of victim retaliation in real‐life settings and circumstances. The data's theoretical implications for deterrence and violence contagions are explored. Data were drawn from in‐depth interviews with 25 currently active drug robbers recruited from the streets of St. Louis, Missouri.     

Exploring Explanations of State Agency Budgets: Institutional Budget Actors or Exogenous Environment?

Budgetary incrementalism argues that three institutional actors—agencies, executive budget offices, and legislative committees—dominate budget outcomes. The complexity and interdependency of public programs expands this expectation to include the influence of exogenous budget factors. Findings from a survey of state agency heads reveal that budget environments do influence state agency budget outcomes. However, the institutional budgetary participants, especially governors and legislatures, envisioned in classical incrementalism retain their principal and primary influence on state agency budgets. A significant departure from classical incrementalism is that agencies are not as influential as previously depicted.