How Cohorts Changed Crime Rates, 1980–2016

Journal of Quantitative Criminology - Identify the effect of differences in criminal activity among birth cohorts on crime rates over time. Determine the extent to which cohort effects are...     

The devil we know and the angel that did not fly: An examination of devil/angel shift in twitter fracking “debates” in NY 2008–2018

Recent work has applied the Narrative Policy Framework (NPF) to examine narrative strategies in policy debates on social media platforms. We contribute to the literature by applying the NPF to fracking policy debates in New York using well-established Natural Language Processing tools, including sentiment analysis. We combine this computational approach with a qualitative hand-coding of pro- and antifracking Twitter influentials. This approach allows us to consider a much larger corpus of tweets over a much longer time frame than has been done thus far. We adapt and test NPF propositions related to the use of the devil/angel shift strategies before and after a major state-wide policy change, that is, a state-wide moratorium on high volume hydraulic fracturing or fracking. Overall, we find evidence for the use of the devil shift narrative strategy by the pro-fracking coalition aimed at the Governor prior to the moratorium. After the moratorium, the relative percentage of Tweets containing devil shift sentiments decreases as the pro-fracking coalition generally downshifts in its use of angel shift language without a corresponding increase in devil shift language, whereas, conversely, the anti-fracking coalition generally downshifts in its use of devil shift language without a general increase in angel shift language. When we shifted our analysis to Tweets containing fracking and the Governor, we found a similar postban decrease in devil shift language among anti-fracking users. Our findings offer lessons for using computational tools in the NPF as an approach to expand analytic ability and for the operationalization of concepts such as narrative strategies and policy entrepreneurs.     

Face mask mandates: Unilateral authority and gubernatorial leadership in US states

During the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, the coordination and cooperation between the federal government and the states failed. American governors were thus tasked with making critical public health policy choices—under extreme uncertainty—with varying institutional capacities, partisan pressures, and state demographic differences. Yet most of the nation's governors chose to impose a face covering or mask mandate to limit the spread of cases. We collected each governor's executive order that mandated the conditions under which their residents would be required to wear a mask and employed a sentiment analysis program to extract key qualities of crisis leadership communication. Our analyses provide insights into the institutional and partisan factors that determined a face mask mandate as well as the institutional, demographic, and leadership communication qualities that affected the total number of cases per capita in the states. Our findings have important implications for post-pandemic policy recommendations with respect to the effectiveness of policies that seek to lower the transmission of viruses in public spaces and the characteristics of impactful public health messaging by government leaders.     

Bondjo Ethnicity and Colonial Imagination

Cet article, qui porte sur le film Heremakono du Malien-Mauritanien Abderrahmane Sissako, examine les intertextualités cinématographiques, poétiques et picturales. Il démontre comment l'ouvrage se réfère au désert et aux divers modes qu'il engendre: importance de la trace, question du déplacement et de l'exil, tradition poétique mystique. Il analyse également l'importance de l'art abstrait et montre comment le cinéaste construit ses images selon une peinture, traçant en même temps un parallèle à l'art moderne (Kandinski, Mondrian) et à la calligraphie en Islam, où l'usage du figuratif n'est guère sollicité afin de ne pas limiter la représentation de l'Absent à une interprétation.     

Informating policy and administration a comparative perspective on terrorism

The cliche that ‘one man's terroirist is another man' freedom fighter’ represents the major dilemma of anti-terrorism policymakers and administrators. The conceptual confusion is further complicated by the ideological orientations and policy interests of the observers. The comparative study of terrorism, however, has provided a conceptual underpinning and does provide the tools for sorting out the biases. This article compares the six principal models of political terrorism and suggests that each in fact describes a distinct form of political violence depending upon the perspective of the observer. Each of the forms of terrorism, moreover, may require a unique set of remedies. Using the widely publicized TWA bijacking during the summer of 1985 as an example, the analysis examines the differences in the American, Israeli, and Lebanese government perspectives and how those differences influenced policymaking.     

Bypassing Congressional Committees: Parties,Panel Rosters,and Deliberative Processes

Although scholars have examined committee rosters extensively, no study has considered the relationship between the ideological composition of panels and their participation in bill drafting. I thus ask: Which committees are frequently excluded from legislative deliberations? Does the composition of committees affect the degree to which they contribute to bill development? Using DW‐NOMINATE data, I calculate ideological scores for congressional panels between 1989 and 2010 to see whether certain committees are routinely bypassed. I find that moderate panels, polarized panels, and panels with moderate chairs are often excluded, while extreme committees in the majority direction tend to retain bill‐writing duties.