Coparenting Conflict and Parenting Behavior in Economically Disadvantaged Single Parent African American Families: The Role of Maternal Psychological Distress

Substantial research has focused on the negative associations between coparenting conflict, parental psychological functioning, and parenting behavior in European American, middle-income, families. However, less attention has been given to ethnic minority families and to families that are nontraditionally structured. In an effort to address this gap, the current longitudinal study examines the relation between conflict with the mother-identified primary co-caregiver and parenting practices in single parent, economically disadvantaged African American families. Participants included 234 mother–child dyads. It was hypothesized that conflict would relate to less utilization of positive parenting practices and that this association would be mediated, at least in part, by maternal psychological distress. Hypotheses were examined using structural equation modeling (Lisrel 8.3): Conflict with a co-caregiver was significantly related to parenting both directly and indirectly through maternal psychological distress. Implications of the findings are discussed.

Understanding the Role of Repeat Victims in the Production of Annual US Victimization Rates

Victimization incidence rates produced from the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) are a generally accepted annual indicator of the amount and type of crime in the United States. However, persons who report a large number of similar victimizations—known as series victimizations in the NCVS—are currently excluded in government reports of annual violent victimizations. This paper quantifies the effect of series incident counting procedures on national estimates of violent victimization. The findings suggest that these high-volume repeat victims can have a significant impact on the magnitude and distribution of violent victimization. Current government counting rules that exclude series incidents do not include about three out of every five violent victimizations and distorts the characterization and risk of violence in the United States. However, the inclusion of series incidents introduces significant estimate instability. One remedy is to use prevalence rates in concert with incidence rates to present a more complete and reliable picture of victimization.

Methodological aspects of the Dutch National Threat Assessment

This paper discusses issues related to measuring organized crime as they have become manifest in the Dutch contribution to the EU Organised Crime Threat Assessment (OCTA). It intends to convey to a wider academic community certain issues of definition, methodology and accountability, understanding the NTA process in terms of the communication of risks in a context of competitive defining institutions.

以国家审计为视野重构监所检察监督模式

监所检察权是检察机关的一项重要权能,目前主要通过在监管场所设置派驻检察室的模式来行使检察监督权。长期以来。这种设置派驻检察室的监督模式存在很多问题,其中派驻检察人员与监管场所“同化”的问题最为突出,导致监督效果不佳。需要借鉴国家审计监督模式的经验,改目前派驻检察为主的监督模式向派驻检察与巡回检察并重的过渡模式,并最终实现巡回检察为主的监督模式。     

走向全民健康保险:论中国医疗保障制度的转型

中国已经进入全民医保的时代,但医疗保障体系呈现碎片化的特征,其内部的若干制度安排之间出现了不协调。中国医疗保障体系亟待进一步转型,转型的重点和方向是将基本医疗保障体系从现行分散化、碎片化的社会医疗保险制度,改造为集中化、一体化的社会医疗保险制度,即全民健康保险。推进全民健保是"发展型社会政策"的体现,具有同时促进经济增长和社会发展的双重功效。从短期来看,这是一种简单易行而又可持续的减税计划,可以促进经济增长,有助于经济发展模式的转变;从长远来看,全民健保制度的建立标志着"社会性基础设施"的建设又迈上了一个新的台阶,这必将为中国福利国家的重建奠定基础。     

Magnitude and durability of electoral change: Identifying critical elections in the U.S. Congress 1854–2010

The two hallmarks of a critical election and, hence, of a critical realignment are the magnitude of the observed change and the durability of that change. In addition to offering a new approach to measuring durable change in national party dominance, and providing a non-parametric criterion to identify unusual changes in seat/vote shares, we provide fresh insights via a unifying statistical approach that reflects both of these factors simultaneously. Furthermore, we assess the robustness of critical election determinations in two ways. First, we compare the magnitude of inter-election shifts with both average volatility over the entire time period and volatility relative to a particular time period. Second, as an alternative to the usual perspective, we consider critical elections not as a one-time cataclysm, but rather as a pair (or perhaps even triple) of consecutive substantial shifts, generated by the same underlying factors. Overall, we distinguish six elections that marginally or provisionally meet our criteria to be critical elections. But focusing on pairs of elections, 1858–60 and 1930–32 stand out as critical among all elections since the 1850s.     

试论非法移民对美国国家安全的影响

非法移民是非传统安全领域的一个重要组成部分,同时也是国际社会所面临的一个共同问题。＂9·11＂事件后,美国社会对于非法移民与国家安全的关注达到了新的高度。非法移民与美国国家安全之间存在一定的相关性,这可从社会安全、国土安全与文化安全三个维度来分析非法移民对美国国家安全所产生的影响。在一定程度上,非法移民问题使得美国的国家安全环境变得复杂化,成为美国国家安全一个不容忽视的挑战。但是,过分夸大非法移民问题对美国国家安全的影响也与客观事实不符。     

完善人民代表大会制度的八条建议

完善人民代表大会制度,是我国政治体制改革的重要组成部分。完善人民代表大会制度的举措包括完善人大选举制度,精简人大代表人数、提高人大代表素质,逐步实行人大代表专职化,建立人大会议辩论制度,健全对人大代表的监督机制,完善人大监督制度、理顺人大与党,"一府两院"的关系以及密切人大与人民群众的关系八个方面。     

The end of a strategic opening? The BNP's window of opportunity in the 2000s and its closure in the 2010s

ABSTRACT

Notwithstanding the endemic failure of extreme-right parties in Britain, the British National Party (BNP) observed a period of electoral growth in the 2000s. After the election of several city councillors nationwide, the BNP experienced an electoral breakthrough in the national ballot of the 2009 European Parliament elections. Yet the BNP's electoral accomplishments dissipated in the early 2010s, fuelling predictions of the party's terminal decline. Within this context, Carvalho seeks to explain the fluctuations observed in the BNP's electoral base in the twentieth-first century by exploring the structure of political opportunities alongside the strategy of the BNP's leadership. Drawing on the convergence thesis and the decline of voting along class lines, he argues that the BNP benefitted from a favourable set of political opportunities in the 2000s, reflecting the decrease in political polarization among mainstream parties, the rise in levels of public distrust, and the intense politicization of the issue of immigration. Despite a general shift to cultural xenophobia, the BNP's leadership remained attached to the ideological traits of neo-fascist parties, including the search for a ‘palingenetic rebirth’ and a national corporatist economic programme. These ideological formulae had important implications for the scope of the BNP's electoral coalition, as Carvalho demonstrates in a review of the secondary literature on the roots of the BNP's electoral support. Consequently, the BNP's electoral growth in the 2000s was the outcome of an interplay between a favourable window of opportunity in British politics and the party's electoral appeal. Carvalho goes on to link the BNP's electoral collapse in the early 2010s with the closing of the aforementioned window after the onset of the financial crisis, a temporary lack of political interest in the issue of immigration, and the formation of the coalition government in 2010.     

Kenneth B. Clark and the problem of power

ABSTRACT

During the early 1960s African American psychologist Kenneth B. Clark, known primarily for his involvement in the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education US Supreme Court desegregation decision, began organizing an ambitious anti-poverty programme called Harlem Youth Opportunities Unlimited, Inc. (HARYOU). Dissatisfied by the lack of progress in school desegregation in New York City and discouraged by the inability of traditional social welfare organizations to address the problems of race and poverty, Clark argued that a new approach had to be developed to mobilize the black poor to gain the political and economic power that would solve their problems. At the same time, he theorized that a new form of racial segregation was beginning to develop in urban areas that foreshadowed increasing social isolation, economic dependence and declining municipal services for many African Americans. He called this new development ‘internal colonialism’ and hoped that HARYOU would be a demonstration project in the Kennedy–Johnson administration's War on Poverty that would address these problems from multiple perspectives. Nonetheless, the plan aroused the political opposition of Harlem Congressman Adam Clayton Powell. The dispute with Powell drove Clark from HARYOU and caused him to re-evaluate his thinking regarding African American leadership. He increasingly viewed the ‘ghetto’ as both a prison and a cocoon that satisfied white and black social, economic, political and psychological needs. By the end of his HARYOU experience, Clark coined the term ‘the new American dilemma’ to describe and theorize about an increasingly isolated and powerless black population in many urban centres. The term also signified his belief that the problem of power was intricately tied up in, while also separate from, the problem of race.