Analyzing Criminal Trajectory Profiles: Bridging Multilevel and Group-based Approaches Using Growth Mixture Modeling

Over the last 25 years, a life-course perspective on criminal behavior has assumed increasing prominence in the literature. This theoretical development has been accompanied by changes in the statistical models used to analyze criminological data. There are two main statistical modeling techniques currently used to model longitudinal data. These are growth curve models and latent class growth models, also known as group-based trajectory models. Using the well known Cambridge data and the Philadelphia cohort study, this article compares the two “classical” models—conventional growth curve model and group-based trajectory models. In addition, two growth mixture models are introduced that bridge the gap between conventional growth models and group-based trajectory models. For the Cambridge data, the different mixture models yield quite consistent inferences regarding the nature of the underlying trajectories of convictions. For the Philadelphia cohort study, the statistical indicators give stronger guidance on relative model fit. The main goals of this article are to contribute to the discussion about different modeling techniques for analyzing data from a life-course perspective and to provide a concrete step-by-step illustration of such an analysis and model checking.

试析我国女性群体的分化与分层

伴随着社会结构的急剧变动,妇女群体的分化与分层也日益明显,但无论是以往的妇女研究还是社会分层研究都对此领域有所忽视。本文一反女性研究中强调性别视角的做法,而是以阶层视角重新审视女性问题,将我国的妇女划分为五个层次,对其各自的组成群体、社会地位、生存困境以及发展需求等进行分析。     

Collective Action for Smallholder Market Access: Evidence and Implications for Africa

It is widely acknowledged that the involvement of small farmers into markets can contribute to higher productivity and income growth, which in turn can enhance food security, poverty reduction efforts, and overall economic growth. In Africa, as in other parts of the developing world, agricultural production systems and their participants face significant challenges as a result of changing economic, environmental, and sociopolitical context. New dynamics in the global agricultural economy, such as the growth of supermarkets, are providing smallholders with both the new opportunities and new constraints to participate in and benefit from market exchanges. Collective action in the form of producer groups can enable African smallholders to take advantage of the new value chains and deal with existing market imperfections. However, certain conditions must be in place to create and sustain incentives for farmers to organize around marketing. Experiences from collective action in natural resource management (NRM) have shown that the types of markets and products, characteristics of user groups, institutional arrangements, and external environment need to be considered in order to determine the effectiveness and sustainability of collective marketing for smallholders. This paper applies the lessons from collective action in NRM to marketing, using existing case studies of producer groups in Africa, and offers policy recommendations on the factors that contribute to the success of collective marketing efforts.     

特色栏目:青少年学术期刊生存与发展的基石

大众传播媒介的迅猛发展和理论研究的繁荣活跃,使我国公开发行期刊的总量达到九千多种。但部分青少年学术期刊由于缺乏创新意识与竞争意识,存在趋同化、平庸化倾向,发行量大多在几百份到几千份左右,市场化程度不高。办好特色栏目是青少年学术期刊生存与发展的基石。     

论国际政治视野中的民族自决原则

冷战结束以来,国际政治中的民族分裂主义现象日益突出。民族分裂势力的旗号之一就是“民族自决原则”,这是对民族自决原则的曲解。本文拟从历史和现实的角度对此进行理论分析,认为民族自决只适用于反对外国压迫和殖民统治,民族自决的主体是政治意义上的民族而不是人类学上的族群。     

班级非正式群体的成因、特点和对策

教师、尤其是班主任必须承认班级非正式群体产生与存在的客观性。应该在认真分析其成因、性质特点和作用的基础上,给以正确的评价、合理的对待、积极的引导乃至适当的利用。只有当班级正式群体和非正式群体协调一致、互为补充,班级的目标、规范和活动能使每一个成员的需要都得到满足时,整个班级才能是一个有机的集体,班级的工作才能顺利开展。     

Capital united? Business unity in regulatory politics and the special place of finance

While organized business is a key actor in regulatory politics, its influence is often conditional on the level of unity or conflict occurring within the business community at any given time. Most contemporary regulatory policy interventions put pressure on the normal mechanisms of business unity, as they are highly targeted and sector‐specific. This raises the question of how business unity operates across a highly variegated economic terrain in which costs are asymmetric and free‐riding incentives are high. In this paper, we empirically assess patterns of business unity within regulatory policymaking across different regulated sectors. Our analysis utilizes data from hundreds of regulatory policy proposals and business community reactions to them in the telecommunications, energy, agriculture, pharmaceutical, and financial sectors over a variety of institutional contexts. We find considerable empirical support for the “finance capital unity” hypothesis – the notion that the financial sector enjoys more business unity than other regulated sectors of the economy. When the financial sector is faced with new regulations, business groups from other sectors frequently come to its aid.     

Tracing policy influence of diffuse interests: the post-crisis consumer finance protection politics in the US

Dodd–Frank, the financial reform law passed in the United States in response to the 2008 financial crisis, established the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a new federal regulator with the sole responsibility of protecting consumers from unfair, deceptive, or abusive practices. This decision marked the end of a highly politicized reform debate in the US Congress, in which proponents of the new bureau would normally have been considered to be much weaker than its opponents. Paradoxically, an emerging civil society coalition successfully lobbied decision-makers and countered industry attempts to prevent industry capture. What explains the fact that rather weak and peripheral actors prevailed over more resourceful and dominant actors? The goal of this study is to examine and challenge questions of regulatory capture by concentrated industry interests in the reform debates in response to the credit crisis which originated in the US in 2007. The analysis suggests that for weak actors to prevail in policy conflicts over established, resource-rich opponents, they must undertake broad coalition building among themselves and with influential elite allies outside and inside of Congress who share the same policy goals.     

Rebels in Northern Uganda after their return to civilian life: between a strong we-image and experiences of isolation and discrimination

This article is based on biographical interviews and field research carried out in two adjacent regions of northern Uganda on local peace and post-war processes. It focuses on the situation of former rebel fighters following their return to civilian life. In the case of Acholiland, these are primarily former “child soldiers” of the so-called Lord’s Resistance Army who were recruited by violent abduction; in West Nile they are primarily men who more or less voluntarily joined local rebel groups as adults. The following questions were investigated: How do rebels who have returned from the “bush” speak about their past and their present? What discourses do they confront within the groupings, or we-groups, to which they are regarded as belonging and whose collective knowledge they refer to? What is the nature of their present situation and how can it be socio- and psychogenetically explained and interpreted?     

Leadership Matters: The Effects of Targeted Killings on Militant Group Tactics

Targeted killings have become a central component of counterterrorism strategy. In response to the unprecedented prevalence of this strategy around the world, numerous empirical studies have recently examined whether “decapitating” militant groups with targeted killings is strategically effective. This study builds on that research program by examining the impact of targeted killings on militant group tactical decision-making. Our empirical strategy exploits variation in the attack patterns of militant groups conditional on whether a government’s targeted killing attempt succeeded against them operationally. In both the Afghanistan-Pakistan and Israel-West Bank-Gaza Strip theaters, targeted killings significantly alter the nature of militant group violence. When their leaderships are degraded with a successful strike, militant groups become far less discriminate in their target selection by redirecting their violence from military to civilian targets. We then analyze several potential causal mechanisms to account for these results and find strongest evidence that targeted killings tend to promote indiscriminate organizational violence by empowering lower level members with weaker civilian restraint.