Beyond contestation: conceptualizing negotiation in democracy promotion

ABSTRACT

This article presents an analytical framework that guides the contributions to this special issue and, in general terms, aims at enabling a systematic investigation of processes of negotiation in the international promotion of democracy. It first briefly introduces the rationale for studying democracy promotion negotiation, offers a definition, and locates the general approach within the academic literature, bringing together different strands of research, namely studies of negotiation in international relations as well as research on democratization and democracy promotion. The larger part of the article then discusses key concepts, analytical distinctions and theoretical propositions along the lines of the three research questions that are identified in the introduction to this special issue. More specifically, the article (1) offers a typology that facilitates a systematic empirical analysis of the issues that are discussed in democracy promotion negotiations; (2) takes initial steps towards a causal theory of democracy promotion negotiation by identifying and discussing a set of parameters that can be expected to shape such negotiations; and (3) introduces key distinctions and dimensions that help guide empirical research on the output and outcome of negotiations in democracy promotion.     

新马克思主义空间批判范式及当代意义

20世纪60年代末兴起的新马克思主义城市学派，以资本主义生产方式分析为主要入口，探讨“空间的生产”在资本主义体系形成和发展中的重要意义。其贡献不仅在于从政治哲学视角揭露当代资本主义的空间政治经济矛盾，把社会关系再生产的故事完整地叙述出来，从而完成了对资本“空间生产”的价值批判；更在于其坚持了解放政治的宏大目标——通过揭示人类社会变迁的空间路径，寻求重新定位“乌托邦想象”的可能性。这种历史唯物主义的空间化努力使马克思主义在新的时代条件下焕发出新的活力，为我们寻求马克思主义政治哲学的“当代出场路径”提供了一种理论启示。     

BITING ONCE,TWICE: THE INFLUENCE OF PRIOR ON SUBSEQUENT CRIME LOCATION CHOICE

Properties, victims, and locations previously targeted by offenders have an increased risk of being targeted again within a short time period. It has been suggested that often the same offenders are involved in these repeated events and, thus, that offenders’ prior crime location choices influence their subsequent crime location choices. This article examines repeated crime location choices, testing the hypothesis that offenders are more likely to commit a crime in an area they previously targeted than in areas they did not target before. Unique data from four different data sources are used to study the crime location choices of 3,666 offenders who committed 12,639 offenses. The results indicate that prior crime locations strongly influence subsequent crime location choices. The effects of prior crime locations are larger if the crimes are frequent, if they are recent, if they are nearby, and if they are the same type of crime.     

A qualitative exploration of the experience of restorative approaches in a forensic mental health setting

Restorative justice (RJ) is an intervention gaining worldwide recognition in criminal justice systems and other settings. There is a growing evidence base demonstrating positive outcomes in a number of domains, but we found no previous research focussed upon the use of RJ in a forensic mental health setting. This study used a constructivist grounded theory analysis of semi-structured interviews to explore and develop a deeper understanding of RJ practices interventions in such a setting. Ten participants including RJ facilitators, patients and mental health staff took part in research interviews. Restorative interventions were found to be congruent with models of mental health and offender recovery. Processing emotions, developing thinking and coherent narrative, and immediacy are found to be key components of the intervention. The emergent model highlights the role of containment and a high level of facilitator skill when working with a complex, vulnerable and potentially unstable client group.     

Legislative Committees as Uncertainty Reduction Devices in Multiparty Parliamentary Democracies

Most research on committees in multiparty legislatures in parliamentary democracies focuses on their role in solving intra-cabinet delegation problems. Using a straightforward spatial model, this article discusses how committees can also solve uncertainty problems that arise in settings characterised by unstable coalitions, weak governmental agenda control and a lack of government change. In order to explore empirically how committees solve these problems, the article focuses on the success (and later decline) over the last 30 years of the sede legislativa, a law-making procedure that formalises ‘universalism’ in Italian legislative committees. The statistical results largely confirm the theoretical expectations.     

INCOME INEQUALITY,RACE, AND PLACE: DOES THE DISTRIBUTION OF RACE AND CLASS WITHIN NEIGHBORHOODS AFFECT CRIME RATES?*

This study tests the effects of neighborhood inequality and heterogeneity on crime rates. The results of this study, which were obtained by using a large sample of census tracts in 19 cities in 2000, provide strong evidence of the importance of racial/ethnic heterogeneity for the amount of all types of crime generally committed by strangers, even controlling for the effects of income inequality. Consistent with predictions of several theories, greater overall inequality in the tract was associated with higher crime rates, particularly for violent types of crime. Strong evidence revealed that within racial/ethnic group inequality increases crime rates: Only the relative deprivation model predicted this association. An illuminating finding is that the effect of tract poverty on robbery and murder becomes nonsignificant when the level of income inequality is taken into account; this finding suggests that past studies that failed to take income inequality into account may have inappropriately attributed causal importance to poverty. This large sample also provides evidence that it is the presence of homeowners, rather than residential stability (as measured by the average length of residence), that significantly reduces the level of crime in neighborhoods.     

Specialization in juvenile careers: Markov results for a California cohort

In this paper, we examine the arrest careers through September 1985 of a highly active cohort of youth paroled by the California Youth Authority in the early 1980s. Our results are in some ways similar to and in other ways different from those reported by other researchers. We find that while adjacent transition matrices appear constant, the same cannot be said for nonadjacent matrices. We reject the first-order Markov hypothesis and find support for specialization in the statistical significance of the forward specialization coefficients. Our results also suggest that, in addition to transitions to the same type of offense, an oscillating pattern of offending is common for our subjects. We also compare the transition matrices of three racial/ethnic and four regional groups. These results indicate differences in the patterns of offending by the racial/ethnic groups in our sample and similar offense-transition behavior in three of the four regions that differs significantly from that of the fourth region.Points of view are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official policy of the National Institute of Justice, U.S. Department of Justice, or U.S. General Accounting Office.     

社会主义社会正义的空间价值维度——《社会主义空间正义》一书评介

当代中国正在驶入城镇化快车道,数亿人口将在短短几十年间从乡村迁徙定居到城市,也因此将带来大量的矛盾和问题。如何通过城市及更广泛意义上的空间问题寻求社会正义这个人类核心的价值,青年学者王志刚博士的专著给我们提供了一个清晰的答案。该书视角新颖,文笔流畅,观点独到,是近年来学术界研究城市哲学与空间问题的一部力作。     

Policy integration: placing the spatial dimension in the health agenda. Evidence from Portugal

The significance of spatial policies for health and well-being is well recorded. While there has been an increasing body of literature illustrating the importance of including a territorial perspective in health decision-making processes, evidence shows that policy integration between spatial and health policies is still scarce. This paper aims to develop a deeper understanding of how this integration can be considered in conceptual terms and how it is actually embraced in practice by health decision-makers. Drawing upon the concept of territorial cohesion, the paper presents and discusses the results of a research held in Portugal aiming to understand this topic.