Housing Programs Fail to Deliver on Neighborhood Quality,Reexamined

This article revisits the relative performance of housing programs in terms of delivering on neighborhood quality. Newman and Schnare examined this issue in 1997, and this article updates their work more than a decade later. Both efforts examine the neighborhood characteristics surrounding assisted rental housing and assess the direction of assisted-housing policy. The analysis is performed by exploring census data at the tract level for the tenant-based Housing Choice Voucher program plus a set of project-based programs, including public housing, the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit program, and other HUD multifamily programs. We conclude that Newman and Schnare remain correct that rental housing assistance does little to improve the quality of the recipients' neighborhoods relative to those of welfare households and can make things worse. However, things have improved. The Housing Choice Voucher and Low-Income Housing Tax Credit programs have grown in importance over the intervening years and have improved their performance by moving more households into low-poverty, less distressed areas. Importantly, these active programs for assisted housing are beginning to find ways to overcome the barriers preventing entry into the suburbs, although more needs to be done.     

Fiji’s Foreign Relations: Retrospect and Prospect

Abstract

Of all the island states of the Southwest Pacific, Fiji’s foreign relations have been the most fraught since the advent of independence in the region, due largely to a succession of coups d'état. These have invariably precipitated adverse responses from major partners and aid donors, notably Australia, New Zealand, the United States and the European Union. The last coup in 2006 also unsettled relations in Fiji’s more immediate region, especially among some of its smaller Polynesian neighbours, contributing to Fiji’s unprecedented suspension from the Pacific Islands Forum. This article reviews Fiji’s foreign relations from the time of independence in 1970 through the period of successive coups to the 2014 elections. It also examines Bainimarama’s strategies in extending foreign relations in the broader international sphere as well as issues surrounding the ‘normalisation’ of relations with its traditional partners.     

Uncertainties at the European Union's southern borders: actors,policies, and legal frameworks

A multiplicity of legal and political arrangements regulate the European Union's external borders. With borders representing the intersection between national and international law and politics, the EU also acquired some legal competences in this realm. The resulting triple set of rules coincides with the growing disaggregation of the classical functions of borders. This state of affairs generates legal and procedural uncertainties and results in a growing ambiguity and lack of transparency, in terms of competences and accountability. Due to the EU's concerns with transnational terrorism, and the growing securitization of migration, the EU's borders with the states of the Middle East and North Africa are particularly relevant in this regard, with the resulting uncertainties touching upon fundamental rights. This article discusses the conceptual starting point of the growing institutional, legal, and political complexity at the EU's southern borders, together with relevant aspects and developments, thus also providing the background to the different contributions in this special issue.     

DELINQUENCY AND GENDER MODERATION IN THE MOVING TO OPPORTUNITY INTERVENTION: THE ROLE OF EXTENDED NEIGHBORHOODS

A long history of research has indicated that neighborhood poverty increases youth's risk taking and delinquency. This literature predominantly has treated neighborhoods as independent of their surroundings despite rapidly growing ecological evidence on the geographic clustering of crime that suggests otherwise. This study proposes that to understand neighborhood effects, investigating youth's wider surroundings holds theoretical and empirical value. By revisiting longitudinal data on more than 1500 low‐income youth who participated in the Moving to Opportunity (MTO) randomized intervention, this article explores the importance of extended neighborhoods (neighborhoods and surroundings) and different concentrated disadvantage configurations in shaping gender differences in risk taking and delinquency. The results from two‐stage, least‐squares analyses suggest that the extended neighborhoods matter and they matter differently by gender. Among girls, extended neighborhoods without concentrated disadvantage were associated with lower risk‐taking prevalence than extended neighborhoods with concentrated disadvantage. In contrast, among boys, localized concentration of disadvantage was associated with the highest prevalence of risk taking and delinquency. Interactions between the immediate and surrounding neighborhoods were similarly associated with differential opportunity and social disorganization mediators. Among the more critical potential mediators of the link between localized disadvantage and boys’ risk taking were delinquent network ties, strain, and perceived absence of legitimate opportunities for success.     

远东纲要实施以来的中俄区域合作

俄罗斯2002年3月开始实施的远东纲要为我国发展同远东地区的经贸合作提供了前提条件。纲要实施两年以来,远东各联邦主体纷纷制定发展战略和采取措施,加速经济与社会的发展,并在大力发展对外关系时,把发展同中国东北边境地区经贸合作列为优先发展方向。这促使该地区与中国北方省份的区域合作出现飞速发展的可喜局面。     

劳资关系的文化视角

作为社会关系之一的劳资关系 ,既是一种市场经济关系 ,也是一种市场文化关系。这种文化关系的客观存在 ,既因其与经济关系内在有机联系的不可分性所决定 ,又是市场经济发展的必然要求和产物。正确认识把握劳资间的文化关系 ,将给我国社会主义市场经济中新兴的劳资关系铺垫一个自觉合理的文化底蕴和社会氛围 ,同时 ,也为劳资双方调节彼此关系提供一个新的视角和途径 ,更好地实现劳资合作的经济价值和社会价值。     

理解含义:理论、话语和国际关系

近年来,语言在国际关系中的重要作用逐渐引起人们的兴趣和关注,出现国际关系研究的“语言转向”。这一学术转向的意义在于,它试图探索国际关系中的人和事件如何在语言的作用下被赋予含义,以及这种含义反过来如何影响并建构着国际关系“现实”。符号含义的不固定性、多层性和争议性,不仅挑战了国际关系“知识”中的话语霸权现象,而且提醒人们有必要对国际关系的不同“现实”进行理解,并说明国际政治不仅是竞争物质实力的领域,而且还是争夺话语含义的场所。     

The State and Human Rights: Governance and Sustainable Human Development in Yemen

International Relations theory has had difficulty explaining the global spread of human rights norms, and in particular the spread of human rights norms in the non-Western world. An exploration of Yemen's integration of human rights-based approaches to economic development into its policymaking gives the empirical foundation to examine the interplay of both norms and self-interest and external and internal pressures in framing such policies. In the case of Yemen, at least, each of these contrasting pairs is to a large degree mutually constituted. Conceptualizing norms and self-interest and external and internal pressures as mutually constitutive differs from the usual contrasts painted between these pairs in international relations theory, but is an important step in moving beyond an impasse among realist, liberal, and constructivist theories and toward a usefully integrative approach.     

Linking Experiential and Classroom Education: Lessons Learned from The American University–Amnesty International USA Summer Institute on Human Rights

How can internships and other forms of experiential or service learning be designed to best accomplish academic goals? This article explores the benefits and pitfalls of experiential education by looking at the relevant scholarly literature and at students' and faculty members' experience with the American University–Amnesty International USA Summer Institute on Human Rights. Overall, faculty and students report that internships, when integrated with traditional classroom learning, greatly enhance learning overall. The article suggests strategies for structuring internships to enrich students' learning.     

正确认识八种关系 全力强化公安派出所工作

本文从加强公安派出所建设和发展的角度出发,正确认识与公安派出所工作相关的多种思维观念之间的关系,分清主次轻重,以推动公安派出所工作.