Pacifists and Revenge-Seekers in Response to Unambiguous Peer Provocation

In order to better understand why some children retaliate when they feel provoked and others do not, the present study identified “pacifistically-oriented” children who made negative interpretations in response to unambiguous provocations, yet did not endorse revenge goals, and compared them to “revenge-seeking” children who also made negative interpretations but did endorse revenge goals. Groups were identified based on seventh graders’ (N?=?367; 54.77% male; 22.89% racial/ethnic minority) responses to hypothetical situations in which a peer excluded and insulted them. Comparing these groups revealed that Pacifists endorsed relationship-maintaining goals and emotion regulation goals more highly than Revenge-Seekers. Revenge-Seekers reported more anger and endorsed beliefs about negative reciprocity and aggression being legitimate more highly than Pacifists. Additionally, Revenge-Seekers were more disrespect sensitive than were Pacifists, based on a measure of vigilance for signs of disrespect and expectations that others would disrespect them. Together these findings point to social-cognitive and emotion-related processes that may inhibit revenge-seeking in unambiguous provocation situations, even when children interpret the peer’s behavior quite negatively.     

Promoting customer engagement: A new trend in utility regulation

This paper traces a new development in regulation that encourages utilities to engage more directly with their customers. We make four contributions: First, we perform a comprehensive analysis of how regulators are using customer engagement, and offer a simple model for understanding different customer engagement initiatives. Second, we review assessments of customer engagement. We find that there are no quantitative, empirically robust assessments of the effectiveness of customer engagement as a regulatory tool. Third, we develop two detailed case studies of an energy regulator and a water regulator that are in the forefront of customer engagement efforts. We find that there is no direct link between the engagement strategy used and the economic incentives received by a firm. Finally, we propose a framework for improving the customer engagement process. The new framework relies on microeconomics, modern tools of program evaluation, and supplying the regulated firm with direct incentives to engage with the customer.     

Best Friends’ Discussions of Social Dilemmas

Peer relationships, particularly friendships, have been theorized to contribute to how children and adolescents think about social and moral issues. The current study examined how young adolescent best friends (191 dyads; 53.4 % female) reason together about multifaceted social dilemmas and how their reasoning is related to friendship quality. Mutually-recognized friendship dyads were videotaped discussing dilemmas entailing moral, social-conventional and prudential/pragmatic issues. Both dyad members completed a self-report measure of friendship quality. Dyadic data analyses guided by the Actor-Partner Interdependence Model indicated that adolescent and friend reports of friendship qualities were related to the forms of reasoning used during discussion. Friends who both reported that they could resolve conflicts in a constructive way were more likely to use moral reasoning than friends who reported that their conflict resolution was poor or disagreed on the quality of their conflict resolution. The findings provide evidence for the important role that friendship interaction may play in adolescents’ social and moral development.     

Knowing Me,Knowing You: Media Portrayal of the EU in Kazakhstan

Abstract

The dichotomy of Self/Other prevails in shaping identity. This article asks how and to what extent the elements of the EU’s image produced by media discourse shape the national identity of Kazakhstan. It contends that a state’s identity can be formulated not in opposition—that is, not ‘Us against Them’—but rather, ‘Us as One of Them’. It argues that, in the case of Kazakhstan, the predominantly positive media discourse about the EU ‘Other’ contributes to a positive formulation of the Self via the legitimisation of the domestic regime on the national and international levels.     

Administrative reform assistance and democracy promotion: exploring the democratic substance of the EU’s public administration reform principles for the neighbourhood countries

International donors, particularly the European Union (EU), vehemently endorse institution-building and public administration reform (PAR) in their work on democracy support. Still, the linkages between externally sponsored reform and advancement of democratic governance in beneficiary countries constitute a blind spot in our understanding of democratization. This article contributes to examining this relationship by exploring the democratic substance of the EU’s PAR portfolio for the neighbourhood countries. The aim of the article is to focus attention on the PA–democracy interface in the study of democracy promotion by elaborating a conceptual framework for exploring the nature of externally supported administrative reforms and the substantive content of democracy being advanced. By using the OECD/SIGMA’s (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development/Support for Improvement in Governance and Management) PAR framework for the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) countries as a case study, this article demonstrates how the EU’s approach to programming PAR accommodates elements from several formats of democratic governance while the conceptualization of the democratic effects of the PAR principles remains vague. The article concludes by highlighting the need for closer examination of the potentials and limits of external PAR strategies in democracy support, and for attuning the EU’s PAR design to its democratic implications.     

The economic significance of “insignificant” rules

We know relatively little about the economic effects of “insignificant” rules because they are not typically analyzed. Yet, these rules could be cumulatively important. We provide an economic analysis of one proposed rule to control hazardous air pollutants, which is not considered to be economically significant. This rule is of particular interest because it is one of the first in a long series of rules that Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will consider for limiting hazardous air pollutant emissions. Our analysis suggests that the proposed controls that EPA has considered are not likely to pass a benefit–cost test. We recommend that an agency base its decision to allocate additional resources to benefit–cost analysis on the expected value of the improved information. In addition, agencies should consider applying a rule of thumb that would specify a threshold level of risk reduction that needs to be achieved before some kinds of regulation are considered.     

The political economy of environmental regulation: Towards a unifying framework

There are several theories that attempt to explain various aspects of environmental policy. Building on insights from this theoretical work, and recent advances in our understanding of instrument performance, this paper constructs a more complete theory of environmental regulation. There are two primary contributions of this research. The first is to provide more satisfactory explanations for a number of observed patterns of environmental policy. For example, there is, as yet, no satisfactory theory about the emergence of incentive-based mechanisms, such as marketable permits and effluent fees. The second contribution of this paper is to develop a parsimonious framework for understanding many important aspects of environmental policy. This framework suggests the outputs of environmental policy emerge from a struggle between key interest groups.This research was supported by the National Science Foundation. I would like to thank Gordon Hester for helpful comments. Responsibility for the final product rests solely with the author.     

Methodological development: structured outcome assessment and community risk monitoring (SORM)

This paper describes an effort to develop a clinical tool for the continuous monitoring of risk for violence in forensic mental health clients who have left their institutions and who are dwelling in the community on a conditional release basis. The model is called Structured Outcome Assessment and Community Risk Monitoring (SORM). The SORM consists of 30 dynamic factors and each factor in SORM is assessed in two ways: The current absence, presence or partial och intermittent presence of the factors, which is an actuarial (systematized and 'objective') assessment. Secondly, the risk effect, i.e. whether the presence/absence of factors currently increases, decreases or is perceived as unrelated to violence risk, is a clinical (or impressionistic) assessment. Thus, the factors considered via the SORM can be coded as risk factors or protective factors (or as factors unimportant to risk of violence) depending on circumstances that apply in the individual case. Further, the SORM has a built-in module for gathering idiographical information about risk-affecting contextual factors. The use of the SORM and its potential as a risk monitoring instrument is illustrated via preliminary data and case vignettes from an ongoing multicenter project. In this research project, patients leaving any of the 9 participating forensic hospitals in Sweden is assessed at release on a variety of static background factors, and the SORM is then administered every 30 days for 2 years.