The Bureaucratic Politics of Welfare-State Crisis: Sweden in the 1990s

This article suggests that key bureaucrats play a decisive role in times of welfare crisis. It argues that key bureaucrats, through their advice, define both the type of welfare crisis and the range of possible solutions, which have at least two important consequences: First, it broadens the distribution of welfare cuts, as key bureaucrats—contrary to politicians—have no interests in targeting special voter groups. Second, it enables political compromises, as both the government and the opposition trust the key bureaucrats' expertise. These suggestions are tested empirically in a case study of Sweden in the 1990s. It shows that key bureaucrats did indeed influence both the distribution of the cuts and enabled a compromise between the center-right government and the Social Democratic opposition.     

Peace in South Tyrol and the Limits of Consociationalism

This article discusses the capacity of corporate consociationalism in bringing positive peace, understood as the enhancement of societal harmony, cooperation and integration, by analyzing South Tyrol, considered a model-case to diffuse ethnic tensions. Using data on attitudes of the South Tyrolean population concerning various aspects of the relationships between South Tyrolean linguistic groups, the analysis shows that South Tyrolean consociational mechanisms have brought peaceful coexistence and mutual acceptance among the groups, but some problematic elements remain in the success story of South Tyrol. Thereby the article highlights the limits of corporate consociationalism in fostering positive peace in divided societies.     

THE CONTEMPORARY CRISES OF MARXIST CRIMINOLOGY

Marxist theory gains its critical capacity by presenting itself as in the process of being realized through class conflict. By locating its critical and empirical reality in a ideal, unrepressive, unoppressive, relatively crime free future, it renders itself irresponsible for its own history and immune from empirical criticism. In order to sustain this vision in the absence of historical evidence. the chief promoters of a Marxist perspective in American criminology have found it necessary to invent untestable and irrefutable concepts whose principal function is to maintain a suspension of the relationship between history, social reality, and theory. Because such work is more akin to religious phophesy than criminology. it presently appears to be irreconcilable with all heretofore accepted standards of academic scholarship.     

The Application of Dynamic-Analytic Techniques to Criminal Justice Planning and Evaluation

The general inadequacy of the sources of data in criminal justice for evaluation and planning has been apparent for some time. Among those factors which contribute to the inadequacy of much crime data are the following: (1) generally it is limited to one particular stage of criminal processing; (2) measurements are in the form of summary statistics; (3) it is specific to one agency in that each collects and reports its own summary tabulations; (4) the unit of count changes with different organizational structures. In sum, existing sources of data frequently measure only one temporal point and this fails to reflect the dynamic aspects of criminal processing. Similarly, many of the analytic techniques used for evaluation are static and do not reflect the dynamic aspect of the system.

In light of such considerations, this paper explores the utility of various dynamic-analytic techniques in conjunction with longitudinal sources of data. The following include some of the more important implications for future evaluation. First, the development of a sophisticated systems model to assist in the selection and verification of outcome measures. Second, a reconceptualization of the outcome measures normally used in evaluation studies in order to conceive of the total system as a critical outcome measure in evaluative studies. Third, the development of a model to assist in the planning process that precedes evaluation. This may be accomplished by providing a mechanism for the simulation of change, thus predicting the future impact of changes in the system.