Books: Comparative Politics and Area Studies

R. Banton, P. Clifford, S. Frosh, J. Lousada and J. Rosenthal, The Politics of Mental Health (London, Macmillan, 1985)
T. Forester (ed.), The Information Technology Revolution (Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1985
Philip Green, Retrieving Democracy: in Search of Civic Equality (Totawa, N. J., Rowman & Allanheid 1985)
Joseph J. Houska, Influencing Mass Political Behaviour: Elites and Political Subcultures in the Netherlands and Austria (Berkeley, Institute of International Studies, University of California, 1985)
R. Kuhn (ed.), The Politics of Broadcasting (Beckenham, Croorn Helm, 1984)
G. E. Lang and K. Lang, Politics and Television Reviewed (Berkeley, Sage, 1984)
A. Organski, J. Kugler, J. Johnson and Y. Cohen, Births, Deaths and Taxes (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1984)
W. E. Styler, Adult Education and Political Systems (Nottingham, Publications Unit, Department of Adult Education, University of Nottingham, 1985)
David Robertson, A Dictionary of Modern Politics (London, Europa Publications, 1985)
J. T. Morley, Secular Socialists: The CCF/NDP in Ontario , A Biography (Toronto, McCill-Queen's University Press, 1984)
H. S. Parmet, JFK: the Presidency of John F. Kennedy (Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1984)
R. H. K. Vietor, Energy Policy in America Since 1945 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1985)
G. T. Mazuzan and J. S. Walker, Controlling the Atom (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1984)
A. Figueroa, Capitalist Development and the Peasant Economy in Peru (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1984)
Harvey B. Feigenbaum, The Politics of Public Enterprise: Oil and the French State (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1985)
Eckhard Jesse, Wahlrecht zwischen Kontinuitat und Reform 1949–1983 (Dusseldorf, Droste, 1985)
H. Lydall, Yugoslav Socialism: Theory and Practice (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1984)     

THE DEVELOPMENT AND IMPLEMENTATION OF SPECIAL EDUCATION POLICY: WHERE DID THE 1981 ACT FIT IN?

The passage of legislation is just one point in the process of negotiation and bargaining which formed the will to legislate and continues throughout the period of policy implementation. Using the 1981 Education Act as a case study, this paper develops a conceptual framework which sees education legislation as a significant reference point, a statement of government intent, but implementation as a political process involving negotiation, bargaining and compromise between different sectors of government, between central and local government, between education, health and social services, between administrators and professionals, and with parents.     

Giving Your Chinese a Local Flavor

<正>Wang,the driver of our school bus,is the most animated speaker I have ever seen—in any language. He is generally so excitable on the drive to and from school that he entertains all the teachers.He maintains a constant flow of     

CLOSE‐UPS AND THE SCALE OF ECOLOGY: LAND USES AND THE GEOGRAPHY OF SOCIAL CONTEXT AND CRIME

Whereas one line of recent neighborhood research has placed an emphasis on zooming into smaller units of analysis such as street blocks, another line of research has suggested that even the meso‐area of neighborhoods is too narrow and that the area surrounding the neighborhood is also important. Thus, there is a need to examine the scale at which the social ecology impacts crime. We use data from seven cities from around the year 2000 to test our research questions using multilevel negative binomial regression models (N = 73,010 blocks and 8,231 block groups). Our results suggest that although many neighborhood factors seem to operate on the microscale of blocks, others seem to have a much broader impact. In addition, we find that racially and ethnically homogenous blocks within heterogeneous block groups have the most crime. Our findings also show the strongest results for a multitude of land‐use measures and that these measures sharpen some of the associations from social characteristics. Thus, we find that accounting for multiple scales simultaneously is important in ecological studies of crime.     

RELIGION AND CRIME REEXAMINED: THE IMPACT OF RELIGION,SECULAR CONTROLS,AND SOCIAL ECOLOGY ON ADULT CRIMINALITY*

Since Hirschi and Stark's (1969) surprising failure to find religious (“hellfire”) effects on delinquency, subsequent research has generally revealed an inverse relationship between religiosity and various forms of deviance, delinquency, and crime. The complexity of the relationship and conditions under which it holds, however, continue to be debated. Although a few researchers have found that religion's influence is noncontingent, most have found support—especially among youths—for effects that vary by denomination, type of offense, and social and/or religious context. More recently the relationship has been reported as spurious when relevant secular controls are included. Our research attempts to resolve these issues by testing the religion-crime relationship in models with a comprehensive crime measure and three separate dimensions of religiosity. We also control for secular constraints, religious networks, and social ecology. We found that, among our religiosity measures, participation in religious activities was a persistent and noncontingent inhibiter of adult crime.     

Reluctant Coalitionists: The Conservative Party and the Establishment of the Coalition Government in May 2010

The Conservative party has been the real awkward partner in the Conservative‐Liberal Democrat coalition government because its backbench MPs have rebelled more frequently than their Liberal Democrat counterparts since May 2010. This reflected the fact that the Conservatives were reluctant coalitionists to begin with: they would have preferred to see a minority Conservative government, they had made far too many concessions to the Liberal Democrats, they had been bounced into accepting a coalition deal by a controlling party leadership, and they had lost out on those ministerial positions now held by Liberal Democrats. There was thus no great enthusiasm for the establishment of a coalition government with the Liberal Democrats in the parliamentary Conservative party in May 2010. Conservatives merely resigned themselves to an outcome which they had been given little opportunity to influence and which David Cameron had made it very difficult for them to reject.