FUNDING COMMUNITY POLICING TO REDUCE CRIME: HAVE COPS GRANTS MADE A DIFFERENCE?*

Research Summary: This research examines how funding from the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS), has affected violent and property crime rates in the United States from 1995 to 1999. Drawing on six years of panel data, we examine the effects of three types of awards made by COPS to 6,100 law enforcement agencies serving more than 145 million citizens. We estimate their impact on crime reduction over time in jurisdictions receiving funding and controlling for baseline levels of crime, socioeconomic characteristics, city size, and population diversity and mobility. Our analyses suggest that COPS hiring and innovative grant programs have resulted in significant reductions in local crime rates in cities with populations greater than 10,000 for both violent and nonviolent offenses. Multivariate analysis shows that in cities with populations greater than 10,000, an increase in one dollar of hiring grant funding per resident contributed to a corresponding decline of 5.26 violent crimes and 21.63 property crimes per 100,000 residents. Similarly, an increase in one dollar of innovative grant funding per resident has contributed to a decline of 12.93 violent crimes and 45.53 property crimes per 100,000 persons. In addition, the findings suggest that COPS grants have had no significant negative effect on violent and property crime rates in cities with less than 10,000 population. Policy Implications: The findings of this study imply that COPS program funding to medium‐ and large‐size cities has been an effective force in reducing both violent and property crime. Federal government grants made directly to law enforcement agencies to hire additional officers and promote innovations may be an effective way to reduce crime on a national scale.     

Growth in women's political representation: A longitudinal exploration of democracy, electoral system and gender quotas

The expansion of women's formal political representation ranks among the most significant trends in international politics of the last 100 years. Though women made steady political progress, substantial country-level variation exists in patterns of growth and change. In this article, longitudinal theories are developed to examine how political factors affect women's political representation over time. Latent growth curve models are used to assess the growth of women in politics in 110 countries from 1975 to 2000. The article investigates how electoral systems, national-level gender quotas and growth of democracy – both political rights and civil liberties – impact country-level trajectories of women's legislative representation. It is found: first, national quotas do affect women's political presence, but at a lower level than legislated by law; second, the impact of a proportional representation system on women's political representation is steady over time; and third, democracy, especially civil liberties, does not affect the level of women's political representation in the earliest period, but does influence the growth of women's political representation over time. These findings both reinforce and challenge prior cross-sectional models of women's political representation.     

Changing the Subject: The Case for ‘Social Politics’

Running through Bernard Crick's In Defence of Politics is an implicit faith in the ability of liberal democracy to deliver progress. From the perspective of 1962 such optimism seems well founded. After the years of post war austerity there had been more than a decade of steady growth, the middle class was expanding fast providing unprecedented levels of absolute social mobility (more benign and less complicated than the relative social mobility which today's politicians disingenuously claim to pursue). Matthew Taylor explores the case for ‘social politics’.     

The Extreme Right in Britain: Still an ‘Ugly Duckling’ but for How Long?

In recent years the far right in Britain has received increased support in local, national, and European elections. Examining these results researchers have pointed toward a wider potential support base for parties such as the BNP. Drawing upon in-depth interviews with the BNP leadership, strategists, and organisers this paper argues that both the party's environment and the party itself must be incorporated if we are to provide a satisfactory account of recent success. Through cross-national co-operation and influence from far right parties elsewhere the BNP has embarked upon a concerted attempt to build political legitimacy. This paper examines this process whilst also highlighting some general policy implications emerging from recent BNP gains.     

Understanding variation in public support for European integration

Abstract. Much of the research on the European Community focuses on elites and institutions and as a result downplays the importance of the mass public in determining the direction of European integration. A common justification for this viewpoint is that members of the public provide a stable reservoir of strong support for European integration. Recent political events, however, raise doubts about this depiction of a 'passive public'. Consequently, there is a need for a fuller understanding of European attitudes. We specify a number of hypotheses dealing with the effects of international trade interests, security concerns, and demographic characteristics on cross-national and cross-sectional variations in public support for European integration. Using Eurobarometer surveys and OECD data on EC trade from 1973–1989, we investigate these hypotheses in a pooled cross-sectional model. Our statistical results reveal that an individual's level of support is positively related to her nation's security and trade interests in EC membership and her personal potential to benefit from liberalized markets for goods, labour, and money.     

Fast thinking: Implications for democratic politics

A major programme of research on cognition has been built around the idea that human beings are frequently intuitive thinkers and that human intuition is imperfect. The modern marketing of politics and the time‐poor position of many citizens suggests that ‘fast’, intuitive, thinking in many contemporary democracies is ubiquitous. This article explores the consequences that such fast thinking might have for the democratic practice of contemporary politics. Using focus groups with a range of demographic profiles, fast thinking about how politics works is stimulated and followed by a more reflective and collectively deliberative form of slow thinking among the same participants. A strong trajectory emerges consistently in all groups in that in fast thinking mode participants are noticeably more negative and dismissive about the workings of politics than when in slow thinking mode. A fast thinking focus among citizens may be good enough to underwrite mainstream political exchange, but at the cost of supporting a general negativity about politics and the way it works. Yet breaking the cycle of fast thinking – as advocated by deliberation theorists – might not be straightforward because of the grip of fast thinking. The fast/slow thinking distinction, if carefully used, offers valuable new insight into political science.