Cajoling or coercing: would electoral engineering resolve the young citizen–state disconnect?

The relationships between citizens and their states are undergoing significant stresses across advanced liberal democracies. In Britain, this disconnect is particularly evident amongst young citizens. This article considers whether different electoral engineering methods – designed either to cajole or compel youth to vote – might arrest the decline in their political engagement. Data collected in 2011 from a national survey of 1025 British 18-year-olds and from focus groups involving 86 young people reveal that many young people claim that they would be more likely to vote in future elections if such electoral reforms were implemented. However, it is questionable whether or not such increased electoral participation would mean that they would feel truly connected to the democratic process. In particular, forcing young people to vote through the introduction of compulsory voting may actually serve to reinforce deepening resentments, rather than engage them in a positive manner.     

Mental Illness and the Criminal Justice System

This is the second essay in a two‐part series exploring the relationships between mental illness, criminal behavior, and the criminal justice system. The number of mentally ill persons in prisons and jails has increased substantially over the last several decades, and there are currently more people with mental illness behind bars than there are in mental hospitals. In this essay, we place these trends within a broader historical context of the social control of mental illness in the United States. We identify how and why mentally ill persons have come to be overrepresented in the criminal justice system and highlight the unique challenges this population poses for police, courts, and correctional facilities. Finally, we review several recent innovations in policy and practice that may help alleviate that burden of criminal justice involvement on mentally ill offenders, as well as the burden of mentally ill offenders on the criminal justice system.     

“An Army of Civil Servants”: Max Weber and Émile Durkheim on Socialism

This paper is a comparison of the views of Max Weber and Émile Durkheim on socialism; these two have yet to be compared on this topic. They offered shared critiques of socialism, but differed in assessment of its overall worth, with Durkheim being more welcoming. After considering possible explanations for this divergence I argue it reflects the contrasting methodologies adopted by both. Whilst Weber places questions of the “value” of socialism solely in the conscious of the individual, and therefore beyond sociology, Durkheim sees this as a social question and therefore part of the practical concerns of sociologists.     

Existential Risks to Humanity Should Concern International Policymakers and More Could Be Done in Considering Them at the International Governance Level

In this perspective, we consider the possible role of the United Nations (UN) with respect to existential risks to human civilization and the survival of humanity. We illustrate how existential risks have been discussed at an international governance level, specifically in documents in the UN Digital Library. In this large corpus, discussions of nuclear war account for over two-thirds (69%, 67/97) of mentions of existential risks, while mention of other existential risks, or such risks as a category, appears scant. We take these observations to imply inadequate attention to these significant threats. These deficits, combined with the need for a global response to many risks, suggest that UN member nations should urgently advocate for appropriate action at the UN to address threats, such as artificial intelligence, synthetic biology, geoengineering, and supervolcanic eruption, in analogous fashion to existing attempts to mitigate the threats from nuclear war or near-Earth objects.     

A Dignified Standard of Living in Mexico: Results of a Pilot Study of the Minimum Income Standard Approach

Traditionally, the role of tourism has been recognized as an instrument of endogenous development and, therefore, so has its potential to generate wealth and employment, provided the right circumstances are in place. One of the essential circumstances is governance, that is, coordination, collaboration and/or cooperation between the different players involved in the tourism development process, in a way that ensures the multiplier effect of tourism on the local economy. One of the great challenges facing policymakers and destination managers is the measurement of the progress achieved in tourism destinations in the field of governance and the adoption of the measures required to encourage the implementation of good governance in those destinations. This paper presents a system of indicators which can be adapted to the characteristics of any tourism destination and which allows the implementation of governance to be measured. This system has been generated from a questionnaire given to a group of governance experts and its application will be very useful in order to improve the management of tourism destinations.     

A new class of skew-symmetric distributions and related families

In this work, we investigate a new class of skew-symmetric distributions, which includes the distributions with the probability density function (pdf) given by g _α(x)=2f(x) G(α x), introduced by Azzalini [A class of distributions which includes the normal ones, Scand. J. Statist. 12 (1985), pp. 171–178]. We call this new class as the symmetric-skew-symmetric family and it has the pdf proportional to f(x) G _β(α x), where G _β(x) is the cumulative distribution function of g _β(x). We give some basic properties for the symmetric-skew-symmetric family and study the particular case obtained from the normal distribution.     

Reducing Absenteeism and Rescheduling Among Grocery Store Employees With Point-Contingent Rewards

The purpose of this research was to evaluate a reward program designed to reduce absenteeism among staff (N = 38) at a grocery store. The intervention included public feedback and a credit reward system whereby participants got store dollars for attendance and authorized rescheduling of work assignments. Results showed that absenteeism decreased from a group mean of 8 shifts missed per week during baseline to 4.25 shifts missed per week during the intervention before increasing to 6.75 shifts missed per week during the reversal phase. The mean total rescheduling occurrences were reduced from a baseline average of 19.83 per week to 9.25 per week during the intervention and returned to 22.25 per week during the reversal. Employees were also less likely to leave early during the intervention period.     

The Social Construction of Official Statistics: The Case of the UK ‘Measuring National Well-being’ Programme

Social Indicators Research - This article is interested in the process of official statistic-making which, it is argued, has previously only been lightly examined. It makes the case that role of...