The aim of the article, based on my doctoral thesis (Mitar, Theoretical and Methodological comparison of selected approaches for assessment of security of modern society, Ph.D. Dissertation, 2005), ...is to present my slight modification of Bailey’s SET as an explicit theoretical approach for an empirical assessment of security of contemporary societies. I formed a model D=f(PLOTIS), in which component D was defined (various deviant or unwanted phenomena—in present article measured by the number of deaths in violent conflicts), which was conditioned by macro-societal factors (Population, Level-of-living, Organisation, Technology, Information, Space), denoted by acronym PLOTIS. The model is tested by cross-sectional design, 19 (non-random) chosen former European socialist countries are compared, available secondary data at the end of a period of transition (1989–2002) are used. The model is tested by different methods of analysis: descriptive statistics, qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) and descriptive discriminant analysis (DDA). The comparison of results acquired by different methods confirmed usefulness of the modified SET as starting point for formation and testing of hypotheses about the influence of macro-societal characteristics (measured by PLOTIS) on unwanted phenomena. Last but not least, some proposals for further research are presented.
Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to identify and describe police officers' opinions on the prevailing anxieties, feeling of fears and threats, attitudes towards crime and punishment.Design ...methodology approach - The paper took a quantitative approach to data collection that included a survey on a representative sample of the Slovene police.Findings - Comparisons of attitudes (anxieties of everyday troubles, feelings of insecurity, importance of appropriate measures against crime and adequate severity of punishment) has been conducted to find similarities and differences between police officers regarding gender and age. The results show that male police officers and senior police officers have more conservative attitudes towards the most appropriate measures against crime and are more likely to defend severe punishment of offenders. Such attitudes indicate persistence of traditional authoritarian police orientation in (post)modern society.Research limitations implications - The results are generalizable for the Slovenian police but not generalizable for the police worldwide.Practical implications - A useful source of information learning about some characteristics of police professional culture and police officers' attitudes towards punishment and their understanding of threats in society.Originality value - This paper furthers understanding of police occupational culture in a new democratic country.
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