Custody decisions in Alabama before and after the abolition of the tender years doctrine

This study investigated the impact of the abolition of the tender years doctrine on custody decisions in divorce cases. This doctrine supported the presumption that the mother is the more suitable parent for young children. In March of 1981, the Supreme Court of the State of Alabama found this doctrine to be unconstitutional. To assess the hypothesis that this ruling had a significant effect on custodyrelated decisions, a sample of court records for divorce cases in an Alabama county was examined as representative of the state on a number of key variables. Overall, no significant differences were found on indicator variables for the comparisons before and after the ruling. There was neither an increase in custody grants to fathers nor an increase in custody requests by fathers.     

Politics and ethics in cultural criminology

This essay offers both a critique of the theory and practice of criminology and an alternative programme via a sketch of a cultural criminology utilising cultural and literary analysis. The first part of the essay calls for the problematisation of the issues of value and representation in the criminological project and offers a competing account of the theoretical basis of the project of criminology based upon a cultural politics of difference and the ethics of radical alterity. The second part of the essay is a demonstration of how this theoretical basis might operate in practice through a cultural criminological reading of Maurice Blanchot's novelThe Most High (1948, 1996). This novel is an account of the relationship between language and transgression in a totalitarian society at the end of history. An alteration in the discursive practices of the criminological project premised upon a competing theoretical perspective suggests that criminology (specifically the relation between law and transgression, deviancy and regulation) can become an important element in explanations regarding the organisation and disorganisation of contemporary urban culture utilising the strengths of its prior application (specifically narratology) and abandoning its fear of culture.     

Tinpots,Totalitarians (and Democrats): An Empirical Investigation of the Effects of Economic Growth on Civil Liberties and Political Rights

Ronald Wintrobe (1990, 1998) has recently provided atheoretical foundation for estimating equations that attemptto explain the dependence of civil liberties and politicalrights in non-democratic regimes on the history of economicgrowth. This theory suggests that data from different kinds ofnon-democratic countries should not be pooled without allowingcoefficients to vary with regime type. It also placesinteresting restrictions on the signs of the coefficients ofeconomic growth in equations explaining freedom in the typesof regimes Wintrobe identifies. In this paper, we employ theserestrictions to test Wintrobe's theory. Some additionalhypotheses about the difference between democratic andnon-democratic regimes and about the role of education, notconsidered by Wintrobe, are also investigated.The results indicate clearly that the relationship between thedegree of freedom – as measured by the sum of the Gastilindexes of civil liberties and political rights – andeconomic growth varies significantly across all types ofregimes. Totalitarians (that attempt to maximize power) areclearly different than tinpots (that just attempt to maintainpower) in this respect, and non-democratic regimes differ fromdemocracies. Other aspects of the theory are partiallyconfirmed. In particular, in totalitarian regimes, positivegrowth reduces freedom, and negative growth increases it insome specifications. The theory predicts the opposite patternfor tinpots, and we do find that negative growth reducesfreedom in tinpot regimes. However, positive growth in tinpotsalso appears to reduce freedom in some cases, which is not inaccord with the theory. Secondary schooling has a positive effect on freedom, as inprevious empirical work, a result that is shown here to holdeven when each type of regime is considered separately. Butthe effect of primary schooling is different: in tinpot andtotalitarian regimes, but not in democracies, primaryschooling is associated with reduced freedom.     

The dragon as demon: images of China on Capitol Hill

In congressional debate on China‐related issues, alliances of partisans of single issues of high symbolic significance to some Americans insist vocally on strongly negative views of China that often caricature a complex society and foster unconstructive moralizing rather than analysis of the problems that they address. By demonizing China they obstruct the formulation and maintenance of a coherent American policy toward China and weaken Congress' contribution to making US policy. Members of Congress who favor engagement and look to a future in which they hope economic and political reform will grow in a China benefited by trade, foreign investment, and a peaceful international environment cannot display the moral certainty affected in congressional debates by the most outspoken critics. A variety of reasons underlie the demonizing of China in Congress, including some ignorance (willful or not) and reliance on lobbyists and poorly informed staff. Distorted images deform the contribution that Congress makes to the formulation of US China policy and cloud the perceptions of China held by some members and, derivatively, by many of their constituents among the American people.     

Risky Drinking and Driving/Riding Decisions: The Role of Previous Experience

Factors related to risky drinking and driving/riding decisions were explored by presenting vignettes to 135 older adolescents, 17–24 years of age, with vignettes related to drinking and other social behaviors engaged in at a party. Analyses revealed that alcohol-related behaviors, attitudes toward the acceptability of drinking and driving, and previous drinking and driving/riding experiences were all significant predictors of decisions about driving or riding while intoxicated. Indeed, the overall model accounted for 46% of risky drinking and driving/riding decisions. As predicted, older respondents had more previous experiences with driving while intoxicated and riding with intoxicated drivers than did younger respondents, and they reported that drinking and driving was more acceptable among their peers. However, contrary to expectations, there were no differences in the number of risky decisions made by the two age groups or between males and females. The importance of previous experiences is discussed.     

Bureaucratic choice and nonoptimal provision of public goods: Theory and evidence

Local governments' allocation decisions are modeled in the context of a slack maximizing bureaucrat who produces public goods according to a production function that includes both provision and the constituents' socio-economic characteristics. To gain a better understanding of the determinants of slack, comparative statics and an empirical study of Illinois municipalities are conducted. The indirect output distance function provides efficiency scores upon which we regress several variables, representing socio-economic characteristics, costs and competition measures. We find that slack or inefficient behavior is associated with richer communities, lower education levels and a lack of competition for residents among municipalities.