Courtroom testimony by psychologists on eyewitness identification issues

This article makes two major points in regard to expert psychological testimony on eyewitness identification. First, the attention devoted by psychologists to eyewitness identification issues is far out of proportion to the incidence of trials involving eyewitness identifications of criminal defendants; furthermore, the often-expressed concern over wrongful convictions is probably misplaced. Second, the experimental methods used in studies of eyewitness performance are fundamentally unsuited for drawing conclusions about actual witnesses. Hence, there is not an adequate scientific foundation for expert psychological testimony on eyewitness identification. Archival research is perhaps the most promising approach to the study of the criminal justice system.     

Domestic Costs, the U.S. Public, and the Isolationist Calculus

This article examines and tests two models of the circumstances shaping the extent of the American public&;apos;s isolationist sentiment. The first, termed the "elastic band" model, assumes a constant popular disinclination toward foreign involvements, one that may, at most, temporarily be stretched to accommodate responses to major external threats. A second model assumes the operation of a "cognitive shortcut" based on low-information rationality. It proposes that acceptable levels of domestic involvement depend on the gravity of the domestic opportunity costs of foreign involvement, and it is termed the "domestic costs" model. While the former model implies a constant public resistance to international activism, a resistance that is relaxed only in proportion to the gravity of external threats, the latter model suggests that the U.S. public displays a relatively constant internationalist attitude, and that variations around that threat are largely explained by fluctuations in the perceived domestic opportunity costs of international involvement.
Both models are subjected to statistical testing, a testing that vindicates the domestic costs model. Further insights are obtained by examining attitudes toward internationalism as they are affected by levels of education. Although internationalism increases with education, and although levels of education predict differential impacts of the variables encompassed by the model, each segment of the public seems to operate within the general parameters of the "domestic costs" model.     

Partisanship as information

Intuitively, we associate different political parties with different types of policy. In contrast, this paper shows that in the absence of differential costs of membership among parties (that is, if party membership ischeap talk), party labels cannot perfectly signal the ideologies of candidates. However, under certain conditions parties can signal candidate types imperfectly. The paper therefore also provides an example of how costless communication can be effective in games of partial conflict.     

“Sex change” in skeletal remains: Assessing how heat-induced changes interfere with sex estimation

The true impact of heat-induced changes in human bone regarding their sex estimation has not been comprehensively documented having a potentially negative impact on forensic anthropology. The objective of this paper was to evaluate how heat exposure affects sex estimation based on both morphological and metric features. The study focused in both low-to-medium intensity burns and high intensity burns. Selected sexually dimorphic features were analysed in 51 experimentally burnt skeletons from the 21st Century Identified Skeletal Collection. Bones were burnt to maximum temperatures between 450 °C and 1050 °C achieved after 75 to 257 min. Morphological methods tested in this study comprised the recommendations for hipbone features from Buikstra and Ubelaker (1994) and from Bruzek (2002). On the other hand, metric references tested here were the ones from Wasterlain (2000), Curate et al. (2016) and Gonçalves et al. (2013) focused on the humerus, femur, calcaneus and talus. Agreement was tested with Gwet’s AC1 test and was further assessed by calculating the relative amount of perfect agreements. Results demonstrated that heat-induced changes affected not only the scoring of morphological features burnt at high temperatures but also the scoring of features burnt at lower intensities. On the other hand, metric features were only considerably affected in high intensity burns, no major changes being documented for low-to-medium intensity burns. For low-to-medium intensity burns, the Bruzek and Curate et al. methods revealed a better agreement between the pre- and post-burning scores. For high intensity burns, better agreement was obtained by using the Bruzek (2002) and Gonçalves et al. (2013) methods. As expected, heat-induced warping, fracture and metric change had a major impact on the pre- and post-observations’ agreement. Contrary to what has been systematically assumed over the years, this impact is also quite substantial in bones burnt at low-to-medium burn intensities so caution is advised during the analysis of this kind of burnt skeletal material.     

THE CURRENTS BENEATH THE “RISING TIDE” OF SCHOOL CHOICE: AN ANALYSIS OF STUDENT ENROLLMENT FLOWS IN THE CHICAGO PUBLIC SCHOOLS

Existing research highlights that families face geographic, social, and psychological constraints that may limit the extent to which competition can take hold in school choice programs. In this paper, we address the implications of such findings by creating a network of student flows from 11 cohorts of eighth‐grade students in the Chicago Public Schools (CPS). We applied a custom algorithm to group together schools with similar sending and receiving patterns, and calculated the difference in mean achievement between a student's attended and assigned high schools. For all identified school groupings, we found that the students were on average moving to higher achieving schools. We also found that the movement toward higher achieving schools of the top achievement quartile of students was over twice as large as that of the bottom quartile, but that the flows of both the highest and lowest achieving student quartiles were toward higher achieving destinations. Our results suggest that student movements in CPS between the years of 2001 to 2005 were consistent with creating market pressure for improvement as well as increasing segregation by achievement. However, further research into how schools responded to those movements is required to make inferences about the level or consequences of competition generated by choice‐related reforms during that time.     

Japan and identity change: why it matters in International Relations

Abstract

Two approaches to identity have been employed to explore issues in Japan's international relations. One views identity as constituted by domestic norms and culture, and as constitutive of interests, which in turn cause behaviour. Proponents view Japan's ‘pacifist’ and ‘antimilitarist’ identity as inherently stable and likely to change only as a result of material factors. In the other approach, ‘Japan’ emerges and changes through processes of differentiation vis-à-vis ‘Others’. Neither ‘domestic’ nor ‘material’ factors can exist outside of such identity constructions. We argue that the second, relational, approach is more theoretically sound, but begs three questions. First, how can different identity constructions in relation to numerous Others be synthesised and understood comprehensively? Second, how can continuity and change be handled in the same relational framework? Third, what is the point of analysing identity in relational terms? This article addresses the first two questions by introducing an analytical framework consisting of three mutually interacting layers of identity construction. Based on the articles in this special issue, we argue that identity entrepreneurs and emotions are particularly likely to contribute to change within this model. We address the third question by stressing common ground with the first approach: identity enables and constrains behaviour. In the case of Japan, changes in identity construction highlighted by the articles in this special issue forebode a political agenda centred on strengthening Japan militarily.     

Identifying with the Nation: Spain's Left-Wing Citizens in an Age of Crisis

This study analyses the extent, sense, and strategies employed by sympathisers with Spanish state-wide left-wing parties to ‘reconstruct’ their affective ties with the Spanish nation after the ‘monopolisation of patriotism’ by Franco's regime. Such an undertaking is further complicated within the context of economic crisis and intensified peripheral nationalism found in Catalonia and the Basque Country. This article applies qualitative analysis to the discourse of left-wing participants from 11 focus groups held in March 2012 amidst the economic (and political) crisis. As expected, this context of crisis favoured the emergence of explicit discourse on the Spanish nation, providing an opportunity to gain a better understanding of its nature. Findings show that welfare nationalism and social patriotism define the kind of attachment developed by the interviewees towards Spain better than the concept of constitutional patriotism, or any kind of ethnic-cultural feeling of belonging.     

The European Union and Latin America: ‘Transformative power Europe’ versus the realities of economic interests

Relations between the European Union (EU) and regional subgroups in Latin America (Mercosur, the Andean Community and Central America) are clear examples of ‘pure interregionalism’ and provide evidence of the EU's active promotion of regional integration. Within the context of these cases, this article explores what type of international power the EU wields, how interregionalism is embedded in that power, and how it is deployed. Combining strands of literature on EU–Latin American relations, interregionalism, EU external policy and power provides a framework within which interregionalism can be understood as an important normative and practical tool for the EU's external power projection. Drawing on official documentation and interviews with key individuals, the paper highlights the EU's articulation of power in interregional relations and reflects upon its mixed success. It concludes that, while imperial qualities and aspirations can be observed in the EU's penchant for interregionalism, the transformative power of the EU remains limited.