Distrust of Government, the Vigilante Tradition, and Support for Capital Punishment

This study probes the interconnections among distrust of government, the historical context, and public support for the death penalty in the United States with survey data for area-identified samples of white and black respondents. Multilevel statistical analyses indicate contrary effects of government distrust on support for the death penalty for blacks and whites, fostering death penalty support among whites and diminishing it among blacks. In addition, we find that the presence of a "vigilante tradition," as indicated by a history of lynching, promotes death penalty support among whites but not blacks. Finally, contrary to Zimring's argument in The Contradictions of Capital Punishment , we find no evidence that vigilantism moderates the influence of government distrust on support for the death penalty, for either whites or blacks. Our analyses highlight the continuing influence of historical context as well as contemporary conditions in the formation of public attitudes toward criminal punishment, and they underscore the importance of attending to racial differences in the analysis of punitive attitudes.     

Are the Benefits of Economic Resources for Socioemotional Functioning Shared across Racial/Ethnic Groups?

Growth in economic disparities, economic segregation, and racial/ethnic diversity have occurred in tandem in the U.S., leading to essential questions concerning whether the benefits of economic resources are shared across diverse groups. Analyzing a sample of eighth grade early adolescents (age 14 years) drawn from the nationally representative Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 1998–1999 (N?=?7625; 59% White, 12% Black, 19% Hispanic, 7% Asian, 2% Native American, and 2% multiracial; 47% female), lagged regression models assessed links between family, neighborhood, and school income and adolescent emotional and behavioral functioning. The results found that family income was associated with heightened emotional and behavioral functioning, and school income with improved behavioral functioning for White adolescents, whereas no benefits emerged for Black or Hispanic youth. In contrast, mixed associations emerged between income and early adolescent functioning for Asian and American Indian youth, with predominantly negative links appearing for multiracial youth. These patterns highlight diversity in the potential benefits and costs of economic resources, and suggest the need to better specify mechanisms through which economic disparities affect youth from varied backgrounds.     

The Popularity Costs of Economic Crisis under Electoral Authoritarianism: Evidence from Russia

While a large literature recognizes that economic crises threaten the stability of electoral autocracies, we know relatively little about how citizens form economic perceptions and how they attribute blame for worsening conditions in these regimes. To gain traction on these questions, I exploit subnational variation in economic performance across Russia's regions during a recent downturn, combining regionally representative surveys of more than 67,000 voting‐age respondents with data on growth and unemployment. Contrary to conventional wisdom that citizens are passive consumers of propaganda, I show that they extract objective economic information from personal experience and local conditions. Moreover, I find that they give greater weight to this information where regional party dominance makes economic performance a clearer indicator of the ruling party's competence and when they believe the media are biased. These results suggest limits on illiberal regimes' ability to exploit informational asymmetries to bolster popular support during economic downturns.     

Finger in the Dyke or the Floodgates Stemmed? Sections 29–40 of the Employment Act 2002

This article considers Sections 29–40 of the Employment Act 2002 in the context of post-War developments in labour relations culminating in the National Industrial Relations Court. It considers the development of Employment Tribunal which rather than being the last resort intended by the legislators, has become the first resort of complainants, often for trivial matters by employees; or by employers taking an extremely broad view of Gross Misconduct by employees. Due to the volume of cases and the shortage of Chairs, cases are constantly delayed and postponed. The article posits that these are the principle reason behind the framing of Sections 29–40 of the Employment Act 2002 which introduced a new Section 9(1)(a) into the Employment Tribunals Act 1995. This has given the Chair of an Employment Tribunal the authority to strike out a weak case at a Pre-Hearing Review that will strike the case out once and for all at this juncture. The aim is to encourage employers to have proper procedures and for employees to follow them. This article suggests that in fact the reforms will have the opposite effect; that they have introduced another layer of legal complexity which will further increase the number of cases brought before the Employment Tribunal.     

Fascism as Action through Time (Or How It Can Happen Here)

The purpose of this paper is to discuss how fascism may be identified by its actions, the stages through which a fascist rule takes power, and how to recognize it before it does so. The thesis is that a fascist takeover of a democratic government is rapid and unexpected. Its goal is a revolutionary reversal of representative government in the name of the people, while it accomplishes the opposite: a single-party corporate regime that replaces individual liberty with subtle, bureaucratic, and overt types of coercion. Rather than generate a generic definition of the many types of fascism, it is more useful to study how it affects the lives of ordinary people, the milieu out of which it develops, and what its precursors look like. Understanding fascism entails studying it from the point of view of those who lived under it and recorded their experiences, as well as from the analytic perspectives of social scientists. As Robert O. Paxton observes: “The fascist phenomenon was poorly understood at the beginning in part because it was unexpected.”¹Robert O. Paxton, “The Five Stages of Fascism,” in Fascism: Critical Concepts in Political Science, edited by Roger Griffin, vol. I (2004), Chapter 14, 305–26.View all notes We are facing the question again in 2017 with the surprise election of Donald Trump as the forty-fifth president of the United States by a minority of the popular vote and the evident support of the white nationalist milieu. Paxton proposes a five-stage theory for understanding fascism in its many varieties. A developmental sequence is proposed against which current events in the United States may be assessed.     

Modeling psychiatric patients' treatment decision making

Decision-making processes of psychiatric inpatients were assessed at admission and prior to discharge, and compared to hospital staff members using a paired comparison paradigm in which subjects chose between hypothetical antipsychotic medications. Multidimensional analyses of binary choice matrices revealed that all subjects based decisions on the risks and benefits of medication, and weighted risks and benefits in roughly equal proportions. Hospital staff demonstrated greater internal consistency in their decisions than the inpatient sample at both time points. For newly admitted inpatients, severity of psychiatric symptoms and nonverbal intelligence were related to internal consistency of decision making, and behavioral indices of medication compliance predicted relative weighting of risks and benefits. For predischarge and comparison samples, verbal intelligence and treatment preferences predicted both outcome measures. Reliance on verbal reports of decision making may be misleading when assessing competence in acutely impaired psychiatric patients.