Repeated postevent questioning can lead to elevated levels of eyewitness confidence

Two experiments tested the proposition that postevent questioning can lead to later increases in witness confidence without corresponding changes in witness accuracy. After a staged interruption in a college classroom, participants were questioned about the event 5 times over 5 weeks in Experiment 1 (n=57) and 3 times over 5 days in Experiment 2 (n=79). During the final questioning session, the participant-witnesses consistently reported higher levels of confidence for those items that had been subject to repeated postevent questioning than for those items that were asked for the first time, yet there was no difference in the accuracy of the responses to the two sets of items. Additionally, in all conditions the participant-witnesses were generally overconfident in their responses. These results suggest that repeated postevent questioning can cause eyewitnesses' subsequent confidence estimates to be artificially inflated.     

Citizen Involvement and Performance Management in Special-Purpose Governments

Performance management and citizen participation are being used by local governments to improve government accountability and responsiveness. In some cases, local governments are integrating these two trends. One area of local government in which this trend has not been assessed is special districts. This paper uses data from a study of nine special districts in the state of Texas to fill this void. To assess citizen participation in performance management among the districts, we interviewed district managers, analyzed minutes from governing board meetings, and conducted citizen focus groups in three regions of the state. Our findings suggest that although districts may not yet be in tune with the latest performance management trends, they are making efforts to engage citizens in other ways. We recommend ways that districts can build on these experiences and more effectively incorporate citizens in the development, analysis, and reporting of performance measures.     

Systems Ideologies and Street-Level Bureaucrats: Policy Change and Perceptions of Quality in a Behavioral Health Care System

This article examines the stability of street-level bureaucrats' negative perceptions regarding a newly implemented managed care system on quality of care and service delivery in a publicly funded behavioral health care system. Overall findings indicate that the generally negative perception of managed care did not differ between staff in the two programs, indicating a weak effect on attitudes of frontline workers. More proximal variables to the caregiver, such as service type and job title, show more influence on attitudes. The conclusion discusses the implications of these findings for practicing administrators and academic researchers.     

Japan's United Nations Peacekeeping Dilemma

The Peacekeeping Operations (PKO) Law was passed in Japan in 1992, after much debate and controversy over the question of sending SDF troops on UN peacekeeping missions. The limits implicit in the "Five Principles" of that Law mean, however, the SDF cannot participate in UN PKO missions in any meaningful way. In this article, Kimberly Marten Zisk, Associate Professor at Barnard College, Columbia University, addresses the issues behind the arguments for and against a more active Japanese UN PKO participation. The strong antimilitarist sentiment which arose as a reaction to the specter of the Pacific War, and the fears of her neighbors, in addition to domestic political concerns, are all contributory factors to Japan's reluctance for a more active UN PKO role. Nevertheless, Zisk states that a s a "middle power" in international relations, and one that is very keen for a seat on the United Nations Permanent Security Council, it is puzzling that Japan should have placed so many restrictions on the SDF's PKO. She argues that for any comprehensive study of Japanese defense policy and PKO, the bureaucratic influences on peacekeeping policy should also be taken into account.     

Publishing while editor: Transparency and behaviour in public administration journals

Journal editors serve as gatekeepers of knowledge, a role critical to preserving the quality and standards of good research. Some scholars have questioned whether editors have taken advantage of their position to publish their own work. To understand the extent to which editors of public administration journals self-publish, we examined publishing patterns over a 20-year period. We collected the names of editors from the mastheads of 13 generalist public administration journals from 1997 to 2016 and used data indexed from Web of Science to look at articles published in those journals during the same time. We found that while self-publishing behaviour is not common across the entire field, it is a trend for certain journals and individuals. We also found the practice of self-publishing is influenced by whether an individual served in a primary editorial role (e.g., editor-in-chief), length of editorial service, and overall scholarly productivity. We discuss appropriateness and ethical implications of the practice.     

Reply to Critics

This article responds to the four contributors to the book symposium on Conscience and Conviction: The Case for Civil Disobedience. Those four contributors are Thomas Hill Jr, David Lefkowitz, William Smith, and Daniel Weinstock. Hill examines the concepts of conviction and conscience (Chapters 1 and 2); Smith discusses conviction and then analyses the right to civil disobedience and my humanistic arguments for it (Chapter 4); Weinstock explores democratic challenges for civil disobedience (Chapter 5); and Lefkowitz assesses the merits of a legal demands-of-conviction excuse for civil disobedience (Chapter 5). This ‘Reply to Critics’ addresses them in turn.     

The Prevalence of Paraphernalia Found at the Scene of Drug‐Related Deaths

Many illicit drugs involve the use of paraphernalia, and the presence of paraphernalia found at the scene of death may suggest that the death is drug‐related. Few sources of objective data are available regarding the prevalence of drug paraphernalia found at the scene of drug‐related deaths or the likelihood of a death with drug paraphernalia found at the scene to be drug‐related. This study reviews the deaths which were investigated by the Bexar County Medical Examiner's Office in an attempt to provide objective data. Over 4000 deaths with scene investigations were reviewed, and the presence of paraphernalia was found to be strongly associated with the death being drug‐related, heroin‐related, or cocaine‐related with the relative risk for each being 5.0, 15.4, and 6.6, respectively. This confirms that the presence of drug paraphernalia at the scene of death strongly suggests the death to be drug‐related and in particular heroin‐related.