COMMUNITY ACCOUNTABILITY,MINORITY THREAT,AND POLICE BRUTALITY: AN EXAMINATION OF CIVIL RIGHTS CRIMINAL COMPLAINTS*

A growing body of evidence shows that minorities are disproportionately the targets of police brutality, but important theoretical questions about the causes of that inequity remain unanswered. One promising line of research involves structural‐level analyses of the incidence of police brutality complaints; however, existing studies do not incorporate variables from alternative theoretical explanations. Drawing on the community accountability hypothesis and the threat hypothesis, we tested the predictions of two prominent structural‐level explanations of police brutality in a study of civil rights criminal complaints. The study included cities of 150,000+ population (n = 114). The findings reveal that two community accountability variables—ratio percent Hispanic citizens to percent Hispanic police officers and the presence of citizen review—were related positively to police brutality complaints, partially supporting that perspective. Two threat hypothesis measures of threatening people—percent black and percent Hispanic (in the Southwest)—were related positively to complaints, as predicted. The relative degree of support for the two hypotheses is assessed.     

Judicial Procedures as Instruments of Political Control: Congress's Strategic Use of Citizen Suits

Citizen suit provisions, which give proregulatory interests access to the federal courts, can be used by Congress to increase the courts' role in regulatory policy. I analyze 284 environmental regulation bills reported favorably out of committee and show that committee support for citizen suits is a function of the committee's policy goals and the political context in which the bills are generated. These findings indicate that Congress deliberately uses judicial procedures as instruments of political control and that scholars examining judicial policymaking must include legislative goals in the list of explanatory factors.     

Chinese Oppression in Xinjiang,Middle Eastern Conflicts and Global Islamic Solidarities among the Uyghurs

Individuals in Xinjiang are not merely passive recipients of state representations and policies; they are also agents capable of finding subtle means of self-representation. These symbolic oppositions are necessarily fluid: they emerge, adapt and disappear in response to the changing political environment. Currently, some individuals are demonstrating symbolic resistance to the state through the vehicle of Islam itself: a return to the mosque and orthodox religious practice. This article explores the nature and source of the current Islamic renewal in Xinjiang, conceived (though not exclusively) as a vehicle of symbolic opposition to perceived Muslim oppression at national and global levels. In discussing the international dimension, I explore the role played by imported Islamic materials, pilgrimage, study abroad, and, above all, the national and global mass media.     

Books: International Relations

D. Allen and A. Pijpers (eds), European Foreign Policy-Making and the Arab-Israeli Conflict (Dordrecht, Martinus Nijhoff, 1984)
Sydney D. Bailey (ed.), The Making of Resolution 242 (Dordrecht, Martinus Nijhoff, 1985
David Howard Bain, Sitting in Darkness, Americans in the Philippines (Boston, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1984
C. Coker, The Future of the Atlantic Alliance (London, Macmillan, with the Royal United Services Institute, 1985)
C. Rose, Campaigns Against Western Defence (London, Macmillan, with the Royal United Services Institute, 1985)
G. R. Berridge and A. Jennings (eds), Diplomacy at the UN (London, Macmillan, 1958)
John Burton, Global Conflict: The Domestic Sources of International Crisis (Brighton, Wheatsheaf Books for The Center for International Development, University of Maryland, 1984)
B. J. C. Kercher and D. J. Moss (eds), Shadow and Substance in British Foreign Policy 1895–1939 (Edmonton, University of Alberta Press, 1984)
D. Holloway and J. M. 0. Sharp (eds), The Warsaw Pact (London, Macmillan, 1984)
W. R. Louis, The British Empire in the Middle East 1945–1951: Arab Nationalism, The United States, and Postwar Imperialism (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1984)
Brian Murphy, The World Wired Up: Unscrambling the New Communications Puzzle (London, Comedia, 1983)
Steve Smith (ed.), International Relations: British and American Perspectives (Oxford, Basil Blackwell, in association with the British International Studies Association, 1985)
I. Wallerstein, The Politics of the World Economy (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1984)     

Tribute to Richard E. Zody

Public budgeting is multifaceted. It draws from areas of study and practice ranging from management to administration to planning. Guided by analysis—enhanced by computational and technical advances—and political systems, it overlays the public sector at every level of government, including local, state, national, and international. It is also the domain of both academics and practitioners. This tribute honors Richard E. Zody by focusing on the multifaceted nature of public budgeting to reflect the career of a man committed to many of these dimensions. The central focus of his career was on improving public budgetary and management systems, and in doing so, he deftly drew from the many dimensions of budgeting. Dick demonstrated in his study, writing, teaching, and application an intellectual interest in two particular themes: the relationship between academics and practitioners; and budgeting and management, which includes the use of analytical skill and strategic planning. Through these interests, Dick impacted many lives.     

Some Varieties of Linguistic Argumentation

The maxim to understand the law literally (Montesquieu, Voltaire) resembles Holmes' Plain Meaning Approach. But these approaches should not be considered as the expression of a naïve legal epistemology. They rather stress that the law ought to be interpreted as it is understood by the prudent citizen. In this way, the ideal of the rule of law is best guaranteed.     

TERRORISM,POLITICS, AND PUNISHMENT: A TEST OF STRUCTURAL-CONTEXTUAL THEORY AND THE “LIBERATION HYPOTHESIS”*

The sentencing literature generally has been characterized by an inability to explain Significant amounts of the variance in sentencing outcomes. Two major theoretical explanations have addressed this issue: structural-contextual theory and the “liberation hypothesis.” Structural-contextual theory suggests that the components of the justice system traditionally work somewhat independently of one another. This theory suggests that variance explained in sentence outcomes will increase appreciably when components function with greater interdependence—a so-called “tightening” or “coupling” effect. Such tightening supposedly takes place when particular cases are given high priority for investigation and prosecution. An example of this situation might be domestic terrorism. The liberation hypothesis suggests that the greater the severity of an offense, the less likely judges or juries will feel free to follow their own sentiments regarding guilt and punishment. As a consequence, the ability of legal variables to predict variation in sentence length will be greater as crime severity increases. This study compares a sample of officially designated terrorists matched with nonterrorists convicted of the same federal offenses. OLS regression and structural equation modeling procedures are used to compare the levels of explained variance for the two groups. The results indicate strong support for the basic premises of both theories. Explained variance for the terrorist sample is more than four times greater than the explained variance for the nonterrorist sample. Further analysis shows that explained variance is highest for terrorists who have committed a high-severity offense and lowest for nonterrorists who have committed a low-severity offense. The subsequent addition of other predictor variables available only for the terrorist sample further increases the explained variance and provides additional support for the liberation hypothesis.