Procedural Justice in Majority–Minority Relations: Studies Involving Belgian Linguistic Groups

Two studies investigated perceptions of fairness of two modes of group representation in a political assembly. The numerical status of two Belgian linguistic groups (Dutch-speaking vs. French-speaking) was predicted to influence these perceptions: The minority finding equality fairer and proportionality less fair than the majority. These preferences were investigated at two levels of comparison, Belgium and Brussels, Dutch speakers being numerically a majority in Belgium and a minority in Brussels. The results of two studies (N = 52 and N = 127, respectively) revealed that the expected trend was present, especially at the level of Brussels. A third study (N = 103) suggested that minorities and majorities could be driven by different motives with trust in the out-group being a powerful predictor of minorities' choices, whereas group identification predicted majorities' preferences.     

Equity,relative deprivation,and the value consensus paradox

This paper addresses the question of why respondents, when asked to specify an income they would be willing to accept as just, settle for an amount that, in most case, does not deviate strongly from what they actually receive. The phenomenon is illustrated by data from West Germany. It is argued that relative deprivation theory must be extended to incorporate processes of social hierarchy perception because inasmuch as this perception is contorted it creates illusory justice evaluations. Empirical evidence of misperceiving social distributions is given by social grading studies based on large German samples. The structural causes of the distributional misperceptions are discussed, one of these causes being the value consensus paradox, i.e., the paradox that, in a stratified society, value consensus will produce different social perceptions.     

Social control theory: The salience of components by age,gender, and type of crime

Most social control theorists do not consider definitions of delinquency problematic. Beginning with the assumption that crime is a unitary concept, researchers have combined a variety of non-normative items to create additive delinquency scales. Rarely is consideration given to whether the causes of crime differ for distinct types of criminal activity. Furthermore, the classic social control model doesnot predict that bonding variables operate differently for distinct age and gender categories. Consistent with the structuring perspective, the present research attempts to refine the social control model by specifying conditions under which the model predicts different forms of delinquency. This study examines social control theory using survey data from middle- and high-school students (N=2926). Logit regression analysis revealed that the model which best explains personal crime differs from the model which best explains property crime. Also, certain components of the model were more powerful predictors of criminal behavior for different age-gender groups. The importance of model specification is demonstrated and the implications for social control theory are discussed.     

Freedom of Religion and Minority Religions in Hungary

Religiosity in Hungary is not especially high; however, the vast majority of the population has a denominational identity. There has been a religious revival since the early 1980's, both in the mainstream churches and due to some religious groups newly active in the country. Religious claims are mostly accommodated on an individual basis. Legal entities called churches can be founded for the purpose of exercising religion, but the registration of a church is not a condition of the free exercise of religion. Religious freedom is guaranteed by the Constitution. The Hungarian state regards itself neutral in matters concerning ideology and religion. Church and state operate separately. The state, however, appreciating religious phenomena, provides support for churches and is open for cooperation with them on a sophisticated legal basis. A new method of offering state support for religions using taxpayer choices is described, which shows some interesting patterns of support for minority faiths as well as traditional ones.     

The dynamite charge

When juries report they are deadlocked, judges may deliver a supplemental instruction known as thedynamite charge which urges jurors to reexamine their views in an effort to reach a unamimous verdict. To examine the impact of this instruction, 72 mock jurors were led to believe they were participating in a controlled deliberation by voting and passing notes. Subjects were randomly assigned to the majority or minority faction of a 3-to-1 split. After the third round of deliberation, half the subjects received the dynamite charge, half did not. Results provided support for the hypothesis that the dynamite charge causes jurors in the minority to feel coerced and to change their votes and encourages those in the majority to exert increasing amounts of social pressure. These findings are discussed for their practical implications, limitations, and directions for further research.We would like to thank Rebecca Buchanan and Craig Gangi for their role as experimenters in a pilot study.     

The Penalisation of Poverty and the rise of Neo-Liberalism

This article explicates and extends the analyses put forth by the author in his book, Prisons of Poverty, which argues that the generalised increase of carceral populations in advanced societies is due to the growing use of the penal system as an instrument for managing social insecurity and containing the social disorders created at the bottom of the class structure by neo-liberal policies of economic deregulation and social-welfare retrenchment. It retraces the steps whereby this neo-liberal penality was elaborated in the United States and then diffused throughout the world, but contends that European countries are not blindly following the American road to mass imprisonment: Europe's path to the penal state entails the conjoint intensification of both social and penal treatments of poverty and the activation of the policing functions of welfare services leading to a form of social panoptism. Only the building of a Europe-wide social state can check the spread of the penalisation of poverty and its deleterious social consequences.     

Distributive and procedural justice in the workplace

The interrelatedness of procedural and distributive justice has implications for organizational practice, especially in the area of performance appraisal. I explore these implications by first describing how procedures can influence perceptions of distributive justice: Procedural improprieties can bring to mind the possibility that a more just outcome might have been obtained if only more acceptable practices had been followed. Next I discuss a second form of interrelatedness — how distributive consequences can influence perceptions of procedural justice — by suggesting that the fairness of a procedure can be assessed in terms of its expected-value (typical or most probable) outcome. These points are illustrated by a discussion of howvoice, or the opportunity for employees to contribute information during the performance appraisal process, can affect both appraisal accuracy and perception of fairness.     

Cutting the Grass: A Reexamination of the Link between Marital Attachment,Delinquent Peers and Desistance from Marijuana Use

Recent work indicates that marriage contributes to desistance from crime. However, two prominent interpretations of this relationship have been offered. The first, rooted in informal control theory, suggests that the marriage effect is a direct result of social bonds that tend to accompany matrimony. The second contends that the effect is indirect and due to the impact of marriage on patterns of delinquent peer association. Using data from waves 5 and 6 of the National Youth Survey, this study re-analyzes these interpretations by examining the relationship between marital attachment, delinquent peer association and desistance from marijuana use. Although change in delinquent peer association is a powerful predictor of marijuana desistance, findings are also consistent with the control theory interpretation of the marriage effect. Implications and limitations of the current study are noted.A previous version of this paper was presented at the 2000 meeting of the American Society of Criminology in San Francisco, CA.     

Symbolism of the Spirit of the Laws: A Genealogical Excursus to Legal and Political Semiotics

The spirit of the laws is a symbol reflecting the ontological status and transcendental ideals of the system of positive law. The article analyses historical links between the romantic philosophy of the spirit of the nation (Volksgeist), which subsumed Montesquieu’s general spirit of the laws under the concept of ethnic culture, and recent politics of cultural and ethnic identity. Although criticising attempts at legalising ethnic collective identities, the article does not simply highlight the virtues of demos and the superiority of civic culture against the vices of ethnos and the regressive nature of ethnic politics of identity. Instead, the author argues that the civil democratic concept of political identity is part of the more general process of social differentiation: unlike the pre-political ethnic concept of identity, it can be converted to generalised democratic procedures and thus dismantle the totalitarian claims of cultural identity politics.

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Deviant identity,negative self-feelings,and decreases in deviant behavior: The moderating influence of conventional social bonding

Abstract

Informed by Kaplan's general theory of deviant behavior it was hypothesized that adolescents characterized by deviant identities who developed negative self-feelings would decrease deviant behavior over time if the youths were bonded to the conventional social order but not if the youths were not bonded to the conventional social order. For adolescents not characterized by deviant identities, the development of negative self-feelings would increase deviant behavior over time regardless of the level of conventional social bonding.

The hypotheses were explored using data from youth (n=1019) tested during early adolescence and re-tested 3 years later. Ordinary least square regression models estimated the effects of negative self-feelings on later deviant behaviors controlling for earlier deviant behavior, gender, race/ethnicity, and father's education. The model was estimated separately for each of four subgroups: deviant identity/high social bonding; deviant identity/low social bonding; non-deviant identity/high social bonding; and non-deviant identity/low social bonding.

As hypothesized, negative self-feelings anticipated significant decreases in deviant behavior for the deviant identity/high social bonding group, but were unrelated to deviant behavior in the deviant identity/low social bonding group; and negative self-feelings anticipated increased deviant behavior in the two non-deviant identity groups regardless of the level of social bonding.     

基于社会资本提升领导者权力性影响力的探讨

领导者权力性影响力是领导者有效管理组织的必要条件，因此，如何提升领导者的权力性影响力是一个值得我们研究的课题。近年来．随着竞争的不断加剧和环境不确定性的增加，社会资本在领导者有效管理组织中日益凸显其独特魅力.本文通过对领导者社会资本影响力的获取与权力性影响力之间关系的分析．认为领导者对社会资本的占有是提升其权力性影响力的重要途径．提出了领导者获得社会资本并借此提升其权力性影响力的建议．希望对领导者有效管理组织有所裨益.     

Explaining Majority and Minority Trust in the Police

This article tests the contribution that social capital theory, performance theory, and the procedural justice-based model can make towards explaining the trust of majority and minority group members in the police. The central research questions are: (1) do the same factors determine their levels of trust? and (2) are the effects parallel? To answer these questions, we carried out regression analyses on data collected from majority and minority group members living in Belgium (960 face-to-face interviews). The results show that, although the three theories offer explanatory elements for members of both majority and minority groups, the explanation of their trust in the police is not identical. Implications for research and theorization are discussed.     

Perfect justice procedures

Perfect justice procedures are such that rule out envy. At the core of such procedures lies the divide-and-choose procedure (one divides, the other chooses), which guarantees that individuals be satisfied with outcomes. The divide-and-choose principle is extended here ton individuals, to the sharing of nondividable goods, to job allocation, and to social satisfaction. The introduction of this principle into social psychology and sociology is proposed, and a comparison between equity and satisfaction is outlined.     

The Patterns of Masculinity in Prison

A prison culture of masculinity shapes the prison macho – boys dont cry. The prison macho is a real man who always hides his feelings and performs like a tough guy. These characteristics are much different from what happens in everyday life in the social spheres, where human being needs to be loved, need concerns and compassion from others and express these to others as well. In the current study, there is a recognition of a multiplicity of masculinities and an emphasis on how subjects are continually constituting and constructing their identity. Based on qualitative research, this study analyzes the patterns of masculinity embedded in the daily code of conduct used by prison staff to deal with prisoners and by prisoners to interact with other inmates and constitute their subculture. The investigation of prison sociology in the constitution of masculinity discourses in Tainan Prison contributes to both gender studies and to the literature exploring differences between western and eastern perspectives and policies related to incarceration.     

The Evolving Structure of the Environmental Justice Movement in the United States: New Models for Democratic Decision-Making

Over the last two decades in the United States, mainstream environmental organizations have reduced, rather than increased, democratic participation by citizens in environmental problem-solving. The environmental justice movement, on the other hand, has served to enlarge the constituency of the environmental movement by incorporating poorer communities and oppressed people of color into environmental decision making process; build community capacity by developing campaigns and projects that address the common links between various social and environmental problems; and facilitate community empowerment by emphasizing grassroots organizing over advocacy. This paper outlines the different components in the environmental justice movement. It is our contention that if researchers and policymakers continue to conceive of the ecological crisis as a collection of unrelated problems, then it is possible that some combination of regulations, incentives, and technical innovations can keep pollution and resource destruction at tolerable levels for more affluent socioeconomic populations. However, poor working class communities and people of color which lack the political–economic resources to defend themselves will continue to suffer the worst abuses. However, if the interdependency of issues is emphasized as advocated by the environmental justice movement, then a transformative environmental politics can be invented.     

How Self-Relevant is Fair Treatment? Social Self-Esteem Moderates Interactional Justice Effects

An organizational field study examined the extent to which fair treatment influences organizational commitment was a function of employees levels of social self-esteem. Following recent research indicating that self-esteem acts as a moderator of procedural fairness effects, we suggested that to examine the relational assumption that self and procedures are related, one should assess the social dimension of self-esteem. In line with predictions, the results indeed showed that fair treatment (assessed by an interactional justice scale) positively influences affective commitment, but only when employees have low social self-esteem. These findings are discussed in light of research on relational models of justice and sociometer theory.     

The Social Construction of Illegality and Criminality

In this article illegal immigrants, a relatively new group of immigrants living at the margins of society, are discussed. The question of the significance of crime for groups that are officially excluded from the formal labour market and public provisions, is presented within the framework of the Unknown City research project, conducted in the four largest Dutch cities (interviews with illegal immigrants; an ethnographic study to determine the extent of support by various ethnic communities; and an examination of the ways in which the restrictive policies towards illegal immigrants were implemented by the police, the Aliens Departments, and by professionals within public or semi-public institutions in the fields of education, healthcare and housing). Both the relatively limited involvement in crime in general and the differences between groups can be explained by the embeddedness of illegal immigrants in the labour sphere and the support by ethnic communities. Attention is paid to the social and legal construction of the illegal immigrant through new legislation and to the observation that illegality is increasingly linked to crime. The majority of illegal immigrants are not criminally active. One exception is the category that is active in the lower levels of the hard drug trade. The authors' analysis suggests that the perception of the criminal illegal immigrant first and foremost reflects the division between wanted and unwanted immigrants, which is the result of the shift towards a restrictive policy.     

Intent and Ordinary Bias: Unintended Thought and Social Motivation Create Casual Prejudice

Social psychologists have addressed stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination for nearly a century. Everyday prejudices first seemed to lodge in abnormal personalities, pathological bigots who were exceptional (bad apples), but Freudian explanations proved inadequate. Purely cognitive explanations took their place, arguing that bias inevitably results from normal processes of categorization and association, often automatic. But this so-called cognitive miser account denies the role of intent, which does influence the activation and use of stereotypes and prejudices. People are more realistically motivated tacticians who display more cognitive bias under particular social motivations. The author's continuum of impression formation, proceeding from initial categorization to possible moderation by motives, illustrates this view. Plausible social motives include belonging, understanding, controlling, self-enhancing, and trusting, all known to influence ordinary bias. Social neuroscience is beginning to show that motivation and cognition mix at the earliest stages of ordinary bias.     

Considering the Tower of Babel: Correlates of Assimilation and Multiculturalism among Ethnic Minority and Majority Groups in the United States

Survey data collected from multiethnic samples of geographically dispersed college students and a national probability sample of US adults were utilized to examine the correlates of support for multiculturalism and assimilation—two competing interethnic ideologies, or ideals for how an ethnically diverse society should optimally function. Endorsement of multiculturalism and assimilation was related to perceived ethnic group differences, intergroup bias, and voting behavior on a number of public policies, but in opposite directions. Relative to white participants, ethnic minority participants endorsed multiculturalism to a greater extent, reported higher levels of group identification, and were more likely to support pro-diversity public policies. Discussion focuses on explanations for the variety of observed differences between ethnic minority and majority respondents, on the meaning of assimilation and multiculturalism, and on the argument that harmony between ethnic groups and dissimilarity between ethnic groups need not be thought of as mutually exclusive.

European criminal law and European identity

This contribution aims to explain how European Criminal Law can be understood as constitutive of European identity. Instead of starting from European identity as a given, it provides a philosophical analysis of the construction of self-identity in relation to criminal law and legal tradition. The argument will be that the self-identity of those that share jurisdiction depends on and nourishes the legal tradition they adhere to and develop, while criminal jurisdiction is of crucial importance in this process of mutual constitution. This analysis will be complemented with a discussion of the integration of the first and the third pillar as aimed for by the Constitutional Treaty (TE), which would bring criminal law under majority rule and European democratic control. Attention will be paid to two ground breaking judgements of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) that seem to boil down to the fact that the Court actually manages to achieve some of the objectives of the CT even if this is not in force. This gives rise to a discussion of how the CT (and related judgements of the ECJ) may transform European criminal law in the Union to EU criminal law of the Union, thus producing an identity of the Union next to the identities prevalent in the Union. The contribution concludes with some normative questions about the kind of European identity we should aim to establish, given the fact that such identity will arise with further integration of criminal law into the first pillar.