Use of Force

This issue of Policing: A Journal of Policy and Practice, isdevoted principally to the use of force, a topic that has dominatedacademic debate and preoccupied practitioners. For academics,the question is: what distinguishes police officers and theorganisations in which they operate from others, particularlythose growing legions of private security operatives, un-swornpolice auxiliaries, and sundry officials with law enforcementpowers? The orthodox answer is that the police enjoy a ‘monopolyof legitimate force’ over their fellow citizens (a viewthat has its origins in the pioneering work of Bittner, 1970).That orthodoxy has increasingly been criticised in the faceof the obvious fact that bouncers, store detectives, securityguards of all kinds, and many others also exercise ‘legitimateforce’ in ejecting drunken customers from pubs and clubs,apprehending shoplifters, and defending     

Risk Management and Risk Avoidance in Agency Decision Making

Despite decades of efforts to enhance the public's role in bureaucratic decision making, citizens still tend to have little influence on the decisions that public managers make. Solutions often focus on the processes or structures of participation, but such changes may be of limited effectiveness if the structure is only part of the problem. Although much research has argued the normative justification for including the public, noting that frameworks that do not encourage genuine participation may diminish rather than enhance public influence, there has been less focus on how participants’ divergent frames of reference may also diminish the influence of public input. This research explores this gap from a risk management perspective, suggesting that public managers tend to view risk as something to be managed, whereas citizens tend to view risk as best avoided.     

The Politics of Perception: Use and Abuse of Transparency International's Approach to Measuring Corruption

The annual Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), published by Transparency International (TI), has had a pivotal role in focusing attention on corruption. Despite recent critiques of the CPI, it remains highly influential on research into the causes of corruption and is also extensively used to galvanise support for measures to fight corruption. In this article we explore the CPI in more depth in order to highlight how the index has been used for political ends which may not always turn out to be supportive of anti-corruption efforts. The argument is developed in four sections: in the first, we focus on Transparency International's definition of corruption, highlighting some conceptual difficulties with the approach adopted and its relationship to the promotion of 'good governance' as the principal means of combating corruption. In the second section, we outline some methodological difficulties in the design of the Corruption Perceptions Index. Although the CPI has been much criticised, we demonstrate in the third section that the index continues to exercise great influence both in academic research and in the politics of anti-corruption efforts, particularly as exercised by Transparency International itself. In the final section we argue that the CPI contributes to the risk of creating a 'corruption trap' in countries where corruption is deeply embedded, as development aid is increasingly made conditional on the implementation of reforms which are impossible to achieve without that aid.     

Diversionary Despots? Comparing Autocracies' Propensities to Use and to Benefit from Military Force

This article adds to recent research that has begun to systematically analyze the varied conflict propensities of autocracies. Using political incentive theory, we develop hypotheses on the diversionary proclivities of three distinct types of autocratic regimes that contradict conventional wisdom and the findings of recent empirical studies. To provide a full rendering of autocracies' diversionary tendencies, we test our hypotheses with Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) models that capture reciprocal relationships among external military force and four of its potential domestic causes from 1950 to 2005. Although our results provide only partial support for political incentive theory, they demonstrate the utility of using properly identified reciprocal models and of analyzing refined conceptualizations of autocratic regimes. We find that certain types of autocracies are more prone to use diversionary force and to benefit from it than others.     

风险感知对消费者网上购物行为的影响

消费者在网上购物过程中感知到各种风险,这些风险感知严重地影响了消费者的网上购物行为。主要从网络消费者的信息搜索行为、品牌选择行为和安全支付方式选择等方面研究风险感知对消费者网上购物行为的影响,从而提出降低消费者网上购物中风险感知的策略,进而帮助企业制定网上营销的策略,减少策略的盲目性和随意性,增强营销策略的针对性和有效性。     

The Use of Force in British Foreign Policy: From New Labour to the Coalition

This article studies the ideational underpinnings of the UK Coalition government's ‘liberal conservative’ foreign policy. It begins by suggesting that an Iraq‐centric account of Blair's foreign policy suggests a grand vision on the prime minister's part that was lacking from his earlier foreign policy adventures, which relied on a more conventional form of British statecraft. The second section contends that the Gordon Brown years 2007–10 and, since the end of New Labour, Coalition foreign policy, can be seen as a response both to the substance and style of Blair's highly personalised stewardship of foreign policy post‐9/11. The war on terror and the invasion of Iraq were accompanied by a seemingly open‐ended democracy promotion around the globe which was quite out of character with past British practice. The article argues, therefore, that under Brown and Cameron cautious pragmatism has tended to win out over the proclamation of grand strategic ambition.     

The Feedback Effects of Controversial Police Use of Force

Political Behavior - Controversial cases of police use of force against minority civilians have become a ubiquitous feature of news headlines, and videos of these interactions between citizens and...     

邻避风险认知偏差与沟通:社会判断理论的视角

社会判断理论认为邻避风险认知偏差源于周围环境的不确定性和个体理性与知识的有限性,不同利益相关者的风险认知参数不同——如权重、相关程度、函数关系、组合原则以及一致性等.分析这些参数,可以科学量化地表达认知偏差.利用棱镜模型对邻避风险认知的判断结果、判断原则和判断偏差等要素进行分析,从认知回馈角度出发,在主观合理的风险预期和客观公正的风险解释基础上进行平等互动的风险沟通,化解邻避风险认知偏差.     

Structural Change in U.S. Presidents' Use of Force

Has there been a structural change in the way U.S. presidents use force abroad since the nineteenth century? In this article, I investigate historical changes in the use of force by U.S. presidents using Bayesian changepoint analysis. In doing so, I present an integrated Bayesian approach for analyzing changepoint problems in a Poisson regression model. To find the nature of the breaks, I estimate parameters of the Poisson regression changepoint model using Chib's (1998) hidden Markov model algorithm and Frühwirth‐Schnatter and Wagner's (2006) data augmentation method. Then, I utilize transdimensional Markov chain Monte Carlo methods to detect the number of breaks. Analyzing yearly use of force data from 1890 to 1995, I find that, controlling for the effects of the Great Depression and the two world wars, the relationship between domestic conditions and the frequency of the use of force abroad fundamentally shifted in the 1940s.     

Taking Chances: Evaluating Risk as a Guide to Better Use of Best Practices

Recent attention to best practices has resulted in a complex array of terminology and a number of compendia of effective practices that may be daunting to public policy makers and administrators seeking solutions to important public problems. This study clarifies these distinctions and builds on them to create a decision tool that will help policy makers as they use best practice information in program adoption or development. Decision makers must know their goals in seeking out best practices. As they evaluate potential practices, they should consider not only the quality of available evidence of effectiveness but also the risk of harm to constituents and the cost per unit of benefit generated. The study applies the rubric to an emerging practice in support services for individuals with disabilities known as Cash and Counseling, demonstrating that the practice is low risk, cost neutral, and improves effectiveness and consumer satisfaction. The tool highlights the judgmental elements of concern in the decision process while providing a means to assess multiple decision dimensions in a coherent fashion.     

Entering the Arena? Gender and the Decision to Run for Office

A critical void in the research on women's underrepresentation in elective office is an analysis of the initial decision to run for office. Based on data from our Citizen Political Ambition Study, the first large-scale national survey of potential candidates, we examine the process by which women and men emerge as candidates for public office. We find that women who share the same personal characteristics and professional credentials as men express significantly lower levels of political ambition to hold elective office. Two factors explain this gender gap: first, women are far less likely than men to be encouraged to run for office; second, women are significantly less likely than men to view themselves as qualified to run. Our findings call into question the leading theoretical explanations for women's numeric underrepresentation and indicate that, because of vestiges of traditional sex-role socialization, prospects for gender parity in U.S. political institutions are less promising than conventional explanations suggest .     

公民参与:公共决策科学化民主化的必然选择

将公众参与和专家论证、政府决策结合起来 ,突出政府决策的公众参与性 ,是群众观点在决策领域的升华。扩大公民参与 ,是提高决策科学化、民主化的关键。目前 ,我国公民社会的参与程度还不高 ,在某种程度上还是在政府的动员下参与的。因此 ,我们应当从观念层面、技术层面、制度层面、公众利益表达等层面建立健全公民参与机制 ,切实维护公民参与的权利。     

政府决策与执行分离的价值分析与构想

政府决策与执行分离是政府职能转变的重要内容,保持政府决策与执行的适度分开,对于促进我国公共行政体制改革与政府体制创新具有十分重要的意义。本文主要针对政府决策与执行分离的特定内涵及其理论意义与实践价值作简要的分析,并结合我国的具体国情和公共管理实践,总结出在我国实现政府决策与执行职能适度分离的思路与构想。     

China and the world: Perception and analysis

Abstract

This paper considers whether China's images of itself may have influenced analyses of China from the outside, and thereby skewed understanding. A sense of Chineseness, of a culture and civilization which is somehow very different from any other, is a recurrent theme in China's history and in the history of Europe's direct contacts with China. Acceptance by Europeans of such images as true representations of China is itself a tradition which stretches back many centuries, and the sentiment of China's uniqueness often seems to have been drawn into contemporary studies of China.     

论领导者非权力性影响力的提高

领导者的非权力性影响力是取得领导效能的重要保证,是团结群众的重大力量,是验证领导者自身领导资格的重要标准.提高领导者非权力性影响力的主要对策是培养自己的高尚品德,树立优良作风,丰富知识,增长才能,锻炼坚强的意志,正确地认识他人,重视情感作用,陶冶性情.