Christianity and punitive mentalities: A qualitative study

According to David Garland (1990) scholars should be concerned about the cultural foundations of punishment in modern western society, such as religion. To this end, Garland conceptualizes punitive mentalities and sensibilities that provide the cultural support for structural systems ofpunishment. Punitive mentalities are ways of thinking about punishment, whereas punitive sensibilities are ways of feeling about punishment. Garlandsuggests that religious traditions are an important source of punitive mentalities and sensibilities. This research is an empirical analysis ofpunitive mentalities and their cultural roots, using qualitative research.Research questions focus on the following: Are there distinctively punitivementalities? How do punitive mentalities influence the desire for officialpunishment? Data from a previous study (Cook, 1998a) are analyzed here to explore terrains of punitive mentalities within the contexts of Christianity.Findings identify four distinct categories: anti-punitive, non-punitive,retributive and vengeful mentalities where Christian (non)belief systemsare important cornerstones. Respondents in each group have specific desires regarding the state's use of punishments, especially the ``death penalty''.     

Project USA: American competitiveness and what must be done to restore it

The United States today faces a loss of influence as a world power, a reduction in American independence as a policymaker, and a decline in the standard of living on which Americans have come to depend. History teaches that nations weaker and less productive than the United States can rise to become economic powerhouses and rapidly increase their standards of living. History also teaches that nations failing to recognize their fundamental problems will inevitably decline. American politicians must face what is abundantly clear: the United States is losing ground and must act quickly to reverse its course. This White Paper outlines what must be done. Information about the nation's current status must be analyzed and communicated. Incentives to improve the level of competence in government must be provided and maintained. The emphasis of government policy must be changed to reflect broad economic and technological interests as opposed to special interests. Savings must be encouraged and increased. Infrastructure must be improved Tax laws must be modified to help bring these changes about. Economic and technological issues must be elevated to the importance they require. American thinking must reflect the new realities: that the age of leadership through military power is over, that the requirements for success in the world of the 1990s and beyond require a sound and growing economy that is internationally competitive. The US can accomplish these goals only through foundation-shaking, comprehensive, fundamental changealong the lines we propose herein.This paper is the executive summary (with minor editing modifications) of a white paper that is available from Cornell University's Johnson Graduate School of Management.     

Reviews

Anders Aslund, How Russia Became a Market Economy. Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 1995, xviii + 378 pp., £25.75/£9.95.

Boris Kagarlitsky, Restoration in Russia: Why Capitalism Failed. London: Verso, 1995, 172 pp., £39.95/£11.95.

Simon Clarke (ed.), Management and Industry in Russia: Formal and Informal Relations in the Period of Transition. Aldershot: Edward Elgar, 1995, xii + 244 pp. £45.00.

Jan Adam, Why Did the Socialist System Collapse in Central and Eastern European Countries? The Case of Poland, the Former Czechoslovakia and Hungary. London: Macmillan, 1996, xii + 244 pp., £40.00.

? Bogeti? & Arye L. Hillman (eds), Financing Government in the Transition: Bulgaria. The Political Economy of Tax Policies, Tax Bases, and Tax Evasion. Washington, DC: The World Bank, 1995, xv + 254 pp., £19.95.

Vladimir Tismaneanu (ed.), Political Culture and Civil Society in Russia and the New States of Eurasia. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1995, xiii + 384 pp., $22.95.

Alexander Maksimovich Yakovlev, Striving for Law in a Lawless Land—Memoirs of a Russian Reformer. New York: M. E. Sharpe, 1996, xvi + 237 pp., $62.95.

Tuomas Forsberg (ed.), Contested Territory: Border Disputes at the Edge of the Former Soviet Empire. Aldershot: Edward Elgar, 1995, xi + 267 pp., £45.00.

Graham Smith (ed.), The Nationalities Question in the Post‐Soviet States. London: Longman, 1996, xiv + 524 pp.

Aleksandr’ G. Savel'yev & Nikolai N. Detinov, The Big Five: Arms Control Decision‐making in the Soviet Union. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1995, xiv + 204 pp., £47.95.

Keith L. Nelson, The Making of Detente: Soviet‐American Relations in the Shadow of Vietnam, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995, xvii + 217pp., £29.00.

George Ginsburgs, Alvin Z. Rubinstein & Oles M. Smolansky (eds), Russia and America: From Rivalry to Reconciliation, New York: M. Sharpe, 1993, xi + 353 pp.

Diego Cordovez & Selig S. Harrison, Out of Afghanistan: The Inside Story of the Soviet Withdrawal. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995, ix + 450 pp., $35.00.

Andrei S. Grachev, Final Days. The Inside Story of the Collapse of the Soviet Union. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1995, xviii + 222 pp., £22.50.

Ilya Prizel & Andrew A. Michta (eds), Polish Foreign Policy Reconsidered. Challenges of Independence. Basingstoke, Macmillan, 1995, xiii + 174 pp., £25.00.

James Riordan, Christopher Williams & Igor Uynsky (eds), Young People in Post‐Communist Russia and Eastern Europe. Aldershot: Dartmouth, 1995, xvi + 215 pp., £39.50.

James von Geldern & Richard Stites (eds), Mass Culture in Soviet Russia: Tales, Poems, Songs, Movies, Plays and Folklore 1917–1953. Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press, 1995, xxix + 492 pp., £39.50 h/b, £19.50 p/b.

Katerina Clark, Petersburg, Crucible of Cultural Revolution. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995, xii + 377 pp., £25.50.

Anna Feldman Leibovich, The Russian Concept of Work: Suffering, Drama, and Tradition in Pre‐ and Post‐Revolutionary Russia. Westport, CT and London: Praeger, xv + 166 pp., £44.95.

R. Antony French. Plans, Pragmatism & People. The Legacy of Soviet Planning for Today's Cities. London: UCL Press, 1995, xi + 233 pp.

Roger Brunet, Denis Eckert & Vladimir Kolossov, Atlas de la Russie et des pays proches. Montpellier‐Paris: Reclus‐La Documentation Franchise, 1995, 208 pp., 220Ff.

Bruce Grant, In the Soviet House of Culture: A Century of Perestroikas. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995, xvii + 225 pp., £12.00.

Michael Bourdeaux (ed.), The Politics of Religion in Russia and the New States of Eurasia, The International Politics of Eurasia, Volume 3. Armonk, NY and London: M.E. Sharpe, 1995, xiv + 321 pp., $49.95 h/b, $19.95p/b.     

Abortion laws in African Commonwealth countries

This paper provides an overview of the range of current (1981) abortion laws in the African Commonwealth countries, traces the origins of the laws to their colonial predecessors, and discusses legal reform that would positively provide for legal termination of pregnancy. The authors claim that the range of these laws demonstrates an evolution that leads from customary/common law (Lesotho and Swaziland) to basic law (Botswana, The Gambia, Malawi, Mauritius, Nigeria's Northern States and Seychelles) to developed law (Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria's Southern States, Sierra Leone, and Uganda), and, finally, to advanced law (Zambia and Zimbabwe). The authors call for treating abortion as an issue of health and welfare as opposed to one of crime and punishment. Since most of the basic law de jure is treated and administered as developed law de facto, the authors suggest decriminalizing abortion and propose ways in which to reform the law: clarifying existing law; liberalizing existing law to allow abortion based upon certain indications; limiting/removing women's criminal liability for seeking an abortion; allowing hindsight contraception; protecting providers treating women in good faith; publishing recommended fees for services to protect poor women; protecting providers who treat women with incomplete abortion; and punishing providers who fail to provide care to women in need, with the exception of those seeking protection under a conscience clause. The authors also suggest clarifying the means by which health services involving pregnancy termination may be delivered, including: clarification of the qualifications of practitioners who may treat women; specification of the facilities that may treat women, perhaps broken down by gestational duration of the pregnancy; specifying gestational limits during which the procedure can be performed; clarifying approval procedures and consents; and allowing for conscientious objections to performing the procedure.     

Three conditions under which experiments and observational studies produce comparable causal estimates: New findings from within‐study comparisons

This paper analyzes 12 recent within‐study comparisons contrasting causal estimates from a randomized experiment with those from an observational study sharing the same treatment group. The aim is to test whether different causal estimates result when a counterfactual group is formed, either with or without random assignment, and when statistical adjustments for selection are made in the group from which random assignment is absent. We identify three studies comparing experiments and regression‐discontinuity (RD) studies. They produce quite comparable causal estimates at points around the RD cutoff. We identify three other studies where the quasi‐experiment involves careful intact group matching on the pretest. Despite the logical possibility of hidden bias in this instance, all three cases also reproduce their experimental estimates, especially if the match is geographically local. We then identify two studies where the treatment and nonrandomized comparison groups manifestly differ at pretest but where the selection process into treatment is completely or very plausibly known. Here too, experimental results are recreated. Two of the remaining studies result in correspondent experimental and nonexperimental results under some circumstances but not others, while two others produce different experimental and nonexperimental estimates, though in each case the observational study was poorly designed and analyzed. Such evidence is more promising than what was achieved in past within‐study comparisons, most involving job training. Reasons for this difference are discussed. © 2008 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

Gender and Evidence in Family Law Reform: A Case Study of Quantification and Anecdote in Framing and Legitimising the ‘Problems’ with Child Support in Australia

Despite claims of ‘evidence based policy’, the place of empirical evidence in family law reform is ambiguous. There is ongoing socio-legal analysis of the differential value and uses of quantitative data and anecdote in detailing women’s experiences and advocating for change. In this paper, we engage with these issues through a focus on how data were constructed in a key government report, Every Picture Tells a Story, which was used to officially define the problem and outline recommendations in the controversial 2006-08 reform of the Australian Child Support Scheme. Our discussion focuses on two questions: what legitimacy is accorded to different kinds of evidence in family law reform processes?; and, how is this legitimacy gendered? We applied feminist critical discourse analysis to the type, source and claims of the data included in the child support chapter of the report. Our findings indicate that both quantitative data and anecdote were used to privilege fathers’ financial interests and autonomy; in contrast, women’s voices and interests were marginalised. Thus, we argue the legitimacy of data is ascribed through its relationship to the gendered definition of the ‘problems’ of child support, rather than the type of data per se.     

Individual Differences in Adolescents’ Emotional Reactivity across Relationship Contexts

Understanding individual differences in adolescents’ ability to regulate emotions within interpersonal relationships is paramount for healthy development. Thus, the effect of individual vulnerabilities (depressive affect, social anxiety, self-blame, and coping efficacy problems) on the transmission of emotional reactivity in response to conflict from family to peers (friends and romantic partners) was prospectively examined across six waves of data in a community-based sample of 416 adolescents (M_age Wave 1?=?11.90, 51% girls). Multiple-group models estimated in structural equation modeling suggested that youth who were higher in social anxiety or coping efficacy problems were more likely to transmit emotional reactivity developed in the family-of-origin to emotional reactivity in response to conflict in close friendships. Additionally, those youth higher in self-blame and depressive affect were more likely to transmit emotional reactivity from friendships to romantic relationships.     

Parents and Peers as Social Influences to Deter Antisocial Behavior

Growth curve analyses were used to investigate parents’ and peers’ influence on adolescents’ choice to abstain from antisocial behavior in a community-based sample of 416 early adolescents living in the Southeastern United States. Participants were primarily European American (91%) and 51% were girls. Both parents and peers were important influences on the choice to abstain from antisocial behavior. Over the four-year period adolescents relied increasingly on parents as influences and relied less on peers as influences to deter antisocial behavior. Significant gender differences emerged and suggested that female adolescents relied more on social influences than did male adolescents but that as time progressed male adolescents increased the rate at which they relied on peers. Higher family income was associated with choosing peers as a social influence at wave 1, but no other significant income associations were found. Understanding influences on adolescents’ abstinence choices is important for preventing antisocial behavior.

Perceptions of Problem Behavior in Adolescents’ Families: Perceiver,Target, and Family Effects

Considerable research has focused on the reliability and validity of informant reports of family behavior, especially maternal reports of adolescent problem behavior. None of these studies, however, has based their orientation on a theoretical model of interpersonal perception. In this study we used the social relations model (SRM) to examine family members’ reports of each others’ externalizing and internalizing problem behavior. Two parents and two adolescents in 69 families rated each others’ behavior within a round-robin design. SRM analysis showed that within-family perceptions of externalizing and internalizing behaviors are consistently due to three sources of variance; perceiver, target, and family effects. A family/contextual effect on informant reports of problem behavior has not been previously reported.