An important failure: knowledge limits and the financial crisis

Abstract

This paper introduces a theme section on knowledge limits in and after the financial crisis. It explores how and why practitioners have generally responded less conservatively to crisis than academics, and argues that academics within a variety of problematics could do more by reflecting critically on the heroic ideas about the role of knowledge which were current across the social sciences in the decade before the crisis. It then turns to introduce the section's papers before finally raising the possibility of a more explicitly political approach to understanding finance.     

Following the News? Reception of Uncivil Partisan Media and the Use of Incivility in Political Expression

Partisan, pundit-based media gets blamed for making political discourse more uncivil, and studies on incivility in mediated discourse have found that uncivil political media can induce negative reactions in audiences. However, how use of uncivil media affects the way individuals express their political views has yet to receive substantial scholarly attention. I hypothesize that tuning in to uncivil political media leads to an increased propensity to use incivility in textual political expression. I develop an index to identify incivility in political expressions, and test my hypothesis using panel data analysis and an open-ended survey item in the 2008 National Annenberg Election Survey. I find that, consistent with my hypothesis, use of uncivil media—specifically pundit cable news and political talk radio—leads to an increased use of incivility when expressing text-based political opinions. Furthermore, this only occurs with reception of like-minded uncivil political media. I note the implications this has for online political discourse and effective deliberation.     

Eating Peas with One’s Fingers: A Semiotic Approach to Law and Social Norms

This paper proposes a semiotic theory of norms—what I term normative semiotics. The paper’s central contention is that social norms are a language. Moreover, it is a language that we instinctively learn to speak. Normative behaviour is a mode of communication, the intelligibility of which allows us to establish cooperative relationships with others. Normative behaviour communicates an actor’s potential as a cooperative partner. Compliance with a norm is an act of communication: compliance signals cooperativeness; noncompliance signals uncooperativeness. An evolutionary model is proposed to explain how this comes about: evolution has generated an instinctual proficiency in working with these signals much like a language—a proficiency that manifests in an emotional context. We see these social rules as possessing a certain ‘rightness’ in normative terms. This adaptive trait is what we call internalization. Internalization enhances the individual’s ability to speak this code. Because these signals communicate who is and who is not a reliable co-operator, sending and receiving cooperation signals is crucial to individual survival. Individuals who internalized the entire process and thus became more adept at speaking the language were at an advantage. Law seeks to shape the language of norms by maintaining the collective standards of society; as such, understanding how and why this normative language emerges is critical to understanding a core function of law.     

Mobilizing Law in Latin America: An Evaluation of Black's Theory in Brazil

This research addresses two separate but related questions. First, to what extent are sociological theories proposed to explain legal behavior in Western societies applicable to non‐Western contexts? And second, to what degree is Black's theory of law generalizable, as he contends, “across time and space?” Our research merges these questions by exploring the applicability of Black's theory in a Latin American context. Data collected from a nationally representative survey in Brazil suggest support for Black's propositions regarding the impact of vertical, horizontal, cultural, and normative status on the likelihood of mobilizing the law, as well as the feasibility of using his framework for understanding legal behavior in non‐Western settings. Our discussion considers implications and directions for future analyses in both the Brazilian and cross‐cultural contexts.     

Governing the restoration of civil rights for ex-felons: an evaluation of the Executive Clemency Board in Florida

In Florida, when someone is adjudicated guilty of a felony crime, they lose the right to vote. The only way to regain these rights is to go through the process of rights restoration. The civil rights restoration hearings in Florida have the potential to serve as a formal ceremony in which individuals are acknowledged for their recovery from crime and readmitted into the political community. Data from the Governor’s office, observations of the Executive Clemency Board, and interviews with ex-offenders who have experience with the restoration process, were evaluated to determine the impact these hearings have for ex-offenders’ reintegration. Results suggest that the low success rate, cumbersome process, and lengthy amount of time required may all serve to further alienate the many applicants who are rejected, impeding their reintegration into the community. Recommendations to either simplify the process of rights restoration or to remove ex-felon disenfranchisement policies are given.     

Results from experimental trials testing participant responses to White, Hispanic and Black suspects in high-fidelity deadly force judgment and decision-making simulations

Objective

Advance the methodological techniques used to examine the influence of suspect race and ethnicity on participant decisions to shoot in an experimental setting.

Methods

After developing and testing a novel set of 60 realistic, high definition video deadly force scenarios based on 30 years of official data on officer-involved shootings in the United States, three separate experiments were conducted testing police (n?=?36), civilian (n=?72) and military (n?=?6) responses (n?=?1,812) to the scenarios in high-fidelity computerized training simulators. Participants’ responses to White, Black and Hispanic suspects in potentially deadly situations were analyzed using a multi-level mixed methods strategy. Key response variables were reaction time to shoot and shooting errors.

Results

In all three experiments using a more externally valid research method than previous studies, we found that participants took longer to shoot Black suspects than White or Hispanic suspects. In addition, where errors were made, participants across experiments were more likely to shoot unarmed White suspects than unarmed Black or Hispanic suspects, and were more likely to fail to shoot armed Black suspects than armed White or Hispanic suspects. In sum, this research found that participants displayed significant bias favoring Black suspects in their decisions to shoot.

Conclusions

The results of these three experiments challenge the results of less robust experimental designs and shed additional light on the broad issue of the role that status characteristics, such as race and ethnicity, play in the criminal justice system. Future research should explore the generalizability of these findings, determine whether bias favoring Black suspects is a consequence of administrative measures (e.g., education, training, policies, and laws), and identify the cognitive processes that underlie this phenomenon.     

Congressional dysfunction: An information processing perspective

The public's approval of Congress is at an all time low. The parties seem to have taken the legislative process hostage for their own electoral gain. Whereas traditional arguments about congressional dysfunction focus on polarized voting coalitions or outputs – particularly legislation – in this article we highlight congressional information processing and how it has changed in this highly partisan era. By coding congressional hearings according to the kind of information on which they focus, we find that members of Congress are receiving one‐sided information to a greater degree and are spending less time learning about potential solutions. We use these results to make numerous recommendations for improving how Congress gathers its information.     

The effect of the election of prosecutors on criminal trials

We examine whether elections of public prosecutors influence the mix of cases taken to trial versus plea bargained. A theoretical model is constructed wherein voters use outcomes of the criminal justice system as a signal of prosecutors’ quality, leading to a distortion in the mix of cases taken to trial. Using data from North Carolina we test whether reelection pressures lead to (a) an increase in the number and proportion of convictions from jury trials and (b) a decrease in the average sanction obtained in both jury trials and pleas. Our empirical findings are consistent with our theoretical predictions.