Moral Leadership and Administrative Statesmanship: Safeguards of Democracy in a Constitutional Republic

The pursuit of the common good must be understood from the reality that governing is ugly. The ability to grapple with situations that are ambiguous requires administrators to be cognizant of action that might be suspect but necessary to accomplish the public interest. This often requires them to become active players. John Rohr postulates that the U.S. Supreme Court's standards of strict scrutiny is one approach that could be used to justify such action. Building on this line of thinking, the strict scrutiny test can be used as a guide to shape the constitutive character of administrative statesmanship while simultaneously restraining it. The ability to balance formative action and restraint provides a different dimension to an understanding of administrative statesmanship. Even though this process is not easy, it helps administrators refrain from going beyond the mark and enables them to act like statesmen in seemingly unresolvable situations.     

A Multiple Mediational Test of the Relationship Between Childhood Maltreatment and Non-suicidal Self-Injury

Post-traumatic stress symptoms, depressive symptoms, and psychological dysregulation have been shown to mediate the relationship between child maltreatment and non-suicidal self-injury. However, these proposed mediators often co-occur and previous research has not tested mediation when all variables are assessed simultaneously. The current study sought to advance the literature on maltreatment and self-injury by estimating the mediational effects of post-traumatic stress symptoms, depressive symptoms, and psychological dysregulation in the same multiple mediator model. Both maltreated (n = 129) and non-maltreated (n = 82) adolescent females, consisting of Caucasian (55%), African-American (37%), and Bi-racial (8%) backgrounds, participated in the study. Results indicated that only post-traumatic stress symptoms mediated the relationship between maltreatment and self-injury when all variables were included in the model. Overall, post-traumatic symptoms represented a unique pathway from maltreatment to self-injury and warrant special attention when assessing and treating such behavior with adolescent females.     

The Scum of Tabriz: Ahmad Kasravi and the Impulse to Reform Islam

Ahmad Kasravi (1890–1946), one of the most influential Iranian thinkers of the twentieth century, delivers a stinging criticism of Shi′ism and Islam in two works which have been almost completely ignored by secular scholars, despite their immense influence on the thought and writings of Ayatollah Khomeini, the leader of the Islamic revolution as well as Ali Shariati and Jalal Ale Ahmad, its ideological forebears. The article considers the paradoxical reception of Kasravi's Shi′ism (Shi′igari) and On Islam (Dar Piramun-i Islam): both their extraordinary impact on Islamic revivalists and their neglect by specialists in Iranian affairs and Islamic studies. The occlusion of Kasravi's impulse to reform, the reduction of his ambiguous position in the Iranian intellectual tradition, has functioned to all but foreclose discussions of Islamic reform among secular scholars, deforming the contemporary intellectual history of Iran and Shi′ism more broadly.     

Public advocacy and the regulatory climate

A State's regulatory climate is an important determinant of utility capital costs and construction expenditures. This paper demonstrates the relationship of public (both proxy and qrassroots) advocacy movements with state regulatory climate and the cost of electricity. The perceived indifference of the utility industry and the regulatory process to public advocacy movements may be exploited by politicians seeking public office on an anti-utility platform. The result can be the weakening of the industry's long-run ability to produce a reliable power supply.     

Steve Backer,Grand Fleet Battlecruisers

Desmond Bristow, with Bill Bristow, A Game of Moles: The Deceptions of an MI6 Officer (London: Little, Brown and Co., 1993). Pp.292. £18.99. ISBN 0–316–90335–3.

Nicholas Elliott, Never Judge a Man by his Umbrella (Salisbury: Michael Russell, 1991). Pp.201. £14.95. ISBN 0–85955–182–2.

Nicholas Elliott, With My Little Eye: Observations Along the Way (Norwich: Michael Russell, 1993). Pp.111. £12.95. ISBN 0–85955–200–4.     

Criminal Specialization Revisited: A Simultaneous Quantile Regression Approach

Whether criminals are specialized or versatile in their offending is a long-standing research area that has been recently revitalized by a paradigm that recognizes that both specialization and versatility characterize offending careers. Based on data from an enriched sample of 500 adult habitual criminals, the current study introduces a measure of relative specialization—the offense specialization coefficient—and a novel analytical technique called simultaneous quantile regression to further the study of specialization. Although offenders committed a mix of offenses, there was considerable and at times pronounced evidence of specialization. Age, sex, and arrest onset had differential predictive validity of specialization for eight crimes at the 75th and 95th quantiles. Implications and suggestions for future research are offered.