Can International Boycotts Transform Political Systems? The Cases of Cuba and South Africa

The economic embargo against Cuba has been widely promoted as a way to hasten the end of the Castro regime. Historically, however, the connection between embargoes and regime change is mediated by a complex of political, social, and economic conditions. Labormarket bottlenecks and domestic elite opposition, decisive factors in the South African case, are absent from that of Cuba. This study uses the factors derived from an analysis of South Africa to compare the Cuban case and concludes that the embargo against Cuba cannot have its intended results.     

Information Handling Challenges in Complex Systems

ABSTRACT:

Even when leaders exhibit desirable leadership styles, the effectiveness of their behaviors on organizational outcomes may be influenced by the structural distance between them and their followers. Nonetheless, previous empirical research on the relationships between leadership styles and outcomes has largely ignored the role of leader distance in public administration. Using panel data drawn from the US federal government, this study explores how transformational and transactional leadership styles affect employee turnover behavior and how span of control as a proxy for leader distance moderates those relationships. The statistical results indicate that transformational leadership is negatively related to turnover behavior, whereas transactional leadership is positively related to turnover behavior. Further analysis shows that span of control significantly moderates the relationships between the two leadership styles and employee turnover behavior such that organizations benefit more from transformational leaders with a broad span of control than from those with a narrow span of control. Conversely, transactional leaders with a narrow span of control are better at reducing turnover than those with a broad span of control. The implications and contributions of these results for public administration are discussed.     

WINNING ESSAY: 1998 LAW SCHOOL ESSAY CONTEST

Courts are frequently confronted with children who, regardless of court orders, refuse to visit their noncustodial parents. This article examines the possible alternatives to holding a child, or parent, in contempt for such behavior. Furthermore, solutions and ideas that better serve the needs of children and parents in these highly volatile family situations will also be explored .     

A Comparison of Forensic and Nonforensic Malingerers: A Prototypical Analysis of Explanatory Models

Explanatory models of malingering strive to understand the primary motivation underlying attempts to feign. Rogers, Sewell, and Goldstein (1994) provided empirical support for the conceptualization of pathogenic, criminological, and adaptational models. In the current study, a prototypical analysis of 221 forensic experts results in a slightly refined formulation: the adaptational model was decomposed into its two broad dimensions (cost–benefit analysis and adversarial setting). An important finding is that the factor structure for the explanatory models remained stable when applied to both forensic and nonforensic cases. As a first investigation, significant differences were observed in prototypical cases of malingering by the category of referral (forensic or nonforensic) and by type of feigning (mental disorders, cognitive impairment, and medical syndromes). Surprisingly, the feigning of medical syndromes appeared to play a relatively prominent role in both forensic and nonforensic cases and to be influenced by the apparent adversarial context of the assessment. Finally, important gender differences were observed, especially with nonforensic prototypical cases of malingering.     

A Bargaining Model of Holdouts and Takings

The holdout problem is commonly cited as the justification foreminent domain, but the nature of the problem is not well understood.This article models the holdout problem in a bargaining framework,where a developer seeks to acquire several parcels of land fora large-scale development. We show that in the absence of eminentdomain, holdouts are a significant threat, resulting in costlydelay. However, if the developer has the power to use eminentdomain to acquire the land from holdouts, all sellers will bargain,thus avoiding delay. An offsetting cost is that owners may negotiateprices below their true value, possibly resulting in excessivetransfer of land to the developer.     

Striking the federal bargain in Russia: comparative regional government strategies

The central research goals of this article are to classify and explain the positions of the 89 state “governors” of Russia with regard to the most desirable federal division of power. The state governors are classified along a 5-item autonomy index based on events data and content analysis of their speeches, declarations, petitions, threats and actions from 1991–1995 as reported in two regional sources. Theoretical propositions derived from four schools of thought (essentialism, instrumentalism, relative deprivation and resource mobilization) are tested to discover which, if any, provide useful insights into the preferences and behavior of regional elites in Russia. In the end, a combined model that synthesizes elements of the above is shown to be most useful in explaining variation in elite positions.