Finding a role for institutions of democracy

This paper looks at the role that can be played by parliaments in the New Partnership for Africa's Development.     

Ameyuki-San No Uta: Yamada Waka No Satsuki Naru Shōgai

Abstract

Yamada Waka was a leader in Japan's feminist movement during the 1920s and 1930s. The wife of a well-known professor, she had access to the most progressive social and intellectual circles in Tokyo at the time . While Japan moved through the post–World War I decades with an upsurge of democratic thought and then a slow march toward the militarism that was to result in World War II, Yamada labored to raise the consciousness of Japanese women about their potential to contribute to the building of a better world and about the narrow roles society had decreed for them. She published a number of books, lectured widely in Japan and the United States, and opened a half-way house for the rehabilitation of prostitutes.     

Deep Probe: The Evolution of Network Intelligence

Over the last several decades, civil society activists and non-governmental organizations have been employing new information and communication technologies, such as the Internet, to facilitate their activities. At the same time, an increasing number of computer scientists, hackers, and engineers have become increasingly politicized, contributing their skills to security, privacy, and networking tools used by civil society organizations worldwide. The merging of these two social forces, and their sophisticated uses of technology for political action, is giving rise to a new form of distributed information and communication networking that I refer to as ‘network intelligence’.     

Japan in the coming century: Looking East or West?

The modernization of Japan's trade policies and social structure, argues Professor Ronald Dore of the London School of Economics, will increase Japan's social instability. The continuation of the outdated Japan‐US alliance, he states, only inhibits the growth of the international order; he warns that the day may come when Japan's interests lie with China rather than the US. Dore advocates that Japan adopt a proactive foreign policy, using military force not for reasons of national interest, but only to contribute to the peaceful settlement of international conflicts.     

Book reviews

This paper analyzes recent free trade arrangements from a positive political economy perspective. In contrast to most other literature which fails to take into account geographical factors it is argued here that proximity and transportation costs play an important role in trade arrangements. Another important also largely neglected factor is the degree of social cohesion in terms of labor standards among potential trading partners. A political support maximizing government will consider these factors when balancing political support from free traders and protectionists.     

The Discourse and Practice of Counter-Terrorism in Liberal Democracies

This article examines the post-Cold War tendency to broaden the counter-terrorism mandate to include other phenomena such as organised crime, drug-trafficking and illegal immigration. This redefinition has important implications for democracy, both at the level of discourse and at the level of practice. At the level of discourse, the plasticity of the word "terrorism" and its application to a wide variety of phenomena is a form of claims making activity by a variety of agencies fighting for budgetary allocations in an era of cost-cutting and deficit reduction. At the level of practice, the counter-terrorism mandate is being expanded to include the range of phenomena covered in the widening discourse and this, in turn, has led to a blurring of boundaries between internal and external security, police and military models of control, and public and private sectors. All this has an impact on the openness of government, the accountability of agencies of social control, the adherence to the rule of law in the fight against terrorism and related phenomena, and the possibility of informed consent by a public made fearful by the claims-making discourse as it is disseminated through the mass media.     

Differences in mothers' and children's perceptions of urban black children's life stress

Differences between mothers' and childrens' perceptions of the children's life Stressors were evaluated among 380 urban black elementary school children and their mothers. Fifty-eight life Stressors were rated for frequency of occurrence to the children over the last year and the degree of negative affect associated with Stressors that occurred. Fifty-one items were classified into seven specific contextual categories. Predicted mother-child differences were noted for total frequency and subjective weight ratings and in mulnvariate comparisons of frequency and subjective weight ratings across the seven categories, confirming mothers' tendency to underreport in comparison with their children. Gender differences were not evident for total frequency or subjective weight ratings, but multivariate analyses support gender differences across categories. Mothers showed no consistent pattern of differences between reports for sons and daughters. Development of population-appropriate stress measures, use of stress categories, and implications for the interpretation of stress reports are discussed.An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Conference on Human Development, Richmond, Virginia, March 1990. This project was supported by a postdoctoral research fellowship from the American Heart Association of the National Capital Area awarded to Dr. O'Brien, a grant from National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (HL 35261) to Dr. lannotti, and a grant from National Institute on Drug Abuse (DA 4497) to Dr. Patricia J. Bush.Received Ph.D. in developmental psychology from The Catholic University of America. Research interests include life stress during middle childhood and adolescence as it relates to risk behaviors, and family support and conflict during adolescence, particularly among siblings.Received Ph.D. in developmental psychology from The State University of New York at Buffalo. Research interests include social and environmental influences on the early use of abusable substances, the development of children's eating and exercise patterns and their relationship to cardiovascular risk factors, and the development of understanding of and attitudes toward health and illness, including heart disease and AIDS.     

Examining the cognitive interview in a double-test paradigm

Abstract

The Cognitive Interview (CI) was compared with a standard interview protocol (based on the National Transportation Safety Board) to interview witnesses of a videotaped traffic accident. Witnesses were tested twice, five minutes after viewing the accident and again two weeks later. The CI elicited approximately 70% more correct facts than did the standard interview, and at equivalent accuracy rates, at both the first interview and the second interview. The double-testing procedure generated novel data patterns that may allow us to identify incorrect recollections; other results lead us to question some legal assumptions about the diagnosticity of inconsistent recollections.