Game tree analysis of international crises

Conflicts among nations can often be understood as games in which players (nations) possessing strategies (the sets of actions they may take) face alternative consequences (loss or gain of territory or prestige) determined by their choices of action. Amenable to this type of analysis is the recent Falkland Islands crisis involving Argentina and Great Britain. The events in this case provide an illustration of the way “three-stage, two-person sequential game tree models” can explain the outcome of a crisis situation, whether the parties involved possess perfect information regarding the likely actions of their opponents or are subject to misperceptions about them. When misperceptions occur, the effects can be severely detrimental to both players. Under certain conditions a single misperception by a player of an opponent's preferences can lead to conflict even though both players would have preferred another outcome, one that would in fact have resulted if the error in perception had not occurred. Thus, the outcome of such a “game” is highly sensitive not only to the players' actual preferences but to mutual perceptions of those preferences.     

Does the American Dairy Industry Fit the Meso-Corporatist Model?

Corporatism having become a less useful label for describing entire political systems, corporatist scholars have emphasized the importance of meso-level corporatism, using dairying as the classic example. Analysis of the American dairy industry does not support the claim that there is 'no corporatism in the United States' but it suggests why meso-corporatist enclaves in a macro-pluralist system are liable to be ephemeral. What sets the American dairy industry apart from its European and Canadian counterparts is that the meso-corporatist institutional arrangements were undermined by the emergence of large regional cooperatives in the 1960s and as a result present dairy policy-making has reverted once more to a pluralist paradigm.     

Career development of adolescents: An ecological perspective

Bronfenbrenner's ecological model of human development is used as a framework for examining the research on the career development of adolescents. The examination of the four contexts — the microsystem, the mesosystem, the exosystem, and the macrosystem — provides an additionalperspective to the ontogenic (individual) approach that has predominated the research literature in this field. Among the four contexts examined, some research on the influence of microsystem, including family, school,peer group, and workplace is identified. The amount of developmentally based research drops off quickly for the other systems, although there are other pertinent research and social issues for each system. Research and intervention implications of this perspective are indicated.This research was supported by grants from the Humanities and Social Science Grants Committee of the University of British Columbia and Youth Employment Program of British Columbia.Received Ed.D. from McGill University. Current research interest is career development and counseling of adolescents.     

Crime in Indian country: Another “trail of tears”

This article explores the status of crime among the American Indian population. Quantitative information regarding Indian offenses and arrest is presented and placed into the large spectrum of social problems afflicting Indian society. Some quantitative comparisons are made with a similar study conducted in 1964.Trend analyses were performed, and projections are provided relevant to total, adult, and juvenile Indian arrest; rates of arrest for Total, UCR Part I, and alcohol-related offenses are also given. Indian crime data are compared with those of other ethnic groups. The Indian propensity for arrests involving alcohol-related offenses is discussed in detail.The frequency of crimes on- and off-reservation is analyzed, particularly with respect to violent crimes; data are examined to determine the most frequent types of police contacts that Indian offenders experience.     

Meritocracy revisited

Michael Young is author of The Rise of the Meritocracy,reissued in paperback by Transaction. Among his other books is Family and Kinship in East London (with Peter Willmott).He is founder and director of the Institute of Community Studies in London. He is a past chairman of the Social Science Research Council of the United Kingdom and founder of the Open University. He is a member of Parliament as Lord Young of Dartington.