From ‘Judicial Mind’ to ‘Democratic Soul’: Law and Politics on the Bureaucratic Frontline

This article considers the relationship between law and democratic politics as manifest in the practice of ‘street‐level bureaucracy’. By glancing back to debates about citizenship and public administration between the two world wars, it sets contemporary concerns about the political constitution in broader context. In doing so, it discloses a fundamental division between conceptions of the state derived from Roman jurisprudence on the one hand, and ancient Athenian political practice on the other. It finds in the tragic dilemmas posed for street‐level bureaucrats—by the competing claims on their values—a test of individual moral agency and of democracy as the management of diversity. It concludes that what is at stake in our estimation of street‐level bureaucracy is not so much the purity of the ‘judicial mind’ as the complexity of the ‘democratic soul’ and the ‘connected society’.     

The democratic deficit: Paul Martin and parliamentary reform

Abstract: Paul Martin's plan to reform parliamentary government in order to eliminate the so‐called democratic deficit calls for greater independence for individual mps and the House of Commons vis‐à‐his the government. In this article, we first examine what is required to make the reforms work according to his measures of success. We then consider why he has restricted his assault on the democratic deficit to the reform of Parliament. Third, we consider whether parliamentary reform is sufficient to address the discontents and criticisms of Canadian government that have given rise to the perceived democratic deficit. We conclude that the Martin plan, except for the review of government appointments, is sound from the perspective of representative democracy but that it will be successful in addressing the democratic deficit only to the extent that the prime minister and his reform‐minded colleagues are able to convince Canadians that citizen participation in the institutional processes of reformed parliamentary government can be meaningful. Sommaire: Le projet qu'a M. Paul Martin de réformer le gouvernement parlementaire afin d'éliminer le soi‐disant déficit démocratique exige une plus grande indé‐pendance des députés individuels et de la Chambre des communes à l'égard du gouvemement. Dans le présent article, nous examinons tout d'abord les exigences nécessaires pour que les réformes fonctionnent selon ses mesures de succés. Nous examinons ensuite pourquoi M. Martin a restreint son attaque du déficit démocratique à la seule réforme parlementaire. Troisiémement, nous examinons si la réforme parlementaire est suffisante pour remédier aux insatisfactions et critiques envers le gouvemement canadien qui ont engendré le déficit démocratique perçu. Nous con‐cluons que le plan de M. Martin, à I'exception de la revue des nominations gouveme‐mentales, est solide du point de vue de la démocratie représentative. Il ne parviendra cependant à s'attaquer au déficit démocratique que dans la mesure où le Premier ministre et ses collégues soucieux de réforme seront capables de convaincre les Canadiens que la participation des citoyens aux processus institutionnels d'un gouverne‐ment parlementaire réformé peut être constructive.     

Corporations as Moral Agents: Trade-Offs in Criminal Liability and Human Rights for Corporations

This article argues that a common way of defending corporate criminal liability creates a dilemma: it provides a strong justification for giving human rights to corporations. This result follows from approaches to punishment and human rights which predicate each on the status of moral agency. In short, if corporations are moral agents in a sufficient sense to attract criminal liability, they are eligible holders of human rights. The article also discusses the doctrinal application of this philosophical claim. Drawing on US jurisprudence, it illustrates how the European Court of Human Rights might deploy corporate moral agency as a theoretical foundation for its otherwise weakly-reasoned attribution of human rights to corporations. If proponents of corporate criminal liability are dissatisfied with these conclusions, they face difficult policy trade-offs: they must abandon the doctrine, or adopt alternative approaches to punishment or human rights.     

Institutionalizing inequality in the courts: Decomposing racial and ethnic disparities in detention,conviction, and sentencing*

A significant body of literature has examined racial and ethnic inequalities in sentencing, focusing on how individual court actors make decisions, but fewer scholars have examined whether disparities are institutionalized through legal case factors. After finding racial and ethnic inequalities in pretrial detention, conviction, and incarceration based on 4 years of felony court data (N = 83,924) from Miami-Dade County, we estimate nonlinear decomposition models to examine how much of the inequalities are explained by differences in criminal history, charging, and for conviction and incarceration, pretrial detention. Results suggest that inequality is greatest between White non-Latinos and Black Latinos, followed by White non-Latinos and Black non-Latinos, ranging from 4 to more than 8 percentage points difference in the probability of pretrial detention, 7–13 points difference in conviction, 5–6 points in prison, and 4–10 points difference in jail. We find few differences between White non-Latinos and White Latinos. Between half and three-quarters of the inequality in pretrial detention, conviction, and prison sentences between White non-Latino and Black people is explained through legal case factors. Our findings indicate that inequality is, in part, institutionalized through legal case factors, suggesting these factors are not “race neutral” but instead racialized and contribute to inequalities in court outcomes.     

Bottom-up peacekeeping in southern Kyrgyzstan: how local actors managed to prevent the spread of violence from Osh/Jalal-Abad to Aravan,June 2010

In the aftermath of the June 2010 violence in southern Kyrgyzstan, much scholarly attention has focused on its causes. However, observers have taken little notice of the fact that while such urban areas as Osh, Jalal-Abad, and Bazar-Korgon were caught up in violence, some towns in southern Kyrgyzstan that were close to the conflict sites and had considerable conflict potential had managed to avoid the violence. Thus, while the question, “What were the causes of the June 2010 violence?” is important, we have few answers to the question, “Why did the conflict break out in some places but not others with similar conflict potential?” Located in the theoretical literature on “the local turn” within peacekeeping studies, this article is based on extensive empirical fieldwork to explore the local and micro-level dimensions of peacekeeping. It seeks to understand why and how local leaders and residents in some places in southern Kyrgyzstan managed to prevent the deadly clashes associated with Osh, Jalal-Abad, and Bazar-Korgon. The main focus of the project is on Aravan, a town with a mixed ethnic population where residents managed to avert interethnic clashes during the June 2010 unrest. The answers to the question of why violence did not occur can yield important lessons for conflict management not only for southern Kyrgyzstan, but also for the entire Central Asian region.     

The global governance of informal economies: the International Labour Organization in East Africa

This article develops a Gramscian approach to the governance of ‘informal’ economies through a historical study of International Labour Organization (ILO) programmes in East Africa. Drawing on Gramsci’s conception of the ‘subaltern’, the article highlights the ways in which the articulation of ‘informality’ in policy documents is coloured by broader struggles over the political organisation of labour. The article develops this argument through two case studies. The first examines the World Employment Programme mission to Kenya in the 1970s that popularised the concept of ‘informal’ labour. The second is a contemporary programme on apprenticeships in the informal economy that originated in Tanzania.     

Suicidal Ideation and Distress Among Immigrant Adolescents: The Role of Acculturation, Life Stress, and Social Support

Acculturative stress and social support play important roles in suicide-related phenomena among adolescent immigrants. To examine their contributions, measures of acculturative and general life stress and a measure of multiple sources of social support were used to predict psychological distress and suicidal ideation among Korean-born high school students residing in the US. Korean students who were sojourning without both parents were compared to Korean students who immigrated with both parents, Korean students who remained in Korea, and American high school students in the US (total N = 227; 56.8% female). The sojourning group reported higher levels of life stress, distress, psychological symptoms, and suicidal ideation than the other groups. Within the two acculturating groups, levels of distress, symptoms, and suicidal ideation were associated with life stress, lack of parental support, and not living with both parents. The findings have important implications for suicide prevention among immigrant adolescents, and imply that parental support is particularly protective.