Symposium: public policy and organization termination

This symposium has three objectives: first, to define the terminology of policy and organization termination and provide a review of literature that will identify current theories and frameworks of termination; second, to publish new studies that test and evaluate the usefulness of these theories and frameworks; and third, to encourage further testing and study of theories and frameworks that have proven so far to be useful in explaining termination.     

Capacity building: Shifting the paradigms of practice

Capacity building is now one of the most frequently invoked of current development concepts and yet it continues to defy a shared definition of what it means in practice. Is it possible that capacity building demands such a radically new form of practice, such a radically new form of thinking, that our current approaches are doomed to failure, not because we lack adequate models or 'technologies', but because our very approach to the issue is inadequate? Arguing that conventional capacity-building initiatives have tended to focus on the material and tangible aspects of the capacity of an organisation and its people to be critically self-aware, the author outlines some fundamental shifts which would be both entailed and generated by concentrating on the practice of the development practitioner in relation to organisational development, rather than focusing on external appearances or rushing to the training manuals.     

Perceptions of coercion in interrogation: comparing expert and lay opinions

ABSTRACT

When confessions are entered into evidence in criminal courts, issues of coercion and voluntariness are important and often contested matters. Occasionally, defense attorneys proffer expert witnesses to testify about the coercive pressures of an interrogation and the risk of a false confession. Such testimony is often ruled inadmissible on the grounds that it does not inform the jury beyond its common knowledge. In our effort to test this judicial assumption about common knowledge, we surveyed jury-eligible laypeople (n?=?67) and social scientists specializing in interrogation and confessions (n?=?54) regarding their opinions about the coerciveness of prohibited interrogation tactics, maximization techniques, minimization techniques, and suspect risk factors and compared their ratings with a set of independent t tests. Laypeople gave lower ratings to the coerciveness of all sets of items representing interrogation techniques, and lower ratings to the vulnerabilities associated with suspect risk factors, as compared to social science experts. The disparities between laypeople’s and experts’ perceptions of coercion in interrogations demonstrate that such issues are not fully within the common knowledge of prospective jurors, and suggest the need to provide jurors with expert witness guidance when tasked with evaluating confession evidence.     

Medical students as child abusers

Medical students may abuse pediatric patients. Not only do such students represent a hazard to the patient, but they may themselves be seriously ill and in need of psychiatric treatment.     

Pseudoabuse--the misdiagnosis of child abuse

When a patient's problem is judged to be the result of child abuse and it is not, considerable harm may be done to the child, his parents, and the doctor-parent relationship. The case histories of 15 children who were thought to be abused are reviewed and their correct diagnoses are presented. Overdiagnosing the battered child syndrome can be as harmful as failing to consider it.     

A comparison of mothers of adolescent incest vs. non-incest perpetrators

One hundred and thirty mothers of adolescent sexual perpetrators were interviewed. Mothers of incest perpetrators (n = 48) were compared to mothers of non-incest perpetrators (n = 82). Results indicated that significantly more mothers of incest perpetrators reported having been physically and sexually abused, having a sexual dysfunction, and having been in prior psychotherapy. With regard to their sons, a higher percentage of mothers of incest perpetrators reported that they believed their son had committed the sexual offense, was in need of treatment, and had a history of being physically abused. Additionally, a significantly lower percentage of incest perpetrators had involvement with the juvenile justice system.     

Integrating the Undergraduate Experience: A Course on Environmental Dispute Resolution

This paper describes a rigorous undergraduate course on environmental dispute resolution. Students get hands-on experience in negotiation cases, developing skills and building theoretical understanding through a series of exercises. With this foundation, the students advance to an extended role-playing case study on oil exploration in the Ecuadorian rain forest. The course provides an integration function both in terms of understanding environmental issues, but also in modeling reality, encouraging action, and building process tools that are essential in addressing environmental and social challenges facing the planet.     

Reviews

Pekka Sutela, Economic Thought and Economic Reform in the Soviet Union. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991, 197 pp., £30.00 h/b, £10.95 p/b.

Stephen White, Gorbachev and After. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991, ix+310 pp., £27.95 h/b, £8.95 p/b.

Catherine Merridale & Chris Ward, eds, Perestroika. The Historical Perspective. London, New York, Melbourne, Auckland: Edward Arnold, 1991, xiii+253 pp., £12.95 p/b.

Guy Standing, ed., The New Soviet Labour Market. In Search of Flexibility. Geneva: ILO, 1991, xiv+440 pp., SF45.00.

Leonard Geron, Soviet Foreign Economic Policy under Perestroika. London: Chatham House Papers, The Royal Institute of International Affairs, Pinter Publishers, 1990, 126 pp., £19.50, h/b, £7.95 p/b.

Malcolm R. Hill, Soviet Advanced Manufacturing Technology and Western Export Controls. Aldershot: Avebury, 1991, xv+256 pp., £35.00.

Gerhard Simon, Nationalism and Policy toward the Nationalities in the Soviet Union: From Totalitarian Dictatorship to Post‐Stalinist Society, translated by K. and O. Forster. Boulder, CO, and Oxford: Westview Press, 1991, xvii+483 pp., £22.50 p/b.

A. Kemp‐Welch, Stalin and the Literary Intelligentsia 1928–39. London: Macmillan, 1991, vi + 338 pp., £45.00.

Jelena Milojkovic‐Djuric, Aspects of Soviet Culture: Voices of glasnosf, 1960–1990. New York: East European Monographs, Columbia University Press, 1991, iv+190 pp., $29.00.

Landon Pearson, Children of Glasnost. Growing up Soviet. Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 1991, xv+505 pp., $16.95, p/b.

Robert Rand, Comrade Lawyer. Inside Soviet Justice in an Era of Reform. Oxford: Westview Press, 1991, x+166 pp., £9.50 p/b.

Sheila Fitzpatrick, Alexander Rabinowitch & Richard Stites, eds, Russia in the Era of NEP: Explorations in Soviet Society and Culture. Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press, 1991, viii+344 pp., £22.50 h/b, £9.50 p/b.

Efraim Karsh, Soviet Policy towards Syria since 1970. Basingstoke and London: Macmillan, 1991, 229 pp.+index, £35.00.

Ronald D. Bachman, ed., Romania: A Country Study, 2nd edition. Washington, DC: US Library of Congress Federal Research Division, 1991, xxxvi+356 pp.