The state must compete: Optimal pricing of legal cannabis

We examine the socially optimal pricing strategy for the legal cannabis industry that faces significant competition from an illicit market. We explore the impact of different preferences for legal and illicit cannabis using a constant elasticity of substitution utility function. We find that under a range of policy objectives and other circumstances, the socially optimal pricing strategy is for the legal market price to be dramatically lower than the illicit market price. This contradicts the approach taken across Canada in the year since legalization. These findings suggest that governments should adopt policies to reduce the price of legal cannabis.     

Political Debates on Asylum Seekers during the Fraser Government, 1977–1982

Between 1977 and 1982, the Australian Government resettled over 54,000 Vietnamese refugees. It also admitted 2,059 Vietnamese asylum seekers who arrived by boat without state authorisation. Although the number of Vietnamese asylum seekers was significantly smaller than the number of Vietnamese refugees processed offshore in refugee camps, the unexpected arrival of these boat people stimulated debate in Parliament and in the press about an appropriate response. This article examines the language politicians used to describe Vietnamese asylum seekers and the arguments used to justify their inclusion or exclusion. The evidence demonstrates that the political rhetoric used in this period in Australia's immigration history cannot be solely categorised as inclusive or humane. Rather, the overall impression is one of resistance and pragmatism.     

Juvenile participation in conversations with probation officers

Juvenile probation work comprises a mixture of repressive and empowering strategies, since probation officers need to control young offenders' conduct and at the same time help the offender to take responsibility and live life within the margins of society. This ambiguous nature of juvenile probation work may confuse the communication between probation officers and juveniles. Interviews with offenders of Moroccan origin and their probation officers in the Netherlands show that both parties are unhappy with the mutual communication. According to the youngsters, a restrictive policy is inevitable but might be more effective if this would go together with an empowering approach. Interactional analysis of the conversations shows that the lack of juvenile participation is caused by professional conversational dominance, as seen in topic control, poor role clarification, and a cross-examining style of the conversations.     

The Libyan Debate: Coercive Diplomacy Reconsidered

Muammar Qaddafi’s decision to dismantle his Weapons of Mass Destruction programmes in December 2003 elicited an extensive debate about the role of normal versus coercive diplomacy. The normal diplomacy perspective rests on factors that cannot solve the “why know” problem, and it relies on an unsupported assumption that Qaddafi’s identity had changed. The Libyan case, however, challenges the coercive diplomacy model. Libya confronted a demand and threat to disarm, but the George W. Bush Administration issued no explicit threats, placed no time deadlines on Libyan compliance, and attached only a moderate sense of urgency to Libya’s WMD program. This study argues that the coercive diplomacy perspective needs slight modification to account for the Libyan case. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq provided implied threats to Qaddafi’s survival. The Bush Administration then used veiled threats to threaten Qaddafi simultaneously with unacceptable damage and enable diplomats to find a peaceful solution to the crisis.     

Book reviews

Jonathan Michie and John Grieve Smith (eds), Managing the Global Economy, (Oxford University Press, Oxford 1995). 343pp. ISBN 0–19–828968–5 (pb).

Hilary Rose, Love, power and knowledge: towards a feminist transformation of the sciences, (Polity Press, Cambridge 1994). 336pp. ISBN 0–7456–1001–3 (pb).

Daniele Archibugi and David Held (eds), Cosmopolitan Democracy, (Polity Press, Cambridge 1995). 190pp. ISBN 0–7456–1380–2, 0–7456–1381 0 (pb).

Olivier Roy, The Failure of Political Islam, (I B Tauris, London 1994). 224 pp. ISBN 1–85043–880–3.

T. Gallagher, Romania After Ceausescu, (Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh 1995). 276pp. ISBN 0 7486 0613 0 (pb).

John Gray, Beyond the New Right: Markets, Government and the Common Environment, (Routledge, London and New York 1993). 195pp. ISBN 0–145–09297–3 9, 0–145–10706–7 (pb).

Anthony Giddens, Beyond Left and Right: the Future of Radical Politics, (Polity Press, Cambridge 1994). 276pp. ISBN 0–7456–1438–8, 0–7456–1439–6 (pb).

Nicola Field, Over the Rainbow: Money, Class and Homophobia, (Pluto, London 1995). 193pp. ISBN 0–7453–0825–2.

Red‐Green Study Group, What on earth is to be done? A red‐green dialogue, (Red‐Green Study Group, Manchester 1995). x+69pp. ISBN 0–9525784–0–9.

Darrow Schecter, Radical theories: Paths beyond Marxism and social democracy, (Manchester University Press, Manchester and New York 1994). x+205pp. ISBN 0–7190–4385–9.     

Book review

Goodman, Robert. The Last Entrepreneurs, America's Regional wars for Jobs and dollars, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1979, 292 pp., $11.95.     

Individual Popularity,Peer Group Popularity Composition and Adolescents’ Alcohol Consumption

Previous studies have convincingly shown associations between popularity and adolescent drinking. This study examined whether the popularity composition of the peer group and the relative difference in popularity between adolescents and their peers are also associated with adolescent drinking. Participants were 800 adolescents (M _age?=?14.73; SD_age?=?1.00; 51.6?% girls) from 31 classrooms who completed peer ratings of popularity and self-reports of alcohol consumption. Results showed that drinking was higher among popular than unpopular adolescents, higher among popular adolescents surrounded by less popular classmates, and lower in classrooms with more variability in popularity. Thus, beyond individual popularity, peer group popularity composition also should be taken into account when investigating antisocial and health risk behaviors in adolescence such as drinking.     

Measuring Exposure to Political Advertising in Surveys

Research on the influence of negative political advertising in America is characterized by fundamentally conflicting findings. In recent years, however, survey research using estimates of exposure based on a combination of self-reported television viewing habits and Campaign Media Analysis Group data (a database of all advertisements broadcast on national and cable television in the top 75 media markets) has argued that exposure to negative political advertising boosts interest in the campaign and turnout. This paper examines the measurement properties of self-reports of television viewing. I argue that the errors from common survey formats may both be nonrandom and larger than previously acknowledged. The nonrandom error is due to the tendency of politically knowledgeable individuals to be more sensitive to question format. Thus the inferences drawn about the relationship between political knowledge, exposure to negative ads, and political behavior are also sensitive to the measures used to estimate exposure. I demonstrate, however, that one commonly used measure of exposure—the log of estimated exposure—is not only more theoretically defensible but also alleviates some of the more serious problems due to measurement error.