Unforgiven: Russian intelligence vengeance as political theater and strategic messaging

The poisoning of former Russian intelligence officer and MI6 agent Sergei Skripal highlights the enduring Russian ardor for poisoning enemies of the state as a warning to others who contemplate disloyalty. Beyond treating the event itself, we explore Russian conceptions of theatrical murder as a peculiar element of state power. We historicize this development and inquire whether assassination as political theater and strategic messaging is a tool embraced in particular by Vladimir Putin or rather emblematic of the Russian state. We explore why and how Putin opted to strike at the moment he did to seek vengeance against Skripal, concluding that a confluence of structural and human factors at the intersection of British government policies with Russian domestic politics led Putin to his decision. We conclude with the implications of these findings for western governments.     

Beliefs about child witnesses: A survey of professionals

This research addressed how professionals involved with the legal system evaluate children, primarily between 4 and 8 years old, as witnesses. In particular, we focused on professionals’ beliefs and opinions regarding children's memory, suggestibility, and behaviors as they relate to witness credibility. In addition, we surveyed professionals’ evaluations of investigative methods related to reliability. Four hundred and seventy-eight professionals working with children in the Norwegian legal system (i.e. judges, police detectives, psychologists, child psychiatrists, prosecutors, and defense attorneys) completed a questionnaire about child witness issues. Results indicated that psychiatrists as well as police officers expressed greater belief in children's capacities than did other groups, whereas defense attorneys and psychologists were more skeptical regarding children's general credibility. Psychiatrists and psychologists both, however, tended to favor, more than did legal professionals, the use of clinical techniques with children in abuse investigations. Implications are discussed in relation to professionals’ attitudes toward children as witnesses.     

Locating China’s Middle Classes: social intermediaries and the Party-state

The middle class has emerged as a political phenomenon in China since 2002 through a state-sponsored discourse that sees it as a universal and universalising class. Although the evidence from other countries suggests that the growth of middle classes leads to regime change, this seems to be an unlikely outcome for China. In the first place, China’s middle class discourse has uncertain sociological foundations. Secondly, where the middle classes are identifiable they still probably constitute no more than 12% of the population. Thirdly, China’s middle classes have a very close relationship to the Party-state. Most of the professional and managerial middle classes are part of, or closely associated with, the Party-state; and the entrepreneurial middle class has either emerged from within the Party-state or has been incorporated into it.     

“It's Just Black,White, or Hispanic”: An Observational Study of Racializing Moves in California's Segregated Prison Reception Centers

This article takes as its launching point a 2005 U. S. Supreme Court case, Johnson v. California (543 U.S. 499), which ruled that the California Department of Corrections' unwritten practice of racially segregating inmates in prison reception centers is to be reviewed under the highest level of constitutional review, strict scrutiny. Relying on observational data from two California prison reception centers, this research is grounded in an interactionist perspective and influenced by Smith's work on “institutional ethnography.” I examine how racialization occurs in carceral settings, arguing that officers and inmates collaborate to arrive at a “negotiated settlement” regarding housing decisions. They do so working together (but not always in agreement) to shape how an inmate is categorized in terms of ‘race’/ethnicity and gang/group affiliation, within a framework established by official Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation paperwork and related institutional understandings of housing needs. The findings demonstrate that administrators, officers, and inmates alike have influence over the process by which people are categorized and ‘race’ is produced, even as they derive their power from different sources and are both enabled and constrained by the relationship between them. I conclude that California prisons are, as Wacquant has put it, “the main machine for ‘race making’” (2005:128), and that the fuel for that machine—a series of patterned, negotiated settlements—happens in real time, “on the ground,” and with important consequences for inmates, officers, and administrators.     

The King James Bible at 401

The King James Bible has now entered its fifth century. Prepared by some 50 committed scholars of Hebrew and Greek, its text depended heavily on the work of the martyred scholar William Tyndale. Like the Septuagint, its Greek precedent, begun in the 3rd century B.C.E., the KJV was a team effort, and it was in fact, as the Septuagint was in legend, undertaken at royal command. Like Shakespeare's works, the King James Version both reflected and helped create the modern English language. But its phrases were not always called majestic. Indeed they were frowned upon by many an 18th century writer. But its robust language, hewing closely to the concrete diction of the Hebrew and koine Greek originals, kept to a vocabulary less than a third the size of Shakespeare's, allowing it to fulfill Tyndale's dream, that one day the Bible's message would be open to the humblest speaker of English. Idealized, even idolized in some quarters, this redoubtable text continues to strike fire today, where its many rivals often only sputter.     

9/11: The Failure of Strategic Intelligence

Professor Goodman analyses the failure of US intelligence prior to 9/11 setting the context in the 1980s and 1990s. He dissects the flaws of the CIA, FBI and the Pentagon. He argues that the State Department should be strengthened because its capabilities are the most important. He also recommends that the FBI be split in two and that the CIA's budget be disclosed.     

Computing in the USSR: Recent Progress and Policies

The paper evaluates a broad spectrum of Soviet computing capabilities ranging from the development, production and service sectors to applications in enterprise management, national security, education, and consumer products. Comparisons between Western and Soviet information technologies, summarized in tabular form, reveal gaps in Soviet computing and communications resulting from both technical limitations and administrative/political constraints in the economy. Programs designed to narrow these gaps are described in a final section. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: 052, 124, 635.