Resolving the contradictions of modernity and modernism

He is the author, among other books, of The End of Ideology; The Coming of Post-Industrial Society; The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism;and The Social Sciences Since World War Two.This is the first of a two-part essay on Modernity and Modernism. An enlarged version, with reference citations and text emendations in footnotes, will be published later this year by Transaction.     

The Irish troubles analyzed

Robert J. Cormack and Robert D. Osborne (eds.), Discrimination and Public Policy in Northern Ireland, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991. Pp.288, 37 tables, 8 figures, biblio., index. £27.50. ISBN 0–19–827519–6.

John Fulton, The Tragedy of Belief: Division, Politics, and Religion in Ireland, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991, Pp.260, 6 tables, biblio., index. £30. ISBN 0–19–827316–9.

John E. Finn, Constitutions in Crisis: Political Violence and the Rule of Law, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991. Pp.274, biblio., index. £28. ISBN 0–19–505738–4.     

The armed struggle and underground intelligence: An overview

This comparative analysis of the dynamics of underground, revolutionary intelligence is based on a generation of analytical association with recent and continuing armed struggles. It is a first effort to depict the unconventional nature of intelligence in an illicit and covert world that is not merely the mirror image of orthodox practice. It is mainly a discussion of strategic and tactical aspects, their structure, focus, and role, as well as special factors such as counterintelligence and heresy, prisoners and foreign contacts. Underground, these are in great part shaped by the aspirations and ideals of the rebels as well as by the special conditions that assure inefficiency in return for cover. The article is, then, a preliminary, general analysis of a largely neglected aspect of unconventional conflict.     

An introduction to judicial fact-finding

This article seeks to provide an introduction as to how judges determine facts. It draws on material across a range of jurisdictions as to how judges themselves have described what they do and what they ought to do. It explores what factors judges take into account when deciding whether the evidence of a witness is credible. It examines the difference between recollection and reconstruction of events by witnesses and considers how judges draw inferences from primary facts. The importance of documentary evidence, expert evidence, judicial notice and the giving of reasons in the fact-finding process are also explored.     

Book Reviews

Jeffrey T. Richelson and Desmond Ball, The Ties that Bind: Intelligence Cooperation between the UKUSA Countries (London: George Allen &; Unwin 1986). Pp. xviii + 402. £19.95.

Giuseppe De Lutiis, Storia dei Servizi Segreti in Italia (Rome: Editori Riuniti, 1985). Pp. 313, Lire 16,500.

Scott D. Breckenridge, The CIA and the U.S. Intelligence System (Boulder, CO; Westview Press, Frederick A. Praeger). Pp. 364.

Phillip Thurmond Smith, Policing Victorian London. Political Policing, Public Order, and the London Metropolitan Police (Westport, CT and London: Greenwood Press, 1985). Pp. x + 230. £35.

Charles Perrow, Normal Accidents: Living with High‐Risk Technologies (New York: Basic Books, 1984). Pp. 386. $10.95.     

External Validity in Policy Evaluations That Choose Sites Purposively

Evaluations of the impact of social programs are often carried out in multiple sites, such as school districts, housing authorities, local TANF offices, or One‐Stop Career Centers. Most evaluations select sites purposively following a process that is nonrandom. Unfortunately, purposive site selection can produce a sample of sites that is not representative of the population of interest for the program. In this paper, we propose a conceptual model of purposive site selection. We begin with the proposition that a purposive sample of sites can usefully be conceptualized as a random sample of sites from some well‐defined population, for which the sampling probabilities are unknown and vary across sites. This proposition allows us to derive a formal, yet intuitive, mathematical expression for the bias in the pooled impact estimate when sites are selected purposively. This formula helps us to better understand the consequences of selecting sites purposively, and the factors that contribute to the bias. Additional research is needed to obtain evidence on how large the bias tends to be in actual studies that select sites purposively, and to develop methods to increase the external validity of these studies. © 2012 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.