Attitudes toward sex and sex offences among Israeli and former Union of Soviet Socialist Republic youth: implication for prevention strategies for new immigrants

The phenomenon of sex offences among new immigrants from the former USSR is a source of concern in Israel. This research studied students from Israel (n = 257) and the Ukraine (n = 195) to learn about their system of social norms and values regarding sex and sex offences. For the purposes of this study, a new tool was structured and validated that examines attitudes toward 11 spheres of life connected with the research topic, such as the status of men and the victim's responsibility for rape. The principal findings show significant differences in the norms and values of the surveyed groups, reflecting negative norms among Ukrainian youth. Results are examined in light of the possible implications for understanding the phenomenon of sexual violence among immigrant youth from the former USSR and the appropriate methods for treating them in Israel. The discussion highlights possible implications for other countries that face similar issues.     

Prisoners' perception of informing to the authorities: an analysis in terms of functional moral judgment

A series of functional measurement experiment show that prisoners modulate their moral judgments of violations of their in-group regulations. The participants were 67 women and 80 men, sentenced for at least three years for murder, robbery, drug-traffic or white collar offenses. Each was asked, individually, to imagine a series of incidents where incriminating information on in-group or out-group inmates is delivered to the prison authorities or to an ingroup source and to rate the deserved denigration of the informer, who was characterized as a leader or not and as a drug-addict or not who had a prison-leave or not. An assignment of approximately equal weight for social status, drug use and prison leave was found, beyond gender and type of offense. In line with the hypothesis of judgmental modularity, informing to an out-group source was judged much more severely than informing to in-group arbiter and than informing on an out-group inmate.     

Intra-Party Conflict and Coalitional Behaviour in Denmark and Norway: The Case of 'Highly Institutionalized' Parties

The purpose of this article is to analyse the impact of intra-party conflicts on the coalitional behaviour of highly institutionalized parties in Denmark and Norway. The focus is on how highly institutionalized parties either prevent or cope with internal conflicts. The account proposed is based on the idea that organizational rigidity, that is the lack of heterogeneous and diffused mechanisms for internal dissent, does not allow the party to handle internal dissent in a variety of flexible ways. When inter-party negotiations induce internal conflicts, members may be forced to leave the party as their primary mechanism for the expression of dissent. A major implication of this view, which is supported by the empirical findings, is that in multi-party systems where minority situations occur, the most attractive strategy (in terms of bargaining power) for highly institutionalized parties is the formation of informal minority governments. When such parties form. formal minority governments, the party elites tend to impose structural constraints on the day-to-day operation of the government and modify their alliance strategy in order to cope with the derived internal conflicts.     

Efficient Contract Remedies And the European Unification

This paper applies theoretical results that are derived from financial-economic principles to the issue of efficient contract remedies in view of the European Unification. Common Law favors the expectation damages remedy, according to which a party who is aggrieved by a breach of contract expects an ex-post damages award, while this paper demonstrates that if the subject of the contract is traded continuously with observable values, an alternative remedy is equally efficient and just. The alternative remedy is rationalized on an ex-ante basis, and thus, courts intervention in the event of a breach of contract may not be essential. The EU aims to establish a uniform commercial code superior to all national law. This goal reflects current cultural differences and lacks of homogeneity, such as expectations and risk preferences across EU Member States. Lacks of homogeneity, can not, however, invalidate the above conclusion, as long as prices are continuously traded and a single price regime prevails. Accordingly, this paper predicts that since price differentials across Member States are likely to disappear faster than other non-homogeneous factors, the Court of Justice will show a tendency to rule, utilizing the rationale underlying the ex-ante regime, and perhaps, to overturn country-specific rulings by National Courts, which favor the expectation damages regime.     

In the Shadow of Terror: High School Youth Violence in Thailand

This study explored the prevalence and severity of own violence, violence in the family, the school, and the neighborhoods of high school students from three distinguished provinces in Thailand and consisted of 1305 youths. The southern Muslim province has the highest rates of violence; and males were found to be more violent than females. Own violence among Thai youth is lower than the ones in western societies. As in the west, the highest violent rates were indicated in the schools, followed by violence in the community and the family. The results were interpreted in light of the social/demographic and cultural characteristics of Thailand.     

Yitzhak Rabin,the Ambassador to Washington, 1968–73: A Diplomat and Policy Maker

Rabin differed considerably from the average ambassador – a representative receiving and issuing reports. He viewed himself not only as a diplomat, but as capable of shaping policy with respect to both the Arab–Israeli conflict and the relationship with the United States. During his term as ambassador to Washington he displayed sober realism with regard to the political, and to some extent the military, reality – the very realism that was absent from the government that sent him.     

Feeling the Heat? Anticorruption Mechanisms in Comparative Perspective

This article addresses the implications of political executives losing control over corruption investigations of senior officeholders following the creation of anticorruption mechanisms (e.g., commissions, special prosecutors, independent counsels, investigating judges). When investigations hit close to home, the ensuing political fallout makes political executives eager to look for ways to derail such investigations, especially when investigators proceed with an uncharted mandate. Against this background, two hypotheses are investigated: (i) the striking outcome of this process is a concerted move by targeted political executives to undermine the credibility of anticorruption mechanisms and, when deemed necessary, to terminate their operation, and (ii) the extent to which the prosecutors are successful depends on both institutions and media accessibility: the more centralized and fused political power is, and the less media accessible the government is, the harder it will be to carry out an investigation. These hypotheses are strongly supported by a comparative analysis of five anticorruption mechanisms in the United States, the Soviet Union, Italy, and Australia (Queensland and New South Wales.)