Public Attitudes About Property Distribution at Death and Intestate Succession Laws in the United States

Intestate succession statutes should reflect the distributive preferences of intestate decedents. To date, these distributive preferences could only be inferred from distributive patterns found in wills. This telephone survey of 750 persons living in Alabama, California, Massachusetts, Ohio, and Texas supplements prior will studies and provides new insights concerning public attitudes about property distribution at death. The distributive preferences of the respondents revealed few significant differences that could be attributed to age, education, income, wealth, or occupational status. Two other important findings of this study suggest that a modern intestacy statute should provide that (1) the surviving spouse inherit the entire estate in preference to the decedent's issue or family of orientation and (2) issue who are in the same generation share equally in the estate.     

Global Privacy Concerns and Regulation-- Is the United States a World Apart?

The regulatory approach to privacy protection taken by many foreign jurisdictions is markedly different from that of the United States. The European Union (EU) best illustrates the international approach with its comprehensive privacy directive that applies to all EU members. By contrast, the approach regarding data privacy in the United States has been to pass industry-specific laws and often only in response to public outcry over some privacy concern. These fundamental differences have been the source of some conflict in international commercial transacting. Now that the global community is committed to eliminating terrorism, it remains to be seen if these different attitudes toward privacy by the United States and much of the rest of the world will affect global attempts to weed out terrorists. This article discusses the constitutional basis for most US policy approaches to privacy regulation. The article explains how the US constitution is the source for most of the differences between the US and international regulatory approaches to information privacy. Finally, the discussion addresses how new issues regarding privacy in the war on terrorism may be addressed by US Constitutional law.     

Reviews

William A. Clark, Crime and Punishment in Soviet Officialdom. Combating Corruption in the Political Elite, 1965–1990. London: M. E. Sharpe, 1993, xi + 242 pp., $49.95 h/b, $16.50 p/b

Leslie Holmes, The End of Communist Power. Anti‐Corruption Campaigns and Legitimation Crisis. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1993, xx + 358 pp., £45.00 h/b, £13.95 p/b.

Rachel Walker, Six Years that Shook the World: Perestroika—the Impossible Project. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1993, viii + 312 pp., £35.00 h/b, £9.99 p/b.

Stephen R. Graubard (ed.), Exit From Communism. New Brunswick, NJ, and London: Transaction Publishers, 1993, 292 pp., $19.95.

Sergei V. Chugrov, Rossiya i Zapad: Metamorfozy Vospriyatiya. Moscow: Nauka, 1993.

Zoltan D. Barany, Soldiers and Politics in Eastern Europe, 1945–90. London: Macmillan, 1993, xi + 243 pp., £40.00.

Paul Hockenos, Free to Hate. The Rise of the Right in Post‐communist Eastern Europe. London: Routledge, 1993, x + 332 pp., £17.99.

Ben Eklof (ed), School and Society in Tsarist and Soviet Russia. New York: St Martin's Press, and Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1993, xii + 254 pp., illustrations, index, £45.00.

Timothy Edward O'Connor, The Engineer of Revolution. L. B. Krasin and the Bolsheviks, 1870–1926. Oxford: Westview, 1992, xix + 322 pp., £36.95.     

A Cross-Cultural Perspective on the Relationships between Emotional Separation,Parental Trust,and Identity in Adolescents

Emotional separation and parental trust in parent–adolescent relationships are important factors for adolescent identity formation. However, prior research findings on emotional separation are inconsistent. This study aimed to conduct a more rigorous examination of the associations of emotional separation and parental trust with identity synthesis, confusion, and consolidation by applying a bi-factor model to identity, using adolescent samples from Lithuania (N?=?610; 53.9% female; M _age ?=?14.92), Italy (N?=?411; 57.4% female; M _age ?=?15.03), and Japan (N?=?759; 43.7% female; M _age ?=?14.13). Structural equation modeling revealed that emotional separation and parental trust were consistently associated with identity consolidation across the three countries, rather than associated with identity synthesis and identity confusion. Furthermore, the patterns of associations of emotional separation and parental trust with identity synthesis and identity confusion differed across the three nations. Overall, this study provides a better understanding of the role of emotional separation and parental trust in adolescent identity formation by suggesting the importance of the identity consolidation in the association between parent–child relationships and identity formation across three countries.     

Development policy and the democratic peace in Sub-Saharan Africa

The contention that ‘democracies do not ?ght one another’ has gained widespread acceptance in the discipline of international relations, as well as among policymakers and international institutions. In the post-Cold War era, this contention has formed part of the justi?cation for making development assistance conditional on democratic reforms in recipient countries. This article explores the democratic peace thesis in relation to Sub-Saharan Africa, and argues that the relationship between peace and democracy is much more complex than commonly allowed for in conventional liberal analyses. Contemporary development policies that are intended to promote peace, democracy and stability are frequently implicated in the production and continuation of con?ict. Accordingly, the article contends that many of Africa’s conflicts and so-called ‘failed states’ are best understood in light of policies inspired, in part, by the principles of the democratic peace thesis. The argument is illustrated with reference to four countries on the African continent: Côte d’Ivoire, Rwanda, Sierra Leone and Zambia.     

Organizational Justice Across Cultures: A Systematic Review of Four Decades of Research and Some Directions for the Future

This review aims to provide an overview of the main frameworks and findings of cross-cultural organizational justice research and some directions for future research. We systematically reviewed the literature and analysed 74 papers, which include more than one country, from the justice receiver perspective. We contribute to the literature in two ways. First, our analysis of methodological aspects highlights some limitations: most studies compare two countries, mainly China and the USA; cross-cultural equivalence checks are rare; and most studies do not directly measure culture, rather tend to use collectivism and power distance as post hoc explanations of country differences. Second, we offer a broad view of country differences by investigating contextual effects that go beyond national values. Our analysis of the influence of sociocultural influence levels shows that culture, socioeconomic development, organizational, situational, and individual characteristics interact to predict the development of and reactions to (in)justice across countries. A greater integration of levels is important for the advancement of research. Across cultures, more positive justice perceptions are related to positive outcomes, but are achieved differently, so organizations should be aware of sociocultural influences on employees’ perceptions of justice.     

Punishing the Innocent: Children of Incarcerated and Detained Parents

Abstract

About 2 million minor children in the U.S. have at least one parent incarcerated for criminal offenses. There are about 33,000 undocumented persons detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in jails and federal detention centers around the country, and 79% of the minor children of these detainees are U.S. citizens. There are few government programs that measure and respond to the harm caused to these children by the incarceration and detention of their parents, and the negative effects on these children are largely ignored in public policy debates about incarceration and immigration detention. I argue that we have an obligation to these children based on (1) the special status of children, (2) the harm caused to children by the arrest, detention and incarceration of their parents, (3) current incarceration and detention policies even in the presence of alternatives that would, on balance, create less harm.