Risk-taking behaviour and criminal offending: an investigation of sensation seeking and the Eysenck personality questionnaire

This study investigated relationships between hostility, Zuckerman's sensation seeking, and Eysenck and Eysenck's personality scales within a prison population, to explore whether they could be conceptualized in terms of two socialized and unsocialized sensation seeking factors. Participants included 79 incarcerated adult male offenders (age range = 18-62). Findings support the distinction between socialized and unsocialized sensation seeking and suggest that these factors represent more overarching personality factors. Psychoticism was a clear marker of the more broad impulsive, unsocialized sensation seeking factor, rather than representing a supertrait in its own right. This factor was also represented by lie, disinhibition, and boredom susceptibility scales. Findings relating to hostility also supported such a reformulation, as unsocialized scales did cluster together to predict the unsocialized hostility factor, whereas unsocialized scales did not. The results demonstrate the need for a theoretical reformulation of the two given theories of personality.     

External Democratization after War: Success and Failure

In post-war societies external actors promote democracy within a broad framework of state- and nation-building, rule-of-law building, and economic development. But not all democracy promotion efforts succeed in an equal way. A closer look at cases of intervention and democratization since 1945 helps us to account for this variation. Cases of democratization can be differentiated according to their level of post-war socio-economic development, the level of social trust versus the level of inner-societal violence, the character of remaining stateness, the potential erosion of the nation, and the terms of peace. In order to explain the democratization successes of the post-World War II period on the one hand, and the apparent democratization failures of the 1990s and after 11 September 2001 on the other, the strategies external actors use in post-war transformation must be considered. Sometimes, external actors differ significantly in their ability and willingness to deal with the five issues mentioned above. Given differences in both structural conditions and actor engagement, external actors should be more careful when using some of the early democratization cases as blueprints for democracy promotion today.     

Drugs,Violence, and Corruption: Perspectives from Mexico and Central America

Robert J. Bunker, ed., Criminal Insurgencies in Mexico and the Americas: The Gangs and Cartels Wage War. New York: Routledge, 2013. Tables, figures, index, 210 pp.; hardcover $160, paperback $56.95. Robert J. Bunker and John P. Sullivan, Studies in Gangs and Cartels. New York: Routledge, 2014. Tables, figures, index, 232 pp.; hardcover $168, paperback $54.95. Michael Deibert, In the Shadow of Saint Death: The Gulf Cartel and the Price of America's Drug War in Mexico. Guilford: Lyons Press, 2014. Map, bibliography, index, 336 pp.; hardcover $24.95, paperback $16.95. Alfredo Nateras Domínguez, Vivo por mi madre y muero por mi barrio. Significados de la violencia y la muerte en el Barrio 18 y la Mara Salvatrucha. Mexico City: Instituto Mexicano de la Juventud (IMJUVE)/Secretaría de Desarrollo Social (SEDESOL), 2014. Figures, bibliography, 493 pp.; paperback. Sala Negra de El Faro, eds., Crónicas negras desde una región que no cuenta. Mexico City: Aguilar, 2014. 350 pp.; paperback $17. Héctor Silva Ávalos, Infiltrados: crónica de la corrupción en la PNC (1992–2013). San Salvador: UCA Ediciones, 2014. 312 pp.; paperback $10.