Looking for strengths in response to AIDS: individual,group and public authority roles in strategy

The HIV/AIDS pandemic is a challenge not only to medical understanding but also to understanding about how society works or can be made to work. New treatment regimes have to be matched with new social organisation. Caring and coping present society‐wide challenges and to the need to reinvent key social institutions in order to respond effectively. Existing studies demonstrate the vulnerability of modern, large‐scale state institutions to loss of knowledge, skill and competence in the face of high attrition rates in their pay role staff. Equally, family and kinship as well as other civil society institutions or ‘traditional’ social structures may be so disrupted by the loss of carers and providers that they cease to generate adequate levels of well‐being and security. The role of key individuals in providing public leadership is recognised but the significance of personal networks in communicating effective messages and mores is more difficult to pin down. Associations and mass movements have emerged that play a vital role in changing social attitudes and behaviour, and social institutions are adapting to the challenge. It appears that diverse social responses are essential, but, I argue, public policy thinking has a ‘centralist’, hierarchical, bias that discourages' sensible thinking about plural, diverse, strategies. This article seeks to develop a way of thinking about strategy, around the idea of institutional competence, to take account of, and be responsive to, diverse social forms and initiatives. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Determinants of Military Strategy, 1903–1994: A Quantitative Empirical Test

Military strategy is centrally important to understanding the causes, conduct, and outcomes of war. Several foreign policy theories make predictions as to what military strategies a state will choose. This article presents the first quantitative, empirical tests of hypotheses of strategy choice. Analysis was conducted on a random sample of country-years taken from the population of all countries from the years 1903 to 1994. Military strategy is classified as being either maneuver, attrition, or punishment. Empirical findings reveal that democracies and industrialized states are more likely to choose maneuver strategies, and that a state's own experiences affect the likelihood of it choosing maneuver. Factors found not to affect strategy choice include terrain, the level of external threat, troop quality, whether a state is democratizing, whether a state is a mixed regime, whether a state is a military regime, and vicarious experiences.     

A confirmatory factor analysis of a four-factor model of adolescent concerns revisited

This article addresses the issue of the day-to-day concerns faced by adolescents from urban, lower socioeconomic (SES) backgrounds. The current research is both a replication and extension of the work of C. Violato and W. B. Holden ([1988], A Confirmatory Factor Analysis of a Four-Factor Model of Adolescent Concerns, Journal of Youth and Adolescence, Vol. 17, pp. 101–113), who collected similar data on a sample of predominantly white students from a range of SES levels. The first goal was to analyze the mean ratings of the 14 concerns for the current study, and to compare these ratings to those found by Violato and Holden. Here, a high degree of similarity between the two studies: students in both studies rated career, grade, future schooling and appearance issues as the four most serious concerns and sexual impulse, drug, smoking and alcohol issues as the four least serious concerns. The second goal was to reevaluate Violato and Holden 's four-factor model of adolescent concerns, where the 14 concerns were evaluated in terms of four major themes: Social Self, Personal Self, Future and Career, and Health and Drug issues. In particular, we were interested in determining whether there were gender differences in this model. Results indicated that the model for boys and girls were not identical. For girls, the model was improved by including the correlations of the Health and Drugs factor to the three remaining factors, suggesting that girls have a more holistic view of their concerns.Received Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. Current research interests are in quantitative methods and program evaluation.Received Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, in educational psychology. Current research interests include quantitative methods in education and psychology.     

What’s in a poll? Incentives for truthful reporting in pre-election opinion surveys

We examine the ability of pre-election polls to aggregate information about voter preferences. We show that if the electorate is small and voting costs are negligible, then an equilibrium exists in which citizens report their true political preferences. If the electorate is large or voting costs are significant, however, then no such equilibrium exists because poll respondents possess incentives to influence the voting behavior of others by misreporting their true preferences. We find that when a truthful equilibrium does exist, a poll can raise expected welfare by discouraging turnout among members of the minority.     

An Intentionally Unfair Trial

Numerous flaws made the Dujail trial a violation of the internationallyprotected human right to a fair trial. The United States andthe Iraqi authorities conducted an unfair trial knowing thatboth the Third and Fourth Geneva Convention describe ‘wilfullydepriving’ a person ‘of the rights of fair and regulartrial’ as a war crime. Even if Saddam Hussein was notto be regarded as a prisoner of war, that is, merely as a civilian,in any case his right to fair trial was protected by internationallaw. According to the author, both the relevant states and theindividuals involved in the unfair Dujail trial bear responsibilityfor breaches of international law.     

Car Stereos and the Criminal Sanction: The Dangers of Too Much Social Control

Noise pollution is an ongoing problem in American cities, and car stereos are a major reason why large numbers of people are unhappy. Citizens are demanding regulation of “boom cars” and the typical policy response is to use the criminal sanction. The behavior is annoying, but hardly morally opprobrious. Despite the best intentions of those who propose such laws, they are potentially a bigger danger to civil liberties than the behavior that they purport to regulate. The enforcement of such laws does little to curb the behavior in question, but may function as a content-based regulation of certain types of music, provides opportunities for racial profiling, and may harm the legitimacy of the government thus reducing its ability to use its police power in areas which are more appropriate for the use of that power.