Clerics, Exiles, and Academics: Opposition to the Brazilian Military Dictatorship in the United States, 1969–1974

Virtually no one in the United States raised objections to the 1964 military takeover of the Brazilian civilian government. In the early 1970s, however, the Brazilian regime had become associated with torture and the arbitrary rule of law. By the end of that decade, compliance with human rights standards had developed into a yardstick for measuring U.S. foreign policy initiatives in Latin America. This paper argues that between 1969 and 1974, a small group of dedicated church activists, exiled Brazilians, and academics introduced the issue of human rights in Latin America into the U.S. national body politic. A network of concerned activists fashioned a systematic campaign to educate journalists, government officials, and the public about the abuses taking place under the generals' rule. Their activities helped isolate the military regime and laid the groundwork for a broader solidarity movement with Latin American popular struggles in the late 1970s and 1980s.     

Interpersonal Correlates of Peer Victimization Among Young Adolescents

Empathy, prosocial behavior, the number of friends, self-reported popularity, and various forms of interpersonal forgiveness were examined as predictors of peer victimization among 52 7th and 8th graders attending a private school. Popularity was the strongest individual predictor of teacher-reported victimization with high popularity associated with low victimization. Malestudents reported significantly higher rates of victimization than females, prompting the decision to examine correlates of self-reported victimization separately by gender. Interpersonal forgiveness scores were the strongest predictors of self-reported victimization; however, different forms of forgiveness were the greatest predictors of male and female self-reported victimization. Implications are discussed.     

The Indian Police: Problems and Prospects

India has a substantial terrorist problem, especially in theNortheast and in the northwestern state of Jammu and Kashmirstate. Somewhat related to this is tension between the majorityHindu community and the significant Muslim minority. Hindu-Muslimclashes in Gujarat during early 2002 led to open accusationsof government connivance and police partisanship. While theIndian Police Service has acquired a professional elan in handlingterrorism, its religious neutrality therefore continues to bequestioned. This image problem is compounded by a politicalsystem that fosters police identification with the ruling politicalparty. The ambience of corruption has also contributed to decliningstandards of personal rectitude among the higher police echelons.A lack of political will poses the significant obstacle to majorpolice reforms in the foreseeable future.     

Issues,the Spatial Theory of Voting,and British General Elections: A Comparison of Proximity and Directional Models

Competing spatial models of voter choiceare compared in the context ofparliamentary representatives selectedthrough single-member district, pluralityelections where party platforms areemphasized over individual candidates.Respondents of the 1987, 1992, and 1997British general election surveys ratepolitical parties on a series of issuescales. Ordered logistic regressions ofparty evaluations under proximity,directional, and mixed models reveal thatthe classic spatial model and thedirectional model perform equally well.Differences center on perceptions of thestatus quo, as voters appear to evaluatethe incumbent party (here, theConservatives) slightly differently thanminority parties (Labour and the LiberalDemocrats). The proximity model worksbetter for voter evaluations of governingparties while the directional model workswell for opposition parties.     

Testing the Buchanan-Wagner Hypothesis: European Evidence from Panel Unit Root and Cointegration Tests

According to the Buchanan-Wagnerhypothesis, public deficits reduce theperceived price of public goods to thecurrent generation of voters who, in turn,increase the demands for such socialservices. Several recent studies haveattempted to test this proposition. In thispaper, we apply modern time seriestechniques organized around panel unit rootand panel cointegration to draw sharperconclusions from the short time series thatare typically available. We find that thereis a long run positive relationship betweengovernment spending and government deficitsfor each country individually, as well asfor the panel as a whole. This providessupport for the BW hypothesis. We alsoanalyze the implications for the relativeproductivity performance of the public andprivate sector, the existence of scaleeconomies in the provision of publicservices, as well as the extent of crowdingout effects.     

Civic Engagement and Public Policy Making in America

Larry N. Gerston, Public Policymaking in a Democratic Society: A Guide to Civic Engagement
Thomas A. Birkland, An Introduction to the Policy Process: Theories, Concepts, and Models of Public Policy Making
Mark E. Rushefsky, Public Policy in the United States: At the Dawn of the Twenty-First Century     

The Limits of Ecological Inference: The Case of Split-Ticket Voting

We examine the limits of ecological inference methods by focusing on the case of split-ticket voting. Burden and Kimball (1998) report that, by using the King estimation procedure for inferring individual-level behavior from aggregate data, they are the first to produce accurate estimates of split-ticket voting rates in congressional districts. However, a closer examination of their data reveals that a satisfactory analysis of this problem is more complex than may initially appear. We show that the estimation technique is highly suspect in general and especially unhelpful with their particular data.