Contradictions, Law, and State Socialism

The relationship of law to antagonisms and contradictions within state socialism is explored from a Weberian and a Marxian perspective. Examining legislation, court decision making, legal control of economic behavior, and law enforcement reveals contradictions between (I) a radical participatory ideology versus muted or extinct civil society; (2) the ideology of comprehensive planning versus the impotence of law; (3) strategies aiming at total control of public life versus the emergence of a niche society outside the reach of the state; (4) regulatory norms versus the functional necessity of norm-breaking behavior; (5) reliance on a revolutionary sense of justice versus the cultivation of "doublethought"; (6) a program of total control of economic behavior versus the emergence of deviant, even criminal, forms of organization to fulfill functionally necessary but ideologically unapproved economic tasks; and finally, (7) two distinct practices of law, responsive or postliberal versus repressive. Yet, contradictions typically did not lead through conflict to subsequent reform during the state socialist era, as conflicts were repressed. When reforms were attempted, they furthered conflict and system breakdown.     

Zur Entwicklung der Vermögensungleichheit in Deutschland

For a long time, the social policy discussion in Germany has been heavily dominated by income inequality and poverty risk rates, while at the same time the analysis of personal wealth distribution was underdeveloped, last but not least due to a severe lack of appropriate data. Using representative micro data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP), this paper analyzes individual level information on net wealth for 2002 and 2007. This five year period saw a pronounced increase in both income and wealth inequality. More detailed analyses by SES reveal significant differences in wealth holdings by migration status, education level, region, income level as well as across age groups. This cross-sectional perspective is being enriched by panel analyses focusing on correlates of individual wealth holdings as well as on determinants of wealth mobility. Using a multivariate regression framework we find clear indication for the relevance of the individual employment and income career as well as a sustaining importance of intergenerational transmission (by means of bestowals and inheritance) for both wealth accumulation and mobility.     

Economic ideas and institutional change: Evidence from soviet economic debates 1987–1991

The article analyses the shift in ideas that took place in Soviet economic thought between 1987 and 1991 and its relation to the changes in the real economy. The main focus of the article is on the issue of whether the evolution of Soviet economic thought in the analysed period changed in a gradual, path-dependent manner, or in a discontinuous, revolutionary fashion. Following the approach of Imre Lakatos, I argue that the conviction of being on the road to the ‘wholesome society’ formed the hard core of Soviet ideology, while ‘democratic centralism’ and the centralised economy provided its protective belt. Perestroika was the last attempt to save the hard core of Soviet ideology by adjusting the protective belt. This attempt failed, and the economic debates, which at first had been restricted to the protective belt, more and more approached its hard core, until it finally cracked. In this sense there was certainly a paradigm shift in Soviet economic thought. However, the notion of history as a purposeful process was not given up even by the Soviet adherents of monetarism. The utopian liberalism which became fashionable among Russian economists for a short period of time, it is argued, provides evidence that paradigm shifts and path-dependence in the evolution of economic ideas are not mutually exclusive.     

Black and white complainants and the police: A comparison of individual and contextual characteristics

Citizens have always had an important role in the crime control process; they are most often responsible for the detection of crime. It is imperative, therefore, that citizens perceive police officers to be competent and just in the execution of their duties; in the absence of such confidence, the process suffers. Ironically, the groups which are most often the victims of crime hold the most negative attitudes toward the police. Minorities in urban communities, particularly blacks, fit this pattern. These attitudes appear to be linked to the perception of negative, differential experiences with the police, experiences which often lead to the filing of a formal complaint. Using a data set from the complaint files of a large American city, this article explores the relationship between the attitudes of blacks toward the police, experiences with the police, and complaints lodged against the police.     

The impact of patrol staffing on police-citizen injuries and dispositions

This article examines the impact of one- and two-officer patrol units on police-citizen interactions which resulted in the filing of citizen complaints against the officer(s). Specifically, it is hypothesized that there is no difference between one- and two-officer units (1) in the rate of injuries to officers in hostile police-citizen interactions, (2) in the number of citizen complainant injuries received in such interactions, (3) in the number of resisting arrest-type charges placed against the citizen, and (4) in the type of charge placed against the citizen in the incident. The data indicate that the impact of staffing is felr more by citizens than officers. When controlling for shift and dangerousness of precinct of occurrence, citizens were found to be more likely to be injured in hostile police-citizen encounters than the police, especially when two officers were present. Officers in two-officer units were more likely to arrest the citizen in the incident which precipitated the complaint and the arrest of that citizen was most likely to be for the more serious charge of assaulting an officer. The results suggest that lone officers resolve more disputes without resorting to formal outcomes. The implications of these findings for police patrol strategy are discussed.     

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