Results are needed,not ideology

He has been a Fulbright-Hays Senior Lecturer with the Institute of Geography and Regional Development in Caracas, Venezuela, where he taught field methods in agricultural geography. His books include Geopolitics of the Caribbean: Ministates in a Wider Worldand, with Jim Norwine, Geography as Human Ecology?     

The myth of the corporation as a creation of the state

The general movement to joint stock enterprise could not take place until certain economic and legal changes had been effected … The legal change was the substitution of the law of corporations for the law of partnership in company affairs. Investors could then invest safely and full exploitation of the economic changes became possible … Out before the legal changes of 1844 and 1855. English law virtually prohibited joint-stock enterprise for ordinary trading and manufacturing purposes.¹     

Defendant-juror similarity and mock joror judgments

It was hypothesized that joror-defendant similarity would lead to greater leniency toward a criminal defendant when the evidence against that defendant was weak or inconclusive; but when evidence was strong, it was expected that this relationship would be reversed. In Study 1, religious similarity was found to be simply and positively related to evaluation of the defendant and leniency, a relationship unaffected by the strength of evidence. This pattern of results was attributed to (a) insufficiently strong evidence against the defendant and (b) the lack of anticipated jury deliberation, problems addressed in Study 2. In that study, when evidence was strong against the defendant, juror-defendant racial similarity did increase the likelihood of conviction, but only when jurors anticipated being in the racial minority in their jury. Implications of the findings for psychological theory and for voir dire were discussed.The authors wish to thank Howard Klein and Jane Stanfel for their assistance in data collection and analysis in Experiment 2, and the Editor and two anonymous reviewers for their suggestions on an earlier draft.     

Prior Experiences as Temporal Frames of Reference in Social Justice: The Influence of Previous Fairness Experiences on Reactions to New and Old Supervisors

This paper focuses on the psychology of social change and social justice. Specifically, we focus on subordinates’ reactions to new and old supervisors, and we argue that in evaluating these different types of supervisors, subordinates may rely on prior fair or unfair experiences as temporal frames of reference. We further propose that a result of these frames of reference may be that previous fairness experiences have a bigger impact on subordinates’ reactions to subsequent neutral communications when an old rather than when a new supervisor is the source of that communication. Findings of two empirical studies indeed show that subordinates who had had fair experiences with a particular supervisor reacted more positively toward subsequent neutral messages when the communication was coming from the old supervisor rather than from the new supervisor. Subordinates who had had unfair experiences, however, reacted more negatively toward the communication when the source was the old rather than the new supervisor. Some evidence was also found for contrast effects such that people who react to a new supervisor may react more positively with the neutral demand from this authority figure when they have earlier experienced unfair as opposed to fair treatment by a different supervisory agent. These findings were obtained on subordinates’ satisfaction with the supervisors’ communication and their acceptance of the supervisor. Finally, we discuss the implications for the psychology of social change and social justice.     

The Implications of Elections for Federalism in Iraq: Toward a Five-Region Model

For most observers, Iraq's recent elections were an importantfirst step on the road to democratic normalcy. However, threerelated outcomes—the political marginalization of SunniArabs, the electoral gains made by Shi'a religious parties,and the triumphant performance of the Kurds—render thetask of crafting Iraq's permanent constitution significantlymore problematic. In this paper, we examine the implicationsof these election results for the design of Iraq's federal system.Our focus is on the character of the subunits in any futuresystem, specifically on whether Iraq should adopt a form ofterritorial federalism based on the country's existing eighteenprovinces (as most scholars argue) or whether a form of ethnic,or "plurinational," federalism based on five regions would bebetter able to address the very significant problems createdby the election results. After assessing the relative meritsof the various proposals for a federal Iraq, we conclude thata system based on five broad regions, though not ideal, is theleast bad of the options available.