Witness to a Miracle

This year marks the 40th anniversary of China's reform and opening up. Over the past four decades, the country has man-aged remarkable average annual GDP growth of 9.6 percent, a feat unprecedented in the history of human economic development.     

Further Validation of the Test of Memory Malingering (TOMM) Trial 1 Performance Validity Index: Examination of False Positives and Convergent Validity

Assessment of performance validity is an essential part of a neuropsychological evaluation, with the inclusion of two or more performance validity tests (PVTs) becoming routine practice. Considering the time to administer multiple tests, there has been some support for use of the Test of Memory Malingering (TOMM) Trial 1 (T1) as an independent, “one and done” PVT. Notably, cutoffs for TOMM T1 need further validation, with an emphasis on minimizing false-positive classifications among those with bona fide cognitive impairment. In a clinically referred sample of 127 veterans, this study examined the role of cognitive impairment in TOMM performance and the utility of a TOMM T1 as an independent PVT. Examinees were administered the TOMM and three additional PVTs as part of a comprehensive neuropsychological battery. Sixty-eight percent of examinees were classified valid (35% of valid examinees were cognitively impaired). TOMM T1?≤?40 had excellent observed sensitivity (83%) and specificity (93%) overall, with minimal false-positive classification. TOMM T1 was also significantly correlated and concordant with other memory-based PVTs. Given score ranges and failure rates for TOMM T1?≤?40 among those with neurological/neurocognitive conditions, scores in the 37–40 range may merit administration of additional TOMM trials to maximize accuracy in identifying valid-cognitively impaired versus noncredible performance. Otherwise, an abbreviated TOMM administration (i.e., only T1) using a cutoff of ≤?40—in conjunction with one or more additional PVTs—may be sufficient for detecting noncredible/invalid test performance in the absence of known or suspected neurological/neurocognitive disorders.     

Penal abolitionism: a different kind of reform

Rates of reoffending are high, both for people leaving prison and people on community sentences: the reconviction rate for all custodial sentences is 46.8 per cent, rising to 56.8 per cent for custodial sentences less than one year in duration. The reconviction rate for Community Orders is 36.8 per cent (Ministry of Justice, 2011).

Reoffending is expensive. Prison costs £45,000 per prisoner per year, plus £170,000 to build and maintain each new place (Prison Reform Trust, 2010). Cheaper community sentences can still cost £4,200 per offender per year. Many people in the criminal justice system have multiple and complex needs. For example, 72 per cent of male and 70 per cent of female sentenced prisoners suffer from two or more mental health disorders (ibid).     

Exploring Civic Engagement at an Urban Commuter Campus: Pathways and Barriers

Universities have traditionally had a vested interest in the civic preparation of students. In order to understand the unique situation of this population of students in a university serving non-traditional community students, qualitative data was used to identify pathways and barriers associated with their civic engagement. Results suggest themes associated with time, knowledge, and access.     

Geography,Globalization, and Terrorism: The Plots of Jemaah Islamiyah

Globalization and terrorism have become connected in many people's minds. I argue that the technologies of globalization, such as cheap transportation and telecommunications, do not in many circumstances liberate terrorist groups to attack throughout the world or necessarily grant them more power vis-à-vis states. In politically open environments, terrorist networks can behave much like legitimate jet-setting transnational organizations. When terrorist groups face state hostility, many of the tools of globalization become unavailable to them, and their activities become dependent on routes over any advantageous topographical features along states' boundaries, such as thick jungle, treacherous mountains, and tiny, isolated islands. This not only limits the territorial scope of the group's activities, but also means that the lack of these advantages can lead to failure. To illustrate this argument, I trace how the Southeast Asian terrorist group Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) planned two plots in 2000 and 2001: the Christmas Eve 2000 bombings in Indonesia, which succeeded, and the Singapore plots in 2001, which failed. The technologies of globalization were a great deal of help to JI during periods of political openness, but when it came under political pressure, the importance of geography and borders returned, particularly with regard to logistics.     

To govern,or not to govern? Opportunity and post-coup military behaviour in Egypt 2011–2014

This article examines Egyptian military behaviour in 2011 and 2013 to address the question of why officers remain in power following some successful coups, and allow for a transition to civilian rule after others. My evidence suggests that in post-1970 cases where international factors fail to exert sufficient pressure, outcome variation is influenced by levels of corporate opportunity, defined here as the ease with which the army can use control of the state to expand its corporate interests. Drawing on the existing literature, I posit consensus against military rule, high popular support for democracy, strong civil society, the presence of a strong opposition party, and low levels of cohesion among officers as factors which constrain opportunity. Prior research suggests that when the level of opportunity is high, controlling the state becomes a high-risk/low-reward endeavour, making it likely that officers will allow for a transition to civilian rule. My study contributes to the existing scholarship by using original data gathered through interviews with Egyptian officers, as well as other experts on the Egyptian military, to argue that low consensus against military rule, low support for democracy, and high organizational cohesion are jointly sufficient to produce governing intervention.     

State Revenue Forecasts and Political Acceptance: The Value of Consensus Forecasting in the Budget Process

Concerns about political biases in state revenue forecasts, as well as insufficient evidence that complex forecasts outperform naive algorithms, have resulted in a nearly universal call for depoliticization of forecasting. This article discusses revenue forecasting in the broader context of the political budget process and highlights the importance of a forecast that is politically accepted—forecast accuracy is irrelevant if the budget process does not respect the forecast as a resource constraint. The authors provide a case illustration in Indiana by showing how the politicized process contributed to forecast acceptance in the state budget over several decades. They also present a counterfactual history of forecast errors that would have been produced by naive algorithms. In addition to showing that the Indiana process would have outperformed the naive approaches, the authors demonstrate that the path of naive forecast errors during recessions would be easily ignored by political actors.     

An experimental study of the efficiency of unanimity rule and majority rule

Scholars traditionally claim that unanimity rule is more capable of producing Pareto optimal outcomes than majority rule. Dougherty and Edward (Public Choice 151(3):655–678, 2012) make the opposite claim assuming proposals are either random, sincere, or strategic. We test these competing hypotheses in a two-dimensional framework using laboratory experiments. Our primary results suggest: (1) majority rule enters the Pareto set more quickly than unanimity rule, (2) majority rule leaves the Pareto set at the same rate as unanimity rule, and (3) majority rule is more likely to select a Pareto optimal outcome than unanimity rule at the end of the game.