Campaign Persuasion and Nascent Partisanship in Mexico's New Democracy

Despite ample evidence of preelection volatility in vote intentions in new democracies, scholars of comparative politics remain skeptical that campaigns affect election outcomes. Research on the United States provides a theoretical rationale for campaign effects, but shows little of it in practice in presidential elections because candidates’ media investments are about equal and voters’ accumulated political knowledge and partisan attachments make them resistant to persuasive messages. I vary these parameters by examining a new democracy where voters’ weaker partisan attachments and lower levels of political information magnify the effects of candidates’ asymmetric media investments to create large persuasion effects. The findings have implications for the generalizability of campaign effects theory to new democracies, the development of mass partisanship, candidate advertising strategies, and the specific outcome of Mexico's hotly contested 2006 presidential election. Data come primarily from the Mexico 2006 Panel Study.     

大学生宗教信仰的社会心理学分析

随着大学教育、教学活动与社会联系的日益深入,宗教文化在大学校园中也有一定程度的渗入和传播,信教的大学生人数呈上升趋势。导致大学生宗教信仰的原因既有西方宗教文化的影响等外部因素,也有大学生好奇心强、追求自我实现等内部心理因素。高校一方面应尊重大学生的宗教信仰,另一方面应采取加强对大学生的无神论教育等措施引导大学生树立科学的世界观和人生观,为社会主义建设事业培养更多的合格人才。     

Just 'Cause You're Smarter than Me Doesn't Give You a Right to Tell Me What to Do: Legitimate Authority and the Normal Justification Thesis

Joseph Raz's famous theory of authority is grounded in threeclaims about the nature and justification of authority. Accordingto the Preemption Thesis, authoritative directives purport toreplace the subject's judgments about what she should do. Accordingto the Dependence Thesis, authoritative directives should bebased on reasons that actually apply to the subjects of thedirective. According to the Normal Justification Thesis (NJT),authority is justified to the extent that subjects are morelikely to comply with right reason by following the authority'sdirectives than by following their own judgments about whatright reason requires.¹ In this article, I consider a number of ways in which NJT mightbe construed as a justification for authority. First, I evaluateNJT construed as a principle that would provide a practicaljustification for an individual to accept or recognize a particularperson or persons as a preemptive authority. Second, I evaluateNJT construed as a principle that describes the conditions underwhich a state or legal system is morally legitimate. I arguethat NJT is true under none of these interpretations.²     

An Analysis of Miranda Warnings and Waivers: Comprehension and Coverage

Miranda warnings enshrine the constitutional rights of custodial suspects against self-incrimination. However, the wording and sentence complexity of Miranda warnings and waivers vary dramatically from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. This study is the first extensive investigation of Miranda warning variations examining 560 Miranda warnings from across the United States. With Flesch-Kincaid reading comprehension as a useful metric, Miranda warnings varied from very simple comprehension (i.e., grade 2.8) to requiring postgraduate education. Miranda warnings are composed of five components (e.g., silence and evidence against you); marked variations were also observed in the comprehensibility of individual components. On average, the Miranda warning component on "continuing rights" requires a reading comprehension level six grades higher than the comparatively simple expression of the right to silence. Similar analyses were conducted on Miranda waivers. The content of these warnings differed on such issues as communicating (a) when access to an attorney would be granted (e.g., 45.9% specified only "during questioning") and (b) explicitly that indigent legal services were free (e.g., 31.8% directly informed suspects). Finally, the study identified representative Miranda components at different levels of reading comprehension as a template for further research.     

The Differentiation of the Volatile Organic Signatures of Individuals Through SPME-GC/MS of Characteristic Human Scent Compounds

Abstract:  Human scent evidence is utilized as an investigative tool through canine scent discriminations based on the premise that human scent is an individualizing characteristic. This study describes the development of what is effectively a human scent barcode consisting of the relative ratios of an individual's "primary odor" compounds utilized to determine a reproducible and individualizing profile which can be stored in a searchable database for a proof of concept of human scent as a biometric measure. Triplicate hand odor samples were evaluated from 10 subjects utilizing solid phase micro-extraction gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (SPME-GC/MS) and compared via Spearman Rank Correlations. Narrowing the compounds considered for each subject to only those common in all three samples, or a subject's "primary odor constituents," produced a greater degree of both individualization and discrimination; at both correlation thresholds of 0.9 and 0.8, the individuals were correctly discriminated and identified in 99.54% of the cases.     

The challenge of cyber attack deterrence

National security planners have begun to look beyond reactive, tactical cyber defense to proactive, strategic cyber defense, which may include international military deterrence. The incredible power of nuclear weapons gave birth to deterrence, a military strategy in which the purpose of armies shifted from winning wars to preventing them. Although cyber attacks per se do not compare to a nuclear explosion, they do pose a serious and increasing threat to international security. Real-world examples suggest that cyber warfare will play a lead role in future international conflicts. This article examines the two deterrence strategies available to nation-states (denial and punishment) and their three basic requirements (capability, communication, and credibility) in the light of cyber warfare. It also explores whether the two most challenging aspects of cyber attacks – attribution and asymmetry – will make cyber attack deterrence an impossible task.     

Ethics, Information Technology, and Public Health: New Challenges for the Clinician-Patient Relationship

Increasingly widespread adoption of health information technology tools in clinical care increases interest in ethical and legal issues related to the use of these tools for public health and the effects of these uses on the clinician-patient relationship. It is argued that patients, clinicians, and society have generally uncontroversial duties to support civil society's public health mission, information technology supports this mission, and the effects of automated and computerized public health surveillance are likely to have little if any effect on the clinician-patient relationship. It is also suggested, nevertheless, that electronic public health surveillance raises interesting and important ethical issues, some of which can be addressed if not resolved by empirical research, especially regarding patient preferences about secondary use of health data and their moral obligation to contribute to population- based health.     

Can Strict Criminal Liability for Responsible Corporate Officers be Justified by the Duty to Use Extraordinary Care?

The responsible corporate officer (RCO) doctrine is, as a formal matter, an instance of strict criminal liability: the government need not prove the defendant’s mens rea in order to obtain a conviction, and the defendant may not escape conviction by proving lack of mens rea. Formal strict liability is sometimes consistent with retributive principles, especially when the strict liability pertains to the grading of an offense. But is strict liability consistent with retributive principles when it pertains, not to grading, but to whether the defendant has crossed the threshold from noncriminal to criminal conduct? In this essay, I review the two most plausible arguments supporting an affirmative answer in the context of the RCO doctrine. First, perhaps this doctrine reflects a rule-like form of negligence, akin to a rule that prohibits selling alcohol to a minor. Second, perhaps this doctrine expresses a duty to use extraordinary care to prevent a harm. Neither argument is persuasive. The first argument, although valid in some circumstances, fails to explain and justify the RCO doctrine. The second argument, a duty to use extraordinary care, is also inadequate. If “extraordinary care” simply means a flexibly applied negligence standard that considers the burdens and benefits of taking a precaution, it is problematic in premising criminal liability on ordinary negligence. If instead it refers to a higher duty or standard of care, it has many possible forms, such as requiring only a very slight deviation from a permissible or justifiable standard of conduct, placing a “thumb” on the scale of the Learned Hand test, identifying an epistemic standard more demanding than a reasonable person test, or recognizing a standard that is insensitive to individual capacities. However, some of these variations present a gratuitous or incoherent understanding of “negligence,” and none of them sufficiently explain and justify the RCO doctrine.