Legitimating beliefs: Sources and indicators

The more a government is effective and fair, the more legitimacy that government is likely to attain, and the more it will possess the potential to elicit compliance without excessive monitoring or punitive action. We explore this proposition using contemporary survey data from sub‐Saharan Africa. In particular, we are interested in the conditions that promote popular legitimating beliefs that provide support for governments that are attempting to serve their entire populations competently and in a manner that is relatively impartial and equitable. This article provides empirical support for a long hypothesized link between the extent of government effectiveness, procedural justice, and citizens' willingness to defer to governmental tax authority. The sample, drawn from a continuum of developing societies in Africa, allows us to analyze the impact of variations in government effectiveness and citizen perceptions of fairness on the sense of obligation to comply with the tax authorities, our indicator for legitimating beliefs.     

Photographic comparison of surface topography as a viable solution when physical match is challenging

Physical matching methods are a family of well‐known methods that are utilized in order to determine whether two pieces of a tearable/breakable material used to be one object. When performing physical match of polymers, it is sometimes difficult to reach an unambiguous conclusion. This is due to various reasons. One is when the tear/fracture resides in an inaccessible or hidden‐from‐view region of the piece. Another is when the shape of the tear/fracture at the object's tear/fracture line is insufficient for deducing a complete match. Third is deficiency of material along this line. These are examples of processes where the line is affected so drastically, so that a match renders impossible. Specifically, when addressing elastic materials, the tear/fracture line may even be squashed. This may also be a reason for difficulty in performing a physical match. In this paper, a method is proposed where a match is alternatively achieved by means of photographic comparison of marks on the surface topography of the pieces‐in‐question. Comparisons of pairs of torn pieces of silicon rubber were made. The procedure involved photography of the surface topography the pieces. Then, the photographs were horizontally mirror‐flipped. Lastly, a comparison was made between two photographs: a photograph of one piece and a mirror‐flipped photograph of the opposite piece. The results show that after comparing the pieces to one another, only one unique pair turned out to be positively matched. Using the proposed method, not only the comparison is done by a more informative method (comparing to physical match), it is also more convenient, faster, less expensive, and technically simpler.     

Research note: evidence for moving to an 84-person photo lineup

The traditional six-to-ten person lineup is known to be extremely unreliable. Witnesses who choose someone when the suspect is innocent are too likely to choose that suspect. One solution is to enlarge the lineup in a manner that reduces mistaken identification far more than it lowers correct identification of the culprit. This experiment was built on past research, and it displayed to witnesses lineups consisting of sets of 12 photographs in an album, either two sets (24 photos) or seven sets (84 photos). No difference was found between witnesses for the 24-person lineup or the 84-person lineup in either their ability to identify the target whom they had seen previously, or in the number of mistaken choices of someone in lineups where the target was absent. Since the chance that the witness might mistakenly identify the suspect is far less in the 84-person lineup, lineups should consist of at least that number.

When Local Comes to Town: Governing Local Agriculture in the South Carolina Lowcountry

The South Carolina Lowcountry—the coastal region centered on Charleston—has developed a vibrant local food system over the past several decades. This article examines the role of governance institutions in cultivating local-market farmers and the broader agricultural landscape. It argues that the region’s institutions of agricultural governance produce a farmer characterized by “entrepreneurial nostalgia”—put simply, the articulation of entrepreneurial and nostalgic subjects. This farmer subjectivity in many ways fits within what is generally deemed a neoliberal mode of being, yet this article also emphasizes, contrary to much of the work on neoliberalism, the racial politics of such a subject position. Entrepreneurial nostalgia not only emphasizes individualism and the marketing of the self but it does so in a way that aligns with both colorblind and liberal-multicultural forms of racism. The article closes by reflecting on potential openings for reworking this farmer subjectivity.     

Serious tax fraud and noncompliance

Research Summary This article reviews what international evidence exists on the impact of civil and criminal sanctions upon serious tax noncompliance by individuals. This construct lacks sharp definitional boundaries but includes large tax fraud and large-scale evasion that are not dealt with as fraud. Although substantial research and theory have been developed on general tax evasion and compliance, their conclusions might not apply to large-scale intentional fraudsters. No scientifically defensible studies directly compared civil and criminal sanctions for tax fraud, although one U.S. study reported that significantly enhanced criminal sanctions have more effects than enhanced audit levels. Prosecution is public, whereas administrative penalties are confidential, and this fact encourages those caught to pay heavy penalties to avoid publicity, a criminal record, and imprisonment. Policy Implications Although it has yet to be proven that prosecution has a greater or lesser impact on these offenders, increased prosecution might be justified for purposes of moral retribution as well as perceived social fairness.     

Technologies, Security, and Privacy in the Post-9/11 European Information Society

Since 11 September 2001, many 'hard' and 'soft' security strategies have been introduced to enable more intensive surveillance and control of the movement of `suspect populations'. Suicide bombings have since generated a step-change in asymmetric threat analysis and public perceptions of risk. This article reviews how post-9/11 'security' issues intersect with existing and emerging technologies, particularly those relating to identity, location, home, and work that will form the backbone of the European Information Society. The article explores the complexities generated by the way that these technologies work, sites of nationalist resistance, and formal bureaucratic roles. Many of the planned surveillance methods and technologies are convergence technologies aiming to bring together new and existing data sources, but are unable to do so because of poor data quality and the difficulty of using the integrated data to reduce serious crime risks. The delay may enable legal compliance models to be developed in order to protect the principles of privacy that are set out in the ECHR and the EC Data Protection Directive. Though (moral) panics produce changes in law, the article emphasizes the constraining effects of law.     

Medicoritual trephinations in modern Israel.

Two recent cases of ritual trephinations that were revealed during regular autopsies are described. The osteologic findings are discussed in relation to hospital craniotomy and ancient trephination, and the forensic practitioner is offered a set of criteria to differentiate properly between trephination and craniotomy.