Tribal law enforcement authority to enforce state laws

This paper summarizes the current status of the ability of tribal law enforcement officers to enforce state law in all states that have Indian country – defined in 18 U.S.C. § 1151 as any Indian reservation, dependent Indian communities, or Indian allotments – within their borders. It is important to understand the current status of those officers as their agencies look to improve public safety in their nations. First, for context, we provide a brief background on tribes and tribal law enforcement. Then, we present a summary of the legal jurisdictional challenges faced by tribal law enforcement. Finally, we analyze the current status of tribal law enforcement officers in each state and conclude with a summary and concluding remarks.     

The integration of British undergraduate men’s public and private masculinities

Abstract

Recent research has highlighted British heterosexual men espousing gay-friendly attitudes, and adopting ‘softer’ gendered behaviours. In contexts where overt homophobia is increasingly stigmatized, it is possible that these public avowals of attitudes do not correspond with privately held beliefs. In this article, I draw on a two-year covert insider-ethnography of undergraduate men to investigate men’s private attitudes related to homosexuality and their embodied masculinities. In these contexts, these men were found to be as emotionally open, inclusive and homosocially tactile as they were in public. Drawing on Goffman’s notion of front and backstage, I contend that these men’s masculine identities are ‘authentic’ components of themselves, and are more than strategic presentations of self.     

Small Firms’ Formalisation: The Stick Treatment

Firm informality is pervasive throughout the developing world, Bangladesh being no exception. The informal status of many firms substantially reduces the tax basis and therefore impacts the provision of public goods. The literature on encouraging formalisation has predominantly focused on reducing the direct costs of formalisation and has found negligible impacts of such policies. In this paper, we focus on a stick intervention, which to the best of our knowledge is the first one in a developing country setting that deals with the most direct and dominant form of informality, that is registration with the tax authority with a direct link to the country’s potential revenue base and thus public goods provision. We implement an experiment in which randomly selected firms are visited by tax representatives who deliver an official letter from the Bangladesh National Tax Authority stating that the firm is not registered and the consequential punishment if the firm fails to register. We find that the intervention increases the rate of registration among treated firms, while firms located in the same market but not treated do not seem to respond significantly. We also find that only larger revenue firms at baseline respond to the threat and register. Our findings have at least two important policy implications: i) the enforcement angle, which could be an important tool to encourage formalisation; and ii) targeting of government resources for formalisation to high-end informal firms. The effects are generally small in levels and this leaves open the question of why many firms still do not register.     

Following the Party in Time of War? The Implications of Elite Consensus

Prominent perspectives in the study of conflict point to two factors that exert substantial influence on public opinion about foreign intervention: (1) news about casualties and (2) signals from partisan elites. Past work is limited, however, in what it can say about how these two factors interact. We present an experiment designed to understand the surprisingly common scenario where elites send competing messages about whether the public should support war or oppose it—and these messages do not coincide with party divisions. We find that partisans are generally insensitive to news about casualties, but they become noticeably more sensitive when they perceive within-party disputes over support for the war. Independents, however, respond to news of casualties irrespective of what messages elites send. These findings shed light on when and how the public responds to competing and unclear cues and speak to the role of public opinion in determining conflict outcomes and democratic foreign policy-making more broadly.     

Wilhelm II: Into the Abyss of War and Exile, 1900–1941

Wilhelm II: Into the Abyss of War and Exile, 1900–1941. By John C.G. Röhl (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), pp.1562, AU$97.95 (cloth).     

Why Do Partisan Media Polarize Viewers?

The recent increase in partisan media has generated interest in whether such outlets polarize viewers. I draw on theories of motivated reasoning to explain why partisan media polarize viewers, why these programs affect some viewers much more strongly than others, and how long these effects endure. Using a series of original experiments, I find strong support for my theoretical expectations, including the argument that these effects can still be detected several days postexposure. My results demonstrate that partisan media polarize the electorate by taking relatively extreme citizens and making them even more extreme. Though only a narrow segment of the public watches partisan media programs, partisan media's effects extend much more broadly throughout the political arena.