Author Index of Volume 16

Authors Index

Author Index of Volume 16     

Psycholegal Scholarship's Contribution to False Consciousness About Injustice

The field of psychology and law began with an avowed focus on social justice. In the past two decades, that focus has been diverted. With justice defined more narrowly than previously, psycholegal research has contributed to false consciousness about the degree to which law reduces injustice and promotes social change. Primary components of false consciousness about law include the belief that procedural justice is more important than substantive or distributive justice, the acceptance of legal doctrines that support corporate capitalism, and the belief that the strict rule of law is inherently superior to individualized equity and commonsense justice.     

Regime Types and Discrimination against Ethnoreligious Minorities: A Cross-Sectional Analysis of the Autocracy–Democracy Continuum

Although many assume that the relationship between the autocracy–democracy continuum and discrimination is linear, with autocracies discriminating the most and democracies discriminating the least, the assumption is not universal. This study uses the Minorities at Risk dataset to test this relationship with regard to government treatment of religiously differentiated ethnic minorities (ethnoreligious minorities) as well as ethnic minorities that are not religiously differentiated. The results show that the pattern of treatment of ethnoreligious minorities differs from that of other ethnic minorities. The extent to which a state is democratic has no clear influence on the level of discrimination against non-religiously differentiated ethnic minorities, but it has a clear influence on the level of discrimination against ethnoreligious minorities. Autocracies discriminate more than democracies against ethnoreligious minorities, but semi-democracies, those governments that are situated between democracies and autocracies, discriminate even less. This result is consistent on all 11 measures used here and is statistically significant for seven of them, and it remains strong when controlling for other factors, including separatism. This phenomenon increases in strength from the beginning to the end of the 1990s. Also, democracies discriminate against ethnoreligious minorities more than they do against other minorities. The nature of liberal democracy may provide an explanation for this phenomenon.     

The generational decay of Euroscepticism in the UK and the EU referendum

A prominent feature of media coverage during the UK’s referendum on European Union (EU) membership was the stark difference between the pro-EU young and their Eurosceptic elders, widely assumed to reflect a generational divide. The positive relationship between age and hostility towards the EU is well established in academic research, however only Down, and Wilson [(2013). “A rising generation of Europeans? Life-cycle and cohort effects on support for ‘Europe’.” European Journal of Political Research 52: 431–456] have considered whether this reflects a generational or life-cycle effect. While their research confirms that there is such a generational effect, their capacity to explain it is limited. This study utilizes data from Britain and builds on previous attempts to identify and explain generational trends in Euroscepticism, bridging it with studies on individual-level determinants of hostility towards the EU, providing the most detailed assessment of the extent and causes of generational differences in Euroscepticism to date. The results confirm that today’s young people are the most supportive generation of EU membership, caused by a combination of factors including their experience of the EU during their formative years, their relationships with domestic political institutions, and their access to education.     

Reluctant policy innovation through profit concession and informality tolerance: A strategic relational view of policy entrepreneurship in China's urban redevelopment

This paper engages with the theoretical perspective of policy entrepreneurship to examine the pattern and process of policy change in the context of China's urban redevelopment. Drawing upon a strategic-relational reinterpretation of policy entrepreneurship, this paper identifies a distinctive form of reluctant policy innovation in the “three old renewals” scheme initiated in Guangzhou where profit concession and informality tolerance were practiced to create a small window of opportunity for the project of urban redevelopment to break ground. The motivation of policy entrepreneurship in the successful urban renewal projects in Guangzhou was heavily contingent upon the geographically important location of the project site and the historically incidence of hosting the 2010 Asian Games, which forced municipal government to become entrepreneurial and innovative in decision making and income redistribution in order to get things done as quickly as possible. The distinct fashion of policy innovation identified in the case of Guangzhou points to the polymorphous and dynamic nature of policy entrepreneurship and advocates a relational treatment of the strategies and motives of policy entrepreneurs embedded in concrete geographical and historical context.     

An Almost Universal Scheme of National Service in Australia in the 1950s*

While the Australian Government partly justified the introduction of a universal National Service Training Scheme for eighteen‐year old males in 1951 by highlighting the threat of imminent war and the consequent need for military preparedness, advocates also believed that national service encouraged the development of a sense of civil responsibility. Its confidence in the potential of national service to promote citizenship explains why the government was so strongly committed to the scheme's universality. Nonetheless, although the government went to great lengths to enforce compliance, Aborigines and those from other “non‐white” backgrounds were actively discouraged from participation and women were only reluctantly admitted to the professional army. As would be expected in this period, they were never considered for national service. An examination of the rationale for national service and the associated discourse for inclusion and exclusion not only indicates the social assumptions shaping policy‐making by government and bureaucratic elites in 1950s Australia, but also reveals their wider social aspirations.