The effects of adult and peer social initiations on the social behavior of withdrawn and aggressive maltreated preschool children

The effects of programmed peer- and adult-mediated play initiations were compared for socially dysfunctional, maltreated preschool children. An N = 1, alternating treatments design was used to compare these strategies. Two withdrawn nonmaltreated (control), two withdrawn maltreated, and three aggressive maltreated children served as subjects. Dyadic play sessions were videotaped and rated at the completion of the study by naive raters according to an 18-category observation system. Overall, the control children showed no difference in levels of interaction between peer and adult conditions. The withdrawn maltreated children showed a clear preference for interaction with the peer over the adult. The aggressive maltreated children showed a clear preference for interaction with the peer over the adult. The aggressive maltreated children showed a clear preference for interaction with the adult. They also demonstrated a decrease of positive behavior and increase in negative behavior in response to the programmed initiations. Implications of these differential responses were discussed.     

The Rule of Law or the Rule of Politics? Harmonizing the Internal and External Views of Supreme Court Decision Making

Law professors and political scientists generally subscribe to opposed theories of Supreme Court decision making. Law professors, to a great degree, adhere to an internal view: Supreme Court justices decide cases according to legal rules, principles, and precedents. Political scientists follow an external view: justices decide cases according to their political ideologies or preferences. This article develops an interpretive-structural theory that harmonizes these seemingly opposed views. This interpretive-structural theory not only explains why the internal and external views often are both effective but also why, sometimes, one approach might be more effective than the other. The article concludes by comparing the interpretive-structural theory with the "new institutionalism" that is emerging in political science.     

On the Consequences of Defensive Professionalism: Recent Changes in the Legal Labour Process

This study of change in the legal profession argues that governmental policies, combined with economic recession and supply-side considerations, have led to decline in the legal profession's historical performance, and a defensive strategy which preserves the status and earning power of equity partners. Related responses include a drive towards organizational consolidation, a long-term increase in the numbers of salaried solicitors, and fewer non-fee-earning support staff. This involves a shift from external (or occupational) closure regimes, which sanction entry to the profession, to internal (or organizational) mechanisms, which regulate progression through the professional hierarchy. The paper challenges hypotheses of deprofessionalization and managerialization, and lends empirical support to Freidson's continuity thesis whereby reorganization is safeguarding traditional privileges and rewards for certain sections of the profession at the cost of a progressive process of intra-occupational stratification.     

Contestability, queues, and governmental entry deterrence

This paper demonstrates that a perverse kind of entry deterrence can result when government subsidized production is combined with non-price rationing in the form of queuing. Even though queuing leads to a total cost to the consumer (not including the tax cost) that is higher than the cost of an unsubsidized private supplier, and even though the government's money price is rigid, the market is not contestable. The key to the result is that the waiting cost portion of the consumer's acquisition cost declines immediately upon entry and losses would be forced upon the entrant. Privatization would negate the entry deterrence, thus leading to entry, increased output at lower full prices, lower average production costs, decreased waiting costs, increased profits, and increased consumer surplus.