Recollections of a robbery

One week after committing a simulated robbery while intoxicated or sober, each of 142 subjects recalled the event within a “cognitive interview”. In an initial exploratory experiment, alcohol consumption reduced the accuracy of recall of a variety of types of information, in particular, information about persons. In the second experiment, person identification suffered following the consumption of alcohol, but only when arousal was low. Higher levels of arousal appeared instead to minimize the negative impact of alcohol upon encoding and recall. Second, whereas the recollections by subjects of what they saw during the crime were not impaired by alcohol consumption, their recollections of what they did were impaired. Both experiments examined the effects of arousal upon the subjects' recalls, and Experiment 2 tested the hypothesis that increased arousal serves to reduce attention to peripheral sources of information. This hypothesis was supported because the identification of persons central to the crime benefited from increased arousal but the identification of persons peripheral to the crime did not. A similar hypothesis about the effects of alcohol received only mixed support because the subjects' behaviors reflected “alcohol myopia” but their identifications of target persons did not. Finally, manipulations at the time of retrieval of the subjects' beliefs about how much alcohol had been consumed also altered accuracy of recall. These experiments were supported by research grants from the Alberta Law Foundation to the first author and from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada to the second author. The authors are indebted to the following people, whose assistance was invaluable: Matthew Davidson, Vanessa Farr, Corinne Kuzma, Eileen McFadzen, Laura Mensch, Debbie Robb, Todd Schultz, and Evelyn Tan. We also thank John Vokey, Brian Cutler, Beth Loftus, Garrett Berman, Marisa Caiola, and an anonymous reviewer who provided critical comments on an earlier version of this paper. This research was presented at the meetings of the American Psychology—Law Society, Williamsburg, March, 1990.     

社区矫正比较研究

我国社区矫正制度尚处于试点阶段,如何确立适合我国发展要求的社区矫正制度,并非易事。本文借鉴英国和美国的经验,提出了建立和完善我国社区矫正制度基本设想。     

The politics of government reorganizations: Evidence from 30 OECD countries, 1980–2014

Revisiting the seminal study of March and Olson (1983), this article aimed to empirically test whether or not government reorganizations at the ministerial level can be better explained by political factors than administrative and functional rhetoric. Government reorganizations have often been understood as functional adaptations to increase organizational efficiency and effectiveness, but little empirical research has been conducted on their political context. By analyzing pooled‐time series data from 30 OECD countries from 1980–2014 taken from the Statesman's Yearbook, this article sought to examine whether changes in political power are associated with government reorganizations and whether their intensity is affected by the country's political system (parliamentarism or presidentialism), transitions of administrative power, and political cycles of the top executive's tenure. The results suggested that government reorganizations are more likely to occur in parliamentary systems, after transitions of political power, and at the beginning of the top executive's tenure.     

Executive control of bureaucracy and presidential cabinet appointments in East Asian democracies

This article examines the role of cabinet appointments in controlling the bureaucracy in presidential democracies. I demonstrate how administrative challenges stemming from the structure of the bureaucracy shape presidential choice of ministers. Analyzing a sample of four East Asian cases from 1986 through 2013, I find that presidents are more likely to select ministers from the civil service as bureaucracies are more professionalized, controlling for several political factors. Further evidence from qualitative interviews and case studies suggests that, in professionalized systems equipped with a sizable pool of talent but lacking responsiveness, presidents tend to promote ideologically aligned senior civil servants. However, in politicized systems, where presidents easily obtain responsiveness but face a low level of competence, policy experts tend to be selected from outside the bureaucracy. My findings have important implications for the regulatory governance and state capacity of East Asia, demonstrating the value of balancing between responsiveness and competence.