Corporate public affairs: necessary cost or value‐added asset?

This paper examines the valuation tools available to measure the financial contribution that public affairs activities add to the corporate bottom line. The paper begins with a consideration of the state of quantification in public affairs. Next, theoretical frameworks for broad classes of valuation methodologies are presented. Specific models applied by companies are also examined, outlining their advantages and limitations. The paper concludes with recommendations for implementing quantitative financial measures and opportunities for future research. Copyright © 2003 Henry Stewart Publications     

Korean police officers' attitude toward the efficacy of mini-police stations

In the era of community policing, a mini-police station system gained popularity and was adopted in many countries in order to improve relationships with citizens and decentralize the police. The very similar system in South Korea, which existed as the core division since the establishment of the modern Korean Police, however, stimulated controversy over the effectiveness of preventing crime and improving the relationship between citizens and the police. Unfortunately, an empirical study was not conducted to examine the effectiveness of the mini-police station system in South Korea, despite the significance of the issue. As a first step, the current study examined Korean police officers' perception of the efficacy of police mini-stations. Results showed that a majority of Korean officers believed that mini-police stations played crucial and positive roles. Regarding determinants of the perceived efficacy of a mini-police station, individual and organizational factors (except rank and unit assigned) were not significantly related to officers' attitude toward the efficacy of a mini-police station. Instead, attitudinal factors were found to be significant predictors of the perceived efficacy of a mini-police station. Policy implications and directions for future research are discussed.     

Abortion and the Beginning and End of Human Life

The doctrine that it is wrong to end the existence of something because it is a human life (unless special circumstances obtain) I call "the standard view." I argue that attempts by proponents of abortion choice to avoid the implications of the standard view by suggesting that we don't know when life begins or by suggesting that fetuses are only potential lives fail. Nevertheless, opponents of abortion choice should not base their arguments on the standard view, for the standard view is false. I propose a substitute for the standard view that avoids the difficulties with it, that explains why most people believe that the standard view is true and that also underwrites opposition to abortion choice.     

Beyond the Ghetto: Police Power,Methamphetamine and the Rural War on Drugs

Viewing police as important cultural producers, we ask how police power fashions structures of feeling and social imaginaries of the “war on drugs” in small towns of the rural Midwest. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and a collection of interviews focusing on police officers’ beliefs about the causes of crime and drug use, we locate a narrative of rural decline attributed to the producers and users of methamphetamine. We argue this narrative supports punitive and authoritarian sensibilities and broader narcopolitical projects more generally and ignores long-standing social inequalities observed in rural communities. As such, the cultural work of rural police provides important insight to the shape and direction of late-modern crime control beyond the familiar terrains of the city and its “ghetto.”     

Andreas Wenger and Reto Wollenmann,eds. Bioterrorism: Confronting a Complex Threat

This article examines the transformation of the Chechen conflict from a predominately nationalist to jihadist struggle, and compares the similar changes that took place in the Kashmiri insurgency. Using global jihadist strategy and ideology, and the accompanying influence of Al Qaida, both conflicts are shown to have taken on a new ideology and to have expanded beyond previous areas of operation. In both instances, the political leadership wrapped themselves in the mantle of political Islam (Islamism) as ensuing violence led to rapid socioeconomic transformation and social breakdown, thus allowing foreign jihadists to exert power and take up/divert the cause. In the past few years, two main groups originating in Chechnya and Kashmir have taken on Western targets and become more indoctrinated in Al Qaida's global jihadist ideology: the Caucasus Emirate (CE) and Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT). The opportunist franchising strategy of Al Qaida could come to play a role in the future of both groups, especially if the CE is able to coalesce into a more unified front. More importantly, the global jihadist attributes of the CE must begin to garner the same attention in the Western world as that of LeT.     

Ybarra. Ugh.

The last time the Ninth Circuit decided an exclusionary land use control case, there was no clear-cut victory for either side, the result in Southern Alameda Spanish Speaking Organization v. Union City, 424 F.2d 291, 22 ZD 246 (9th Cir. 1970) being that the Chicano, low-income housing group did not get to use the site it wanted, but the court opined that Union City had to provide some sites somewhere. But in Ybarra v. City of Town of Los Altos Hills, 503 F.2d 250, 26 ZD 426 (9th Cir. 1974) the plaintiff Chicano group lost all.