America,China and Taiwan: three challenges for Chen Shui-Bian

This study analyzes several of the major challenges that the Taiwanese government will confront during President Chen Shui-bian's second term of office. These include serious strains in relations with the US, a continued deterioration in ties with the People's Republic of China (PRC) and increased political polarization, ethnic division and gridlock at home. The author suggests that, while these problems are certainly formidable, they should not be exaggerated. Nor should they be attributed solely to one politician or political camp.     

The Fall: Consequences of US Withdrawal From Iraq

There is no big anti‐war movement in the United States against Iraq like there was against Vietnam. But the people have finally spoken against President Bush's Iraq policy by resoundingly returning a Democratic majority to Congress. Henry Kissinger, eminence gris of American diplomacy, ponders whether this means a “return to realism.” The military historian Martin van Creveld looks at what American withdrawal would mean.     

TENUOUS BORDERS: GIRLS TRANSFERRED TO ADULT COURT*

There are tremendous gaps in our theories and knowledge about girls who have committed crimes deemed so serious as to justify adult sentencing. This study is guided by a feminist approach to “give voice” to 22 girls incarcerated in a women's prison in the Midwest. Through in‐depth interviews, the girls describe their lives before prison and their perceptions of being tried and convicted as adults. Consistent with other research on female offenders, these girls reported lives fraught with violence and victimization, sexism, racism, and economic marginalization. This study calls for a more careful and complex look at issues of victimization, agency, and responsibility among female offenders, particularly those proclaimed “adults” by the legal system.     

Power Sharing and Inclusive Politics in Africa's Uncertain Democracies

Power‐sharing agreements have been widely used in Africa as paths out of civil war. However, the research focus on conflict mitigation provides an inadequate guide to recent cases such as Kenya and Zimbabwe. When used in response to flawed elections, pacts guaranteeing political inclusion adversely affect government performance and democratization. Political inclusion in these cases undermines vertical relationships of accountability, increases budgetary spending, and creates conditions for policy gridlock. Analysis using three salient dimensions highlights these negative effects: Origin distinguishes extra‐constitutional pacts from coalitions produced by more stable institutions, function contrasts postwar cases from scenarios where the state itself faces less risk, and time horizon refers to dilemmas that weigh long‐term costs versus short‐term benefits. The conclusion suggests that the drawbacks of inclusive institutions can be moderated by options such as sunset clauses, evenhanded prosecution of human rights violations, and by strengthening checks on executive authority.     

SENTENCING HOMICIDE OFFENDERS IN THE NETHERLANDS: OFFENDER,VICTIM, AND SITUATIONAL INFLUENCES IN CRIMINAL PUNISHMENT*

Empirical investigations of criminal sentencing represent a vast research enterprise in criminology. However, this research has been restricted almost exclusively to U.S. contexts, and often it suffers from key data limitations. As such, an examination of more detailed international sentencing data provides an important opportunity to assess the generalizability of contemporary research and theorizing on criminal punishment in the United States. The current study investigates little-researched questions about the influence of prosecutorial sentencing recommendations, victim/offender relationships, and extralegal disparities in sentencing by analyzing unique data on the punishment of homicide offenders in the Netherlands. The results indicate that offender, victim, and situational offense characteristics all exert important independent effects at sentencing and that prosecutorial recommendations exert powerful influences over judicial sentences. The article concludes with a discussion of future directions for comparative sentencing research across international contexts.     

Reorienting Regulation: Pollution Enforcement in Industrializing Countries

This special issue aims to set a course for future inquiry on regulatory enforcement in industrializing countries. With examples from major countries including Brazil, China, and Indonesia, the articles develop four cross-cutting themes: (1) how enforcement and its institutional context vary geographically and temporally, (2) how enforcement is affected by deficiencies in regulatory capacity and autonomy, (3) how civil liability regimes interact with enforcement, and (4) the relationship between enforcement and regulatory instrument choice.     

Going,going, . . . gone? The decline of party membership in contemporary Europe

This article offers an overview of levels of party membership in European democracies at the end of the first decade of the twenty‐first century and looks also at changes in these levels over time, comparing party membership today with figures from both 1980 and the late 1990s. While relying primarily on the direct and individual membership figures as reported by the parties themselves, the fit of the data with survey data is explored and it is concluded that the two perform well in terms of convergent validity. The differences between large and small democracies are examined, as well as old and new democracies, and it is found that levels of party membership are related to both the size and age of the democratic polity in question. Finally, the implications of the patterns observed in the membership data are discussed, and it is suggested that membership has now reached such a low ebb that it may no longer constitute a relevant indicator of party organisational capacity.     

Dominant players and minimum size coalitions

Abstract. In this paper we present a result about Peleg's theory of coalition formation in dominated simple games (Peleg 1981). Further, a connection between Peleg's theory and Riker's minimum size theory (Riker 1962, Riker and Ordeshook 1973) is established. This connection leads to a new theory of coalition formation in simple games.