Understanding mediation's role in preventive diplomacy

The ever-increasing number of international conflicts, their complexity, intractability, and their costs, demands that the world focus more attention on preventive diplomacy. Mediation is a key component of preventive diplomacy. This article analyzes data on international conflict management from 1945 to 1990, and examines the factors that contributed to the success or failure of mediation.     

The importance of forensic evidence for decisions on criminal guilt

Recent studies have found that the general public perceives forensic evidence to be relatively inaccurate and to involve high levels of human judgement. This study examines how important the general public finds forensic evidence by comparing decisions on guilt and punishment in criminal cases that involve forensic versus eyewitness testimony evidence and examining whether a CSI effect exists. Specifically, this experimental survey study utilized a 2 (crime type: murder or rape) × 4 (evidence type: DNA, fingerprint, victim eyewitness testimony, or bystander eyewitness testimony) ? 1 (no victim testimony for murder scenario) design, yielding seven vignettes scenarios to which participants were randomly assigned. Results indicate that forensic evidence was associated with more guilty verdicts and higher confidence in a guilty verdict. Forensic evidence did not change the expected sentence length and did not generally affect the ideal sentence length. However, for rape, respondents believed that the defendant should receive a longer sentence when forensic evidence was presented but forensic evidence did not alter likely sentence that respondents expected the defendant to receive. The results of this study did not support a CSI effect. Overall, this study suggests that forensic evidence – particularly DNA – has a stronger influence during the verdict stage than the sentencing stage.     

Pigeonholing Partisans: Stereotypes of Party Supporters and Partisan Polarization

Political Behavior - What comes to mind when people think about rank-and-file party supporters? What stereotypes do people hold regarding ordinary partisans, and are these views politically...     

Towards Robust Hybrid Democracy in Scandinavian Municipalities?

This article calls for the development of democratic hybrids that combine elements of representative democracy with elements of participatory and deliberative democracy. It presents and evaluates an empirical model of hybrid democracy from a Danish municipality and tests whether the positive Danish experiences can be transferred to a Norwegian municipality with less favorable local conditions. The finding is that the hybrid model of democracy is relatively robust in the face of context variation, not least due to conducive local dynamics in the Norwegian case. The relative robustness of the so‐called ‘Gentofte model’ may stimulate its diffusion in countries sharing key elements of the Scandinavian model and inspire municipalities in other countries to experiment with the development of hybrid democracy. The diffusion of hybrid democracy helps to enhance the overall performance of local democracy and reduce the inherent tension between democratic leadership and democratic equality.     

What Is a Summer Job Worth? The Impact of Summer Youth Employment on Academic Outcomes

This paper estimates the impact of New York City's Summer Youth Employment Program (SYEP) on school attendance and other educational outcomes in the following school year for a large sample of low‐income high school students. The program provides summer jobs and training to youth aged 14 to 21, and due to high demand allocates slots through a lottery. Analyses focusing on 36,550 students who applied in 2007 indicate that SYEP produces small increases in attendance in the following school year, with larger increases for students who may be at greater educational risk: those aged 16 and older with low baseline school attendance. For this group, SYEP also increases the likelihood of attempting and passing statewide high school math and English examinations. Findings suggest that although SYEP's explicit goals focus on workforce readiness rather than academics, the program fosters engagement and success in school.     

The Common Sense of Anti-Indian Racism: Reactions to Mashantucket Pequot Success in Gaming and Acknowledgment

Anti-Indian racism, as typified by anticasino backlash, is a part of the "common sense" of race relations in the United States, which increasingly impacts federal administrative procedures used to acknowledge the existence of tribal status. Using ethnographic and archival research, this article shows that the backlash over Mashantucket Pequot recognition and casino success has taken the form, primarily, of racialized attacks on the Mashantucket Pequots' Indian identity. It argues that such backlash carries over to impact groups who seek recognition of their tribal status, and the legitimation that such recognition might bring to their identity. Examining the colonial legacies of anti-Indian racism shows us that such racial antagonism in the United States is nothing new. However, understanding the contexts within which its recent resurgence has occurred may help bring fairness to the acknowledgment process, and may further illuminate intersections of common sense racism and legal spheres in American life.