Does Dumcree ’96 tell us anything about the RUC?

Violence, disorder, and social schism are well-known features of contemporary Northern Ireland resulting in the high profile of the province’s police, the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC). Since 1968, in particular, the policing of some major events has resulted in the RUC being viewed variously as saint and sinner by different sections of society. The most recent cause for acceptance, or condemnation, of police performance was the 1996 ‘marching season’. In particular, withdrawal of the police from the scene of the Drumcree stand-off, once it became evident that the many members of the Orange Order gathered there intended to march down the predominantly Garvaghy Road with or without the approval of the Chief Constable, and the province-wide acts of solidarity related to that event, by other members of the order, led to much controversy. First, this essay identifies some of the potential consequences of policing Drumcree for the RUC public image. Second, it compares these potential perceptions of police performance with some published views of their response to the Ulster Workers’ Council strike in 1974 and during the negotiations leading up to, and in the aftermath of, the Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985. Finally, it considers if there is anything new that can be learned about the RUC from its handling of the Drumcree crisis.     

DAYLIGHT SAVING IN NEW SOUTH WALES: A CASE OF EMOTIVE SYMBOLIC POLITICS?

Abstract: This is a case study of the campaign over daylight saving in New South Wales from the mid-1960s. The period leading to the legislation making daylight saving a permanent feature in 1972 was marked by the involvement of various groups, media campaigns and inter-governmental negotiations. After the legislation was passed, the character of the campaign changed. Conflict was confined mainly to the rural sector, where large-scale citizen involvement occurred. Many anti-daylight saving bodies were created and a petition of over 40,000 names protesting about daylight saving was presented to the Premier. The Country Party was pressured sufficiently to promise during 1973, 1974 and 1975 that a referendum would be held, and this was achieved in May 1976. The results of the poll showed majority approval lay with continuing daylight saving. Until 1972 the policy area appeared to correspond to Theodore Lowi's "regulative" category, but from 1972 the policy arena altered to one which may be viewed in terms of T. Alexander Smith's "emotive symbolic" policy. The article assesses the Smith concept and its usefulness in explaining the issue of daylight saving as an example of intense community debate.     

Focus of attention and locus of control as moderators of fraternal justice effects

The influence of a colleague's performance outcomes on individual's own subsequent performance was investigated. Internal and external locus of control subjects were given information about another person's outcome which indicated two things about organizational standards: how easy or difficult they were to meet and how stringently they were applied. An attentional focus manipulation was employed to influence how subjects used this information. Half of the subjects received a group-focus manipulation and the other half a self-focus one. We proposed that perceived difficulty of standards and stringency of application would interact with attentional focus and subject locus of control to alter subject's own subsequent performances. This expectation was supported by the data. Theoretical and applied implications of this result are discussed.     

Case involving differentiation of deer and human bone fragments

In a recent Louisiana forensic anthropology case, it was necessary to attempt species identification of six small bone fragments. The primary concern was whether or not they matched the fractured humerus of a woman killed by two shotgun blasts and then disposed of in the Mississippi River. These tiny fragments were recovered by law enforcement officers inside a jeep pickup and at the gas station where the vehicle had been cleaned. The police suspect claimed that these fragments were from a deer that he had recently killed. The small size of the pieces precluded positive recognition of human versus nonhuman origin based upon gross morphology and cortical thickness. Microscopic examination was possible. This analysis involved comparison of the unknown specimens to reference deer and human thin sections including bone recovered from the woman during autopsy. Examination of the jeep and gas station fragments revealed no plexiform bone, secondary (not primary) osteons, and variability in size and shape of the osteons and Haversian canals. These and other variables identified the bone fragments as human.     

LOCAL IMPLEMENTATION OF NATIONAL POLICY

This article is an examination of failures in implementing intergovernmental programs. The programs were failures in the sense that actions to implement programs were delayed far beyond the expected dates of completion. Two such failures in cities implementing two different programs (wastewater management and Section 8 housing programs) are contrasted with one instance of success (in Section 8 housing). If a Sharkansky's discussion of political and policy routines is found to be a useful explanation of the different results. When local government routines must be broken to comply with the goals and objectives of federal programs, local actors will do all they can to resist the federal program. This finding demonstrates the importance of varying local political environments in explaining varying patterns of implementation of federal programs.     

Building successful technology transfer teams: A theory of cascading commitment

The attempt to transfer a technology from a publicly funded laboratory to a profit-oriented manufacturer can be a lengthy and complex process, involving several organizations and several key individuals within each organization. For example, a product technology transfer team may include the public lab itself, one or more end user organizations during product development and trial, a transfer agency, a public funding agency, the receptor manufacturer, and a private funding agency. Studies of such multi party transfers have suggested many factors that have contributed to their success or failure. We feel that most of these factors can be organized under the rubric of a more general theory of cascading commitment. Specifically, in this paper we propose that the likelihood of a transfer's success can be substantially affected by excellent management of the team building process by the public lab's R&D manager/director. Successful teams are built by gaining the commitment of appropriate individuals from appropriate organizations in a sequential cascading effect, by insightful and customized solicitation of each new team member to join at the appropriate stage of commercialization. To do this, the manager must be cognizant of, and individually appeal to, each new team member's perceptions of three sets of variables: evidence of the prior members' credibility, evidence of the prior members' commitment, and the set of personal benefits to be gained from participation.     

Modernisation and clean government: Tackling crime, corruption and organised crime in modern Taiwan

Taiwan's formal title is the Republic of China (ROC) on Taiwan because it is the continuation of the government of mainland China that fled to Taiwan in 1949 and has survived there ever since. The rulting party in the ROC is the Kuomintang (KMT, the Nationalist Party of China). The ROC government on the mainland was plagued with problems of corruption at almost all levels, while the regime on Taiwan successfully reinvented itself and oversaw a remarkable economic transformation of that island. This article considered the ROC's corruption problems on the mainland and attempts to explain why these problem shave proved to be so intractable. Corruption played a major part in undermining the Kuomintang's rule on the Chinese mainland. Once the ROC moved its seat of government to Taiwan in 1949, it was forced to take a very different approach to crime and corruption. The next section deals with the evolution of the KMT on Taiwan while the final part of the discussion looks at the problem of organised crime on the island. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

The Transformation of the Western State: The Growth of Democracy,Autocracy, and State Power Since 1800

This article uses POLITY II, a new dataset on the authority traits of 155 countries, to assess some general historical arguments about the dynamics of political change in Europe and Latin America from 1800 to 1986. The analysis, relying mainly on graphs, focuses first on the shifting balance between democratic and autocratic patterns in each world region and identifies some of the internal and international circumstances underlying the trends, and deviations from them. Trends in three indicators of state power also are examined in the two regions: the state's capacity to direct social and economic life, the coherence of political institutions, and military manpower. The state's capacity has increased steadily in both regions; coherence has increased in the European countries but not Latin America; while military power has fluctuated widley in both regions. The article is foundational to a series of more detailed longitudinal studies of the processes of state growth. Ted Robert Gurr is a professor of government and politics at the University of Maryland and Distinguished Scholar at the University's Center for International Development and Conflict Management (Mill Building, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742). Among his 14 books and monographs areWhy Men Rebel (awarded the Woodrow Wilson Prize as best book in political science of 1970).Patterns of Authority: A comparative Basis for Political Inquiry (with Harry Eckstein, 1975), andViolence in America, (3d edition. 1989). He is engaged in a long-term global study of minorities' involvement in conflict and its consequences and resolution. Keith Jaggers is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Political Science at the University of Colorado and research assistant in the Department's Center for Comparative Politics, Campus Box 333, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309. He is co-author with Will H. Moore of “Deprivation, Mobilization, and the State,” recently published in theJournal of Developing Societies, and is currently working on an empirical study of the impact of war on the growth of the state. Will H. Moore is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Political Science at the University of Colorado and research assistant in the Department's Center for Comparative Politics. He is also a co-author with Maro Ellena of a forthcoming article inWestern Political Quarterly on the cross-national determinants of political violence. His current research interests include the resolution of internal wars and the formation of coercive states.