Calculating and Believing: Ideological Norms in the Cradle of Utility Maximization

An individualist approach to political phenomena is not necessarily an economic approach. We can assume that beliefs and commitments as well as selfishness motivate individuals. Ideology provides a basis for individual choice for policy makers and for citizens and is as much a micro-foundation as narrow “self-interest.” Employing a “least-likely” case approach this paper shows that we can find legitimacy and norm-sensitive behavior in the cradle of utility maximization, the firm. In this paper I will lay out some puzzles found in the general areas of business, politics, and policy-making and show how the particular piece of behavior can be understood within the logic of ideological frameworks and the normative acceptability or legitimacy of actions. The purpose is more an “analytical narrative” than a systematic empirical investigation. It suggests the critical importance of examining the normative as well as the self-interest foundation of behavior. To that end, the empirical context of the discussion is provided by business social responsibility, by business participation in elections, by a snapshot of an ideologically driven political career, and by an antibusiness policy decision. The narrative moves from the generosity of business corporations, to foreign-owned corporations' political activity decisions in the host country, to Mrs. Thatcher and the median voter, and finally to the decision to abolish the slave trade.     

The rapid analysis of heroin drug seizures using micellar electrokinetic chromatography with short-end injection

A simple and rapid method for the analysis of heroin seizures by micellar electrokinetic chromatography with short-end injection is described. Separations were performed using an uncoated fused silica capillary, 50 cm x 50 microm I.D. x 360 microm O.D. with an effective separation length of 8 cm. The system was run at 25 degrees C with an applied negative voltage of -25 kilovolts. Injection of each sample was for 2 s at -50 mbar. UV detection was employed with the wavelength set at 210 nm. The background electrolyte consisted of 85:15 (water:acetonitrile, v/v) containing final concentrations of 25 mM SDS and 15 mM sodium borate, pH 9.5. Samples and standards were prepared in 0.1% v/v acetic acid and diluted in the run buffer containing 1 mg/ml of N,N-dimethyl-5-methoxytryptamine as an internal standard. Under these conditions a text mixture containing caffeine, paracetamol, morphine, codeine, heroin, and acetylcodeine was resolved within 1.5 min. The method was used to determine the concentration of heroin in heroin seizure samples, and the results were in good agreement with those obtained by a validated gas chromatographic method.     

A: Reviews: general

TWO INDIAN TRAVELLERS: EAST AFRICA 1902–1906. Edited by Cynthia Salvadori with Judy Aldrick. Mombasa, Friends of Fort Jesus, 1997. x + 242 pp. K. Shs 900.00 (pb).

THE HERITAGE OF OMAN; A CELEBRATION IN PHOTOGRAPHS. By Pauline Sheldon (with photographs by Ozzie Newcombe). Reading, Garnet Publishing Limited, 1995. 160 pp. £30.00

COMRADES AND ENEMIES. ARAB AND JEWISH WORKERS IN PALESTINE, 1906–1948. By Zachary Lockman. Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1996. xvi + 440 pp., one map. £48.00 (cloth), £19.95 (pb).

PAN‐TURKISM. FROM IRREDENTISM TO COOPERATION. By Jacob M. Landau. London, Hurst, 1995. 275 pp. £14.95.

THE HORN OF AFRICA: POLITICS AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS. By Peter Woodward. (International Library of African Studies, 6.) London, I. B. Tauris, 1996. ix + 226 pp., one map. £39.50.

POLITICS AND ISLAM IN CONTEMPORARY SUDAN. By Abdel Salam Sidahmed. Richmond, Curzon Press, 1997. xiv + 249 pp., £40.00

SYRIA AND IRAN: MIDDLE POWERS IN A PENETRATED REGIONAL SYSTEM. By Anoushiravan Ehteshami and Raymond A. Hinnebusch. London and New York, Routledge, 1997. ix + 238 pp., £40.00

WARS, INTERNAL CONFLICTS AND POLITICAL ORDER: A JEWISH DEMOCRACY IN THE MIDDLE EAST. (SUNY series in Israel Studies) By Gad Barzilai. New York, SUNY Press, 1996. 301 pp.

OIL AND ISLAM, SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC ISSUES. By Oystein Noreng. (The PETRO Research Series in Petroleum Economics and Politics, Research Council of Norway.) Chichester, John Wiley, 1997. 342 pp.

DER WEG DER ALEVITEN (BEKTASCHITEN): MENSCHENLIEBER, TOLERANZ, FRIEDEN UND FREUNDSCHAFT. By Ali Duran Gülçiçk. Cologne, Ethnographica Anatolica, 1996. 229 pp. 15DM.

THE DECLINE OF EASTERN CHRISTIANITY UNDER ISLAM, FROM JIHAD TO DHIMMITUDE. By Bat Ye'or. London, Associated University Presses, 1996. 522 pp., illustrations.

ISLAM AND HUMAN IDEOLOGY. By Samih Atef El‐Zein. Translated, with an Introduction and Notes by Elsayed M. H. Omran. Preparation and Presentation by Nabih Sidani and Issam Ghandour. London, Kegan Paul International, 1996. xxv + 375 pp. £45.

ISLAMIC LEGAL INTERPRETATION: MUFTIS AND THEIR FATWAS. Edited by M. K. Masud, B. Messick and D. Powers. Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 1996. 431 pp.

SUHRAWARDI AND THE SCHOOL OF ILLUMINATION. By Mehdi Amin Razavi. (Curzon Sufi Series.) Richmond, Curzon Press, 1997. 192 pp., £35 (hb), £14.99 (pb).

RUZBIHAN BAQLI: MYSTICISM AND THE RHETORIC OF SAINTHOOD IN PERSIAN SUFISM. By Carl W. Ernst. Richmond, Curzon Press, 1996. xxvi + 181 pp., two charts, two appendices, indexes and glossary. £12.99 (pb).

ARABISCHE PRIVATBRIEFE DES 9. BIS 15. JAHRHUNDERTS AUS DER ÖSTERREICHISCHEN NATIONALBIBLIOTHEK IN WIEN. By Werner Diem. (Documenta Arabica Antiqua 2.) Wiesbaden Harrassowitz, 1996. 288 pp. (Textband), 52 plates (Tafelband). 178 DM.

ARABISCHE AMTLICHE BRIEFE DES 10. BIS 16. JAHRHUNDERTS AUS DER ÖSTERREICHISCHEN NATIONALBIBLIOTHEK IN WIEN. By Werner Diem. (Documenta Arabica Antiqua 3.) Wiesbaden, Harrassowitz, 1996. 411 pp. (Textband), 80 plates (Tafelband). 192 DM.

99 BEEKASHI‐WITZE/BEKTA?? FIKRASI: Deutsch‐Türkisch. By Ali Duran Gülçiçek and Rüdiger Benninghaus. Cologne, Ethnographica Anatolica, 1996. 212 pp.     

When death is the sanction—United States and worldwide perspectives

Conclusion Gross and Mauro are probably correct in concluding that in the United States McCleskey ... certainly seems to represent a final decision to give up any pretense that the death penalty can be tamed.8 Current attempts at judicial oversight in the United States have proved as ineffective in bridling the discretion of capital case decision makers as were prior attempts at legislative and gubernatorial oversight. The historical lesson appears to be unmistakable: the nation must either abolish the death penalty or suffer its improper application and imposition. The worldwide pattern documented by Hood reinforces this conclusion; when the death penalty is on a country's statute books, it will be used—but, sooner or later, improperly so. No attempts at judicial or other forms of vigilance have proved this prediction to be incorrect—no matter how few cases have been permitted to flow through the system and no matter how principled have been the system and its officials.B.A., Queens College 1969; M. A., University of Pennsylvania 1973; Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania 1978.     

The police and crime control: Effectiveness,community policing,and legal change

Conclusion Current research on the level of police resources, patrol and investigation strategies, community policing, and the likely impact of changes in the legal framework confirms the simple truth that the police capacity to influence crime has always been vastly overstated. Unfortunately, the preventive police forces that emerged in Anglo-American jurisdictions in the wake of Sir Robert Peel's new police were linked directly and for the first time to the crime rate. While there was little that they could actually do about the crime rate per se, questions of police effectiveness, resource allocation, and the adequacy of police powers have tended to be answered on the basis of such data ever since. The need now is to find different ways of measuring and evaluating police work. It may be that the major contribution of community policing is to highlight precisely this issue by shifting the focus of policing away from the crime rate and by forcing police departments, politicians, and academics to confront the real capabilities of the police and to devise methods of evaluating them and promoting them to an increasingly skeptical world.This is a revised version of a paper given at the third conference of the Society for the Reform of Criminal Law, Sydney Opera House, Sydney, Australia, March 19–23, 1989.LL.M., University of London 1968; LL.B., University of London 1967.     

Reviews

John Miller, Mikhail Gorbachev and the End of Soviet Power. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1993, xviii + 267 pp., £45.00 h/b, £13.99 p/b.

Geoffrey A. Hosking, Jonathan Aves & Peter J. S. Duncan, The Road to Post‐Communism. Independent Political Movements in the Soviet Union, 1985–1991. London and New York: Pinter Publishers, 1992 x + 236 pp., £37.50 h/b, £12.99 p/b.

Sheila Fitzpatrick, The Cultural Front: Power and Culture in Revolutionary Russia. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992, xx + 264 pp., $41.50 h/b, $13.95 p/b.

Ian Jeffries, Socialist Economies and the Transition to the Market: A Guide. London: Routledge, 1993. 562 pp., £70.00 h/b, £19.99 p/b.

William M. Reisinger, Energy and the Soviet Bloc: Alliance Politics after Stalin. Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, 1992, xiii + 184 pp., $37.95.

Joan DeBardeleben, ed., To Breathe Free: Eastern Europe's Environmental Crisis. Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, and Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991, xviii + 266 pp., £25.00 h/b, £9.50 p/b.

Donald D. Barry, ed., Toward the ‘Rule of Law’ in Russia? Political and Legal Reform in the Transition Period. Armonk, NY and London: M. E. Sharpe, 1992, 402 pp., $90.00.

Anna Lawton, Kinoglasnost: Soviet Cinema in Our Time. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992, xvi + 288 pp. £35.00 h/b, £13.95 p/b.

David Pike, The Politics of Culture In Soviet‐Occupied Germany 1945–1949. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1993, 691 pp., $ 55.00.

Alec Nove, ed., The Stalin Phenomenon. London: Weidenfield & Nicolson, 1993, 216 pp., £25.00 h/b.

M. B. Broxup, ed., The North Caucasus Barrier: The Russian Advance Towards the Muslim World. London: Hurst, 1992, xxvii + 252 pp., £27.50.     

“Our biggest killer”: multimodal discourse representations of dementia in the British press

A recent (2016) Office for National Statistics report stated that dementia is now “the leading cause of death” in England and Wales. Ever fixated with the syndrome (an unfailingly newsworthy topic), the British press was quick to respond to the bulletin, consistently headlining that dementia was the nation’s “biggest killer,” while (re)formulating other aspects of the report in distorting and emotive metaphorical terms. In this paper we examine how the media, through use of a recurring set of linguistic and visual semiotic tropes, portrayed dementia as an agentive entity, a “killer,” which remorselessly attacks its “victims.” Such a broadly loaded and sensationalist representation, we argue, not only construed dementia as a direful and pernicious disease, but also, crucially, obscured the personal and social contexts in which the syndrome is understood and experienced (not least by people with dementia themselves). This intensely lurid type of representation not only fails to address the ageist misinformation and common misunderstandings that all too commonly surround dementia, but is also likely to exacerbate the stress and depression frequently experienced by people with dementia and their families.     

Global Simplification of Extradition: Interviews with Selected Extradition Experts in New Zealand,Canada, the US and EU

This paper explores the discernible long-term trend towards the simplification of the conditions for extradition in the law of many states. The process of simplification appears to be justified by the necessity of taking more effective action against transnational crime. It appears to be taking place in three main areas: the recharacterisation of extradition from a criminal to an administrative process, the reduction of the substantive conditions for extradition and the expansion of the international platforms for extradition. The process is being tempered by and partially justified by greater individual human rights protections. In an effort to gain a better grasp of the nature of this process, what is driving it, and where it is heading, this paper records the views of a number of expert practitioners from the state, defence, and judiciary in seven different countries with significant extradition practice on these justifications, changes, and human rights protections. The paper synthesises their views thematically before drawing some conclusions about the nature of the process of simplification of extradition and whether there is an emerging global standard for extradition. The research was funded by the New Zealand Law Foundation International Research Fellowship for 2015.