Psychological self-defense

A small but increasingly visible number of battered women eventually kill their batterers. While most of these women plead self-defense, they are generally convicted of murder or manslaughter because their homicidal acts rarely fit the narrow legal definition of self-defense. This article (a) explains who battered women are and why they kill; (b) suggests that many, perhaps most, battered women who kill their batterers do so in psychological self-defense; and (c) argues that current self-defense law should be expanded to justify such killings.Adversary Forum is edited by Gary B. Melton.     

Constraining war: Human security and the Human right to peace

Conclusion The explicit articulation of a cosmopolitan conception of human security and a corresponding right to peace is a positive development in global politics, inasmuch as it decenters the state in our understanding of the human community and delegitimizes organized violence as the generally accepted means for the “continuation” of realist politics. I have argued that just war theory, when defined in suitably narrow fashion, helps to contribute to our thinking on issues of human security in several ways. First, it provides a stringent normative framework for a reasonable humanitarian justification of the resort to force. Second, it enables us to conceptualize significant moral and legal constraints on war and thus on the powers of states to wage war, thereby displacing the use of force from the statist paradigm of security. Third, it contributes to the delegitimation of unjust wars, that is, military actions undertaken for any purposes other than human security. Fourth, insofar as it provides a justificatory basis for the increasing demilitarization of society, it may influence the progressive and just pacification of global politics. As long as the types of human wrongs that present the gravest threats to human security continue to haunt the global community, there remains a need to be able to respond effectively so as to protect the rights and well-being of individuals. This need poses a genuine dilemma for humanitarian morality and politics, insofar as many of the military capabilities required to defend and to aid vulnerable persons can also be the source of threats to human life and welfare. Yet the existence of this dilemma need not lead us either to apathy or to cynicism. The nexus of human security, the right to peace, and just war theory offers a resolution to the traditional security dilemma by challenging the realist rationale for aggressive militarism, and by supporting the emergence of global security structures and processes guided by the humanitarian norms of just peace. *** DIRECT SUPPORT *** A28BB021 00002     

Structural Power and Public Policy: A Signaling Model of Business Lobbying in Democratic Capitalism

This paper develops a signaling model of corporate lobbying in democratic capitalist societies to analyze the conditions that lead to a powerful political position of business. Proceeding from the traditional dichotomy of structural economic determinants versus business' political action, our model predicts the conditions under which elected political decisionmakers modify their policy pledges to accommodate business' political preferences, or override business' lobbying messages and honor their pledges. Our results show that the structural power of business over public policy is contingent on two variables: the size of reputation costs of business in relation to its material costs of lobbying; and the ratio of the policymaker's reputation constraints from policy commitments and campaign pledges to the electoral costs arising from adverse effects of policy. We evaluate our model using case studies of business lobbying on environmental and financial services regulation in Britain and Germany.     

The Role of Philanthropy in Local Government Finance

Nonprofit organizations thrive on the altruism of citizens, and actively court donors for major gifts. Yet individual gifts to government agencies are often unexpected, sporadic, and initiated by the donor. This article introduces the phenomenon of private giving to local governments and tests hypotheses regarding the expected forms of giving to public agencies. Results indicate that philanthropy is and will likely remain a minor and highly variable source of revenue, making it an ill‐suited replacement for broad‐based tax revenue. However, deliberate government efforts to provide a suitable environment for private donations appear to succeed in attracting more gifts per capita.     

The End of the Beginning? The Freedom of Information Bill 1999

With the publication of its plans for a Bill on Freedom of Information, the new Labour government has been accused of abandoning its promise of greater openness in the way government is conducted in this country and its proposals are seen as a departure from the highly applauded contents of the White Paper published in December 1997. The draft Bill has been pilloried by friend and foe alike. It is seen as a litmus test of Blair's government and where it really stands on the citizen/state relationship and how the future balance will lie between the executive and Parliament. The authors examine the events surrounding the publication of the Bill and its scrutiny by the pre-legislative select committees in the Commons and Lords. The Home Secretary has hinted at possible concessions in the light of fierce criticism. Is this a Bill worth saving and how can it be improved to capture a more appropriate balance between confidentiality, secrecy, and openness in the conduct of modern governance?     

Adolescents' Commitment to Developing Talent: The Role of Peers in Continuing Motivation for Sports and the Arts

The role of peer relationships in supporting or hindering adolescents' talent development has received little research attention, despite the importance of peers in adolescents' lives. We conducted semi-structured in-depth interviews with 41 adolescents talented in sports or the arts, and their parents, to investigate (a) the role of peer relationships in adolescents' continued involvement in their talent activities, (b) possible differences in this role by activity domain, and (c) possible gender differences. Thematic analysis indicated that peers typically played a positive function in supporting the continued involvement of talented adolescents in their talent activities. There were differences in opportunities for peer relationships and social satisfaction between in-school and out-of school activities, but not between activity domains. Both males and females mentioned equally social benefits of such involvement. However, females mentioned receiving negative peer attention more frequently than males, and more often cited social dissatisfaction as a significant contributor to decreased involvement or quitting.     

'All things richly to enjoy': Economics and Politics in Locke's Two Treatises of Government

For all its importance, what is actually said about money in Two Treatises is highly obscure. Comparison with Locke's 1668–74 writings on interest reveals a common understanding of the function of money, akin to that of contemporary mercantilists, which illuminates many difficulties in the chapter on property. These writings are the source of the main economic concepts in the Treatises ; namely, labour as the active source of wealth (which along with the Roman Law notion of self-ownership provides the basis of Locke's theory of property); money overcoming the 'spoliation limit' on the accumulation of consumables, and the idea that money is created by and derives its value from consent (which Two Treatises exploits as a justification of the unequal distribution of property). Finally, the early writings suggest how implausible it is to read a labour theory of exchange value into the Treatises .     

School vouchers and academic performance: results from three randomized field trials

This article examines the effects of school vouchers on student test scores in New York, New York, Dayton, Ohio, and Washington, DC. The evaluations in all three cities are designed as randomized field trials. The findings, therefore, are not confounded by the self‐selection problems that pervade most observational data. After 2 years, African Americans who switched from public to private school gained, relative to their public‐school peers, an average of 6.3 National Percentile Ranking points in the three cities on the Iowa Test of Basic Skills. The gains by city were 4.2 points in New York, 6.5 points in Dayton, and 9.2 points in Washington. Effects for African Americans are statistically significant in all three cities. In no city are statistically significant effects observed for other ethnic groups, after either 1 or 2 years. © 2002 by the Association for Policy Analysis and Management.