Explaining the unpopularity of public funding for congressional elections

This article uses data from the 2008 Cooperative Congressional Election Study to explain weak support for public financing of congressional campaigns. Previous studies lack theory to explain variation in support and use a flawed measure of the dependent variable. We argue that low support reflects a failure resulting from a collective action dilemma. Citizens desire a campaign finance system that weans politicians from private donors, but are unwilling to pay a small amount in taxes to support public financing. In contrast to conventional wisdom, we show that support for public financing is highest among those perceived to benefit the most from the current system. Our results suggest that most Americans would rather not pay for politics, and that reform proposals must avoid incurring transparent costs on individual citizens to pay for reform.     

Forensic drug intelligence: an important tool in law enforcement

Organised criminality is a great concern for national/international security. The demonstration of complex crimes is increasingly dependant on knowledge distributed within law-enforcement agencies and scientific disciplines. This separation of knowledge creates difficulties in reconstructing and prosecuting such crimes. Basic interdisciplinary research in drug intelligence combined with crime analysis, forensic intelligence, and traditional law enforcement investigation is leading to important advances in crime investigation support. Laboratory results constitute one highly dependable source of information that is both reliable and testable. Their operational use can support investigation and even provide undetected connections or organisation of structure. The foremost difficulties encountered by drug analysts are not principally of a chemical or analytical nature, but methodologies to extract parameters or features that are deemed to be crucial for handling and contextualising drug profiling data. An organised memory has been developed in order to provide accurate, timely, useful and meaningful information for linking spatially and temporally distinct events on a national and international level (including cross-border phenomena). Literature has already pointed out that forensic case data are amenable for use in an intelligence perspective if data and knowledge of specialised actors are appropriately organised, shared and processed. As a particular form of forensic case data, the authors' research focuses on parameters obtained through the systematic physical and chemical profiling of samples of illicit drugs. The procedure is used to infer and characterise links between samples that originate from the same and different seizures. The discussion will not, however, focus on how samples are actually analysed and compared as substantial literature on this topic already exists. Rather, attention is primarily drawn to an active and close collaboration between magistrates, forensic scientists, law enforcement investigators and crime analysts from different institutions with the aim of generating, using and validating relevant profiling case data as integral part of investigative and crime analysis processes. Original advances are highlighted through experiences from criminal investigations of offences related to the unlawful importation, exportation, supply and possession of illicit drugs.     

Police Interviewing and Interrogation: A Self-Report Survey of Police Practices and Beliefs

By questionnaire, 631 police investigators reported on their interrogation beliefs and practices-the first such survey ever conducted. Overall, participants estimated that they were 77% accurate at truth and lie detection, that 81% of suspects waive Miranda rights, that the mean length of interrogation is 1.6 hours, and that they elicit self-incriminating statements from 68% of suspects, 4.78% from innocents. Overall, 81% felt that interrogations should be recorded. As for self-reported usage of various interrogation tactics, the most common were to physically isolate suspects, identify contradictions in suspects' accounts, establish rapport, confront suspects with evidence of their guilt, and appeal to self-interests. Results were discussed for their consistency with prior research, policy implications, and methodological shortcomings.     

On the benefits of being naive: the choice of contract duration with projection bias

Empirical evidence shows that consumers are often subject to a projection bias, such as they exaggerate the degree to which their future tastes will resemble their current ones. Such biases are particularly acute when consumers commit to a long-term contract. This paper aims at assessing the consequences of projection bias and at defining when a legal intervention is relevant. In this perspective, we compare the situation of naive and sophisticated agents, both with and without regulation regarding contract duration and early termination fees. The demand side of the market consists either of sophisticated agents, who perfectly anticipate their future willingness to pay (WTP); or of naive consumers, who exhibit a projection bias. The supply side is a monopoly offering long- and short-term contracts. Our main contribution consists in showing that naive consumers are not always worse off than sophisticated agents. The key parameter is how willingness to pay varies over time. If consumers have an increasing WTP for a given service or product, naive agents can actually be better off than sophisticated ones. We argue that naivete protects consumers against a price increase. However, naivete also leads to less exchanges on the market, thus generating a deadweight loss. Hence, the overall effect of naivete on social welfare is ambiguous. As far as public policy is concerned, we conclude that regulating contract duration is only relevant in some circumstances, depending on the market characteristics and on the bias.     

Buried voices: Mexican migrants’ views on the question of illegality

How do immigrant Mexican workers perceive the policies and social discourses that regulate their insertion into American society as noncitizens and illegals? Using ethnographic fieldwork and in-depth interviews, evidence is presented that unauthorized Mexican migrants do not consider themselves lawbreakers but rather moral actors responding to difficult socioeconomic conditions. Informed by a keen understanding of the social forces oppressing them, these migrants articulate a discourse of social justice that works as a powerful counterpoint to the hegemonic ideas of citizenship, belonging, and illegality. A careful analysis of migrant social reflexivity offers a much-needed corrective to the prevailing top-down perspective typically offered among contemporary scholars. By looking at the ways in which migrants make sense of immigration policies and articulate their right to have rights, this examination departs from the widespread tendency among scholars and policy makers of analyzing the migrant’s social and civic status as a matter of assimilation and immigration control.     

The “Bestie di Satana” Murders

In recent years, satanic groups have been responsible for various types and degrees of crimes. We report the case of a number of murders committed in Italy by a group of young people calling themselves the “Bestie di Satana”. Forensic psychiatric assessment of the members of a satanic sect charged with the crime revealed that all the young people had a fragile, immature personality, a very low level of education and were socially disadvantaged. The trial of the members of the “Bestie di Satana” sect was concluded with the verdict of deliberate murder, and all the members were given long jail sentences. This report should lead us to explore social and cultural responses to juvenile satanism, statistically shown to be a relatively rare phenomenon but with a high criminal potential.     

Theoretical and operational challenges of “high-reliability organizations”: air-traffic control and aircraft carriers

This is an empirical and theoretical examination of high reliability organizations. The empirical referents are the U.S. Navy's nuclear aircraft carriers and the air traffic control system of the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration. Three modes of organizational behavior are observed ranging from routine or bureaucratic to high-tempo to emergency. Each mode has distinctive authority patterns, communications pathways and leadership perspectives.

Since 1984, an interdisciplinary group of scholars at Berkeley has been involved in making observations of and theorizing about “high reliability organizations” (HROs), which operate technical systems that are very beneficial, costly, and hazardous. Major operational errors in these organizations are likely to produce catastrophic consequences; therefore, HROs take on the dual goals of sustaining delivery at maximum capacity and operating in nearly error-free fashion. They are so effective that the probability of serious error is very low.

Other kinds of organizations systematically use trial-and-error learning. HROs, however, have less confidence in this process for conducting hazardous operations, because their next error may be their last trial.

This paper draws on experience with two of the Navy's nuclear aircraft carriers and the Federal Aviation Administration's air-traffic control system. Current theories derive primarily from studies of “failure-tolerant,” trial-and-error operating bureaucracies. Is this literature a sure guide to HROs? Do the phenomena challenge contemporary thinking about complex organizations? “High-reliability” operations reveal a range of theoretical (and operational) surprises. The remainder of this discussion explores a single dimension of this theoretical arena.     

The extent of the population paradox in the Hungarian electoral system

The Hungarian mixed-member electoral system, adopted in 1989, is one of the world’s most complicated electoral systems, and, as this paper demonstrates, it suffers from the “population paradox.” In particular, the governing coalition may lose as many as 8 seats either by getting more votes or by the opposition obtaining fewer votes on each territorial list.