A useful tool for evaluating potential mediators

Conclusion Overall, the guidelines published by NIDR are a useful set of standards that should become a valuable reference tool for those responsible for evaluating and selecting mediators. Each institution that is involved in this process will find the guidelines useful as they develop their own criteria. George H. Friedman is vice president for case administration of the American Arbitration Association, 140 West 51st St., New York, N.Y. 10020.Allan D. Silberman is vice president for education and training with the AAA.The authors are grateful for the input on this brief commentary received from their AAA colleagues Thomas R. Colosi, vice president for national affairs, and Robert E. Meade, vice president for program development.     

"Bru-u-u-uce": The simple economics of mob goods

This paper provides a pure economic rationale for chronic excess demand for tickets to events like rock concerts. The model focuses on "mob goods", which are consumed jointly with crowd reaction, or "noise". Whereas the primary commodity is provided by the seller, the joint product is provided collectively by buyers. If propensities to make noise are inversely correlated with reservation prices and a capacity constraint applies, excess demand (queuing) is a necessary condition for profit maximization. One important implication is that anti-scalping laws may be welfare-increasing. The paper explores other applications in professional sports, restaurants, and on-stage theatre.     

Local government priorities for the eighties

Abstract. What conditions of society will circumscribe the options for local government in the 1980s? An economy in transition to something quite different from that which we have known, but not yet describable; public attitudes which reflect substantially altered values from the growth and consumerism obsessions of the fifties and sixties; financial constraints which maintain local government in a state of crisis dependency; and complex intergovernmental relations still developing institutional forms to rationalize decision-making in the public sector. Each level of government has some options, the choice among which will help determine the nature of local government in the eighties. The federal options revolve around the Ministry of State for Urban Affairs. Provincial options revolve around degrees of municipal autonomy. Municipal options are available in social planning, corporate planning, structural reform, administrative professionalism, and political organization. The recommended priority is for maximum decentralization of governmental authority and resources consistent with human and democratic values, pluralism, and a reasonable degree of economy and effectiveness. The creative interaction of citizen, politician, and administrator has its greatest potential at the local level. Sommaire. Queues seront les caractéristiques de la société qui délimiteront les options offffertes aux administrations locales pendant les années quatre-vingts? On pourrait citer les points suivants: une économie en train d'évoluer et de prendre une forme tout à fait différente de ce que nous avons connue jusqu'à présent, si différente qu'il est en fait: impossible de la décrire à ce stade; chez le public, des attitudes reflétant des valeurs se différenciant fortement des tendances d'un monde qui, pendant les années cinquante et soixante, était obsédé par la croissance et la défense du consommateur; des contraintes financières qui maintiennent les administrations locales dans un état de sujétion entretenu par une succession de crises; et des relations intergouvernementales complexes continuant encore d'élaborer des systèmes institutionnels destinés à rationaliser la prise des décisions dans le secteur public. Chaque palier de l'administration publique dispose de quelques options, et le choix qui sera fait parmi celles-ci contribuera à déterminer la nature de l'administration locale pendant les années quatre-vingts. Les options fédérales sont du ressort du Ministère d'Etat chargé des Affaires urbaines. Les options provinciales se situent aux divers niveaux où s'exerce l'autonomie municipale. Pour les municipalités, il existe des options dans les domaines de la planification sociale, de la planification des entreprises commerciales, de la réforme des structures, du maintien d'un niveau élevé de compétences professionnelles dans l'administration, et de l'organisation politique. La priorité recommandée consiste à décentraliser au maximum l'autorité et les ressources gouvernementales tout en cherchant à preserver les valeurs humaines et démocratiques, le pluralisme et, dans une mesure raisonnable, la rentabilité et l'efficacité. L'interaction novatrice entre le citoyen, l'homme politique et l'admmistrateur est potentiellement des plus élevée au niveau local.     

Formal rationality,substantive justice,and discrimination

This study examines the extent to which a juvenile court uses legal, substantive, and discriminatory criteria in assessing dispositions. The indicators of legal criteria are the seriousness of offense and the extent of prior arrest record, of substantive criteria, the presence of family and school problems, and of discriminatory criteria, race and social class. An examination of the dispositions accorded to a sample of 464 fourteen and fifteen year old arrestees in one juvenile court shows that, while discrimination in sentencing is minimal, the court is more likely to use substantive than formal criteria of decisionmaking. These findings suggest that studies of the juvenile court should be reoriented away from their traditional focus on legal and extralegal determinants of decision making toward a focus on substantive criteria.This study was supported by Ford Foundation under grant no. 73-96. We are grateful to Jackson Toby, principal investigator, for his aid in all phases of this study. William Smith and Antonia Steegen provided invaluable research assistance. This is a thoroughly revised version of a paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Society of Criminology, November, 1977.     

Understanding human aggression: New insights from neuroscience

The present paper reviews and summarizes the basic findings concerning the nature of the neurobiological and behavioral characteristics of aggression and rage. For heuristic purposes, the types of aggression will be reduced to two categories — defensive rage (affective defense) and predatory attack. This approach helps explain both the behavioral properties of aggression as well as the underlying neural substrates and mechanisms of aggression both in animals and humans. Defensive rage behavior is activated by a threatening stimulus that is real or perceived and is associated with marked sympathetic output. This yields impulsivity with minimal cortical involvement. Predatory attack behavior in both animals and humans is generally planned, taking minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, or even years (with respect to humans) for it to occur and is directed upon a specific individual target; it reflects few outward sympathetic signs and is believed to require cortical involvement for its expression. Predatory attack requires activation of the lateral hypothalamus, while defensive rage requires activation of the medial hypothalamus and midbrain periaqueductal gray (PAG). Both forms of aggressive behavior are controlled by components of the limbic system, a region of the forebrain that is influenced by sensory inputs from the cerebral cortex and monoaminergic inputs from the brainstem reticular formation. Control of aggressive tendencies is partly modifiable through conditioning and related learning principles generated through the cerebral cortex.     

Learning from Experience? Ottawa as a Cautionary Tale of Reforming Urban Government

This article examines the saga of local government restructuring in Canada's capital city. Specifically, it analyzes the interplay between provincial and local agendas for local government reform over many years, which culminated in provincial legislation and a one-year transition process to establish one municipality for the Ottawa city region. In doing so, the article addresses the extent to which the Ottawa transition demonstrates learning from other major urban restructuring efforts and the extent to which the Ottawa case provides new insights for future local government reform efforts. Key conclusions are that the key motivation for provincially initiated reform—cost saving through simplification of the local government structure in Ottawa—does not fully coincide with local needs and interests. Furthermore, the promise of financial savings has proven difficult to realize as a result of the local politics surrounding existing municipal debt and unresolved human resource management costs. Instead, future benefits from the amalgamation may lie in improved capacity to manage physical development, environmental sustainability, and cultural diversity.