Devolution and Local Government: Evidence from Scotland

Devolution in Scotland has had a major impact upon local government. Local government, at both political and managerial levels, perceives central government in the shape of the Scottish Executive to be closer (geographically and politically) and more open to local government in terms of access to ministers and civil servants. However, Scottish central–local relations continues to be characterised by a sense of mistrust of local government, especially among civil servants and a continuing desire for central control of key policy agendas. Equally, the policy process continues to display features of fragmentation across major policy areas. Moreover, Westminster has not yet departed the scene of Scottish politics in both financial and policy terms but also in the enduring presence of a Westminster ‘political culture’     

Communication and Political Mobilization: Digital Media and the Organization of Anti-Iraq War Demonstrations in the U.S.

The speed and scale of mobilization in many contemporary protest events may reflect a transformation of movement organizations toward looser ties with members, enabling broader mobilization through the mechanism of dense individual-level political networks. This analysis explores the dynamics of this communication process in the case of U.S. protests against the Iraq war in 2003. We hypothesize that individual activists closest to the various sponsoring protest organizations were (a) disproportionately likely to affiliate with diverse political networks and (b) disproportionately likely to rely on digital communication media (lists, Web sites) for various types of information and action purposes. We test this model using a sample of demonstrators drawn from the United States protest sites of New York, San Francisco, and Seattle and find support for our hypotheses.     

The Dynamics of Public Opinion on Cultural Policy Issues in the U.S., 1972–2010

This study investigates the dynamics of public opinion on cultural policy issues over the past four decades. We find collective opinions on many such issues follow the same path over time, driven by an underlying cultural policy mood (CPM). We use more than 2,000 survey marginals, nested in more than 200 time series, that reflect aggregate opinions in 16 cultural policy domains, across 38 years. Using a dynamic principal components method, the results show that since the early 1970s, CPM has moved steadily and consistently in a liberal direction. Over this period, changes in CPM have been tightly linked to changes in aggregate religiosity. Opinion on two notable cultural issues—the death penalty and abortion—do not follow CPM. While public opinion has grown increasingly anti-death-penalty for more than a decade, over roughly the same period it has become as pro-life on abortion as at any time since Roe v. Wade. The measurement of CPM provides evidence of a macro construct of cultural issues that includes opinion toward many, but not all, morality policies.     

Fortitude,ultra and the ‘need to know’

E.T. Layton with R Pinneau and J. Costello, And I Was There. Pearl Harbor and Midway (New York: William Morrow), pp. 596, $19.95.

Donald A. Torres, Handbook of Federal Police and Investigative Agencies (Westport, Conn., and London: Greenwood Press, 1985), pp. 411, £49.95.

Ernest R. May (ed.), Knowing One's Enemies. Intelligence Assessment Before the Two World Wars (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), pp. 561, $29.50 or £19.80 (cloth); $14.50 or £9.70 (paper).     

Exploring the World of the Second and Third Tier Men in the Holocaust: The Interrogation of Friedrich Jeckeln: Engineer and Executioner

Friedrich Jeckeln as Higher SS and Police Fuehrer for South Russia in 1941, and then North Russia from 1941 to 1944, was a key player in the development of the Holocast in the occupied Soviet Union. This article explores his career and motivations through the medium of his interrogation reports. Those interrogations were conducted by the NKVD from December 1945 to January 1946. They formed a key part in the development of a case against Jeckeln for involvement in crimes against the Soviet people. Using a variety of coercive techniques Jeckeln’s captors forced him to confront the enormity of his crimes. He was brought before a court and executed on the same day in February 1946.     

Hart and Raz on the Non-Instrumental Moral Value of the Rule of Law: A Reconsideration

HLA Hart and Joseph Raz are usually interpreted as being fundamentally opposed to Lon Fuller’s argument in The Morality of Law that the principles of the rule of law are of moral value. Hart and Raz are thought to make the ‘instrumental objection’, which says that these principles are of no moral value because they are actually principles derived from reflection on how to best allow the law to guide behaviour. Recently, many theorists have come to Fuller’s defence against Hart and Raz, refuting the ‘instrumental objection’ and affirming the non-instrumental moral value of conformity to the principles of legality. This article argues that although this moral value should be affirmed, the orthodox view is incorrect, because Hart and Raz never understood their arguments about the instrumental or ‘purposive’ value of the principles of legality as denials of their moral value, as a close reading of their work shows.