The neo‐authoritarian dilemma and the labor force: Control and bankruptcy vs freedom and instability

Neo‐authoritarian leaders confront one of their greatest dilemmas when attempting to decide what to do about China's non‐agricultural labor force. Should leaders continue to maintain short‐term order and stability by providing comparatively comfortable employment and benefits to a state‐sponsored workforce, even as two‐thirds of all state enterprises are experiencing financial difficulties and central government deficits are rising? Or should they permit the development of a free market for labor, even though the full implications of a free market — hundreds of millions of surplus rural laborers flooding the cities, tens of millions of surplus urban laborers laid off — are so destabilizing that they are difficult to contemplate? This article discusses the extent to which a neo‐authoritarian program to reform the labor market has succeeded in practice, and it assesses the destabilizing effects of the program. Specifically, it outlines the goals of neo‐authoritarians as they struggle to reform the labor market; the daunting problems that they confront in this struggle; and their limited successes to date. Despite some successful reforms, the article concludes that ‘the neo‐authoritarian dilemma’ with respect to the labor force — stability vs economic modernization — has not been solved.     

Public vs. elite opinion on correctional reform: Implications for social policy

Demands for changes and reform in our correctional system have a long history. Currently many of those active in determining policy are advocating a shift away from the use of imprisonment to greater local supervision. However, many of these “elites” perceive the public as unreceptive and thereby an obstacle to change. This study focuses on an analysis of public opinion in the state of Washington and a comparison of those attitudes with the attitudes of elites (decision makers) in the state. Further, the study describes elite perceptions of public opinion and the implications of those perceptions for social policy. The public is found to be far less punitively oriented than elites expected and far more receptive to the reforms advocated.     

Keeping Cyprus off the agenda: British and American relations at the United Nations, 1954-58

From 1954 to 1958, the Greek government sought to raise the issue of self-determination for Cyprus at the United Nations as a means of pressing for the union of the island with the Greek state - enosis. The British government's objective was to ensure if possible that Cyprus was not debated using the legal argument that it was a domestic issue in which the UN had no rights. The British accepted, however, that other political and strategic arguments would be needed to defeat the Greeks and looked to the US government to support them in the UN forums. This article examines the positions of the British and Americans governments and shows the difficulties which the issue created for both in the UN in the period.     

Post-conviction DNA testing: the UK's first 'exoneration' case?

The routine incorporation of forensic DNA profiling into the criminal justice systems of the United Kingdom has been widely promoted as a device for improving the quality of investigative and prosecutorial processes. From its first uses in the 1980s, in cases of serious crime, to the now daily collection, analysis and comparison of genetic samples in the National DNA Database, DNA profiling has become a standard instrument of policing and a powerful evidential resource for prosecutors. However, the use of post-conviction DNA testing has, until recently, been uncommon in the United Kingdom. This paper explores the first case, in England, of the contribution of DNA profiling to a successful appeal against conviction by an imprisoned offender. Analysis of the details of this case is used to emphasise the ways in which novel forms of scientific evidence remain subject to traditional and heterogeneous tests of relevance and credibility.     

Foreign problems and domestic laws

The complexities presented by the conflicts of law were longavoided in the UK, unlike in other European countries. The Englishjudges, pragmatic as ever, used a legal fiction to ensure thatno action ever had a foreign element. If an action arose betweenan English and French merchant in Paris, then the imaginativecourt would determine that the events took place in ‘Paris,at London in the parish