Methodological aspects of the Dutch National Threat Assessment

This paper discusses issues related to measuring organized crime as they have become manifest in the Dutch contribution to the EU Organised Crime Threat Assessment (OCTA). It intends to convey to a wider academic community certain issues of definition, methodology and accountability, understanding the NTA process in terms of the communication of risks in a context of competitive defining institutions.

Child Justice in Canada and the Four Ps: Protection,Prosecution, Prevention,and Participation

This article provides an analysis of the flaws in the Canadian legal system with respect to child rights, in the light of the three Ps set forth by former Canadian Justice Minister Irwin Cotler (2004–2006): Protection, Prosecution, and Prevention. Contrary to the general trend of research on “youth” crime which focuses on the visible criminal activities of children and for which they are readily ascribed the status of “young offenders,” I examine whether the legal system is just as swift in giving child victims adequate Protection and Prosecution against their assailants. Six specific child victimization contexts have been identified, which are all characterized by invisibility: in the home, in care, in school and public spaces as well as by corporations and the criminal justice system. I explore why these victimizations are invisible and what legal protection is offered to affected children. Finally, I analyse the extent to which a fourth P, that of Participation, can strengthen the three Ps of Protection, Prosecution and Prevention in fighting crimes committed against children. The contents of this article reflect the author’s opinions only.

---

Toward a political economy of post-Fordist punishment

This article suggests some new lines of research in the field of the political economy of punishment and some possible new directions for a critical approach to contemporary social control strategies. The starting point is the transition from a Fordist economy to what can be defined as a post-Fordist system of production. I outline some tendencies in the actual capitalist dynamic (concerning the labour market, the production process, the relations between the workforce and capitalist power and between work and social citizenship), suggesting that a renewed political economy of social control has to deal with them. Two tendencies are assumed to be structural. On the one hand, the tendency of the capitalist system to make the production (and extraction) of surplus-value more and more independent of the effective working time (a tendency toward the reduction of human labour in the productive process). On the other hand, the tendency towards the massive introduction of new technologies: a tendency whose main consequences seem to be the intellectualisation of human labour and the decline of the classic distinction between manual and intellectual labour. I assume that these tendencies give rise to a new productive subject (the multitude), whose characters exceed the actual organisation of work and deepen the contradictions intrinsic to post-Fordist societies. Hence, an analysis of some new social control strategies follows, where I consider actuarialism as a technology for the control of these contradictions

How High-Yield Farming Saves Nature

High-yield farming—more agricultural output per acre of farmland—has been a boon to mankind and to nature. If today’s agricultural efficiency was the same as in the 1950s, the world would need three times the cropland to produce today’s food supply. That would mean that 15-16 million mi² of forest would have been destroyed—all the global forest area available today. Rising population and increased affluence will require a tripling of agricultural efficiency in the next 50 years if we are to protect wildlife at the same time. More investment in agricultural research and education will be required, but this is what produced the previous green revolution.

Brothers’ Keepers?

Relying on rarely analyzed public opinion data from the 1930s and early 1940s, we take issue with the notion popular in contemporary liberal circles that the New Deal era represented a period of expansive commitment to the security and well-being of the poor and politically disenfranchised. At least where the public is concerned—as opposed to the progressive policy makers in the Roosevelt administration—the jobless were regarded with suspicion, immigrants should be forced to “go home,” women belong in the kitchen not on the shop floor. The harsher the economic conditions (by state), the more conservative were the public attitudes. Hence New Deal legislative victories accrued despite rather than because of public support.

Public Opinion and Collective Obligations

This article attempts to identify the general principles that underlie public reasoning about collective obligations and that help explain when political parties can create new obligations or defend existing ones. I use these principles to President Clinton’s unsuccessful attempt to create government health-care plan and attempts by President Bush to privatize Social Security. The success of a party in selling – or defeating – an obligation depends upon what people believe about the competence and capacity of government and the value of autonomy – choices made by each citizen; whether people perceive the obligation as providing floors or establishing ceilings by limiting choice or otherwise restricting opportunities for the better-off; and whether the program is more like insurance or more like welfare. A party’s ability to maintain credibility with voters also depends upon whether party leaders can suppress issues that threaten intra-party elite pacts. When attempts to suppress “taboo” issues like “stem cells” or “black crime” fail, the party loses credibility with its voters and attempts to defend or sell obligations fail.

Iraq the Vote: Retrospective and Prospective Foreign Policy Judgments on Candidate Choice and Casualty Tolerance

In this article, we model the effect of foreign policy attitudes on both vote choice and casualty tolerance, using survey data collected during the 2004 election. We show that prospective judgments of the likelihood of success in Iraq and retrospective judgments of whether the war in Iraq was right are significant determinants of both vote choice and casualty tolerance. The prospective judgment of success is key in predicting casualty tolerance, while retrospective judgment of whether the war was right takes precedence in determining vote choice. In addition, there is an important interaction between the two variables, so the effect of one is conditional on the value of the other. We believe this is compelling evidence that foreign policy matters, and that it matters in reasonable ways.

A Question of Authority: Religion and Cultural Conflict in the 2004 Election

In this study I adopt a view of cultural conflict that extends beyond the usual set of controversial “moral” issues like abortion and gay rights to include symbolic issues related to patriotism and group affect. Using a set of survey items asking about respondents’ preferences in child-rearing, I create a measure of individuals’ orientations toward authority that proves to be a potent predictor of attitudes on cultural issues, affect toward social groups, party identification, and vote choice. This authority effect persists even in the presence of extensive multivariate controls for demographic and religious variables. I find that both authority measures and religion measures shape political attitudes, suggesting the need for a multi-faceted approach to understanding cultural conflict.

Implicit Attitudes,Explicit Choices: When Subliminal Priming Predicts Candidate Preference

Citizens are asked to make many judgments in politics, often in the face of scarce information and limited motivation. In making political judgments, citizens may rely upon a variety of cues, including the partisanship, ethnicity, race, or sex of candidates. Some cues, however, are more democratically troublesome than others. Democratic norms of equality suggest that attitudes towards racial or ethnic groups should not influence citizens’ evaluations of candidates. Often, however, attitudes towards these groups do matter. This article identifies a limiting condition on the effect of group attitudes: the presence of a party cue. I demonstrate that attitudes towards Hispanics influence willingness to support a Hispanic candidate, but only in the absence of a party cue. The article also contributes to existing work by analyzing both explicit and implicit measures of attitudes towards groups. Explicit measures include stereotypes and feeling thermometers; implicit measures are derived from a subliminal priming task. Subjects with positive attitudes towards Hispanics (whether these attitudes were measured implicitly or explicitly) were more likely to support the Hispanic candidate, in the absence of party cues. Subjects with negative attitudes towards Hispanics were less likely to support the Hispanic candidate, in the absence of party cues. The presence of party cues, however, eliminates the impact of attitudes towards Hispanics on political choice.

In Principle <Emphasis Type="Italic">and</Emphasis> in Practice: Learning Political Tolerance in Eastern and Western Europe

Political tolerance is a key democratic value believed to undergird successful and healthy democracies. In nascent democracies especially, citizens must tolerate the views and participation of opposing groups in order to ensure methodical transfers of power with successive elections. Yet, despite its importance, little research considers tolerance outside established democracies. In this paper, we compare political tolerance across eight Eastern European countries and six Western countries. We demonstrate that mean levels of tolerance are lower in the newly democratized countries of Eastern Europe and then examine whether they are a function of East Europeans’ limited experience with democracy. We also test whether established individual-level theories of tolerance replicate across this wide range of new and old democracies. We find some support for theories of democratic learning and also show that models of tolerance operate differently across the range of countries in our sample.