Even criminals take a holiday: Instrumental and expressive crimes on major and minor holidays

Based on routine activity (RA) theory, the authors hypothesized that crime rates would vary with both the type of crime and the type of holiday, with violent crimes occurring more frequently and property crimes occurring less frequently on major holidays that brought families together in the home. It was also hypothesized that minor holidays would have little or no impact on crime rates. These hypotheses were tested by subjecting data on calls for service in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 1985, 1987, and 1988 to time series analyses. After controlling for time of day, day of week, month, four weather variables, the first day of the month, linear trend, and autocorrelation, regression analyses indicated that both violent and property crimes were significantly related to major (or legal) holidays, whereas neither type of crime was more likely to occur on minor holidays. Crimes of expressive violence were significantly more prevalent on major holidays, whereas property crimes were less frequent on those days.     

Books in review

She is author of Equity and Gender,and Property Rights and Eminent Domainboth published by Transaction.     

Inward international licensing by US-based firms: Trends and implications

This paper reviews US statistics on international transactions in royalties and license fees to provide insights into the inward international licensing of technology by US-based firms. The data and their limitations are described. Trends in the data suggest that a change is occurring in the balance between outward and inward licensing of technology by US-based firms. The statistics are consistent with the idea that such firms have a diminishing technological lead and that technology importing, in addition to technology exporting, is becoming important to them. The new situation raises issues for corporate strategy and technology management, as well as for government policy. Mary Ellen Mogee is president of Mogee Research & Analysis Associates, a consulting firm in Great Falls, VA. She established the firm in 1985, after 15 years in policy-analysis positions at the National Science Foundation, the Congressional Research Service, the National Bureau of Standards, and the Patent and Trademark Office. She also teaches in the Management of Science, Technology, and Innovation program in the School of Business and Public Management at the George Washington University. Mogee received her Ph.D. in political science and an MA in science, technology, and public policy from George Washington University.     

Diaspora, faith, and science: building a Mouride hospital in Senegal

This article examines a development initiative spearheaded by the members of a transnational diaspora – the creation of a medical hospital in the holy city of Touba in central Senegal. Although the construction of the hospital is decidedly a philanthropic project, H?pital Matlaboul Fawzaini is better understood as part of the larger place-making project of the Muridiyya and the pursuit of symbolic capital by a particular Mouride "dahira". The "dahira's" project illuminates important processes of forging global connections and transnational localities, and underscores the importance of understanding the complex motivations behind diaspora development. The hospital's history reveals the delicate negotiations between state actors and diaspora organizations, and the complexities of public–private partnerships for development. In a reversal of state withdrawal in the neo-liberal era, a diaspora association was able to wrest new financial commitments from the state by completing a large infrastructure project. Despite this success, we argue that these kinds of projects, which are by nature uneven and sporadic, reflect particular historical conjunctures and do not offer a panacea for the failure of state-led development.     

Missing the Third Wave: Islam,Institutions, and Democracy in the Middle East

This article explores why some societies witnessed less political liberalization during the Third Wave of democratization than others, and importantly, the conditions under which opposition forces may refrain from pressing for political reform. Focusing on the Muslim world, it also presents a more complete understanding of when and how political Islam hinders democratization. Specifically, historical experiences with Islamists in the 1970s and institutional structures established by the 1980s created a condition of uncertainty that enabled some incumbents to thwart liberalization during the Third Wave. Incumbents exploited the fear of political Islam, convincing many secularist opponents that they were better off with the current regime than with Islamist rule. The extent to which incumbents could succeed varied, depending on whether or not Islamist movements had been allowed to mobilize openly and the extent that the regime based its legitimacy on Islam. The argument extends beyond the Muslim world. What is fundamentally at stake is not whether Islam exists as a mobilizing ideology, but whether democratically-minded opponents believe that non-democratic opposition groups exist that would potentially subvert a democratic opening.     

Municipal Socialism Then and Now: some lessons for the Global South

Given the large and growing literature opposed to the privatisation of services such as water and electricity, it is peculiar that so little has been written about the experience of ‘municipal socialism’—a set of roughly analogous historical movements that used local governments to challenge private service delivery and advance ‘socialist’ agendas from the late 1800s to the 1940s. Although primarily a European and American phenomenon, and emerging from different contexts than those prevailing today, municipal socialism found widespread support and transformed many public services. Results were mixed, with some experiments being little more than (pre)Keynesian attempts to revitalise capital accumulation in the face of ‘irrational’ private sector services, but the lessons are important as these experiments provided the first intellectually and politically sustained resistance to privatisation and other prototypical forms of what we now call neoliberalism, and demonstrated the possibility of effective service delivery by the public sector. This paper reviews these experiments, focusing on the experience of the United Kingdom and drawing lessons for contemporary efforts to build alternatives to privatisation in cities in the South, where local-level, socialist-oriented reforms have been relatively strong.     

Making space for restorative justice in criminal justice and criminology curricula and courses

Restorative justice, rooted in the practices of indigenous people across the globe, has grown exponentially in both theory and practice since its beginnings in Canada in the 1970s. Restorative justice has influenced the interactions between offenders and victims, helped community members address crime and develop self-efficacy, and changed the way some countries rebuild after a history of oppression. Despite these restorative justice influenced changes, many criminology and criminal justice programs pay scant attention to restorative justice in curricula. This paper will examine ways to include restorative justice in criminal justice and criminology curriculum and the challenges involved in the process. The paper will then examine how the Law and Justice Department at Central Washington University has incrementally added restorative justice components to its curriculum, culminating most recently with the addition of a Community and Social Justice course. The paper will conclude with several examples of classroom activities and assignments that have helped connect students with the theory and practice of restorative justice.