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).     

Malaysia's new economic policy and the global economy: The evolution of ethnic accommodation

Abstract

Developing countries commonly must deal not only with issues of economic development, but also with the problems associated with a multi‐ethnic population. Most analyses of ethnic programs, however, focus on the domestic political economy and fail to appreciate the importance of international factors. In this essay, I note that Malaysia's New Economic Policy (NEP) and its successors have been affected not only by the domestic ethnic situation but also by the global economy. Furthermore, I argue that current international pressures and constraints have forced a re‐evaluation of the NEP in the past decade. While a concern for ethnic factors is by no means absent from the policy‐making process today, ethnic concerns are now overshadowed by the realities of the international economic order and the government's realization that ethnic accommodation can only be successful within the confines of an outward‐looking, expanding economy.     

Overlapping jurisdictions: Substitutes or complements?

This paper presents a simple model of the demand relationship between the activities undertaken by overlapping governments and uses the framework to estimate the relationship between municipal and county expenditures. The empirical results reveal a complementary relationship between county and city general expenditures; any public sector expansion effects of monopoly power at the county level will therefore be reinforced by greater municipal spending, further expanding the total size of the local public sector. On the other hand, changes in county police and roads expenditures appear to have no strong stable impact on municipal police and roads expenditures, respectively, providing no reinforcing or offsetting municipal spending responses to decisions at the county level.     

Bureaucratic Behavior in the Local Public Sector: A Revealed Preference Approach

Public sector bureaucratic utility is typically assumed to be a function ofbudget size or government employment. Although intuitively appealing, thereare no definitive direct tests of the assumption. To fill this gap, thispaper exploits data that isolate resource allocation decisions made by localpublic sector bureaucrats. We use revealed preference theory to find thatthe bureaucracy behaves ``as if'' bureaucratic utility is an increasingfunction of employment across government functions and public spending,providing direct evidence justifying the popular assumption in theoreticalmodels of government behavior.     

Pax Americana: Bumping into Diplomatic Culture

The existence of a deeply rooted, state-based diplomatic culture with its own distinctive institutions, values, and norms has been neglected in both the study and the practice of international relations, especially in the United States. This neglect has had consequences in recent years, notably in connection with the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Using Iraq as a case study, I argue that the United States transgressed five norms of diplomatic culture that are widely accepted: the use of force only as last resort, transparency, continuous dialogue, multilateralism, and civility. Criticisms of these transgressions and the US responses to these criticisms suggest that even a paramount America cannot avoid diplomatic culture's pervasive influence.     

Reintegrative Shaming, Procedural Justice, and Recidivism: The Engagement of Offenders' Psychological Mechanisms in the Canberra RISE Drinking-and-Driving Experiment

Advocates of restorative justice (RJ) hypothesize that the diversion of criminal cases to RJ conferences should be more effective in lowering the rate of reoffending than traditional prosecution in court processing because the conferences more effectively engage the psychological mechanisms of reintegrative shaming and procedural justice. This study uses longitudinal data from the drinking-and-driving study in the Australian Reintegrative Shaming Experiments (RISE) to evaluate the long-term impact of reintegrative shaming and procedural justice on support for the law and on later recidivism as assessed through the use of police records and by self-report. Analysis first suggests that there is no direct effect of experimental condition on later recidivism. However, it further suggests that both traditional court-based prosecution and RJ conferences increase support for the law and lower the rate of future reoffending when they engage the social psychological mechanisms of reintegrative shaming and procedural justice and thereby increase the legitimacy of the law. Hence, the results argue for the potential value of procedures such as the RJ conference but indicate that those procedures will only achieve their objectives if they are effectively designed and implemented.     

Trafalgar and the Decisive Naval Battles of the 21st Century

This year is the 200th anniversary of the battle of Trafalgar, the archetype of the traditional naval campaign. This article analyses the evolution of naval thinking about the decisive battle, explores its role in the world of the 21st century and identifies several other crucial battles that today's navies need to fight and win. It concludes that despite the differences brought about by technological transformation there is a surprising degree of continuity between the naval past and the naval present.