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.     

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.     

Local government internal structure, external constraints and the median voter

This paper examines how internal structure and external constraints affect local government ability to meet voters' demands. It applies the revealed preference method to US counties to identify those that fail to satisfy the pure democracy outcome of the median voter hypothesis (MVH). Probit analysis identifies the factors associated with counties that satisfy the MVH. Internal government structure does not matter but restricting home rule increases the likelihood of satisfying the MVH equilibrium, the latter result consistent with the leviathan model. The systematic differences found for urban and rural county governments reinforce this conclusion.     

Tradeable emission permits and the control of greenhouse gases

This article reiterates the case for tradeable permits as a global policy option for limiting greenhouse gas emissions, and considers the detailed design of a global tradeable‐permit regime, emphasising the importance of the initial assignment of property rights, and arguing that the relevant property rights in this case are the rights of every member of the world community to share in a sustainable global atmosphere and climate. The allocation of permits should therefore be done on a per capita basis across the world community, with the result that rents generated by the process of reducing carbon emissions would accrue to non‐polluters, most of whom live in the ‘South’. The international transfers of income and wealth implied by the proposed scheme are large but feasible. There is therefore a real prospect that an international convention on carbon dioxide emissions could end the debt crisis and finance sustainable development in the South..