Responding to retributivists: a restorative justice rejoinder to the big three Desert theories

Retributive theories of legal punishment fail to justify the imprisonment of convicted offenders. There are three prominent retributive theories that attempt this: Fair Play theory, Moral Communication theory, and Intuitive Desert theory. Fair Play retributivists seek to imprison offenders in order to re-balance the distribution of benefits and burdens, which is upset by criminal offences. Moral Communication retributivists seek to imprison offenders as a means of communicating society’s condemnation of criminality. Intuitive Desert retributivists seek to imprison offenders because it is a deserved response to wrongdoing (the supporting evidence is our intuitive reactions to criminality). These theories are critiqued and attention is drawn to the superiority of certain restorative justice values and practices.     

Compassionate conservatives or conservative compassionates? US political parties and bilateral foreign assistance to Africa

Conventional wisdom about US foreign policy towards Africa contains two popular assumptions. First, Democrats are widely considered the party most inclined to care about Africa and the most willing to spend resources on assistance to the continent. Second, the end of the Cold War was widely thought to have led to a gradual disengagement of the US from Africa and reduced American attention toward the continent. This article analyses data on US foreign assistance flows from 1961?–?2000 and finds that neither of these assumptions is true. Rather, we find that the configuration of party control over Congress and the Presidency matters significantly, with aid to Africa substantially reduced when the two branches are in opposition.