Book Reviews

Taylor C. Boas, Presidential Campaigns in Latin America: Electoral Strategies and Success Contagion. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016. Figures, tables, appendixes, bibliography, index, 276 pp.; hardcover $99.99, ebook. John Gledhill, The New War on the Poor: The Production of Insecurity in Latin America. London: Zed Books, 2015. Map, bibliography, index, 256 pp.; paperback $29.95, ebook $23.96. Ezequiel A. González‐Ocantos, Shifting Legal Visions: Judicial Change and Human Rights Trials in Latin America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016. Figures, tables, bibliography, index, 342 pp.; hardcover $110, paperback $35.99, ebook $88. Merrilee S. Grindle and Erin E. Goodman, eds., Reflections on Memory and Democracy. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2016. Photograph, 274 pp.; paperback $24.95. David Pion‐Berlin, Military Missions in Democratic Latin America. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. Figures, tables, bibliography, index, 231 pp.; hardcover $105, ebook $79.99. Robert Gay, Bruno: Conversations with a Brazilian Drug Dealer. Durham: Duke University Press, 2015. Illustrations, chronology, notes, bibliography, index, 232 pp.; hardcover $89.95, paperback $14.95. Georgina Waylen, ed., Gender, Institutions, and Change in Bachelet's Chile. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. Figure, tables, bibliographies, index, 259 pp.; hardcover $105, ebook $79.99. Dickie Davis, David Kilcullen, Greg Mills, and David Spencer, A Great Perhaps? Colombia: Conflict and Convergence. London: Hurst, 2015. Maps, figures, tables, notes, bibliography, index, 288 pp.; hardcover $39.40. Mary Helen Spooner and Steven Ullmann, Cuban Health Care: Utopian Dreams, Fragile Future. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2014. Appendixes, figures, tables, bibliography, index, 152 pp.; hardcover $83, ebook $78.50. John M. Kirk, Healthcare Without Borders: Understanding Cuban Medical Internationalism. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2015. Tables, bibliography, index, 376 pp.; hardcover $79.95. Christine J. Wade, Captured Peace: Elites and Peacebuilding in El Salvador. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2016. Illustrations, abbreviations, bibliography, index, 304 pp.; hardcover $69.95, paperback $39.95, ebook.     

Advances in Place-Based Methods: Editors’ Introduction

Journal of Quantitative Criminology -     

Predicting Officer Physical Assaults at Domestic Assault Calls

Police work is rife with the potential for physical harm, and domestic assault calls are one source of assaults on officers. Inability to accurately predict what circumstances might lead to an attack is one cause of officer cynicism and paranoia. Having the ability to identify which suspects pose the greatest threat of assault would allow officers to take appropriate protective measures. Using data collected from 1,951 domestic assault calls across three cities, the present study compared characteristics and behaviors of the batterers with whether or not the batterers physically assaulted the responding officers. Findings revealed five significant batterer characteristics (employment status, shared residence with abuse victim, alcohol consumption, property damage, and hostile demeanor toward officers) that successfully predicted officer assaults. These risk factors may be incorporated into police safety training in the response to family violence calls.     

Guilt by association: The link between states�� influence and the legitimacy of intergovernmental organizations

Unfavorable views toward a particular state will result in skepticism about the legitimacy of IGOs in which that state possesses influence. The more extensive the avenues of influence, the stronger this “guilt by association.” The rationale is two-fold. First, a state that possesses institutionalized influence (e.g., a veto) within an intergovernmental organization faces substantial difficulties in credibly committing to non-interference with organizational activities. Second, even if a state somehow could commit to abstention from overt interference, it may exert covert ideational influence if it already has embedded its values into an IGO. Elites and laypeople alike recognize the avenues of influence that fuel guilt-by-association. With statistical analyses of public opinion data from 35,397 people in 23 countries, I provide the first systematic evidence that guilt-by-association exists: for the United States, Russia, Japan, and Pakistan, vis-à-vis the United Nations, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund. The evidence is robust to numerous alternative specifications. The findings contribute to international relations scholarship by enhancing our understanding of threats to IGO legitimacy and by providing concrete evidence for a mechanism by which antipathy toward powerful states matters in the international realm.     

A Comparison of the Effectiveness of Swabbing and Flossing as a Means of Recovering Spermatozoa from the Oral Cavity

This study examined whether flossing the teeth is a more effective collection method in recovering spermatozoa than conventional swabbing techniques. It was hypothesized that inclusion of flossing as a collection method would extend the recovery of spermatozoa to longer postcoital intervals (PCIs). Eighteen individuals provided 174 oral cavity samples. Successful recovery of spermatozoa was assessed with respect to the collection method and reported activity in the oral cavity during the PCI. Samples were subjected to a differential extraction procedure prior to microscopic evaluation of the extracted pellet. The results indicate that swabbing is more effective than flossing when the PCI falls within 1.5–12 h. However, spermatozoa were recovered from seven floss samples where the corresponding swabs gave negative results. When combining the results from the two collection methods, the percentage of subjects from whom spermatozoa are recovered increases for each PCI beyond the 0‐h interval.     

Ethnic Politics and Women's Empowerment in Africa: Ministerial Appointments to Executive Cabinets

Under what conditions do women participate in executive power in multiethnic societies? Previous research has examined how political institutions, socioeconomic factors, and cultural norms affect the appointment of women as cabinet ministers. However, no study has assessed the extent to which the politicization of ethnicity—a cleavage that shapes political life in many countries—affects women's cabinet appointments. Focusing on sub‐Saharan Africa, we argue that women are less likely to become cabinet ministers where incumbents use such appointments to build patronage‐based alliances with politicians who act as advocates for ethnic constituencies. Using an original dataset on the composition of cabinets in 34 African countries from 1980 to 2005, we show that women's share of cabinet appointments is significantly lower in countries where leaders must accommodate a larger number of politicized ethnic groups, but it rises with higher levels of democracy and greater representation of women in parliament.     

It’s All in the Name: Source Cue Ambiguity and the Persuasive Appeal of Campaign Ads

As strategies for campaign political advertising become more complex, there remains much to learn about how ad characteristics shape voter reactions to political messages. Drawing from existing literature on source credibility, we expect ad sponsorship will have meaningful effects on voter reactions to political advertisements. We test this by using an original experiment, where we expose a sample of student and non-student participants to equivalent ads and vary only the paid sponsor disclaimer at the end of the message. The only thing that differs across stimuli is whether a political candidate, a known interest group, or an unknown interest group sponsors the advertisement. Following exposure to one of these ads, participants complete a posttest battery of questions measuring the persuasiveness of the message, source credibility, and message legitimacy. We find that ads sponsored by unknown interest groups are more persuasive than those sponsored by candidates or known interest groups, and persuasion is mediated by perceived credibility of the source. We conclude by discussing our findings and their implications for our understanding of contemporary campaigns.