INTERNAL COMPETITION OVER FOREIGN POLICY-MAKING: THE CASE OF U.S. ARMS SALES TO IRAN

Two models of foreign-policy making, the bureaucratic politics model and the royal court model, are helpful in explaining U.S. arms sales to Iran in 1985 and in 1986. The bureaucratic politics model is particularly useful in clarifying both the positions taken by the leaders of the foreign policy bureaucracy to the arms sales proposals and the behavior of these officials as the sales were implemented. However, the royal court model best ac- counts for the decisive role of the president and the deference given to those advisers perceived to be acting in his interests.     

Voice stress evaluators and lie detection

Proponents of vocal stress analysis systems argue that they are able to detect spoken deception by analysis of "stress" in the voice signal. Presumably, they do so by examining traces made by laryngeal microtremors which, they claim exist in the voice, are associated with stress, and ultimately are associated with lying. However, most research that seeks to identify the relationships between microtremors and laryngeal function has produced negative results, and data on the ability of voice analyzers to detect stress from speech--or to identify spoken deception--have been negative or "mixed" in nature. Since perspectives based on available results leave a number of questions unanswered, a series of experiments has been undertaken. The first was focused on the basic acoustic/temporal correlates of stress in voice (the subject of an earlier report), the second on examination of stress by commercial voice analyzers, and the third on the detection of relatively high-risk lies by this same type of voice analysis procedure. It was found that correct stress/nonstress identifications occurred only at chance levels; the lie/nonlie identification scores were quite similar with professional "examiners" performing at about the same level of accuracy as other auditors. The following review is divided into two parts: a history of the controversy and a presentation of the two cited experiments.     

Nationalism,Territory, and Organized Violence: Introduction to the Special Issue

Recent decades have seen significant advances in research on the relationship between nationalist ideology and organized violence. New scholarship has paid much closer attention to the microdynamics of violence, the strikingly uneven distribution of violence, the relationship between master cleavages and intimate local and personal struggles, and to process, history, and contingency. Nationalist ideology is understood to be bound up intimately with institutions and with everyday relationships at the local level. We introduce the contributions to this special issue, outlining the way in which they highlight the power of ideas, narratives, and microlevel solidarity in mobilization for violence and how they address the crucial importance of territoriality in linking ideas and action.     

Parental influence on adolescent sexuality: Implications for parents as educators

While parents may not be recognized as disseminators of sexual information, positive and negative sexual messages are communicated by parents to their children, both verbally and nonverbally. The results of this study indicate that the impact of parental messages upon the sexuality of youth appears relatively straightforward for males, but quite complex for females. This article suggests educational approaches that can be used to recycle early parental sexual messages.This study was funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, #HD 10689-02. David J. Kallen, Department of Pediatrics/Human Development, College of Human Medicine, Michigan State University was the principal investigator.Received Ph.D. from Michigan State University. Current research interest is Human sexuality.Received Ph.D. from Pennsylvania State University. Current research interest is Relationships.     

Promoting Public Service Integrity: A Case for Responsible Accountability

We discuss below difference between the concepts of accountability and responsibility, in the context of government administration. We argue that New Zealand's public sector reforms, in particular, have depended on an essentially mechanistic as distinct from an organic interpretation of public organisations. A mechanistic approach focuses disproportionately on notions of organisational accountability at the expense of responsibility, and as a consequence may prove counterproductive over the longer term in maintaining high standards of ethical probity. A concept of responsible accountability needs to be developed further as a means of countering this possibility. We speculate on whether the emphasis on contractualism has enhanced or undermined an integrity-based as opposed to a compliance-based ethics regime, and the possible implications of this for the maintenance of ethical standards.     

We demand work! ‘Dispossession’, patronage and village labour in Bibiyana,Bangladesh

ABSTRACT

This paper critically appraises the usefulness of idioms and theories of ‘dispossession’ to describe changes taking place in rural Bangladesh, where rapid industrialization and ‘development’ have led to profound shifts in the agrarian economy. On the basis of long-term fieldwork in north-eastern Bangladesh, where the multinational company Chevron operate a large gas field, I argue that rather than political and economic struggles in the area involving access to land, it is access to work which is now all important for livelihoods and, as such, has become the basis for local patronage and political power. Theories of ‘accumulation by dispossession’, still widely cited in the anthropology of neo-liberal development in South Asia, are thus of limited help in explaining the changes and continuities which animate local political and economic struggles.