Marijuana Misuse in African States

This article focuses on marijuana misuse or abuse in African states. It specifically addresses the questions concerning the origins and meanings of marijuana, the history of marijuana as a drug of misuse, legal classification, model of consumption, user inducement and motivation, relationship between marijuana use and criminality, legal status and laws governing the control of marijuana; and it surveys African national programs aimed at reducing the demand for, use, cultivation and possession of Indian Hemp. The emphasis of paper is on the extent of group support for marijuana use and the legal processing of the offender.     

Job security regulations in Western democracies: A fuzzy set analysis

This article uses fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to examine the determinants of job security regulations – here understood as restrictions on hiring and firing – in Western democracies. Unlike previous studies, the analysis reveals three different paths to high levels of job security regulations. The first path covers the Southern European state capitalist countries. In these countries, conflicts between forces pushing for liberal democracy and groups alienated from modernisation have led to high levels of statism and crowded out other societal actors. Job security regulations were enacted relatively early in order to provide social security by means available to the state. Due to fragmented welfare states, job security regulations have remained one of the most important pillars of the social protection regime. The second path covers the Continental European managed capitalist countries and is also characterised by high levels of statism. In these countries, repressive governments employed a stick‐and‐carrot strategy to weaken the labour movement and tie the loyalties of the individual to the state. After the Second World War, these countries developed corporatist intermediation systems and encompassing and generous welfare states. Finally, the third path covers the Nordic managed capitalist countries. This path is characterised by a high degree of non‐market coordination, strong labour movements and few institutional veto points. In the Nordic managed capitalist countries, job security regulations traditionally have been subject to collective agreements. However, in the 1960s, labour movements succeeded in pushing through the public legislation of job security despite opposition from employers' associations. Methodologically, this article demonstrates that cross‐national differences in the level of job security regulations can only be explained if the methods used allow for complex causality. In contrast, methods which focus on ‘net effects’ do not offer satisfactory explanations for the cross‐national differences in the level of job security regulations.     

RPR officials: a report on an inquiry into the Neo-Gaullist Party elite

Abstract. Based upon a questionnaire survey of delegates to the RPR National Congress held in Grenoble in November 1984, this paper summarizes a three-dimensional analysis of RPR officials (demographic and sociological identification; political mobilization, party functions and activism; ideological trends and political attitudes) which seeks to appraise how the evolution of the Gaullist movement correlates with changes in French politics between 1976 and 1986.     

HEURISTICS AND BIASES,RATIONAL CHOICE,AND SANCTION PERCEPTIONS*

The relevance of several cognitive heuristics and related biases for rational choice perspectives on crime, and for perceptions of sanction risk, were investigated. We present findings from a series of randomized experiments, embedded in two nationwide surveys of American adults (18 and older) in 2015 (N = 1,004 and 623). The results reveal that offender estimates of detection risk are less probabilistically precise and more situationally variable than under prevailing criminological perspectives, most notably, rational choice and Bayesian learning theories. This, in turn, allows various decision‐making heuristics—such as anchoring and availability—to influence and potentially bias the perceptual updating process.     

No direct taxation without new elite representation: Industrialization and the domestic politics of taxation

The nineteenth century marked the founding period of modern public finance. We examine the domestic and non-war related determinants of direct taxation in this early democratic period and in a state building context. We argue that the reasons for the expansion of direct taxation can be found in the political competition between different elite groups in the context of industrialization. Systematically differentiating between economic and political arenas, we show that intra-elite competition in industrializing economies leads to higher levels of direct taxation only if the new economic elites are able to translate their economic power into the political arena, either through the representative system or by extra-parliamentary means. In addition, we demonstrate that these processes are directly linked to public investments in policy areas related to the interests of new economic elites such as public education. Our analysis is based on novel subnational data from the period 1850 to 1910, enabling us to concentrate on the domestic determinants of direct taxation.     

AGENTS OF INFLUENCE: COUNTRY DIRECTORS AT THE WORLD BANK

This article seeks to understand the operations of the World Bank by examining one particular group of players—the country directors (CDs). It argues that the analysis of international organizations (IOs), by focusing on the behaviour of their principals (states), as principal-agent analysts do, or on organizational cultures, as the constructivist approach does, is inadequate in explaining the operation and behaviour of IOs, which are themselves complex organizations with chains of cascading relationships. Country directors at the World Bank occupy a pivotal position in this chain: with executive directors and the president as their nominal and ultimate principals, vice presidents as their direct principals and client countries as informal principals. They are themselves principals to their country team and to some sector people. For both conceptual and empirical reasons, therefore, CDs deserve separate analysis. To explain the way these relationships shape the work CDs do and how they do it, this article examines three basic functions of country directors at the Bank: (1) representing the Bank to the client countries; (2) representing the country to the Bank; and (3) managing the country offices and country programmes. The empirical section of this article is based on interviews with over 80 officials in both Washington and field offices. We show that an understanding of the Bank and its operations requires an examination of its internal processes and its staff.