Commentaries on the issue

Abstract

The use of informers is morally problematic for police institutions, for investigation managers, and for those individuals either who act as informers or who have daily responsibility for handling informers. This paper examines the moral issues concerning informers at each of these levels. Recourse to informers can be accommodated within Miller and Blackler's moral theory of policing. Within this context, criteria for the morally justifiable deployment of informers are proposed and supplemented with further proposed criteria for morally justifiable informer participation in crime. Morally justifiable recruitment of informers is also considered. Despite directly serving the purpose of policing, informers do not incur police professional obligations.     

Print journalism as political communication: The Iran hostage crisis 1

Studies of political communication and persuasion typically focus on deliberately persuasive communications of political actors. Contemporary rhetorical theories suggest the importance of rhetorical examinations of a range of communications not normally considered rhetorical/persuasive, including media news reports. Bormann's fantasy‐theme analysis is a rhetorical‐critical method that allows critics to discover the rhetorically created social realities of groups of people through detailed examination of their communication behavior. The method is particularly suited to discovering the motives of social actors who share social realities or “rhetorical visions.” Applied to U.S. print media coverage of the Iran hostage crisis, fantasy‐theme analysis reveals the motives that urged journalists to give the episode massive coverage, that urged Americans to become preoccupied with the episode, and that urged Americans to vote out an incumbent president. Thus, the study reveals the tremendous persuasive impact of “objective” materials like news coverage on electoral politics.     

Building a nation: religion and values in the public schools of the USA,Australia, and South Africa

Although the systems of public schools differ among Australia, South Africa and the USA, all three countries recognize that religion plays a significant role in determining values. All three countries have written constitutions but only South Africa and the USA have a Bill of Rights that protects persons’ exercise of religious beliefs. In Australia, the place of religion in education has largely been shaped by state legislatures, administrative regulations and interpretations of the national constitution. In the USA, the long tradition of religious values being represented in public education has been severely restricted over the past 60 years, resulting in artificial judicial lines being drawn between private religious expression and government expression. However, even private expression can be prohibited if it interferes with the educational mission of a school. South Africa had a long tradition of Christian religious practices in government schools under apartheid. However, the post-apartheid 1996 Constitution and 1996 South African Schools Act still give these schools considerable latitude in investing religious values into the educational process. In Australia, values, religion and education have always been a preoccupation of those providing education, although the blurring of public and private education in Australia has resulted in a different direction for the role of religion than in the USA.     

Some thoughts on the use and misuse of statistical inference

The abuse of techniques of statistical inference resulting from inadequate attention to the relationship between the model used and the real world problem being addressed, and inappropriate interpretation of conclusions in the light of that relationsip, are discussed. The basic principle underlying all statistical inference is that we attempt to distinguish between alternatives by comparing observed behavior with that predicted by predictive models of those alternatives. The use of predictive models which do not describe the behavior of the alternatives between which we wish to distinguish is a clear violation of that principle. The principle is illustrated in a discussion of sampling from an urn. The technique of causal inference through partial correlation analysis is discussed as an example of the violation of this principle. On the surface this technique appears to have wide applicability in analyses in support of policy studies, but further examination shows its applicability to be somewhere between highly questionable and totally specious.     

Setting a Course: Congressional Foreign Policy Entrepreneurs In Post-World War II U.S. Foreign Policy

"Congressional foreign policy entrepreneurs" are those legislators who initiate their own foreign policy agendas. These individuals seek to frame policy discussions and mobilize public and interest group interest; to direct congressional agendas toward specific foreign policy issues; to structure and influence the formulation of foreign policies by the executive branch; to revise, refocus, or reformulate foreign policies; to generate alternative and replacement foreign policies; and to fill policy vacuums with their own preferred foreign policies. This paper examines the evolution and impact of such entrepreneurs across the periods of the Cold War Consensus (1946–1967), the Cold War Dissensus (1968–1989), and the Post-Cold War (1990–2000). The paper first provides an overview of the concept of foreign policy entrepreneurs. It then turns to case studies of entrepreneurial initiatives from three prolific entrepreneurs whose careers span the post-World War II era: Senators Jacob Javits, Edward Kennedy, and Christopher Dodd. Together, the overview and cases shed light on the different avenues and activities that entrepreneurs use to address their preferred issues and the impact entrepreneurs have on policy, as well as highlight changes in both over time.