Integrating Institutional and Behavioural Measures of Bribery

Bribery involves individuals exchanging material benefits for a service of a public institution. To understand the process of bribery we need to integrate measures of individual behaviour and institutional attributes rather than rely exclusively on surveys of individual perceptions and experience or macro-level corruption indexes of national institutions. This paper integrates institutional and behavioural measures to show that where you live and who you are have independent influence on whether a person pays a bribe. The analysis of 76 nationwide Global Corruption Barometer surveys from six continents provides a date set in which both institutional and individual differences vary greatly. Multi-level multivariate logit analysis is used to test hypotheses about the influence of institutional context and individual contact with public services, socio-economic inequalities and roles, and conflicting behavioural and ethical norms. It finds that path-determined histories of early bureaucratization or colonialism have a major impact after controlling for individual differences. At the individual level, people who frequently make use of public services and perceive government as corrupt are more likely to pay bribes, while socio-economic inequality has no significant influence. While institutional history cannot be changed, changing the design of public services is something that contemporary governors could do to reduce the vulnerability of their citizens to bribery.     

Assortative Mating on Ideology Could Operate Through Olfactory Cues

Mates appear to assort on political attitudes more than any other social, behavioral, or physical trait, besides religion. Yet the process by which ideologically similar mates end up together remains ambiguous. Mates do not appear to consciously select one another based on ideology, nor does similarity result from convergence. Recently, several lines of inquiry have converged on the finding that olfactory processes have an important role in both political ideology and mate selection. Here we integrate extant studies of attraction, ideology, and olfaction and explore the possibility that assortation on political attitudes may result, in part, from greater attraction to the scent of those with shared ideology. We conduct a study in which individuals evaluated the body odor of unknown others, observing that individuals are more attracted to their ideological concomitants.     

论"布什主义"

文章分析了布什主义产生的历史背景 ;阐述了布什主义的主要内容和特征 ;并对布什主义的本质及其影响作了评价。文章指出 ,布什主义的主要内容是 :(一 )以“恐怖分子”和“无赖国家”作为美国的主要现实对手 ;(二 )以防止能对美国霸权地位构成挑战的大国的崛起作为长期战略目标 ;(三 )推行“先发制人战略” ;(四 )重视维护美国本土安全 ;(五 )倚重军事力量的作用 ;(六 )单边主义倾向突出 ;(七 )意识形态色彩严重。     

基于似然率方法的语音证据评价

法庭话者识别技术引入我国已有二十多年,目前该技术已经广泛应用于各类刑事和民事案件中。纵观世界各国的法庭证据评价体系,除了DNA证据以外,其他证据检验鉴定结论的表述通常有三种:同一认定、否定排除和倾向性意见。简单肯定和否定的结论存在很大的弊端,即过高估计了证据的力度,因而有时可能会造成错案。鉴于此,国外一些学者提出在鉴定结论的表述和价值评判上引入基于贝叶斯理论的"似然率"方法。本文结合目前的法庭话者鉴别方法,重点介绍基于贝叶斯理论下的"似然率"理论体系,并阐明该方法的优越性、局限性以及一些亟待解决的问题。     

Making Meaning of Megan's Law

This study of Megan's Law contrasts scholarly narratives that describe and analyze sexual predator laws with a case study of implementation in New Jersey. A critical feminist perspective shows that Megan's Law employs a radically underinclusive notion of sexual violence that conflicts sharply with feminist arguments about the cultural and institutional roots of sexual violence. The law excludes many of the most common offenders from reach of the law, thus deflecting attention away from assaults committed by family and friends in favor of reviving stereotypes about deviant strangers. The most significant effect of Megan's Law is not to expand the power of the punitive state but to advance a political and legal interpretation of rape that undermines the basis for and gains made by feminist rape law reforms of the 1970s.     

Social capital in civic and stressful societies

This article examines social capital with particular reference to societies where distrust of institutions has been the norm. The first section describes alternative relationships between individuals and institutions in civil and uncivil societies. The second makes clear the important distinction betweensocial network capital andorganizational capital. The former can be used to achieve freedom from the state; the latter implies a trustworthy state. The third section presents empirical survey data from the New Democracies Barometer in nine post-Communist societies; the data measure trust, scepticism and distrust in fifteen institutions. The following sections use multivariate analysis to account for differences in individual levels of trust, and discuss the implications for theories of civic democracy. Richard Rose received his doctorate from Oxford University. He is Director of the Centre for the Study of Public Policy at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, Scotland. William Mishler received his doctorate from Duke University. He has published extensively in the fields of methodology, legislative studies, and political economy.     

Board composition and corporate governance–A multivariate analysis of listed Danish firms

The article conducts a multivariate analysis using a sample of listed Danish firms in order to examine what describes board composition. This issue also relates to corporate law that stipulates the legal boundaries of board composition. In recent years, several European countries, including Denmark, have issued various codes for good corporate governance, in the form of soft law. Such initiatives have been launched, even though the questions of what describes board composition, as well as, the legal profession's influence on board structure, have not been fully uncovered. This study shows that four factors explain Danish board structure. These factors can be interpreted by the following dimensions; the lawyer oriented, the business person oriented, the internationally oriented and finally the traditionally oriented board. Thus, the paper shows that a higher proportion of insider ownership increases the first dimension, whereas a higher remuneration increases the business person orientation of the board. If firm size increases, the international dimension of the board increases and if a firm experiences less growth board structure becomes more traditional. classification G32 . K22