The Greater Yellowstone policy debate: What is the policy problem?

Yellowstone National Park and the surrounding mountainous region comprise the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE), a 19 million acre area that is one of the few relatively intact ecosystems in the lower 48 states. Conservationists believe that continuation of present land management practices in the region will disrupt the ecological integrity of the GYE. Many authors have identified and described these threats, but as yet there has been no sustained effort to make sense of these threats in the context of the ongoing dynamic policy debate. We develop the foundation for such understanding by examining the implicit problem definitions that have emerged from this debate. They fall into three general categories: 1) a scientific definition, 2) an economic definition, and 3) a bureaucratic definition. This process produces an exploratory definition of the policy problem, which suggests a strategy for better understanding and policy design. We propose several intervention points at which substantive, one-the-ground improvements in the management of the GYE are possible.     

Of battered wives,self-defense and double standards of justice: A research note

In what appears to be an outgrowth of the feminist movement and concomitant revelations concerning spousal abuse in America, a new concept in criminal jurisprudence, popularly known as the battered wife syndrome defense, has arisen. Increasingly, abused women who kill their husbands are claiming that their acts were justified, not solely because of the exigency of the circumstance which directly led to the death, but because of sociological, psychological, and legal factors which operate effectively to deprive them of alternatives. This note discusses the validity of the new defense in light of existing law and posits that the claim rests upon a contorted legal foundation, that it could not stand but for an invidious gender-based discrimination violative of Fourteenth-Amendment guarantees, and that it promotes family violence.     

Exploring the consequences of erratic data reporting for cross-national research on homicide

This paper examines the common practice in cross-national research on homicide of using crime estimates for a multiyear period based on a smaller number of years than theoretically desired because of erratic data reporting for selected nations. Correlations between hypothetical baseline rates and various alternative estimates are examined to simulate the potential consequences of using temporally incomplete data rather than data for the full multiyear period of interest. The results reveal that this common practice is likely to be highly acceptable for certain national samples but less acceptable for others. The paper concludes with suggestions for dealing with potentially problematic cases.     

Toward the privatization of the CIS weapons industry: The ‘collectivist’ option

The Russian military-industrial sector, like the economy generally is undergoing a turbulent transformation. Property rights, institutional arrangements, regulatory mechanisms and procurement demand are in rapid flux. In 1992 weapons production declined drastically, variously estimated between 20 and 67 percent, but arms contracts for 1993 are reported to be double last year's volume. This essay attempts to illuminate key elements of Russia's military-industrial transition by analyzing how property rights, tax and regulatory reforms of the sorts advocated by Alexsandr Isaev and Anatoly Chubais are apt to effect efficiency and military-industrial conversion. It is shown that while collectivist ownership could enhance economic efficiency, despite the usual Ward-Domar effects, Yeltsin's market reforms may not be sufficient to foster large scale military-industrial conversion.