The Impact of News Photos on Support for Military Action

Drawing on two experiments embedded in online surveys, this article examines the impact of news photos on support for military action. In 2011, respondents were asked about support for ongoing military involvement in Afghanistan while being randomly exposed to one of two photos—one of a soldier with a child, the other of a soldier with a gun. The former photo increased expressed support for war; and the effect was greater for those who self-identify as being very interested in international affairs. Three years later, a follow-up experiment was fielded that looked both at the past intervention in Afghanistan and ongoing interventions in Syria; results were very similar. Both experiments speak to the potentially profound role of mass media in generating support (or not) for foreign military engagements, and the increased impact of frames on those who are more attentive to the issue domain.     

Becoming “Copwise”: Policing,Culture, and the Collateral Consequences of Street‐Level Criminalization

Over the last four decades, the United States has witnessed a historic expansion of its criminal justice system. This article examines how street‐level criminalization transforms the cultural contexts of poor urban communities. Drawing on five years of fieldwork in Los Angeles’ Skid Row–the site of one of the most aggressive zero‐tolerance policing campaigns to date–the study finds that residents develop and deploy a particular cultural frame–“cop wisdom”–by which they render seemingly‐random police activity more legible, predictable, and manipulable. Armed with this interpretive schema, “copwise” residents engage in new forms of self‐presentation in public, movement through the daily round, and informal social control in order to deflect police scrutiny and forestall street stops. While these techniques allow residents to reduce unwanted police contact, this often comes at the expense of individual and collective well‐being by precluding social interaction, exacerbating stigma, and contributing to animosity in public space.     

Presidential address— Seeing through the fog

All public policies have two things in common. They deal with the future and, as a result, they are based on forecasts or projections. The forecasts or projections may be implicit or based on naive extrapolation or ad hoc assumptions. They may be explicit and based on elaborate extrapolations or on behavioral models. In either case, unfortunately, they are notoriously unreliable. In fact, they almost always are wrong—sometimes just a bit wrong, but often massively wrong. Nonetheless, forecasts are what distinguishes reasoned planning from blind action. Without forecasts, we would be totally at sea. That we have to use forecasts or projections, that we know they will be wrong, and that they usually are wrong raise some difficult questions for policy analysis and policymaking. Regrettably, in my view, they receive too little attention.2 My purpose today is to urge that they receive more. My comments are intended to make four points. First, it is important for policymakers to appreciate how errorprone forecasts and projections actually are. Second, it is important not to permit the availability of projections or forecasts to obscure fundamental policy questions that are important in any plausible scenario. Third, uncertainty means that, where possible, it is prudent to design policies with builtin flexibility that respond automatically to diverse possible outcomes. Fourth, where builtin flexibility is impossible, complete analyses should take into account the consequences if forecasts prove wrong, and weigh those consequences against the results of postponing action until information improves or against other policies under the plausible range of possible outcomes. © 2000 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

Party Government and the "Cohesive Power of Public Plunder"

We argue that party government in the U.S. House of Representatives rests on two pillars: the pursuit of policy goals and the disbursement of particularistic benefits. Existing theories of party government argue that the majority party in the House is often successful in biasing policy outcomes in its favor. In the process, it creates "policy losers" among its own members who nevertheless support their party on procedural votes. We posit that the majority party creates an incentive for even the policy losers to support a procedural coalition through judicious distribution of particularistic benefits that compensates policy losers at a rate commensurate with the policy losses that they suffer. We evaluate our theory empirically using the concept of "roll rates" in conjunction with federal domestic outlays data for the period 1983–96. We find that, within the majority party, policy losers are favored in the distribution of "pork barrel" spending throughout this period.     

Recipes for Pork and Other Delicious Offerings for the New Administration

Is pork produced by feeble budgetary processes? By fixing weak budgetary procedures, can wasteful spending and opportunities for corruption be reduced? This essay looks at three varieties of pork: earmarked, ad hoc, and presidential. What can be done to curb the excesses of each one? By examining the problem of congressional earmarking, this timely article proposes a new process for controlling “earmarked” pork by supporting a new (constitutional) presidential line‐item veto/reprogramming. “Ad hoc pork,” generated by emergency or stimulus bills, is also analyzed. Its downsides can be fixed, according to the essay, by creating a preapproved roadmap for the appropriations process, thereby enhancing the quality of spending oversight. Finally, “presidential pork” derives from chief executives rewarding congressional allies and from government agencies allocating program resources so as to engender support from congressional members. This third variety of pork can be controlled if agencies improve their operational transparency plus strengthen their procedures for selecting projects. What happens when you put good people in a bad place, good apples in a bad barrel? Do the apples change the barrel, or does the barrel change the apples? —Philip Zimbardo, 2008     

The Social Construction of the Market

Although Berger and Luckmann do not specifically discuss the market, they would undoubtedly agree that the market is socially constructed. Indeed, the market is a product of social action that has an objective and subjective reality. Inspired by Berger and Luckmann’s work, this paper will describe the social construction of the market. Specifically, it will focus on the Austrian understanding of the market. It is my contention that the Austrians have articulated a “sociology of the market” that is consistent with Berger and Luckmann’s approach.     

Homicidal Ideation and Individuals on the Autism Spectrum

Interest in the relationship between autism and violence has increased in recent years; however, no link has clearly been established between them. Researchers remain curious if autistic people with certain traits (e.g., a history of trauma) are at greater risk of violence than those individuals with autism alone. In this article, we detail two individuals with homicidal ideation (HI) admitted to inpatient psychiatric units who were found to have a diagnosis of autism without language impairment. These cases illustrate the need for mental health providers to consider autism in their differential diagnosis when evaluating an individual with HI. Broadly, we consider how an autistic individual could be susceptible to developing HI and explore treatments specific to autistic individuals that may be helpful in such cases.     

Comparison of Rehydration Techniques for Fingerprinting the Deceased after Mummification

Postmortem decay causes fingertip decomposition, desiccation, shriveling, and rigidity, reducing the possibility of obtaining sufficiently clear fingerprints for identification. In this study, five rehydration solutions (ammonium hydroxide, sodium carbonate, potassium hydroxide, urea, and warm water) followed by three fingerprint recording methods (photograph, inking roll, and dusting tape) were investigated to process mummified fingertips from an unidentified cadaver. The results show that sodium carbonate treatment is the most effective for minutiae restoration, followed by ammonium hydroxide treatment. This study also demonstrates that even those fingertips that previously failed in urea solution, 1% potassium hydroxide solution, and warm water treatment could be further improved with sodium carbonate solution to obtain qualified minutiae for fingerprint matching. The optimal procedure is rehydrating the desiccated fingertips with sodium carbonate solution for 24 h followed by dusting the finger and transferring the print to adhesive tape.     

Physical,Social, and Perceived Availabilities of Alcohol and Last Month Alcohol Use in Rural and Small Urban Communities

This study seeks to provide a greater understanding of the factors that determine the perceived availability of alcohol and its role in predicting adolescents’ alcohol use. Participants were 151,703 7th–12th grade students (50% female) from a sample of 219 rural communities across the United States, with oversampling for predominantly Mexican-American and African-American communities. Multilevel analysis was used to estimate the perceived availability of alcohol as a function of physical and social availability measures and individual and community-level control variables. Physical availability was measured as the number of alcohol outlets in the community and whether beer and wine were sold in non-liquor stores. Social availability measured the availability of alcohol from social or family groups. Last month alcohol use was then estimated as a function of physical, social and perceived availabilities and control variables. Physical availability had little relationship to perceived availability or recent alcohol use while social availability was a strong predictor of both. Perceived availabilities at the individual and community levels were significant in predicting last month alcohol use. The findings suggest that altering both perceived and actual availability of alcohol can potentially have strong effects on the levels of adolescent alcohol use.