The Fall: Consequences of US Withdrawal From Iraq

There is no big anti‐war movement in the United States against Iraq like there was against Vietnam. But the people have finally spoken against President Bush's Iraq policy by resoundingly returning a Democratic majority to Congress. Henry Kissinger, eminence gris of American diplomacy, ponders whether this means a “return to realism.” The military historian Martin van Creveld looks at what American withdrawal would mean.     

Power Sharing and Inclusive Politics in Africa's Uncertain Democracies

Power‐sharing agreements have been widely used in Africa as paths out of civil war. However, the research focus on conflict mitigation provides an inadequate guide to recent cases such as Kenya and Zimbabwe. When used in response to flawed elections, pacts guaranteeing political inclusion adversely affect government performance and democratization. Political inclusion in these cases undermines vertical relationships of accountability, increases budgetary spending, and creates conditions for policy gridlock. Analysis using three salient dimensions highlights these negative effects: Origin distinguishes extra‐constitutional pacts from coalitions produced by more stable institutions, function contrasts postwar cases from scenarios where the state itself faces less risk, and time horizon refers to dilemmas that weigh long‐term costs versus short‐term benefits. The conclusion suggests that the drawbacks of inclusive institutions can be moderated by options such as sunset clauses, evenhanded prosecution of human rights violations, and by strengthening checks on executive authority.     

SENTENCING HOMICIDE OFFENDERS IN THE NETHERLANDS: OFFENDER,VICTIM, AND SITUATIONAL INFLUENCES IN CRIMINAL PUNISHMENT*

Empirical investigations of criminal sentencing represent a vast research enterprise in criminology. However, this research has been restricted almost exclusively to U.S. contexts, and often it suffers from key data limitations. As such, an examination of more detailed international sentencing data provides an important opportunity to assess the generalizability of contemporary research and theorizing on criminal punishment in the United States. The current study investigates little-researched questions about the influence of prosecutorial sentencing recommendations, victim/offender relationships, and extralegal disparities in sentencing by analyzing unique data on the punishment of homicide offenders in the Netherlands. The results indicate that offender, victim, and situational offense characteristics all exert important independent effects at sentencing and that prosecutorial recommendations exert powerful influences over judicial sentences. The article concludes with a discussion of future directions for comparative sentencing research across international contexts.     

Reorienting Regulation: Pollution Enforcement in Industrializing Countries

This special issue aims to set a course for future inquiry on regulatory enforcement in industrializing countries. With examples from major countries including Brazil, China, and Indonesia, the articles develop four cross-cutting themes: (1) how enforcement and its institutional context vary geographically and temporally, (2) how enforcement is affected by deficiencies in regulatory capacity and autonomy, (3) how civil liability regimes interact with enforcement, and (4) the relationship between enforcement and regulatory instrument choice.     

Political socialization,political gender gaps and the intergenerational transmission of left-right ideology

While left and right are the main terms to distinguish political views in Western Europe, the family socialization of citizens has mainly been studied in terms of partisan preferences rather than identification with these ideological blocks. Therefore, this study investigates the intergenerational transmission of left-right ideological positions in two European multiparty systems. To investigate expectations regarding gendered patterns in political socialization, ideological transmission between mothers, fathers, daughters and sons are analyzed, making use of German and Swiss household data. The results underline the relevance of the family in the transmission of political ideology in multiparty systems, showing high contemporary parent–child concordance in ideological positioning in line with classic work in political socialization. Moreover, the study demonstrates how the gender-generation gap in political ideology is consequential for this process. Young women consistently place themselves on the left of men across all combinations of parental ideology, which indicates that the gender-generation gap trumps other gendered patterns in intergenerational transmission. Consequently, daughters are less likely than sons to take over their parents’ rightist positions, while parent–son transmission is equally large on the left and the right. This also means that left-leaning parents have a general advantage over right-leaning parents in having their ideological identification reproduced by their daughters. The study highlights the importance of differentiating between the transmission of left- and right-wing ideology in political socialization processes. Moreover, it demonstrates that the distinction by offspring gender is imperative when studying the intergenerational transmission of traits that display gender differences within and between parental and offspring generations. The findings point at the active role of especially female offspring in the political socialization process, as they seem to be more strongly impacted by influences outside the family that sustain generational processes of further gender realignment.     

Dominant players and minimum size coalitions

Abstract. In this paper we present a result about Peleg's theory of coalition formation in dominated simple games (Peleg 1981). Further, a connection between Peleg's theory and Riker's minimum size theory (Riker 1962, Riker and Ordeshook 1973) is established. This connection leads to a new theory of coalition formation in simple games.     

Correction

For some reason, the only corrections received in the last Quarterconcern the United Nations in its various forms. General Daubentonwrites to point out that the study of kwashiorkor, referredto on p. 3, 1. 19, of the present volume, was undertaken bythe World Health Organisation, as well as by the Food and AgriculturalOrganisation. A learned letter from Mr. F. R. Bray, of the InternationalLabour Office, points out the connections between the legendThe Deeds of Bokari, printed on p. 61, and the Polynesian legendof Mauitikitiki. This connection exists, but not in the originalversion, only in the mind of the teller, E. Bankole Timothy.Finally, Dr. Chalmers Wright complains of the reference to theUnited Nations publication on inquiries into household standardsof living, made in the Shorter Notices on p. 172, pointing tothe 40 columns of material provided for the inquirer. I shouldhave thought that this might have been surmised from the precedingsentence in the notice, which refers to a list of most of thefield investigation in the past decade or two. The criticismof the actual content of the notice still remains, in my opinion,valid.      

THE URGENCY OF LAND AND AGRARIAN REFORM IN RWANDA

The challenges which lie ahead for post-genocide Rwanda's economic,social and political development are closely related throughthe issue of land. The pressure from a high rate of populationgrowth, added to the paucity of economic opportunities outsidethe agricultural sector, is forcing people off the land andinto poverty. Society is under extreme stress. Over the lastdecade the fabric of Rwandan society has been torn, resultingin ethnic and social divisions which culminpted in the eventsof 1994. Since then, new groups have entered the competitionfor land. Decisions concerning land and agrarian reform willunavoidably benefit some groups within this fragmented societywhile disadvantaging others. This article approaches the landproblem from two perspectives: first, by situating its socio-economicdimension in a deeper historical context and second, by consideringit as a specifically contemporary socio-political problem. Thearticle discusses the latest proposals for land and agrarianreform. While pressure on land has, over time, weakened socialbonds, it remains doubtful whether the government has the politicalstrength—in the present unstable national and regionalpolitical climate—to carry out the necessary reinforcementof communal bonds which economic development appears to require.