The dilemmas of market socialism: Capital market reform in China ‐ part II: Shares

This two‐part article analyses the attempts to reform the socialist financial system in China by diversifying financial assets and introducing capital markets. The approach used is that of political economy, in the sense of elucidating the interplay between political and economic interests, actors and issues in the reform process.

Part I discusses the issue of bonds by governments and enterprises. Although the reform era has seen gradual progress towards something resembling a bond ‘market’ in terms of a diversification of bond types and growing competition between bond issues, there is no evidence that this has improved allocative efficiency in the economy. Rather, bonds have functioned as one instrument in a complex struggle for resources between political, institutional and economic actors in the context of a continuing ‘shortage economy’. This competitive system falls far short of a true ‘market'; rather it embodies powerful systemic factors reflecting the basic structural and institutional features of a semi‐reformed socialist economy.

One of these systemic factors is the institution of social ownership of the means of production which has been called into question by the emergence of shares and share markets, a process we discuss in Part II. Share issues have in the event been economically unimportant but politically important since they challenge the ideological and institutional underpinnings of a ‘socialist’ economy. The key to the future of this form of financial liberalisation depends not merely on further progress in complementary areas of economic reform policy, but also on a resolution of these fundamental political issues.     

Workplace Assessment of Targeted Violence Risk: The Development and Reliability of the WAVR‐21

This study describes the development of the WAVR‐21, a structured professional judgment guide for the assessment of workplace targeted violence, and presents initial interrater reliability results. The 21‐item instrument codes both static and dynamic risk factors and change, if any, over time. Five critical items or red flag indicators assess violent motives, ideation, intent, weapons skill, and pre‐attack planning. Additional items assess the contribution of mental disorder, negative personality factors, situational factors, and a protective factor. Eleven raters each rated 12 randomly assigned cases from actual files of workplace threat scenarios. Summary interrater reliability correlation coefficients (ICCs) for overall presence of risk factors, risk of violence, and seriousness of the violent act were in the fair to good range, similar to other structured professional judgment instruments. A subgroup of psychologists who were coders produced an ICC of 0.76 for overall presence of risk factors. Some of the individual items had poor reliability for both clinical and statistical reasons. The WAVR‐21 appears to improve the structuring and organizing of empirically based risk‐relevant data and may enhance communication and decision making.     

Inequality in symbolism: Cultural barriers to female candidates in political advertising

Abstract

More women are successfully running for U.S. political offices. However, further advances may be limited by women's inability to symbolically portray themselves as effective leaders in political media. We see the dilemma most clearly in political ads for female candidates. These texts juxtapose in the viewer's mind the legacy of women's images in advertising — homemaker, mother, sex object — with the ideal of male‐dominated political leadership. In our culture we still identify the male as political and public‐minded and the female as involved in private concerns.

A feminist semiotic reading and comparison of political ads from a Maryland Senate race between two women (Linda Chavez and Barbara Mikulski) and one from George Bush (as an example of a male standard) illustrate the difficulty women face as candidates in portraying themselves as effective leaders. Bush's ad shows the ease with which men can be portrayed as symbolic Father ready to lead the country. Chavez uses her ads to establish her relationship to patriarchy; she will be a leader defined by maintenance of her roles as wife, mother, and daughter. Chavez's opponent, Mikulski, chooses a potentially riskier strategy and “breaks the rules” in seeking a new way to portray women in some of her ads. Mikulski creates a new kind of symbolic space for women that draws on the power of maternal relationships; she will be a leader who follows the example of her brave great‐grandmother. The develoment and acceptance of more powerful symbols for female candidates, such as motherhood, means a greater possibility for women's electoral victories and increased diversity in politics.     

Thinking race,thinking development

This paper challenges the dominant 'colour-blind' stance of development, arguing that the silence on race is a determining silence, which both masks and marks its centrality to the development project. The aim of the paper is to set out a basic framework for exploring this further. Noting many continuities with colonial formations, it identifies three critical dimensions of development which need to be interrogated: its material outcomes; its techniques of transformation; and its modes of knowing. Its analysis of race emphasises the diversity of understandings and the fluidity between them which underlie both their potential for transformation and their resilience. Following Omi and Winant's work on the USA, development is suggested to comprise a process of racial formation, made up of a vast range of diverse and contradictory racial projects which link the meaning of ethnic, racial and national identities to material entitlements.     

The Truth Behind the Lies: The Complex Motivations for False Allegations of Sexual Assault

The issue of false allegations is arguably the most controversial topic in the area of sexual violence. Portrayals of women who make false allegations are largely negative and leave little room for a comprehensive understanding of the complex motivations behind false complaints of sexual assault. The current study uses detailed qualitative data on 55 sexual assault cases that were reported to the Los Angeles Police Department in 2008 and that were subsequently unfounded. Our study focuses on identifying the factors that motivated complainants to file false allegations. Results reveal that motivations for false allegations fall into five overlapping categories: avoiding trouble/providing an alibi, anger or revenge, attention seeking, mental illness, and guilt/remorse. In addition, our findings more obviously suggest that motivations for filing false reports are varied and complex, often resulting from a need to alleviate social and personal distress. Given that we centered our study on motivations, this research is more comprehensive than prior examinations of motivations that have tackled numerous facets of false sexual assault reports.     

Does electoral fraud spread? The expansion of electoral manipulation in Russia

In this paper, we argue that the occurrence of electoral manipulation in Russia has been driven, in part, by diffusion across neighboring raions through emulation, incentives, and networks. Presumably, in Putin’s Russia all local authorities have some incentives to deliver a high number of votes to United Russia, the “party of power”. However, the perceived pressure to deliver ever higher levels of support for Putin’s party arguably increases considerably if one’s raion is located in a region marked by extraordinarily high turnout and high vote share for United Russia. Conversely, the absence of perceived competition to curry executive favor through delivering votes and networks of uncorrupted local authorities, as well as local opposition organizations working to combat electoral fraud, may help explain the absence of fraud among raions located in regions marked by clean elections. Our quantitative analyses suggest that a “neighborhood effect” – the existence of manipulated raions within a region – strongly influences the likelihood that raions are manipulated. Moreover, although results are more mixed, spatial autocorrelation analysis suggests that turnout levels in raions are influenced by the turnout in proximate raions.     

Bad cops

Research Summary Police scholars and public policymakers throughout generations have sought to identify reliable correlates of police misconduct. Despite these efforts, general statements as to the etiology and epidemiology of police misconduct remain inconclusive, in part because of the inconsistent definitions of misconduct and the difficulty of obtaining the data required to make such statements. This research attempts to fill these gaps through a comparison of the personal and career histories of all 1,543 officers who were involuntarily separated from the New York City Police Department (NYPD) for cause during 1975–1996 with a randomly selected sample of their police academy classmates who served honorably. The study uses confidential NYPD files as its major data sources, which include extensive biographical and career information. The study finds that career‐ending misconduct rarely occurs in the NYPD and that the types of misconduct do not match well with existing definitions. Several factors emerge as significant predictors of misconduct, including officer race, minimal education, records of prior criminality and prior poor employment, failure to advance in the NYPD, and histories of citizen complaints. Policy Implications This study shows that existing definitions of police misconduct are difficult to apply to actual cases of police malpractice, which leads the authors to create a new eight‐category classification scheme. The rarity of misconduct, especially on‐duty abuse, confirms prior research indicating that most police officers do their jobs without engaging in serious malpractice. These findings suggest that the NYPD has become better behaved as it has become more diverse along race and gender dimensions and that the link between black officers and misconduct might be explained by persistent “tokenism.” The findings related to race have important implications for continued efforts to build racially representative police departments. Personal history findings highlight the importance of conducting background investigations that disqualify candidates with arrest records and employment disciplinary histories, whereas the inverse relationship between college education and misconduct provides strong support for continued emphasis on pre‐ and post‐employment educational requirements.     

Examining fatal and nonfatal incidents involving the TASER

Research Summary According to TASER International, nearly 10,000 police departments in the United States have deployed the TASER as a less lethal force alternative in some capacity. Despite the TASER's increasing popularity, serious questions have been raised about the device's physiological side effects; in particular, Amnesty International has reported that more than 300 people have died after being subjected to the TASER. Although a growing body of research has examined the physiological effects of the TASER on animals and healthy human volunteers in laboratory settings, there has been virtually no empirical analysis of “real‐world” fatal and nonfatal TASER cases simultaneously. This article examines all media reports of TASER incidents from 2002 to 2006 through a comprehensive review of LexisNexis and New York Times archives. We compare TASER incidents in which a fatality occurred to TASER incidents in which a fatality did not occur and then employ multivariate analyses to identify the incident and suspect characteristics that are predictive of articles describing TASER‐proximate deaths. Policy Implications Several suspect factors were significantly associated with the reporting of a fatal TASER incident, including drug use (but not alcohol), mental illness, and continued resistance. Multiple deployments of the TASER against a suspect was also associated with the likelihood of the article describing a fatality—especially if the suspect was emotionally disturbed—which raises the possibility that the risk of multiple shocks might not be uniform for all suspects. More research is needed to explore the relationship between mental illness, drug use (illicit or therapeutic), continued resistance, and increased risk of death. In the meantime, police departments should develop specific policies and training governing the use of multiple TASER shocks against individuals who could be in these vulnerable physiological and psychological states.     

Inter- and intra-subject variability in ethanol pharmacokinetic parameters: effects of testing interval and dose

Calculation of a blood alcohol concentration (BAC) at the time of an offence by forward or back-extrapolation, using population average values for ethanol pharmacokinetic parameters or a single estimate of individual specific parameters, ignores the possibility of inter- and intra-subject variability. In order to estimate inter- and intra-subject variability in the elimination rate and absorption rate, BAC was measured over time in 12 male volunteers on 4 occasions. Subjects received 0.44 g kg(-1) body weight of ethanol on the first study day, and 0.70 g kg(-1) body weight on subsequent study days 1, 11 and 12 weeks later, to enable comparisons in variability over short and long time periods and when the same or different doses were administered. Evidence of both inter- and intra-subject variability was found, with inter-subject variability substantially smaller than intra-subject variability when the dose varied. Forensically important differences in pharmacokinetic parameters were observed within individuals between occasions. These findings could have an important impact on medico-legal issues related to ethanol pharmacokinetics.