Standing Tiebout on his Head: Tax Capitalization and the Monopoly Power of Local Governments

Unlike other governmental units, statelottery agencies publicly acknowledge thattheir primary objective is revenuemaximization. This claim and the inherentmonopoly power of lottery agencies providesa unique arena to test for Leviathan. Withdata obtained from United States' lotterygames, I perform a Laffer curve analysis toderive the optimal lottery tax rates fordifferent categories of games. Theseoptimal tax rates and Monte Carlosimulations are then used to test whetherthe current tax structure of lottery gamesis indeed the revenue maximizing structure. I find strong empirical evidence for the``Leviathan Lottery''.     

Racial and ethnic bias in decisions to shoot seen through a stronger lens: experimental results from high-fidelity laboratory simulations

Background

Research on racial bias in the United States includes findings that Americans tend to view blacks as more dangerous than whites. Some have argued that this bias provides a likely explanation for the disproportionate number of ethnic and racial minorities shot by police. One piece of evidence for this proposition comes from experimental work in which research participants push “shoot” or “don’t shoot” buttons when still images of people and objects that may or may not be weapons are presented in rapid succession. These studies have established that participants tend to subconsciously pair black individuals with weapons and white individuals with neutral objects. However, it is not clear from these studies that the subconscious racial bias identified by researchers affects actual decisions to shoot, perhaps because the techniques used to assess the bias-shooting link bear so little resemblance to real-world shootings.

Methods

This paper reports on the results of a novel laboratory experiment designed to overcome this critical limitation by using high-fidelity deadly force judgment and decision-making simulators to assess both subconscious and behavioral bias among 48 research participants, recruited from the general population.

Results

Study results suggest that subconscious associations between race and threat exhibited by participants are not linked to their shooting behavior.

Conclusions

The implications of this finding for understanding how race and ethnicity affect decisions to shoot, and for conducting empirical research on this important topic, are discussed.     

Religious parties and the problem of democratic political legitimacy

Thinkers committed to an ideal of public reason are suspicious of religiously informed political activity as it undermines democratic political legitimacy. This paper considers Jürgen Habermas’s recent shifts on this question in light of the history of Europe’s religious parties in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. These parties made a real and lasting contribution to Europe’s democratization and their history suggests ways in which Habermas and other defenders of public reason misunderstand the nature of democratic political legitimacy.     

Making Connections: Performance Regimes and Extreme Events

Local officials in the emergency management field have reached out and increased their connections with other agencies and organizations during the past several years. Collaborative networks have been created in an effort to address the complexities and uncertainties surrounding extreme events. But has this collaboration really taken root? In this article, the authors find that although a collaborative ethos has penetrated local emergency management, it is neither deep nor uniform. Data from a survey of emergency managers in North Carolina counties show that maintaining a functional network—a performance regime in which participants develop consistent management practices and rely on each other for the generation of new ideas—is a difficult task. The explanation for the variation found across the counties largely involves capacity and vulnerability.     

Squaring the circle? Collective and distributive effects of United Nations Security Council reform

Changing the composition and voting system of the Security Council, in an effort to increase the institution’s global legitimacy, is proving to be one of the most difficult hurdles to overcome for the global community of states represented in the United Nations (UN). This paper demonstrates that due to institutional hurdles, it is considerably more difficult today than it was in the early years of the UN to reach a winning coalition in the General Assembly to secure Security Council reform. In addition, the paper analyzes the effects that adapted patterns of voting, as prescribed by recent reform proposals, would have on the distribution of power among UN member states in the Security Council and on the probability that this institution can form a winning coalition, i.e., reach decisions. Our power and decision capacity computations are based on (modified) Penrose-Banzhaf-Coleman measures.     

Discharge of a Pistol Out a Car Window with the Breech Within the Interior of the Car: Analysis of Gunshot Residue on a Car's Interior Surfaces

The defendant, the driver of the questioned car, allegedly extended his right arm over the passenger seat and fired a single shot from a 380 pistol out the passenger window with the pistol's breech within the car. A simulation of this shooting scenario using the same model car, but different year, was conducted to quantitate gunshot residue (GSR) contamination of interior surfaces within the car. The test car's dash and headliner/window frame above the pistol had the heaviest GSR contamination. The dash GSR from airborne deposition documents a firearm discharge within the vehicle. Transfer from GSR‐contaminated hands or clothing to the dash is unlikely. The heavy GSR contamination of the headliner/window frame above the pistol likely documents the window from which the pistol was fired, but additional experiments are needed to verify.     

F#ck Your Family!: The Visual Jurisprudence of Automobility

This paper considers the popular visual jurisprudence of bumper stickers. Drawing upon a sample sticker/driver/vehicle assemblages observed at the Gold Coast, Australia in 2014, we argue that the meanings and messages projected by the assemblages have a significant legal dimension. The argument is located at the intersection of past research into bumper stickers, increased scholarly interest in the relation of law to automobility and especially recent considerations of the popular visual jurisprudence of the motor vehicle, its cultures and semiotics. In particular we argue that the sticker/driver/vehicle assemblage represents an engagement with law and legality. We suggest this goes beyond immediate denotations of brands with intellectual property or flags and the sovereign nation state to more essential engagement with consumer capitalisms law of the image, the friend/enemy distinction, the ouroboros of rights and the essential legality of living in a polis.