Police attitudes in assigning responsibility for wife abuse

Prevailing myths concerning wife abuse generally tend to blame the victim. The present study examines the degree of responsibility assigned by police officers to the wife, the husband, as well as the couple's socioeconomic situation in cases of wife abuse. The officer's position (neutral vs supportive) adopted toward the woman is also investigated. The influence of eight characteristics related either to the spouses or to the situation of violence on both the officer's position and the attribution of responsibility is analyzed. The characteristics are: couple's socioeconomic status, type of household, drinking by husband, alleged antagonism on the part of the wife, ambivalence of wife to press charges, type of abuse, history of assault, and violence toward children. The results are based on answers to case vignettes provided by 235 municipal police officers. The data were analyzed by performing a multivariate analysis of variance. Results indicate the type of abuse to be the characteristic with the greatest impact on police attitudes. While the husband is systematically considered more responsible than the wife, police officers always consider the wife somewhat responsible, particularly when there is alleged antagonism by the woman and when threats of violence are present.     

Thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura causing sudden, unexpected death--a series of eight patients

Eight patients were presented to the medical examiner after dying suddenly and unexpectedly from thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura. Compared with patients who die after prolonged hospitalization and treatment, these patients showed fewer neurologic symptoms and correspondingly fewer or no microthrombi within the brain. Only four of eight subjects developed fever, which further contributed to misdiagnosis. The differences in clinical presentation between our cases and most published series is striking and may be explained by shorter duration and no treatment. Each case contained the characteristic histology of thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura. Ischemic injury to the heart and conduction system was the most likely mechanism of sudden death. Included in this series is a patient with acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) diagnosed at autopsy, a concurrence that is now appearing more frequently in the medical literature.     

Reviews

The Open Media Research Institute, The OMRI Annual Survey of Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union 1995: Building Democracy. Introduction by J. F. Brown. New York and London: M. E. Sharpe, 1996, xvi + 344 pp., $85.00.

William Gay & T. A. Alekseeva, Capitalism with a Human Face: The Quest for a Middle Road in Russian Politics. London: Rowman & Littlefield, 1996, xxix + 235 pp., £21.50.

Claus Offe, Varieties of Transition: The East European and East German Experience. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1996, viii + 249 pp., £45.00 h/b, £14.95 p/b.

Harald Baldersheim, Michal Illner, Audun Offerdal, Lawrence Rose & Pawel Swianiewicz (eds), Local Democracy and the Processes of Transformation in East‐Central Europe. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996, xiv + 257 pp., £48.50.

Neil Malcolm, Alex Pravda, Roy Allison & Margot Light, Internal Factors in Russian Foreign Policy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996, ix + 356 pp., £40.00.

Pavel K. Baev, The Russian Army in a Time of Troubles. London: Sage Publications, 1996, xiii + 204 pp., £14.95.

Glen E. Schweitzer, Moscow DMZ: The Story of the International Effort to Convert Russian Weapons Science to Peaceful Purposes. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1996, ix + 291 pp., $21.95.

The Aspen Institute, Managing Conflict in the Post‐Cold War World: The Role of Intervention. Washington, DC: The Aspen Institute, 1996, v + 123 pp.

Jorn Gjelstad & Olav Njolstad (eds), Nuclear Rivalry and International Order. London: Sage, 1996, x + 212 pp., £39.50.

Rick Fawn & Jeremy Larkins (eds), International Society after the Cold War. Basingstoke: Macmillan Press, 1996, xi + 302 pp., £14.99.

Georg Brunner, Nationality Problems and Minority Conflicts in Eastern Europe. Gutersloh: Bertelsmann Foundation Publishers, 1996, 198 pp., DM25.00.

Andrew Wilson, Ukrainian Nationalism in the 1990s. A Minority Faith. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996, xvii + 300 pp., £45.00 h/b, £15.95 p/b.

Ann Louise Armstrong, Thomas A. Reiner & Janusz Szymer, Transition in Land and Housing: Bulgaria, the Czech Republic and Poland. London: Macmillan Press Ltd., 1996, iv + 298 pp.

John R. Lampe, Yugoslavia as History: Twice There was a Country. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996, xx + 421 pp., £14.95.

Jonathan Aves, Workers against Lenin: Labour Protest and the Bolshevik Dictatorship. London: I.B. Tauris, 1996, x + 220 pp., £39.50.

Francesca Gori & Sivio Pons (eds), The Soviet Union and Europe in the Cold War, 1943–53. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1996, xxv + 448 pp., £45.00.

Igor Lukes, Czechoslovakia between Stalin and Hitler. The Diplomacy of Edvard Benes in the 1930s. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996, xiii + 318 pp., £22.50.

S. C. M. Paine, Imperial Rivals: China, Russia and Their Disputed Frontier. New York: M. E. Sharpe, 1996, xxi + 417 pp., $75.00.

Felix Corley, Religion in the Soviet Union: An Archival Reader. London: Macmillan, 1996, xiv + 402 pp., £45.00.

Jane Ellis, The Russian Orthodox Church: Triumphalism and Defensiveness. London: Macmillan, 1996, vi + 240 pp., £40.00.

John Gooding, Rulers and Subjects: Government and People in Russia 1801–1991. London: Arnold, 1996, xii + 387 pp.

Richard Taylor (ed.), William Powell (trans.), S. M. Eisenstein: Selected Works. Volume III: Writings, 1934–47; Volume IV: Beyond the Stars: The Memoirs of Sergei Eisenstein. London: British Film Institute, 1996, xiv + 405 pp. (vol. III), £35.00; xxi + 889 pp. (vol. IV), £45.00.

Dmitri N. Shalin (ed.), Russian Culture at the Crossroads: Paradoxes of Postcommunist Consciousness. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996, ix + 341 pp., £13.50.

H. Goscilo & B. Holmgren (eds), Russia. Women. Culture. Bloomington & Indianapolis, 1996, xiv + 386 pp., £19.50.

Pamela Chester & Sibelan Forrester (eds), Engendering Slavic Literatures. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996, xvii + 249 pp., £15.50.

John E. Bowlt & Olga Matich (eds), Laboratory of Dreams: The Russian Avant‐Garde and Cultural Experiment. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996, xvii + 359 pp., £45.00.

Joshua Rubenstein, Tangled Loyalties: The Life and Times of Ilya Ehrenburg. London: I. B. Tauris, 1996, xii + 482 pp., £19.50.

Moskva voennaya, 1941–1945: memuary i arkhivnye dokumenty. Moscow: Mosgorarkhiv, 1995, 755 pp.

Leningrad v osade: sbornik dokumentov o geroicheskoi oborone Leningrada v gody Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny, 1941–1944. St Petersburg: Liki Rossii, 1995, 640 pp.     

The ethical poverty of cost-benefit methods: Autonomy,efficiency and public policy choice

The principle of efficiency holds as the basic standard of market decision-making. Routinely however, it has been applied as a standard of judgement to public choices as well. This essay proceeds on the basis of four assumptions. First, that efficiency, outside the market context, has two manifestations (Cost-Effectiveness Analysis and Cost-Benefit Methods) which are made distinct by one's concentration on judging the most cost-effective means to policy ends otherwise arrived at, and the other's use of efficiency to judge both the means and end of policy choice. Second, that although efficiency is a fit primary decision standard within a competitive market a principle with more distinctly moral weight is needed to judge ends outside of markets. Third, that one possible source of this moral weight is individual autonomy or freedom that is a fit ethical principle upon which to set the ends of public policy. Fourth, that the use of cost-benefit methods rather than cost-effectiveness analysis implies that it can satisfy the requirements of both efficiency and autonomy. If the efficient policy choice also provided protection of individual autonomy then cost-benefit methods could be used for the analysis of public policy ends, but if it fails to have a deeper moral justification then the role of efficiency in the public sector must be limited only to its judgement of cost-effective means to policy ends arrived at by a non-efficiency standard. I will argue that the autonomy of individual choice in a market is a thin and morally impoverished ethical standard of judgement that adds no additional moral weight to market efficiency for the judgements of policy ends. This conclusion limits efficiency to the consideration of public means alone, eliminating cost-benefit methods as a fit approach to policy analysis while simultaneously promoting cost-effectiveness analysis and the search for an independent moral standard for the assessment of public ends.This essay was originally prepared for the 1989 meeting of the APSA in Atlanta and I wish to thank all those who read and commented on my work at that time. In addition, I would like to thank those who participated in its evolution to this form: Douglas MacLean, Mark Sagoff, Brian Barry, Alan Donagan, Russell Hardin, Maurice Wade, Andy Gold, Thomas Reilly, Diana Evans, an anonymous reviewer at Policy Sciences and its two editors, William Ascher and G. Brewer.