Liberal Versus Conservative Stinks

In a recent Public Opinion Quarterly article “Is the Academy a Liberal Hegemony?,” John Zipp and Rudy Fenwick pit themselves against “right-wing activists and scholars,” citing our scholarship (Klein and Stern in Academic Questions 18(1): 40–52, 2005a; Klein and Western in Academic Questions 18(1): 53–65, 2005). Here, we analyze Zipp and Fenwick’s characterization of our research and find it faulty. We, then, turn to their self-identification “liberal vs. conservative” findings and show they concord with our analysis. If one feels that it is a problem that humanities and social science faculty at 4-year colleges and universities are vastly predominantly democratic voters, mostly with views that may called establishment-left, progressive, or status-quo oriented, then such concerns should not be allayed by Zipp and Fenwick’s article. We commence the article with a criticism of the “liberal versus conservative” framework because it is the source of much of the confusion surrounding controversies such as the one over the ideological profile of faculty.     

Natural gas security problems in Europe: the Russian–Ukrainian crisis of 2006

Energy security is, once again, a fashionable topic of conversation in Europe particularly in relation to natural gas, but most of the commentary is relatively general, failing to identify any specific problems. The Russian–Ukrainian gas crisis of January 2006 focussed attention on a specific natural gas security problem: the impact of a bilateral dispute on the transit of Russian gas via Ukraine. This episode reinforced old security lessons on the importance of diversity of routes and sources, but also showed that current events can be more influential than projections of supply adequacy at some date in the future. This event has highlighted the potential role of the European Union in natural gas diplomacy, and the Energy Charter Treaty in the legal framework for gas transit. But the most important legacy of the episode may be not in Russia–EU, but in Russia–CIS, energy relations.     

Roadside oral fluid testing: comparison of the results of drugwipe 5 and drugwipe benzodiazepines on-site tests with laboratory confirmation results of oral fluid and whole blood

Drugged drivers pose a serious threat to other people in traffic as well as to themselves. Reliable oral fluid screening devices for on-site screening of drugged drivers would be both a useful and convenient means for traffic control. In this study we evaluated the appropriateness of Drugwipe 5 and Drugwipe Benzodiazepines oral fluid on-site tests for roadside drug screening. Drivers suspected of driving under the influence of drugs were screened with the Drugwipe tests. Oral fluid and whole blood samples were collected from the drivers and tested for amphetamine-type stimulant drugs, cannabis, opiates, cocaine and benzodiazepines by immunological methods, GC and GC-MS. The performance evaluations of the tests were made by comparing the results of the Drugwipe tests with laboratory GC-MS confirmation results of oral fluid or whole blood. In addition to the performance evaluations of the Drugwipe tests based on laboratory results, a questionnaire on the practical aspects of the tests was written for the police officers who performed the tests. The aim of the questionnaire was to obtain user comments on the practicality of the tests as well as the advantages and weak points of the tests. The results of the performance evaluations were: for oral fluid (sensitivity; specificity; accuracy) amphetamines (95.5%; 92.9%; 95.3%), cannabis (52.2%; 91.2%; 85.1%), cocaine (50.0%; 99.3%; 98.6%), opiates (100%; 95.8%; 95.9%), benzodiazepines (74.4%; 84.2%; 79.2%) and for whole blood accordingly, amphetamines (97.7%; 86.7%; 95.9%), cannabis (68.3%; 87.9%; 84.9%), cocaine (50.0%; 98.5%; 97.7%), opiates (87.5%; 96.9%; 96.6%) and benzodiazepines (66.7%; 87.0%; 74.4%). Although the Drugwipe 5 successfully detected amphetamine-type stimulant drugs and the police officers were quite pleased with the current features of the Drugwipe tests, improvements must still be made regarding the detection of cannabis and benzodiazepines.     

Economists' policy views and voting

In Spring 2003, a survey of 1000 economists was conducted using a randomly generated membership list from the American Economics Association. The survey contained questions about 18 policy issues, voting behavior, and several background variables. The response was 264 (nonblank) surveys. The responses show that most economists are supporters of safety regulations, gun control, redistribution, public schooling, and anti-discrimination laws. They are evenly mixed on personal choice issues, military action, and the minimum wage. Most economists oppose tighter immigration controls, government ownership of enterprise and tariffs. In voting, the Democratic:Republican ratio is 2.5:1. These results are compared to those of previous surveys of economists. We itemize a series of important questions raised by these results.     

The measurement of family process variables: The effect of adolescent and parent perceptions of family life on delinquent behavior

Both adolescent and parental perceptions of how family members interact with and feel about one another are examined to determine their relationship to official and self-reported delinquent behavior. Consistent with prior research, adolescent perceptions of family processes were weakly related to those of their parents. Both parental and adolescent family process measures made independent and significant contributions to the explanation of self-reported and official delinquent behavior. Parental measures contributed more to the explanation of official data than did adolescent measures when compared to the results for self-reported delinquency. Methodological and substantive reasons for these findings are discussed. The importance of taking into account parental perceptions of family interaction, as well as the perceptions of adolescents, is emphasized.     

Crisis Management Europe: An Integrated Regional Research and Training Program

This article describes the Crisis Management (CM) Europe program that seeks to produce scientific knowledge that can be used also in order to train practitioners to cope more effectively with national and regional crises. Initiated in 1997 with a focus on the Baltic Sea area, the program has recently been broadened to cover all of Europe. The program documents and analyzes specific cases of national and regional crises. It relies upon a contextually grounded process tracing strategy for case reconstruction and dissection derived from relevant literatures in political science, psychology, and organizational sociology. To facilitate comparison and cumulation of case findings, a systematic four-step research procedure has been developed. Ten analytical themes of potential interest to both scholars and practitioners are identified as targets for structured focused comparison. More than a hundred cases have been studied by researchers working in research teams based in many European countries. Training tools have been successfully deployed in training practitioners from more than a dozen countries. An ongoing dialogue between academics and practitioners from across the Continent promises to make a contribution toward bridging the gap between these two different communities.