Recollections of a robbery

One week after committing a simulated robbery while intoxicated or sober, each of 142 subjects recalled the event within a “cognitive interview”. In an initial exploratory experiment, alcohol consumption reduced the accuracy of recall of a variety of types of information, in particular, information about persons. In the second experiment, person identification suffered following the consumption of alcohol, but only when arousal was low. Higher levels of arousal appeared instead to minimize the negative impact of alcohol upon encoding and recall. Second, whereas the recollections by subjects of what they saw during the crime were not impaired by alcohol consumption, their recollections of what they did were impaired. Both experiments examined the effects of arousal upon the subjects' recalls, and Experiment 2 tested the hypothesis that increased arousal serves to reduce attention to peripheral sources of information. This hypothesis was supported because the identification of persons central to the crime benefited from increased arousal but the identification of persons peripheral to the crime did not. A similar hypothesis about the effects of alcohol received only mixed support because the subjects' behaviors reflected “alcohol myopia” but their identifications of target persons did not. Finally, manipulations at the time of retrieval of the subjects' beliefs about how much alcohol had been consumed also altered accuracy of recall. These experiments were supported by research grants from the Alberta Law Foundation to the first author and from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada to the second author. The authors are indebted to the following people, whose assistance was invaluable: Matthew Davidson, Vanessa Farr, Corinne Kuzma, Eileen McFadzen, Laura Mensch, Debbie Robb, Todd Schultz, and Evelyn Tan. We also thank John Vokey, Brian Cutler, Beth Loftus, Garrett Berman, Marisa Caiola, and an anonymous reviewer who provided critical comments on an earlier version of this paper. This research was presented at the meetings of the American Psychology—Law Society, Williamsburg, March, 1990.     

社区矫正比较研究

我国社区矫正制度尚处于试点阶段,如何确立适合我国发展要求的社区矫正制度,并非易事。本文借鉴英国和美国的经验,提出了建立和完善我国社区矫正制度基本设想。     

Theorists of Agrarian Perestroika

Agrarian policy is an increasingly important concern for the success of perestroika. This article traces the careers and ideas of A. A. Nikonov, president of the Lenin Academy of Agricultural Sciences (VASKhNIL) and Gorbachev's most important academic advisor on agricultural economics, and VASKhNIL Academician V. A. Tikhonov, an outspoken advocate of radical economic reforms. Restoring incentives to the individual peasant through the lease contract (arendnyi podriad), establishing voluntary cooperatives in place of centralized bureaucratic management, and marketizing agriculture are the principal concerns of their work, and were the central issues discussed at the March 1989 CPSU Central Committee plenum on agrarian policy. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: 027, 124.     

The ‘Arab Uprising’, Islamists and Democratization

This article surveys political activities of selected Islamists in three Arab countries in the Mediterranean region: Tunisia, Egypt and Morocco. Each is notable for recent growth in Islamist political activity in the context of democratization (Tunisia, Egypt) and political liberalization (Morocco). Tunisia, Egypt and Morocco are undergoing political changes consequent to the recent ‘Arab uprising’. The ‘Arab uprising’ involved country-specific yet variable outbursts of popular political anger, although not necessarily with a clear and consistent democratizing focus. Generally, protests focused on interrelated political and socio-economic demands, including: greater ‘freedoms’, improved human rights, better social justice and economic progress, especially more jobs for millions of unemployed youths. The aim of the article is to explain recent developments in relation to the ‘Arab uprising’ in three Mediterranean Arab countries – Tunisia, Egypt and Morocco. The purpose is to complement the individual foci on these countries in subsequent papers in this special issue by providing a thematic overview and to locate the activities of Islamist entities in Tunisia, Egypt and Morocco in comparative context.     

Islamic Militancy in East Africa

This paper examines the relative political significance of domestic and transnational Islamic militancy in three East African countries: Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. It seeks to identify, describe and account for the sources and significance of such militancy, with a focus upon the significance of al-Qaeda and regional affiliates. The paper argues that, encouraged by the post-9/11 international fall out, regional Islamic networks work towards improving the perceived low political and economic status of Muslims in Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda. At present, however, the political significance of Islamic militancy in the three countries is low.     

National Party Division and Divisive State Primaries in U.S. Presidential Elections, 1948–2012

In presidential nomination campaigns, individual state primaries and a national competition take place simultaneously. The relationship between divisive state primaries and general election outcomes is substantially different in presidential campaigns than in single-state campaigns. To capture the full impact of divisiveness in presidential campaigns, one must estimate both the impact of national party division (NPD) and the impact of divisive primaries in individual states. To do so, we develop a comprehensive model of state outcomes in presidential campaigns that incorporates both state-level and national-level controls. We also examine and compare several measures of NPD and several measures of divisive state primaries found in previous research. We find that both NPD and divisive state primaries have independent and significant influence on state-level general election outcomes, with the former having a greater and more widespread impact on the national results. The findings are not artifacts of statistical techniques, timeframes or operational definitions. The results are consistent—varying very little across a wide range of methods and specifications.