Conducting Research on Counties in the 21st Century: A New Agenda and Database Considerations

Given local, regional, national, and global events of the last few years and the ever-increasing service roles and expectations of county governments, American counties warrant greater scholarly attention. To guide researchers, the research agenda published in this journal 15 years ago has been refined and expanded. This 11-point agenda includes fiscal capacity and responsibility; the role of structure, politics, and political participation; intergovernmental relations and networking; professionalism; service delivery; environmental issues; population changes; managing conflict and promoting integration; terrorism and security; information technology; and economic development. In addition, five database concerns and needs that pose significant challenges to researchers are identified and presented for consideration.     

Where have all the parties gone? Fraenkel and Grofman on the alternative vote – yet again

The alternative vote (AV) is a preferential electoral system that tends to reward political moderation and compromise. Fraenkel and Grofman (2004, 2006a, 2006b) have repeatedly attempted to show that AV is not conducive to interethnic moderation in severely divided societies. In this response to their latest attempt, I point out that neither political party coordination of the vote nor strategic voting plays any part in their analysis. In contrast, I explain how moderate parties of one ethnic group are able to induce their supporters to cast ballots for moderate parties supported by voters of another ethnic group. I also explain why the incentives for parties to arrange interethnic vote transfers are much greater under AV than they are under systems such as the single transferable vote, which is in use in Northern Ireland, and I show that Fraenkel and Grofman”s interpretations of AV’s operation in Australia, Fiji, Sri Lanka, and Papua-New Guinea are contrary to the evidence.     

An unusual rubber stamp case

Given a questioned document and a questioned pre-inked rubber stamp, comparisons of each can be made with a microscope or similar magnification device. If sufficient evidence exists, these questioned items can be linked even if the stamp was not used as it was originally designed.     

Some Contrarian Concerns About Law,Psychology, and Public Policy

I discuss six issues that may cut against the majoritarian grain. They are: (1) The U. S. Supreme Court's view of children; (2) the American Psychological Association's view of people with mental retardation; (3) the dilution of autonomy in favor of beneficence; (4) Tarasoff's undermining of fidelity to therapy clients; (5) the misuse of the PCL-R in death penalty litigation; and (6) the criminal law's rejection of determination.     

How Is a History of the Sociology of Religion Possible?: Reflections on Roberto Cipriani's Sociology of Religion

The effort to write a history of the sociology of religion requires a delineation of the field. In turn, this requires a discrimination among the key ideas determining that field, including the notions of religion, sociology, the sacred, and a host of others. This is a prerequisite for sorting the various contributors and contributions to this field as well as determining the value of any such history to the future advance of the study of human consciousness and conduct, including religion. Cipriani's book is reviewed, and its strengths and weaknesses assayed, in light of these concerns. Several lacunae in the book are identified, such as the absence of any treatment of non-Western writers and its failure to substantially engage the work of women, including Jane Ellen Harrison's pioneering sociology of religion.     

“At That Time We Were Intimidated on All Sides”: Residues of the Malayan Emergency as a Conjunctural Episode of Dispossession

ABSTRACT:

This article proposes that the Emergency counterinsurgency campaign of the British colonial state should be viewed as a conjunctural episode of dispossession of Malayan laboring people. Conjunctural episodes of dispossession of working people through state violence and racialized rhetoric emerge as a response to crises in capitalist accumulation occurring at multiple and overlapping scales of capitalist systems – the imperial, the national/colonial, and the local/regional. During these episodes state and capitalist strategies destroy political organizations and solidarities among laboring people and demoralize them over long periods of time, through processes simultaneously material and semiotic. Employing new theorizations of the global anthropology of labor, this article first examines the postwar and Emergency years when the multiethnic and industry-wide bases of Malayan trade unions were destroyed while an estimated half a million working people were forcibly concentrated in so-called New Villages. This had the effect of suppressing a discourse of class and class struggle in favor of a dominant discourse of ethnic conflict. In an effort to articulate class struggle despite the presence of this dominant discourse of essential ethnic difference this essay examines the formation of a new working men's “society” in 1978–1980 and a dispute between truck drivers and truck owners in northern Malaysia.     

A decade of decline: a longitudinal look at big city and big county strategies to cope with declining revenues

Many local governments have now endured a decade of fiscal decline due to periodic reductions in external funding (federal and state and slowdowns in the rate of growth of the state and local government sector. This research examines the extent to which six large jurisdictions (three cities, three counties) under fiscal duress avoided political conflict and prevented further fragmentation of their authority between 1978 and 1987. The results showed that local officials generally chose retrenchment strategies (revenue, expenditure, and borrowing) with the least anticipated political opposition; but where hard choices had to be made (personnel reductions), they were made without hesitation. The timing of politically unpopular choices to coincide with downward trends in the private sector reduced the level of political fallout, even in heavily unionized, socioeconomically diverse communities. The results also showed that local officials strongly endorsed, rather than opposed, strategies that further fragmented their authority (privatization, intergovernmental cooperative agreements), because these approaches produce significant personnel and capital savings in the short term. Finally, the results indicated that the long-term cumulative effects of short-term decremental decisionmaking on the quality of life (as measured by drops in bond ratings) were negative in only one-third of the jurisdictions.     

The Ludwig Martens–Maxim Litvinov Connection, 1919–1921

Research began when the author realized that Antony Sutton had misidentified the author of a key document published in his Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution (1974). This article reports on the interception by federal agents of the document (a letter) brought from the Copenhagen office of Soviet diplomat Maxim Litvinov and intended for Kenneth Durant who was employed by Ludwig Martens, Lenin's unrecognized representative in New York City. Analysis of the letter revealed the true author and opened a research channel for learning more about the backgrounds of three Soviet agents: Bornett Bobroff, Nora Hellgren, and Wilfred Humphries.     

Long-Term Capital Management and the sociology of arbitrage

Arbitrage is a key process in the practice of financial markets and in their theoretical depiction: it allows markets to be posited as efficient without all investors being assumed to be rational. This article explores the sociology of arbitrage by means of an examination of the arbitrageurs, Long-Term Capital Management (LTCM). LTCM's 1998 crisis is analysed using both qualitative, interview-based data and quantitative examination of price movements. It is suggested that the roots of the crisis lay in an unstable pattern of imitation that had developed in the markets within which LTCM operated. As the resulting 'superportfolio' began to unravel, arbitrageurs other than LTCM fled the market, even as arbitrage opportunities became more attractive, causing huge price movements against LTCM. Three features of the sociology of arbitrage are discussed: its conduct by people often personally known to each other; the possibility and consequences of imitation; and the limits on the capacity of arbitrage to close price discrepancies. It is suggested that by 1998 imitative arbitrage formed a 'global microstructure' in the sense of Knorr Cetina and Bruegger.