East Asian Economic Growth and its Implications for Regional Security

Rapid economic growth in East Asia is changing the nature of international relations in the region. In the economic sphere, mercantilist policies of promoting exports and limiting imports contributed to economic tensions between rapidly growing economies in the region and the region's major trading partner, the United States. These tensions over bilateral trade issues began between Japan and United States, moved on next to South Korea and Taiwan, and have now moved from there to China. In the security field, economic growth in China is leading to a major shift in the balance of power in the region. China's steadily increasing GDP is being accompanied by a comparable rise in its military expenditures despite the fact that China faces no obvious external threats at the present time. China's long term desire to be able to defend against any outside power probably means that this increase in defense expenditures will continue for the next decade or two. North Korea continues to be a threat to stability in the region but only because of its capacity to do enormous damage in one last suicidal attack. The one area where China's rising military expenditures could lead to major confrontation on terms very different from those that would occur today is Taiwan.     

警察与媒体关系之我见

媒体既是警察与公众沟通的重要中介,又是警察公共关系的客体。如何看待警察与媒体的关系,是警察公共关系能否收到显著效益的前提条件。警察与媒体的关系可以从政治、法律、工作和利益需求的角度进行界定。警察机关应主动加强与媒体的互动合作。     

“Mitigating Instigation”: Cultural Phenomenological Influences of Anger and Fighting Among “Big-Boned” and “Baby-Faced” African American Youth

While the violent behavior of youth continues to strike fear in the hearts of American citizens, researchers still are unable to make sense of interpersonal and ecological cultural factors that mitigate anger acted out toward others and turned inward. A cultural phenomenological perspective was applied to investigate if self- and other-perceived physical maturity and racial socialization experiences were influential in the expressions of anger and aggression among African American youth. Cross-validation of self-reports of fighting variables was found. Results indicate that the initiation and frequency of fighting behavior is higher for boys, youth who look physically mature, who report lower levels of calamity fear, lower levels of racial socialization, higher levels of anger acting out, and lower levels of anger control. Racial socialization is proposed as 1 way to manage cultural ecological demands that may lead to the use of aggression. Implications for community psychological intervention of violence are proposed.     

Psychosocial differences between occasional and regular adolescent users of Marijuana and Heroin

Data on marijuana and heroin use were obtained from 969 adolescents in Hong Kong, part of them being offenders. Very high drug use prevalence rates were found, which is due to the unique population studied. All but two of the heroin users were incarcerated youth. Drug use frequencies were highly associated with psychosocial variables such as sensation seeking, peer drug use, family drug use, susceptibility to peer pressure, perceived control to gain access to drugs, intention to try other substances, and perceived adverse consequences of drug use. Interactions were found indicating, for example, that regularly marijuana using girls and occasionally heroin using girls were characterized by higher levels of sensation seeking and susceptibility to peer pressure than their male counterparts. Polysubstance use was generally related to high levels of psychosocial vulnerability factors. The exclusive use of marijuana was associated with high susceptibility to peer pressure and with perceived control to gain access to drugs. The findings reflect a complex interplay of psychosocial variables with substance use in adolescents that, however, cannot be generalized beyond this particular sample in Hong Kong.Received Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the University of North Texas. Research interests include drug-taking behaviors, health psychology and women studies. To whom correspondence should be addressed.Received M. Phil in Clinical Psychology from the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Research interests include drug-taking behaviors and adolescent problems.Research interests include stress and anxiety.     

Books in review

He is author of Polls and the Awareness of Public Opinion;and recently of Preserving the Press.     

The impossibility of a desirable minimal state

The amount of control the general public exerts over government depends on accepted government procedures as determined by the political constitution and prevailing public opinion. It has not been the purpose of this paper to suggest ways of providing the public more control over government but to consider some implications of changes in that control. It is obvious that it would be desirable for the general public to have more control over political decisions; i.e., for the political process to be more responsive to the broad based benefits and costs that result from government action. The question is; what does more public control over government imply about the desirable size of government? For the natural rights advocate the answer is nothing. Government should be only large enough to protect citizens against force and fraud. The purpose of the present paper, however, has been to argue that the desirable size of government can be either positively or negatively related to the control exerted over it by the public. If this argument is accepted, it casts doubt on the possibility of a desirable minimum state.When there is little public control over government, organized special interest will have disproportionate political influence and will use this influence to expand government into activities that are detrimental to the public interest. Obviously, given this situation, it will be desirable to use additional public control over government to reduce the size of government by restricting its activities. But just as obvious is that this situation is one in which control over government is inadequate to the task of achieving a minimal state.     

The politics of denial: the use of funding penalties as an implementation device for social policy

Conclusion The standard literature on implementation offers a number of variables usually associated with successful policy-making.⁵⁰ Roughly, the variables can be sorted into three broad categories: the nature of the problem to be solved, the causal theory for problem solution embodied in the statute, and the execution of that statutory solution in practice. These categories will supply a framework helpful in highlighting the empirical similarities across the cases of oblique funding denial discussed above and also for revealing important differences. The similarities will show both the conditions which lead to the use of this particular policy device and the manner of its use; the differences will show the conditions under which it can be used most effectively. Discussion will then turn somewhat more theoretical, inquiring into the legitimacy of funding denial as a political means and the capacity of the state apparatus that employs it. First, the specific social problem addressed in each of the cases of funding denial was relatively intractable. Each involved a matter of moral purpose - how fast is it safe for one to drive? At what age is one responsible enough to drink? What is the extent of one's military obligation? What is meant by the principle of equal respect for all individuals? American government is naturally reluctant to confront such difficult moral decisions and to impose an authoritative determination upon its citizenry. Not surprisingly, therefore, each case of funding denial was the product of a perceived national emergency, accompanied by a dramatic mobilization of public opinion - the energy crisis of 1973; the campaign against drunk driving led by MADD; the sudden presumption of military inadequacy; the civil rights movement, especially the Birmingham marches. The widespread belief that something must be done gave to politicians the incentive to enact policies placing concentrated costs upon some particular population group as a prerequisite for achieving diffuse societal ends. Strong ideological justification remained essential even after initial threshold barriers were overcome. In the speed limit case, for instance, the necessary shift in rationale from energy conservation to traffic safety somewhat weakened the defense for concentrated costs and left the legislation much more vulnerable to challenge and exemption. American politics might well exhibit a general propensity toward particularistic preferences and so-called distributional policies, which award concentrated group benefits and impose diffuse social costs, but there do regularly exist circumstances that help enact policies embodying the exact opposite pattern. A further problem exists, however, when designing a feasible strategy for implementation. In each of the cases considered above, funding denial was adopted because of the perceived insufficiency of the normal, judicial means of coercive implementation - a legislated national 55 M.P.H. speed limit or a direct prohibition against interstate alcohol sales to individuals younger than 21 years old would mandate a significant federal police role and might burden the federal courts; prosecutions under the 1980 Selective Service Act and litigation under the 1954 Brown decision had been deemed incapable of forcing adequate levels of compliance. The alternative next proposed was cash incentives, making it lucrative for the designated actors to adapt their behavior. But, it was found, the political price of Southern school desegregation was not sufficiently counterbalanced by the promise of federally funded technical assistance; the prospect of increased highway aid funds was not enough to induce states to alter their drinking laws. It was then logical for lawmakers to turn to the disincentive power of financial sanctions. Oblique funding denial offered a simple and quite attractive theory of policy cause and effect: by threatening to withhold money from tangentially related concentrated benefits, the target population would be impelled to accept the entailed concentrated costs of social reform. In the two examples using highway funds, the states as intermediaries were constrained to impose policy costs upon certain of their citizens or else face penalties themselves. In the two other examples, the impulsion was applied to the targeted individuals or institutions directly. As a causal theory for solution, however, the funding denial strategy has its own inherent weakness. In all the cases considered, the population designated for enforcement was not the same as the total population whose compliance was needed in order to achieve the social end. For example, the Solomon amendment affected only non-registrant college student aid recipients, a distinct subset of draft law violators. Moreover, all college aid recipients, even if not formally eligible for the draft, were made subject to penalties if they did not sign the specified form. The provision was on one dimension too narrow and on another much too broad, leading to claims of unfair treatment. Similarly, the 21-year-old drinking age affected only a portion of adults who might drink and drive, yet it imposed sweeping limits on all members of a specific age group regardless whether they were drivers or not. The civil rights regulations were applied with inequitable narrowness, for Title VI enforcement affected only the institutions and programs supported by federal grants, and affirmative action under Executive Order 11246 was required only of federal contractors. The 55 M.P.H. speed limit, by contrast, was initially applied with inequitable breadth, uniformly restricting highway speeds irrespective of the type of terrain, the quality of the road or its safety record. Supporters of these provisions often justified them in terms of mere expediency. Chief Justice Burger's defense of the Solomon amendment, that funding denial was a rational tool to encourage compliance among a major group of lawbreakers, was basically the same as the one employed by civil rights advocates on behalf of Title VI. Expediency, nevertheless, is political as well as merely technical. Those who were targeted for the funding denial strategy not only exhibited a certain dependence upon government finance, they also tended to be politically weak. Youths, for example, have been subjected to the strategy both as students and as drivers. This political weakness was further exaggerated by the stigmatization of the victim. Teenage drivers, it was implied, were uniquely irresponsible; college students were unpatriotic; and Southern aid recipients lacked a fundamental respect for the constitution. The exception to the rule was interstate trucking, and thus it is not unexpected that truckers did win some relaxation in the speed limit when first proposed in 1973, and that the portion of the highway regulations that most affect them have recently proved susceptible to attack. Finally, turning to practical execution, it is obvious that federal administrators tend not to want to impose funding sanctions. In all the cases examined, the express legislative intent was to encourage increased voluntary compliance, and ample provision was always made to allow the violator to correct his behavior or to negotiate a compromise in good faith. Moreover, federal grant agencies see their primary function as that of giving away authorized money. Exogenous conditions placed upon the use of such money involved an uncomfortable and often unwanted conflict among agency priorities. The exercise of funding denial interferes with laudable program operations and risks jeopardizing relations with Congress and clients. Counterveiling pressures for vigorous action, from social movements or presidential initiative, have proved fleeting. Thus the actual withholding of authorized dollars has been usually considered somewhat drastic action, to be reserved for dire situations. The Transportation Department, for example, has not yet deducted the required share from state highway funds for violations of the 55 M.P.H. speed limit, despite the findings of an administrative law judge and a suit in federal court to force it to do so. The education division of HEW had a short period of remarkable enforcement activism during the late 1960s but suffered severely for it, and no other agency has been as aggressive in pursuing civil rights. Of course, program effectiveness should not be judged solely by the number of sanctions imposed. The declaration made by the law itself, supported by the threat of possible punishment, can sometimes be sufficient. On the other hand, excessively protracted negotiations and a clear reluctance to apply funding penalties can give credence to the excuses of violators and effectively undermine the incentive for recipients to obey. As V.O. Key observed regarding the funding weapon, The mere existence of the power may have considerable effect, but these indirect results are not so great if the power is not used now and then to give substance to the threats of its use. When conditions appearing to warrant discontinuance of grants are tolerated, the implied threat of federal withdrawal ceases to have potency'.⁵¹ It also should be noted that the standard for judging what constitutes satisfactory performance is not entirely fixed. Only half of the drivers must obey the maximum speed limit for a state to retain its full allocation. Draft registration compliance in the 90% range, monitored by self-certification by college aid recipients, has been considered a success. A similar standard for affirmative action by federal contractors would generate a storm of criticism. Therefore, it appears, funding denial is a potentially powerful weapon in the government arsenal that generally has been applied to relatively intractable problems but in an uneven causal manner by somewhat reluctant administrative agents. The examples discussed above, however, do permit some differentiation. The intractability of the problem addressed varied with the resolve of the target group and the extent of behavioral change required. The difficulties of practical execution varied with the leverage available to the government and the attitude of administrative superiors. On both dimensions, civil rights presented the greatest challenge. Finally, the causal construction of the statute, itself, varied in ways that affected its ability to overcome barriers to successful implementation. The funding denial instrument was sometimes linked to explicitly specified compliance standards and time horizons for their achievement. In those cases, there was least ambiguity regarding the expected behavior of the target group, and least opportunity for administrative footdragging or political veto. The drinking age and draft registration stipulations were presented as simple, dichotomous matters of yes-or-no; either the states passed the requisite law and the students signed the required form, or else they were automatically subject to penalties. The highway speed limit started as dichotomous, but when a number of states complied formally while intentionally promoting circumvention, the law was altered so as to impose partial penalties contingent upon more detailed performance criteria. With civil rights, however, the statute neither defined illegal discrimination, nor established performance standards to be met, nor dictated a timetable for acceptable progress. Thus it gave to executive agencies an enormous amount of independent discretion. The tempting conclusion is that the funding denial device should always be used with tight compliance standards and unavoidable violator consequences. This is not quite true. There can be situations in which the extent of the entailed behavioral change and the sensitivity of the issue require a more subtle approach. There can be situations in which the strictest enforcement rules will engender a legislative reaction sufficient to win repeal once popular momentum wanes, and situations in which implementation at less than full enforcement will nevertheless bring a policy response deemed adequate by the initial intention. Although the bias should be towards specificity, especially given the lamentable record for Title VI, the optimal strategy must be decided on a case-by-case basis. The critical question, however, is not whether the funding denial instrument can be used more effectively, but whether it legitimately can be used at all. There is a sense of impropriety linked to the implicit assertion that the federal government's promises can be later revised through the attachment of technically unrelated performance criteria, and of arbitrariness in the exact nature of the contingencies attached. Critics have regularly protested that funding denial rests upon the unfair strategy of ‘bait-and-switch’, and have claimed that it establishes precedent for the limitless exercise of federal power. On the other hand, it has proven a useful instrument for social policy implementation in cases where more conventional methods have failed. Critics have charged that funding denial is discriminatory in practice, applying only to the vulnerable, politically and by their strong dependence upon government aid. On the other hand, it is a potentially effective means by which at least certain groups can be induced to act in a manner appropriate for the achievement of a desirable diffuse social good, and half a loaf is often preferable to none at all. Critics have asserted that funding denial infringes upon traditional prerogatives and individual freedoms, permitting the aggrandizement of federal authority through devious means. On the other hand, it is quite normal within budget politics for the recipient of government money to aggressively seek maximum discretion over its use, and for the grantor of that money to impose constraints in the pursuit of the public interest. It would seem that support for the oblique funding technique depends largely upon one's view of the diffuse social good pursued. Liberals and conservatives alike, although for different policy ends, have found it a useful instrument in the federal repertory. The more important the end and the greater the demand to achieve it, the less American legislators appear to be deterred by the device's potential limitations. Nevertheless, something more systematic can be said. American statebuilders have always sought to construct institutional forms sufficient to the policy task yet with recognition of the abiding national fear of bureaucratic authority and the preference for private organization and community government.⁵² American liberal ideology posits a state apparatus imbued with a monopoly of legitimate force which nevertheless exists to serve private interests without dominating them. Capitalist economics and constitutional rights establish relatively protected spheres for independent behavior. The state, even when acting on behalf of a clear social good, is simultaneously committed to maintaining a balance with civil society, which inherently limits its dominion and reduces its policy-making capacity. Turning specifically to budgetary instruments, the growth in federal spending over the 20th century is usually taken as an indicator of the increase in central government power. A larger budget implies control over a greater percentage of social resources, extracting more funds from primary earners in the marketplace and reallocating them to serve publicly determined ends. That power, however, is far from absolute. The American state is dependent upon a flourishing private sector for the revenues it expends, and is dependent upon cooperative private actors for the policies implemented through the budget to have their desired effects. Government, in essence, manipulates money that it directly controls in order to influence behavior over which it lacks direct control. This is the wellspring of the ambivalence intrinsic to oblique funding denial. The device is used when lesser means are deemed insufficient, for they would not induce societal actors to bear the concentrated costs of social reform, but when stronger ones would invade traditional state government preserves or require a considerable expansion of judicial power. Coercion is the expected means when government seeks to implement policy ends over an unwilling population. However, in many policy areas, the federal government is relatively weak in its ability to apply coercion and is often averse to the very notion. The American commitment to constitutional federalism and to individual rights significantly circumscribes the power of central dictation. Self-restricted by the rules of its own political system, the federal government must, if it wishes to be effective, then turn to somewhat novel and incomplete instruments. As a policy instrument, funding denial rejects the subservience of pure incentives, placing the burden of proof on potential recipients to show that they have fulfilled stipulated requirements and thus are deserving of funds. Yet denial also suffers strict limitations, as it is constrained by the populations that are susceptible to its leverage and by the extent sanctions actually can be applied. The consequence is a policy dynamic in which the federal government seeks to exercise the greatest possible influence consistent with the structured separation of state from society and of central from local government; and in which the subject group seeks to preserve the greatest possible freedom of choice consistent with support for the federal government's diffuse social policy goal. The dynamic, which engenders intense political controversy and gives rise to dramatic rhetoric, must not be thought the product of faulty policy design. Rather, it is inherent to the logic of an implementation means founded upon the attempt to achieve a complicated philosophical straddle. Ultimately, the American public has but three basic choices. It can revise its political system to greatly expand the power of the federal government. It can abandon the effort to achieve broad social goods when societal interests and local officials maintain sufficient autonomy to resist. Or it can continue to experiment with the awkward instruments of central government leverage. With full recognition of the dangers of abuse and of discrimination, and with full awareness that the results will be less than ideal, social reformers must consciously work to expand the middle ground. Public policy is not just the product of state-and-society relationships. It also reflects the form of those relationships. Ironically, oblique funding denial, for all the appearance of imperious power, is an expression of the institutional tensions fundamental to a liberal political regime. It is a natural consequence of the distinction between central state superintendence but private and local responsibility that is so heralded in American ideology. Funding denial, a complex federal policy instrument which simultaneously leads opponents to claim arbitrary manipulation and supporters to doubt enforcement adequacy, must therefore be seen as a systematic product of the society that invented it. with the assistance of David M. Dudar     

Antigenic properties of human and animal bloodstains studied by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) using various antisera against specific plasma proteins

Antigenic properties of bloodstains of human and non-human primates as well as other animal bloodstains were investigated by the inhibition ELISA using commercially available anti-human albumin (Alb), alpha 2-macroglobulin (alpha 2-M), fibrinogen, transferrin, and immunoglobulin G. In general, chimpanzee bloodstains showed strong cross-reactions with these antisera, and the extent of the cross-reactions of other animal bloodstains decreased largely with the phylogenic order, i.e., agile gibbon (ape), Old World monkeys (Japanese monkey and hamadryas baboon), New World monkeys (night monkey and tufted capuchin monkey), prosimians (grand galago and ring-tailed lemur) and other animals (rat, cattle, swine, goat, dog, cat, and chicken). Among these antisera, anti-human alpha 2-M showed the weakest cross-reaction with chimpanzee bloodstains, and anti-human Alb showed next.     

The determination of cocaine and its major metabolite, benzoylecgonine, in postmortem fluids and tissues by computerized gas chromatography/mass spectrometry

An analytical procedure for the simultaneous determination of both cocaine and benzoylecgonine in postmortem fluid and tissue samples has been developed by using computerized gas chromatography/mass spectrometry and gas chromatography using a nitrogen/phosphorus (N/P) detector. Both methods are accurate and sensitive and allow the determination of tissue concentrations of cocaine and benzoylecgonine as low as 0.015 microgram/mL.