POLICY RESPONSES TO CITIZEN ATTITUDES

Though many studies have provided only limited support for the idea of policymaker "responsiveness," the present study indicates that constituents do have some impact on public policy decisions, though not directly. With the aid of data on decisionmaking of country property appraisers in Florida, I was able to demonstrate that constituency preferences affect policy decisions indirectly through the effect of decisionmaker attitudes, thus suggesting an intervening model of decisionmaking.
Specifically, I found that constituency tax preferences impacted on property appraiser tax attitude and through it on the property assessment ratio. More importantly, I was able to isolate some of the potential factors which accentuate those relationships posited by an intervening model of decisionmaking. In particular, I found that the more policymakers (the property appraisers) were immersed into their social and political context or engaged in "social interaction" activities the more likely they and their own attitudes were to be influenced by prevailing constituency tax sentiment.     

Russian roulette with a knife

The following case report describes an accidental stabbing that occurred on Halloween. The unwitting victim, while preparing for a holiday charade, stabbed himself with an ornamental dagger. By placing himself in a potentially hazardous situation, the victim's behavior entailed risk taking. The psychological implications of such risk taking are complex, and may be compared to such behaviors as russian roulette, gambling, and parasuicide.     

Validating the components of a taxonomic system for rapists: a path analytic approach

This study was part of a series designed to validate a classification system for rapists developed at the Massachusetts Treatment Center. This system (MTC:R2) determines subtypes according to three major dimensions: the meaning of the aggression in the rapist's offenses (expressive versus instrumental), the meaning of the sexual behavior (compensatory, exploitative, displaced anger, or sadistic), and the degree of general lifestyle impulsivity (low or high). A total of 201 rapists were subtyped using this system. A path analytic approach was used to relate family, juvenile, and adult histories to the main decisions of subtype assignment. The classification of an offender on each of the three dimensions was informed by a developmental perspective. Results provided support for the use of the discriminators used and highlighted the deficiencies in our current knowledge regarding developmental precursors. These results were integrated with the findings from other studies using MTC:R2 and suggestions for revisions to the current classification system were discussed.     

Clear, Simple, and Precise Legislative Drafting: How Does a European Community Directive Fare?

In 2001, Martin Cutts redrafted Toy-Safety Directive 88/378/EEC¹in plain language. He criticized the language of that Directiveas being archaic legalese.² He added that Directives, as a whole,were poorly drafted.³ The European Commissions Legal Servicerejected his criticisms. It stated that it had published theEuropean Commission’s plain language guidelines⁴ afterDirective 88/378/EEC had been drafted. In a previous articlein the Statute Law Review,⁵ Butt and Castle’s⁶ plain languageguidelines were explicated using examples from Directive 2002/2/EC.⁷In this article, their guidelines are applied to the whole ofthat Directive to see if its language is ‘clear, simple,and precise’.⁸ The criticisms made in the previous article,⁹combined with those made in this article, suggest that the draftersof Directive 2002/2/EC¹⁰ have not yet mastered the skill ofwriting in ‘clear, simple, and precise’ language.