Democratization in turmoil? Elections in Hong Kong

The first SAR Chief Executive, Tung Chee‐hwa, in his speech at the SAR Establishment Ceremony, said: ‘Democracy is the hallmark of a new era for Hong Kong. The SAR Government will resolutely move forward to a more democratic form of government in accordance with the provisions in the Basic Law’. Butler, Penniman and Ranney, however, cautioned that ‘the critical difference between democratic and nondemocratic regimes is to be found in whether or not they hold elections, and if they do, what kind’. Indeed, electoral changes made to the 1998 LegCo elections are found to be anti‐democratic and retrogressive, as well as unnecessary. The authors conclude that electoral systems matter because they are one of the central mechanisms in modern democracies to give substance and content to democratic governance. If electoral systems are designed in such a manner that they obstruct the exercise of popular sovereignty, ride rough‐shod over the principle of political equality, undermine the extent of representation, complicate relationships of accountability as well as delimit opportunities for participation, then such systems should have little place in genuine democratic reform. To bring Hong Kong's democratization forward, a hard look at the electoral system, which should be more informed by the principles and practices of democracy will be mandatory.     

The residential preferences of blacks and whites: A four‐metropolis analysis

Abstract

Three hypotheses seek to explain the persistence of residential segregation between blacks and whites in the United States: economic differentials, discrimination in housing and lending markets, and neighborhood preferences. The preferences hypothesis posits that both races wish to live in racially homogeneous neighborhoods. This article examines the preferences hypothesis by using recent interview data from metropolitan Atlanta, Boston, Detroit, and Los Angeles.

Race continues to be significant in the residential decision‐making process. Whites’ willingness to move into a neighborhood is inversely related to the density of blacks living there. Blacks prefer integrated neighborhoods, but ones with a substantial representation of blacks. Preferences differ significantly from one metropolis to another, with Detroit representing the extreme. In the other three metropolises, the preferences of blacks and whites do overlap sufficiently to offer hope for a decline in segregation, provided that the influence of other forces, particularly discrimination, also declines.     

Human genomic DNA quantitation system, H-Quant: development and validation for use in forensic casework

The human DNA quantification (H-Quant) system, developed for use in human identification, enables quantitation of human genomic DNA in biological samples. The assay is based on real-time amplification of AluYb8 insertions in hominoid primates. The relatively high copy number of subfamily-specific Alu repeats in the human genome enables quantification of very small amounts of human DNA. The oligonucleotide primers present in H-Quant are specific for human DNA and closely related great apes. During the real-time PCR, the SYBR Green I dye binds to the DNA that is synthesized by the human-specific AluYb8 oligonucleotide primers. The fluorescence of the bound SYBR Green I dye is measured at the end of each PCR cycle. The cycle at which the fluorescence crosses the chosen threshold correlates to the quantity of amplifiable DNA in that sample. The minimal sensitivity of the H-Quant system is 7.6 pg/microL of human DNA. The amplicon generated in the H-Quant assay is 216 bp, which is within the same range of the common amplifiable short tandem repeat (STR) amplicons. This size amplicon enables quantitation of amplifiable DNA as opposed to a quantitation of degraded or nonamplifiable DNA of smaller sizes. Development and validation studies were performed on the 7500 real-time PCR system following the Quality Assurance Standards for Forensic DNA Testing Laboratories.     

Intimate Violence in Canada and the United States: A Cross-National Comparison

Using data from the 1985 U.S. National Family Violence Resurvey and the 1986 Canadian National Family Life Survey, this paper compares incidence of intimate violence or “common couple violence” (Johnson, 1995) in both countries. As expected, gender symmetry characterizes common couple violence, which is a product of the privatized setting of many American and Canadian households. Although the United States exhibits significantly higher rates of societal violent crime than Canada, Canadian women and men were more likely than their American counterparts to use severe intimate violence and to inflict it, as well as minor violence, more often, which is contrary to the culture of violence theory that guided the study. Similarly, the higher rates of wife-to-husband severe violence across the life course in both countries are inconsistent with the theory. Several ad hoc explanations are presented to account for these unexpected findings.     

Methodological Sensitivities to Latent Class Analysis of Long-Term Criminal Trajectories

A recent and growing body of research has employed a semiparametric group-based approach to discover underlying developmental trajectories of crime. Enthusiasm for such latent class models has not been matched with robustness and sensitivity analyses to determine how conclusions from the method vary according to fundamental methodological problems that inhere in criminological data. Using a sample of 500 delinquent boys and their official crime counts from ages 7 to 70, this paper systematically addresses how three concerns in longitudinal research—(a) length of follow-up, (b) the inclusion of exposure time (incarceration), and (3) data on involuntary desistance through death—influence our inferences about developmental trajectories. While there is some evidence of stability, a comparison of group number, shape, and group assignment across varying conditions indicates that all three data considerations can alter trajectory attributes in important ways. More precisely, longer-term data on offending and the inclusion of incarceration and mortality information appear to be key pieces of information, especially when analyzing high-rate offending patterns.