POLICE SUSPICION AND DISCRETIONARY DECISION MAKING DURING CITIZEN STOPS*

This study examines the influence of racial, demographic and situational variables on types of police suspicion and the ancillary decision to stop and question suspects. Data were drawn from an observational study of police decision making in Savannah, Georgia. Based on the literature, we hypothesized that minority suspects will be more likely to be viewed suspiciously by the police for nonbehavioral reasons. We also hypothesize that minority status will play a significant role in the decision to stop and question suspicious persons. The findings from this study provide partial support for these hypotheses. The results indicate that minority status does influence an officer's decision to form nonbehavioral as opposed to behavioral suspicion, but that minority status does not influence the decision to stop and question suspects. We discuss the implications of these findings for understanding race and its role in police decision making.     

THE DHSS SOCIAL SECURITY REGIONAL ORGANIZATION — AN EXERCISE IN MANAGERIAL CHANGE

Government departments are under pressure to increase efficiency and effectiveness and to reduce staff numbers. The Rayner scrutiny programme is part of this pressure; and it has encouraged greater use of independent investigators and change catalysts within departments. This breed of internal critics often operate within, but at the limits of, official tolerance, like bureaucratic Philip Marlowes whose solutions may be accepted, but rarely with gratitude. Despite these developments external critics have continued to doubt the capacity for self-criticism and innovation within government. The popular television programme'Yes Minister' has encouraged such a view. This article describes one department's attempt at using internal change agents to review the handling of business and to implement major changes in an organization employing over 60,000 people. The exercise suggests that bureaucratic inertia can be overcome internally, although the change process is difficult and sometimes painful for those involved.     

The New Aerospace Diplomacy: Reconstructing Post-Cold War US-Russian Economic Relations

Post-Cold War U.S.-Russian diplomacy reveals the increased importance of new diplomatic actors and processes, whilst underscoring the continued key role of state-state negotiation in reconstructing the bilateral relationship between the United States and post-Soviet Russia. The Clinton administration and Yeltsin government negotiated measures to promote political stability, democratization, and conversion to a neoliberal market economy in Russia, a centrepiece of which was the integration of Russia’s globally competitive aerospace sector into the global production chain. Establishing the Gore-Chernomyrdin Commission, a top-level binational economic and technology policy committee, and signing a bilateral trade liberalization treaty on commercial satellite launch services paved the way for public-public and public-private bilateral space cooperation, and for major private joint ventures between US and Russian aerospace firms.     

Markets beyond politics? The state and the internationalisation of financial markets

Abstract. The role of politics is particularly difficult to discern in the domain of international financial markets, where the state's capacity to control or direct capital flows, without incurring considerable opportunity (and political) costs, appears so limited. In addressing this question, this paper argues that the process of internationalisation is first and foremost the consequence of political decision-making (to create open markets) and that many domestic interests linked to the international market have promoted internationalisation both through their policy preferences and economic activity. The paper will then go on to argue that the threat of financial instability and crisis, a consequence of the increased volatility of relatively unregulated capital flows, has prompted political demands for more concerted inter-state co-operation to maintain stability. Much of this takes place through transnational agreements among state agencies, such as the central banks, and much through 'reregulation' in the guise of 'harmonisation' of regulatory and prudential supervisory policies.
Some of this process has received considerable publicity, such as the harmonisation of EEC regulations to facilitate freer trade in banking and financial services as part of the preparation for the Single European Market in 1992. Likewise, the current Uruguay Round of GATT trade talks has the liberalisation of trade in financial services on its agenda. Other aspects of the process have been carried on quietly, far from public view, in such forums as the Bank for International Settlements. Such is the case of a recent agreement to harmonise minimum capital adequacy requirements for banks operating in international markets. The paper uses these three cases to support the argument about the role of politics and the state in international finance.     

Is gender on the 'new agenda'?

Abstract. This paper examines the politicization of gender inequality through a cross-national analysis of attitudes towards inequality between men and women. The data were obtained from national surveys in the United States, Britain, West Germany, Australia and Italy. In all of these countries, attitudes towards gender inequality were found to be associated with the 'left-right' cleavage over economic inequality and redistribution, but they were unrelated to 'new politics' issues. It was also found that attitudes towards gender inequality were more closely integrated into the left-right cleavage in those countries where there was greater awareness of gender issues, and that they had very little net impact on partisanship. Thus high levels of awareness of gender inequality are not associated with the emergence of a new cross-cutting political cleavage. It is concluded that inequality of opportunity between men and women does not constitute part of a new politics agenda, nor does it cross-cut other sources of political interests. It is more plausibly seen as a new element of the well-established left-right cleavage. Consequently, it leaves the structure of political divisions relatively intact.