Preserving fairness: Williams against Cohen on just inequality

The view that the choices people make affect what it is fair for them to receive has widespread appeal. This very general thought has found particular and acute expression in the context of distributive justice in the form of the influential view that has become known as luck egalitarianism. In a surprising development, one of luck egalitarianism’s foremost advocates – G.A. Cohen – appeared, in one of his final papers, to reject the commitment to the fairness of chosen inequalities that defines luck egalitarianism. In opposition to the luck egalitarian view, Cohen suggests that choice merely deprives the disadvantaged of a complaint against being worse off, rather than rendering such inequality fair. Against Cohen’s revised view, Andrew Williams has argued that Cohen’s move underestimates an account of equality under which what individuals choose to do with their equal allocation affects what it is to treat them fairly. Here, I seek to show how the Williams response fails to undermine Cohen’s claims about the relation between fairness and choice. I draw on this analysis to show how the disagreement between Williams and Cohen on this issue illuminates a broader methodological divergence over how to approach questions of justice and fairness.     

Seeing is believing: observer perceptions of trait trustworthiness predict perceptions of honesty in high-stakes emotional appeals

Instantaneous first impressions of facial trustworthiness influence the manner in which observers evaluate ensuing information about stranger targets [e.g. Porter, S., &; ten Brinke, L. (2009). Dangerous decisions: A theoretical framework for understanding how judges assess credibility in the courtroom. Legal and Criminological Psychology, 14, 119–134. doi:10.1348/135532508X281520]. In two studies, we examined the association between perceptions of general trustworthiness and honesty assessments in an extremely high-stakes sample – individuals publicly pleading for the return of a missing relative, half of whom had killed the missing individual. In Study 1, observers (N?=?131) provided trustworthiness ratings – either before or after viewing and evaluating the honesty of videotaped or audio-only pleas – for a still image that depicted a neutral expression on the face of each pleader. In Study 2, observers (N?=?220) evaluated the sincerity of audio pleas paired either with an untrustworthy-looking target, a trustworthy-looking target, or no target face. Collectively, our findings indicated that first impressions of trait trustworthiness form the basis of state judgments of honesty, potentially contributing to misguided credibility assessments and miscarriages of justice in the legal system.     

Superficial Survey Choice: An Experimental Test of a Potential Method for Increasing Response Rates and Response Quality in Correctional Surveys

Objectives

Drawing on prior theoretical and empirical work on survey participation, this study develops one potential method for increasing response rates and response quality in correctional surveys. Specifically, we hypothesize that providing inmates with a superficial survey choice (SSC)—that is, a choice between completing either of two voluntary surveys that are actually differently ordered versions of the same questionnaire—will increase their motivation both to participate in a given survey and to respond thoughtfully to the questions asked therein.

Methods

We test the effectiveness of this method by evaluating its impact on unit nonresponse, item nonresponse, and answer reliability. To do this, we analyze experimental data from a recent survey of male inmates incarcerated in a medium security, private prison.

Results

Findings indicate that the overall response rate is higher among inmates who are provided a survey choice. In addition, the evidence shows that the SSC method increases the percentage of individual items completed, the number of demanding questions completed, and the reliability of reported responses.

Conclusion

The results from the analyses are consistent with the hypotheses that motivated this study and suggest that the SSC method holds promise as a tool for correctional researchers.     

Communication,choice and freedom with reference to risk in aspects of communication on HIV/AIDS

Abstract

Where analysis concludes that a context is characterised by high risk, as in thecase given HIV/AIDS in South Africa, individual choice and freedom are often negated, for instance, by social scientists when they resort to the statistical logic of large numbers. Ironically, given that knowledge and rationality are arguably related, the choice and freedom of the individual deemed not to have knowledge about a given issue, is questioned and soon negated. By focusing on the black people in South africa, as a key example, it is argued that such analyses and solutions deny the existential possibilities of the people. The aim of this article is to affirm an individual's possibilities. The situation of the individual who communicates is recalled to argue against approaches that variously seek to blame the individual.

In the time of HIV/AIDS, ideas such as those of Søren Kiekegaard should be engaged to advance understanding of the limitations and possibilities of the individual who communicates. In the trasition from understanding to acting on information on HIV/AIDS, the individual has the freedom to choose. This is humbling for communication scientists and practioners who seek to prevent the further spread of HIV/AIDS.     

Striking Home: Ideal-Type of Terrorism

ABSTRACT

This essay presents some preliminary notes in an anthropological perspective on terrorism. The following aims to be a questioning review of issues that haunt informed students of terrorism, and yet also an introductory text to the study of terrorism. It is revisionist but didactic. The essay is based on extended research of Palestinian and Israeli terrorism cases, and on critical integration of the literature on terrorism. It offers an alternative approach to the problem of the definition and distinct character of terrorism, expands on overlooked aspects of terrorism, like its relationship to the concept of “home,” emphasizes under-theorized subjects, like the randomness of the targets, and discusses hitherto untouched topics, like the “bad death” of terrorism’s victims. Terrorism is examined in terms of liminality and hybridity, and consequently as more subversive than coercive, threatening our ontological security no less than our physical security.     

Too Little,Too Late: The CIA and US Counteraction of the Soviet Initiative in the Six-Day War, 1967

The authors' previous research has established that the 1967 Arab–Israeli Six-Day War resulted from a deliberate Soviet plan to provoke Israel into a pre-emptive strike, which would legitimize and trigger a massive Soviet military intervention to aid an Egyptian–Syrian counteroffensive. However, US documents released until recently provided no evidence that the American intelligence community, and particularly the CIA, detected this threat or informed the political leadership about it – even though some indications were picked up at the field level. A newly declassified, retrospective report appears for the first time to show that there was awareness of major components of the Soviet operation (preparations for a naval landing and parachute drop). But closer scrutiny finds that this report reflects Soviet propaganda more than factual intelligence – thus further tarnishing what has hitherto been held as an outstanding achievement for the Agency and its chief.     

The gradual transformation? The incremental dynamics of macroprudential regulation

This article focuses on the transformatory potential of macroprudential ideas following the financial crash of 2008, examining how they are being mediated by existing institutional contexts and how and why the task of building a new body of technical macroprudential knowledge is proceeding slowly. It is argued that the movement toward a form of macroprudential regulation has a distinctly incremental dynamic that means any macroprudential transformation will be a gradual process that is likely to span a decade or more. Using Peter Hall's framework of three orders of policy change across substantive and temporal dimensions, the article argues that the macroprudential ideational shift can be compared to third order change. In this sense, it was intellectually radical and took place rapidly in a period of around six months. However, intellectual radicalism does not automatically translate into a radical change in regulatory practice, because of a variety of countervailing political, institutional, and informational variables. In this respect, the task of developing first and second order macroprudential policy is proving to be a much more politically contested process. Furthermore, macroprudential policy is being developed by cautious technocrats who rely on the gradual accumulation of data and evidence to justify policy. The result is a distinctly incremental dynamic to macroprudential policy development that displays many of the features of a process that historical institutionalists refer to as “layering.”     

Who should be called to account for good governance in Africa?

Accountability has been identified as one of the most serious issues in the new democracies. Typically, assessments of the strength of democratic accountability in Africa rarely go beyond the elected and their election. This article argues that an examination of accountability needs to be widened to include all who make decisions that affect the community leaving them with no effective choice, whether they are elected to do so as representatives, or do so in a private capacity as power holders. The reasons are theoretical, empirical and pragmatic. Though the argument is primarily concerned with considering where the limits of the democratic ideal should be fixed, some examples are given of the gap between democratic ideals and actually existing democracy in sub‐Saharan Africa. They reveal a wide variation and contradictions in the actual practice of accountability, so reinforcing the point that attempts to assess the measure of accountability must be multi‐dimensional.     

The Reinvention of Australian Federal Policing in the Pursuit of National Security

Commonwealth policing, since its turbulent emergence in Australia in 1917, has shown both a keen capacity to suppress dissent and a remarkable ability to reinvent itself in a variety of forms. Its present nomenclature of the Australian Federal Police (AFP) arose from an alleged terrorist incident: the 1978 Sydney Hilton bombing.

This article argues that the fragmented AFP faced an ill‐defined and uncertain future in the early 1990s. Since September 11, the revamped AFP, however, has claimed primacy as Australia's leading law enforcement agency, but remains susceptible to government pressure. Contemporary Australian debate has focused on intelligence agency legislation, but limited analysis has addressed the AFP's changing role, expanded powers and significantly increased budgetary resources. As terrorism, national security and people smuggling have become the new “law and order'’ federal agenda, the AFP, straining to accomplish both domestic and regional functions, has extended its transnational, off‐shore policing strategies and intervention.