What Difference Does a Robe Make? Comparing Mediators with and without Prior Judicial Experience

This article reports the results of two studies. The first study, based on the responses of attorneys to questions about the reasons for the success of mediators with and without prior judicial experience, shows that the capacity of the mediator to gain the confidence of the disputants was most important for mediators with and without prior judicial experience. Although certain process skills were viewed as important to the success of both former judges and nonjudges, in general, process skills were significantly more important for nonjudges than for former judges. The capacity to provide useful case evaluations, on the other hand, was significantly more important for former judges than for nonjudges. The second study, based upon attorney responses to questions about unsatisfactory mediators, reinforced the conclusions of the first study regarding the importance of confidence-building attributes. For both judges and nonjudges, the mediator's inability to gain the confidence of the parties was a major reason for his or her lack of success.     

Giving People What They Want Before They Know They Want It

When advertising is able to capitalize on products or services that give people what they want just before they know they want it, it makes for an extremely powerful marketing tool. More often than not, advertising is unable to generate significant awareness or motivation to motivate a potential customer to purchase the advertised product. Yet there is a body of work, limited as it may be, that more often that not has been able to accomplish this. All advertising works to some degree, but the kind that promises people a benefit even before they realize that it is something that they truly want, works better than the other kind. This is particularly powerful when the product being advertised gives people something they want before they even know it. There are obstacles to developing advertising that is fundamentally new and fresh and with which people are not familiar, but the rewards are worth the effort to overcome them. Reviewing some of the most successful marketing accomplishments reveals the use of advertising that has these elements.     

Intelligence Studies on the Continent

The study of intelligence is often inward-looking. Scholars focus upon the means of gathering, evaluating, and distributing information with subsequent evaluation of its impact on decision making. Institution-based analysis ignores the role that the intelligence craft plays in the broader social and political context. This is apparent in the case of intelligence failures which reach beyond government to influence public opinion and ultimately the ability of authorities to mobilise support and govern. In the wake of failure, competing elites contest for power with conspiratorial interpretations of events that provide psychological comfort by offering explanations for events, targeting culprits, and fixing blame. This essay considers the intelligence failure of September 11, 2001, and outlines the conspiracy theories of left and right raised in its wake. Among those charged were the usual suspects - Zionists, the anti-Christ, advocates of a New World Order, and members of the military-industrial complex. In response, American government authorities validated their opponents' plot-making by defending themselves with their own cries of conspiracy. Heightened government secrecy, efforts to intensify surveillance, and the rhetoric of fear deepened the intrigue. In such a culture of conspiracy, charges of subversion bring only short-run gain. Public faith in institutions is eroded and paranoia becomes the conventional wisdom.     

Subnational electoral regimes and crisis recovery in Argentina and Mexico

The confluence of Latin America's volatile economic development patterns and transition to democracy has given rise to a proliferation of work on the national-level political causes and consequences of economic shocks and recovery rates. We explore the subnational electoral determinants of crisis recovery through analysis of growth rates in Mexico's thirty-one states and Argentina's twenty-three provinces following their economic declines of 2000–2002. Consistent with a theory that views intra-national variations in democracy as critical to understanding broader development patterns, we find that subnational electoral “regimes” significantly affect provincial recovery rates. Provinces that have an established electoral legitimacy prior to the onset of an economic shock, and those in which the governor enjoyed a substantial margin of victory, had significantly stronger recovery rates than those provinces stuck in a subnational regime transition with a sitting executive who lacked any claim to an electoral mandate.