Assessing political support in China: Citizens’ evaluations of governmental effectiveness and legitimacy

Whether the Chinese Communist regime can maintain socio‐political stability and survive the potentially turbulent transition to the post‐Deng Xiaoping era remains a serious question challenging many China watchers. Assuming that political support is vital to the stability of any regime, the authors seek to answer this question by examining two major components of political support, instrumental support (citizens’ evaluations of governmental effectiveness) and affective support (citizens’ evaluations of governmental legitimacy). Using data collected from a public opinion survey conducted in Beijing, China in late 1995, this study explores the levels of both affective support and instrumental support, and the nature of the relationship between these two types of political support in China today. The results of this study show that: (1) the current Chinese regime enjoys a moderately high level of affective support and a slightly lower level of instrumental support; (2) the two types of political support are moderately correlated; and (3) the relationship between these two types of support persists across key demographic groups. Based on these results, the authors conclude that the current Chinese leadership has a good chance to maintain political stability in the post‐Deng era, while it will face severe challenges in substantially upgrading its current level of legitimacy by solely relying upon improvements in governmental effectiveness in the short term.     

Student attitudes toward inmate privileges

Although corrections researchers have examined criminal justice students’ attitudes toward offender punishment and the death penalty, they have overlooked the important area of inmate privileges. Using data collected from 570 students enrolled at four different Southern universities, this study examines attitudinal differences between criminal justice and noncriminal justice majors in terms of providing inmates with psychological counseling, college education programs, television, cigarettes, weightlifting, and conjugal visits. No statistically significant attitudinal differences emerged between criminal justice and noncriminal justice majors.     

The effectiveness of social skills training (SST) for juvenile delinquents: a meta-analytical review

Journal of Experimental Criminology - To examine the effectiveness of social skills training (SST) for juvenile offenders and for whom and under which conditions SSTs are the most effective....     

Undercover policing: A psychological and operational guide

Undercover policing carries a tremendous responsibility for interdicting crime and political violence by preventive infiltration of criminal organizations to disrupt their operations and bring their perpetrators to justice. As much of this process involves the skillful manipulation of human relationships, psychology has a vital role to play in all major phases of undercover work. This article will describe the role of psychological services in team formation, selection and training of undercover officers (UCOs), preparation for undercover operations, deployment and monitoring, termination and reintegration, and managing deployment stress and post-operation psychological syndromes.     

Counterinsurgency and terror expertise: the integration of social scientists into the war effort

In this paper the authors draw upon the tradition of Power Structure Research to analyse the increased interpenetration of the military and the social sciences, particularly the recruitment of anthropologists and the adoption and adaptation of counterinsurgency strategies. It is argued that such actors should be understood not as disinterested ‘experts’ but as being organically embedded in a military–industrial–academic complex. The paper considers a number of contemporary examples as well as considering the historical roots of these trends. It is argued that this interpenetration violates the ethical norms of the academy and the moral and social responsibilities of intellectuals.