Legitimate Force in a Particularistic Democracy: Street Police and Outlaw Legislators in the Republic of China on Taiwan

This article explores a “particularistic” concept of legitimacy important to Taiwanese democracy. This form of legitimacy, I suggest, has been instrumental for Taiwan's successful democratic consolidation in the absence of the rule of law. As evidence, I combine ethnographic observation of neighborhood police work with historical consideration of a type of political figure emergent in the process of democratic reform, which I call the “outlaw legislator.” I focus my analysis on the institutional and ideological processes articulating local policing into the wider political field. The center of these processes is a mode of popular representation that positions the outlaw legislator as a crucial hinge articulating the particularistic local order with central state powers. By analyzing the cultural content of the dramaturgical work used to reconcile low policing with higher‐level state operations, this article shows how a particularistic idiom of legitimacy helps hold Taiwanese democracy together.     

Age differences (or lack thereof) in discriminability for lineups and showups

Previous research reveals that showups are an inferior eyewitness identification procedure to lineups, but no single study has compared younger and older adults' identification decisions for both of these procedures. We had witnesses watch a mock crime video and then make an identification decision from a fair lineup, a biased lineup, or a showup that contained the perpetrator or a designated innocent suspect. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis showed that identification accuracy was higher from a lineup than from a showup for both age groups, even if the lineup was biased. In addition, calibration curves revealed that witnesses were underconfident when choosing from a fair lineup but overconfident when choosing from a showup. These results reinforce prior research asserting the superiority of lineups over showups.     

Social problem-solving correlates of sexual deviancy and aggression among adult child molesters

Cognitive-behavioral treatment programs for adult sex offenders often include training geared to improve a perpetrator's social problem-solving skills. However, little empirical evidence exists to date that documents the relationship between problem-solving and deviant sexual interest or behavior among child molesters. As such, this study investigated the association between problem-solving and two aspects of sexual offending—self-reported sexual deviancy and clinician-rated sexual aggression among a recruited sample of incarcerated child molesters. To minimize the potential for biased self-reports, criterion scores on a lie scale were employed to exclude individuals who might be prone to misrepresent their responses. Results indicated this sample to be characterized by significant deficits on all measures of social problem-solving as compared to the general population. In addition, a series of correlational analyses indicated that an avoidant problem-solving style was significantly associated with past sexual aggression, whereas a negative problem orientation and an impulsive/careless problem-solving style were significantly related to a measure of current sexual deviancy. Of particular interest is the finding that a rational problem-solving style (i.e., the constructive style that involves the systematic application of specific problem-solving skills geared toward identifying an effective solution) was not significantly related to either sexual offending measure. The implications of these collective results are discussed.     

Child molestation and psychopathy: a taxometric analysis

ABSTRACT

Prior taxometric research on child molesters and general sex offenders has produced inconsistent and contradictory results. There are theoretical, practical, and policy reasons, however, to assume that a psychopathy taxon may exist in sex offenders and that a taxometric study might shed light on this issue. The mean above minus below a cut (MAMBAC), maximum covariance (MAXCOV), and latent-mode factor analysis (L-Mode) taxometric procedures were employed in three overlapping samples: 188 sex offenders with non-relative child victims, 555 sex offenders with non-relative child or adolescent victims or child incest victims, and a mixed sample of 1404 sex offenders. The taxometric analyses revealed evidence of continuous latent structure in all three samples. These results suggest that psychopathy in sex offenders, child molesters in particular, is organised quantitatively (continuous) rather than qualitatively (categorical).     

Crises,What Crises? New Evidence on the Relative Roles of Political and Economic Crises in Begetting Reforms

Crises beget reforms is a powerful hypothesis. But which type of crises – economic or political – are the main drivers of structural reforms? To answer this question, we construct measures of labour market and trade liberalisation and the two types of crises for a panel of about 100 developed and developing countries between 1960 and 2000. We find that political crises are more important determinants of structural reforms than economic crises. This finding is robust to the inclusion of interdependencies between crises, feedbacks between reforms, different estimators and various alternative measures of crises.     

The ‘Arab Uprising’, Islamists and Democratization

This article surveys political activities of selected Islamists in three Arab countries in the Mediterranean region: Tunisia, Egypt and Morocco. Each is notable for recent growth in Islamist political activity in the context of democratization (Tunisia, Egypt) and political liberalization (Morocco). Tunisia, Egypt and Morocco are undergoing political changes consequent to the recent ‘Arab uprising’. The ‘Arab uprising’ involved country-specific yet variable outbursts of popular political anger, although not necessarily with a clear and consistent democratizing focus. Generally, protests focused on interrelated political and socio-economic demands, including: greater ‘freedoms’, improved human rights, better social justice and economic progress, especially more jobs for millions of unemployed youths. The aim of the article is to explain recent developments in relation to the ‘Arab uprising’ in three Mediterranean Arab countries – Tunisia, Egypt and Morocco. The purpose is to complement the individual foci on these countries in subsequent papers in this special issue by providing a thematic overview and to locate the activities of Islamist entities in Tunisia, Egypt and Morocco in comparative context.     

Resources,Sovereignty, and Governance: Can Mongolia Avoid the ‘Resource Curse’?

The revenue generated from Mongolia's natural resources has the potential to transform the Mongolian state and society. Indeed, investment in mining has already led to a spate of urban growth in Ulaanbaatar and rural development throughout the rest of the country. Yet Mongolia's natural resources could also contribute to a ‘natural resource curse’ if not properly managed. Effective governance in relation to the state's natural resource sector is, therefore, essential. This article examines Mongolia's sovereignty in order to determine whether or not the state is capable of ‘good governance’ in relation to the mining sector.     

Coproduction of Government Services and the New Information Technology: Investigating the Distributional Biases

This article investigates how communications advances affect citizens’ ability to participate in coproduction of government services. The authors analyze service requests made to the City of Boston during a one‐year period from 2010 to 2011 and, using geospatial analysis and negative binomial regression, investigate possible disparities by race, education, and income in making service requests. The findings reveal little concern that 311 systems (nonemergency call centers) may benefit one racial group over another; however, there is some indication that Hispanics may use these systems less as requests move from call centers to the Internet and smartphones. Consistent with prior research, the findings show that poorer neighborhoods are less likely to take advantage of 311 service, with the notable exception of smartphone utilization. The implications for citizen participation in coproduction and bridging the digital divide are discussed.     

The Structure of Utility in Spatial Models of Voting

Empirical models of spatial voting allow legislators' locations in a policy or ideological space to be inferred from their roll‐call votes. These are typically random utility models where the features of the utility functions other than the ideal points are assumed rather than estimated. In this article, we first consider a model in which legislators' utility functions are allowed to be a mixture of the two most commonly assumed utility functions: the quadratic function and the Gaussian function assumed by NOMINATE. Across many roll‐call data sets, we find that legislators' utility functions are estimated to be very nearly Gaussian. We then relax the usual assumption that each legislator is equally sensitive to policy change and find that extreme legislators are generally more sensitive to policy change than their more centrally located counterparts. This result suggests that extremists are more ideologically rigid while moderates are more likely to consider influences that arise outside liberal‐conservative conflict.