Electoral rules and manufacturing legislative supermajority: evidence from Singapore

Electoral authoritarian regimes usually preserve the dominance of the ruling party through electoral fraud, violence and intimidation. This paper focuses on the subtler forms of manipulation that undermine the electoral integrity and democratic outcomes. Specifically, we examine how an unusual electoral rule, involving multimember districts elected through plurality bloc voting for party slates, exaggerates the legislative seat shares of the People’s Action Party (PAP) in Singapore. This rule, used also by other electoral authoritarian regimes, facilitates the manipulation of district magnitude and gerrymandering, especially the ‘stacking’ form, to produce a large disproportionality which distorts the seats–votes linkage. It operates in an undemocratic fashion by precluding the opposition from gaining anything but token seats as long as the PAP remains the plurality-winning party. The importance of this electoral rule and its manipulation has been overlooked in current work that emphasises redistributive strategies or coercion to repress electoral competition.     

Interpersonal problem-solving skills in battered,counseling, and control women

The present study was designed to examine the interpersonal problem-solving skills of battered women, while controlling for the effects of depression and anxiety. Battered, Counseling, and Control women were administered an interpersonal problem-solving inventory and asked to generate as many behavioral options as possible for each problem and then to select the one option they would chose to use in the given situation. All options were rated for effectiveness by two “blind” raters. Subjects were also administered the BETA intelligence test, the Beck Depression Inventory, and the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory Form-Y. Analysis of variance found no significant differences between the groups for intelligence, but the Counseling women were significantly more depressed and anxious than the Battered or Control women. Analysis of covariance (using BDI and STAI scores as covariates) found that Battered women: (1) generated fewer total options, (2) generated fewer effective options, and (3) chose fewer effective options for use in the situation than both Counseling and Control women. These findings provide indirect support for a general problem-solving skills deficit in battered women and reinforce the importance of problem-solving skills training for battered women.     

Economic cycles and punishment: Unemployment and imprisonment

Research on the relations between the labor market and forms of punishment, inaugurated by Rusche, has developed along two lines, broadly speaking: first, the historical evolution of the links between the structure of the labor market and the structure of punishment and secondly, the conjunctural variations in admissions to prison and in prison populations with fluctuations in the employment situation. The present study is of the latter type. It stems from observations on two aspects of the French situation:

The concomitant long-term evolution (1875–1985) of curves for unemployment and for prison populations, given the downward trend in imprisonment rates until recent years.

The constant over-representation, among prisoners, of groups whose position on the labor market is insecure.

The link between unemployment and imprisonment was tested by multiple regression using data on economic, demographic, penal and correctional aspects (French figures, 1920–1985). The results show the participation of demographic factors in the variations in prison populations. They point to a significant correlation between variations in unemployment (in volume and rate) and the evolution of prison populations, all else being equal in terms of recorded crime. Analysis of the functioning of the criminal justice system, showing the existence of an internal subsystem characterized by its procedures — pretrial detention —, the offenses — street crime —, the sentences — imprisonment — and the social characteristics of those convicted, suggests an approach to the interpretation of these findings.     

Spies and Scientologists: ASIO and a controversial minority religion in Cold War Australia, 1956–83

Among all the controversial New Religious Movements to emerge since the Second World War, the Church of Scientology has arguably been subject to more scrutiny by domestic and international intelligence agencies than any other non-Islamic alternative religious group. While owing to the nature of intelligence gathering scholarly accounts of this have often been one-dimensional and brief, the situation in Australia resulting from the Archives Act 1983 has meant that historians of both intelligence agencies and new religions now have access to a significant amount of documentation illustrating the interactions between the Church of Scientology and the Australian Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO) for the period from 1956 to 1983. This period witnessed vacillating fortunes for the Church of Scientology which saw it become the subject of legislative bans in three Australian state jurisdictions during the late 1960s, as well as it launching a high profile, but ultimately unsuccessful, legal case against ASIO in 1979. While never considered a serious security risk by ASIO, the Church of Scientology played a minor role in a number of important events in the history of ASIO particularly during the 1970s, including participating in a wider activist campaign which sought to curtail ASIO’s operations during this period and making submissions to the first Royal Commission into the Australian Intelligence Services under Justice Robert Marsden Hope.     

Theory for Accounting or Accounting Theory: An Essay on the Interaction between Economics and Accounting

The disciplines of general economics and business economics have been growing apart. Business economics has a more practice oriented and multidisciplinary focus. The background for this paper is the question whether, and in what manner, general economics can contribute to the development of business economics. This paper delves into the roots of the old-institutional economic school, in particular into the ideas of Schmoller. More specifically, it is a preliminary investigation into the question whether the insights of the old-institutional school can have a bearing on (management) accounting research. Some future directions in this respect are suggested at the end.     

In a Violent World a Just World Makes Sense: The Case of “Senseless Violence” in The Netherlands

Recent violent incidents in The Netherlands caused nationwide debates about their purported senselessness. Building on Lerner's Just World Theory (Lerner, 1980, The Belief in a Just World. A Fundamental Delusion, Plenum Press, New York), the present experiment sought to delineate the circumstances under which violence is perceived as senseless by outside observers. Participants were more likely to perceive an act of violence as senseless and to identify with the victim when there was no opportunity to blame the victim and when the victim was uninvolved with the perpetrator. These findings suggest that acts of violence are perceived as senseless when attributional strategies fail to uphold observers' belief in a just world.     

Bringing Soul to International Negotiation

In this article, the author calls for a shift in training for international commercial negotiation, away from the standard Western linear, rational, fact-oriented style toward training that makes room for "soul." As used here, the term "soul" combines several concepts that integrate learning on human cognition, cultural intelligence, and effectiveness in international management. The article discusses soul in terms of three components: emotion and subjectivity, deep narratives rooted in faith and ethnic traditions, and cultural intelligence. The article presents three negotiation scenarios from around the globe, contrasting first-generation training approaches to next-generation training approaches that would value the unconscious processes of decision making.