Party and governance in the Arab republics

Abstract

By focusing on political memoirs as an important source, the article deals with the ruling party and governance in the Arab republics, whether they had a one-party system such as Iraq and Syria, or a multi-party system such as Egypt and Tunisia. However, one country among the republics, Libya, annulled political parties and parliament and created its own unique system of governance. Through memoirs of party members, parliamentary opponents, and ministers, the article analyses the substantial role of the ruling parties in perpetuating the regimes. While the triangular relationship between the leadership, the party, and the bureaucracy differed from one republic to another, the overall structure of governance did not vary widely, except in the case of Libya.     

The statistical prediction of violent behavior

Considerable attention in the popular and professional literature has focused on the relative costs and benefits of using public protectionist versus civil libertarian models of social control. In this article, we develop statistical analogs of these models to predict violent behavior among samples of defendants found incompetent to stand trial in New York State. The societal and personal costs (errors of prediction) of each model are compared and their implications for clinical practice and social policy are discussed.This research was supported in part by PHS Grant MH 20367 from the NIMH Center for Studies of Crime and Delinquency. The assistance of Thomas Arvanites in data analysis and the comments of Monroe Lefkowitz and Mary Evans Melick on earlier drafts of this paper are gratefully acknowledged.     

Some measurements of achievement orientation

A series of interrelated studies of achievement orientation, stemming from theoretical work by Kluckhohn and Parsons, are compared. It is found that this orientation consists of at least four separate components: (1) “activism” or “mastery”; (2) “trust”; (3) “independence of family”; and (4) “occupational primacy” or “accomplishment.” The first three are positively correlated with one another and with socioeconomic status; the fourth is negatively correlated with the others and with status. The findings are interpreted in the light of theoretical problems about achievement orientation, social mobility, and economic development.