Development of Communitarian Regulation in the Chemical Industry

This study explores the development of communitarian regulation in the American chemical industry by focusing on the history and challenges facing Responsible Care, the leading example of regulation by an industry association on the environmental scene today.     

Macroeconomic conditions and committee re-election rates

The traditional literature on the link between the macro economy and House elections follows Kramer (1971) and assumes all members of the President's party are equally vulnerable to voter wrath caused by economic changes. Using Presidential Party return rates from 10 House committees over the time period 1916–1996, I find the impact of economic conditions at the polls varies by committee. Generally, committees that manage money or provide a public good are the most sensitive to economic fluctuations. Contrastingly, members of the Public Works committee and the Rules committee are more insulated from electoral culpability due to economic fluctuations.     

The 2001 “spy” plane incident revisited: the Chinese perspective

The 2001 “spy” plane incident was probably the most serious military incident in Sino-American relations since the 1970s, and it generated a crisis in the already brittle relationship since the new Bush administration came into office. This article attempts to revisit this incident from the Chinese perspective and provides some insight into the understanding of the Chinese foreign policy behavior and position on Sino-American relations. It presents the respective arguments concerning the responsibilities of the incident, explores the Chinese historical memory of US hegemonic behavior, and examines the Chinese perspective and attitude towards the incident and their causes through a study of the reactions of the Chinese government and the Chinese people to the incident.¹ He is the founding editor of theHong Kong Journal of Social Sciences and theJournal of Comparative Asian Development. He is also Guest Lecturer at the School of Government, Zhongshan University in Guangzhou, China. The author wishes to thank anonymous reveiwers for their helpful comments made on earlier drafts of this paper.     

Rating the intrusiveness of law enforcement searches and seizures

This article presents the results of a survey that asked 217 subjects to rate the “intrusiveness” of 50 different types of law enforcement investigative techniques, taken primarily from U.S. Supreme Court cases. Respondents disagreed strongly with many of the assumptions the Court makes about privacy and autonomy. Additionally, three theories are developed to help explain perceptions of intrusiveness.     

Perceived responsibility and the least of evils principle

In a 3×3×2 factorial experiment subjects were asked to make a series of judgments about a hypothetical defendant. Varied in theinvestigation were the coercive characteristics of the situation for the defendant, the amount of harm done to the victim, and the legitimate alternatives available to the defendant to meet the demands of coercion. Observers judged the actor harshly for performing an illegal action when a legitimate alternative was available and when the amount of harm to the victim exceeded the level of coercion used against thedefendant. However, the defendant was exonerated from blame and punishment when legitimate alternatives were not available and when coercio level exceeded harm level. The implications of the findings were discussed in relationship to both jury decision making and the attribution of responsibility literature.