Identifying variation in police officer behavior between juveniles and adults

This research explores the basis of officer decision making during encounters with juvenile suspects, and compares these encounters to those between police and adults. Specifically, two types of officer behavior are examined: the decision to arrest, and the exercise of authority. Officer behavior during encounters with juvenile suspects is compared and contrasted to encounters with adult suspects. Results from multivariate analyses find juveniles are significantly more likely to be arrested than adults; however, officers do not exercise different levels of authority during interactions with juvenile suspects. Results also indicate that the factors shaping officer behavior varies across age of suspect, namely, the community context and officer's race offer significantly different influences on juveniles than on adults. Other factors also influence officer discretion differently depending on the age of the suspect, most noteworthy being disrespectful demeanor. The results indicate that police officer behavior during encounters with juvenile suspects is very different than during encounters with adults.     

Beyond opportunism: Intermediary loyalty in regulation and governance

Regulators and other governors rely on intermediaries to set and implement policies and to regulate targets. Existing literatures focus heavily on intermediaries of a single type – Opportunists, motivated solely by self-interest. But intermediaries can also be motivated by different types of loyalty: to leaders (Vassals), to policies (Zealots), or to institutions (Mandarins). While all three types of loyalists are resistant to the traditional problems of opportunism (slacking and capture), each brings pathologies of its own. We explain the behavioral logic of each type of loyalty and analyze the risks and rewards of different intermediary loyalties – both for governors and for the public interest. We illustrate our claims with examples drawn from many different realms of regulation and governance.     

The relationship between serial sexual murder and autoerotic asphyxiation

This case series documents and examines the association between autoerotic asphyxiation, sadomasochism, and serial sexual murderers. Autoerotic asphyxiation, along with other paraphilias found in this population, is reviewed. Five cases of serial sexual killers who engaged in autoerotic asphyxiation were identified worldwide: four from the United States and one from Russia. Case reports for each are provided. All (100%) were found to have sexual sadism in addition to autoerotic asphyxiation. Furthermore, two (40%) had bondage fetishism, and two (40%) had transvestic fetishism, consistent with these paraphilias co-occurring in those with autoerotic asphyxiation. Overall the group averaged 4.0 lifetime paraphilias. Some possible relationships were observed between the offenders' paraphilic orientation and their modus operandi, e.g., all of these serial killers strangled victims-suggesting an association between their sadistic and asphyxiative paraphilic interests. The overlap of seemingly polar opposite paraphilias in this sample--sexual sadism and autoerotic asphyxiation--is explored from a historical and clinical perspective. Multiple commonalities shared between these five offenders and serial sexual murderers in general are addressed. A primary limitation of this study is its small sample size and empirical basis; the results may not be generalizable beyond the sample. The findings from this study support the supposition that crime scene behaviors often reflect paraphilic disturbances in those who commit serial sexual homicides.     

Associations in the Embrace of an Authoritarian State: State Domination of Society?

According to conventional wisdom, associations that are closely linked with and penetrated by an authoritarian state are significant chiefly as symbols of state domination of society. Yet a review of empirical evidence suggests that the nature and significance of incorporated or co-opted associations varies much more widely than the conventional perspective suggests. Not only are close association-state linkages sometimes looked upon favorably by societal participants, but some independent societal associations actually seek to be co-opted by an authoritarian state. Moreover, incorporated associations often have more to do with strategies by state agencies and officials to accomplish parochial goals than with state efforts to control society. This article elucidates a new analytical perspective for understanding the dynamics and functioning of incorporated associations, citing a wide range of empirical cases to show how this perspective facilitates a better understanding of the kinds of state-society engagement that occur within and through incorporated associations. The article concludes with a brief analysis of associations in contemporary China that builds on the preceding discussion, illuminating the importance of local-level interactions in determining the character of incorporated associations. Kenneth W. Foster is a Ph.D. candidate in the department of political Science at the University of California, Berkeley. His research interests include state-society relations in developing countries, comparative public administration and organizational behavior, and the politics of China and Taiwan. His Ph.D. dissertation focuses on the relationship between bureaucratic processes and the emergence of associations in contemporary China.     

Rereading the Public: Isolationism and Internationalism Revisited

This is the first installment in what we hope will be a recurring series of Forums in ISP. In each segment we intend to provide an outlet for peer-reviewed dialogue and debate on important topics in the field and to allow our readers to discuss material previously printed in the pages of ISP. Below are two comments on "Challenging U.S. Policymakers' Image of an Isolationist Public" by Steven Kull and Clay Ramsay published in ISP 1:1. Both comments raise a number of important issues pertaining to the relationship of public opinion and foreign policy, and also address more general questions of domestic impact on foreign policy outputs and several significant methodological questions about approaches to polling. The Forum begins first with comments by Richard Clark and Kenneth Dautrich, is followed by comments from Shoon Murray, and concludes with a response from Kull and Ramsay.     

China's Future Economic Regionalization

This paper investigates China's economic growth potentials and limitation up to 2020 and recommends a trend of economic regionalization. A sustainable growing economy is a necessity for China's future stability. The growth sustainability of the Chinese economy depends essentially on its continued commitments to institutional reform and economic deregulation. China's relaxation of government intervention in economic activities has led and will be leading China to decentralize its central governmental authority over economic planning and control. This will consequently stimulate the emergence of regional economies in Mainland China. In the next two decades, there will likely be 10 regional economies with relatively independent industrial structures emerging in Greater China (or the Chinese Economic Area of Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan and the Mainland) as a result of economic liberalization and decentralization.     

Outsiders’ Responsibility to Answer for Crime

R. A. Duff has revived the tradition of “answerability” for crime. In this philosophical and jurisprudential tradition, a person is answerable to the criminal law of a state and the process of that state’s courts only if there is some appropriate relationship between the state and the person. Duff’s great contribution has been to develop the idea of accountability of persons to a state or other polity as a philosophical notion which, he argues, underlies all just implementations of criminal law. Duff has centered his views around the relationship between the citizen and the polity (in today’s world, the state) to which the citizen belongs. His focus has been on insiders, rather than outsiders. This article argues that, in the current world, the relationship among cocitizens, outsiders, and the state is based in part on the moral idea that the state exists to protect citizens from evil acts, specifically those that we call public and criminal wrongs, wherever the acts originate. Outsiders understand this, and understand that states other than their own use criminal law to protect their citizens. Duff’s writings contain an idea which turns out to be very useful in cases of outside acts, even though he does not apply it directly to them. Some states or other entities may have only an incomplete relationship with an accused person (compared with the relationship of citizen and state), but nonetheless may have the moral and political authority to try her for crime. This paper extends this notion to show that such incomplete relationships exist in a great many common cases of outsiders (noncitizens who act outside the territory of a state) who commit crime. These relationships support criminal prosecution of outsiders, so long as we admit that protection of persons from crime is a legitimate goal of the criminal law.     

Bureaucratic Responsiveness to LGBT Americans

Marriage rights were extended to same-sex couples in the United States in 2015. However, anecdotes of bureaucratic noncompliance (in the form of bias or denial of license issuance) raise the possibility that de jure marriage equality has not led to equality in practice. We investigate this by conducting a nationwide audit experiment of local-level marriage license–granting officials in the United States. These officials vary in the constituencies they serve, as well as how they are selected, allowing us to evaluate long-standing hypotheses about bureaucratic responsiveness. Overall, we find no evidence of systematic discrimination against same-sex couples—regardless of responsiveness measure, institutions, ideology, or prior state legal history. We find, however, that among same-sex couples, officials tended to be more responsive to lesbian couples. In contrast to evidence in other areas of service provision, such as policing and federal assistance programs, we find bureaucrats tasked with provision of marriage services show little evidence of discrimination.     

Social inequalities without class cleavages in Latin America’s neoliberal era

Social inequalities have deepened in Latin America over the past several decades, yet an erosion of class cleavages has occurred in the political arena. During the era of import-substitution industrialization (ISI), “stratified” cleavage structures based on class distinctions emerged in a subset of Latin American countries where party systems were reconfigured by the rise of a mass-based, labor-mobilizing party. These nations typically experienced more severe economic crises during the transition from ISI to neoliberalism than nations that retained elitist party systems with “segmented,” cross-class cleavage structures. They also experienced greater political upheaval, as neoliberal critical junctures produced an erosion of stratified cleavages along their structural, organizational, and cultural dimensions in the labor-mobilizing cases, while leaving the segmented cleavages of elitist systems relatively unscathed. The Latin American experience differs from that of Europe, where strong labor movements and labor-backed parties were associated with superior economic performance during periods of economic adjustment. It also challenges Duverger's notion of an organizational “contagion from the Left,” as the dramatic weakening of labor movements and the shift away from mass-based party organizations have caused party systems to converge on elitist organizational models during the neoliberal era.