Travelling law: Sex,drugs and Montesquieu

With thanks to Jatinder Barn with whom I have discussed this article throughout. Thanks also to Peter Fitzpatrick for his initial invitation and subsequent encouragement, and to my friend and colleague Paul Gilroy for introducingPersian Letters to our teaching syllabus and hence to my library. I retain sole responsibility for any inaccuracies arising from the research and any mistakes in argumentation.     

State Crimes of Previous Regimes: Knowledge, Accountability, and the Policing of the Past

The policy of lustration is set in the context of responses to abuses of power by previous regimes. Using examples from three recent forms of social reconstruction (in Latin America, the former communist states, and South Africa), the author reviews the “justice in transition” debate. How do societies going through democratization confront the human rights violations committed by the previous regime? Five aspects of this debate are reviewed: (1) truth: establishing and confronting the knowledge of what happened in the past; (2) justice: making offenders accountable for their past violations through three possible methods: punishment through the criminal law, compensation and restitution, and mass disqualification such as lustration; (3) impunity: giving amnesty to previous offenders; (4) expiation; and (5) reconciliation and reconstruction. A concluding discussion raises the implications of the subject for the study of time and social control.     

Municipal Default Patterns: An Historical Study

The incidence of municipal default is closely related to the business cycles in this country. During national depressions nearly all sectors and regions experience defaults, although not with equal severity. Regional borrowing behavior during the boom years preceding depression determines which regions will be most severely affected by national depression. The history of state and local borrowing is briefly surveyed with attention to four major periods of economic expansion and the national depressions that followed. Regional development cycles are then reviewed with a focus on several cases: special district defaults both at the turn of the century and today; Detroit at the beginning of the automobile industry; and Florida in the 1920s. New York City and Cleveland are analyzed in the context of urban crises. Revenue bond defaults, including toll roads and the Washington Public Power and Supply System (WPPSS) are analyzed for special recurring patterns.     

Reflections of a bourgeois Menshevik

He is author of The End of Ideology; The Radical Right; The Coming of Post-Industrial Society; The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism;and The Social Sciences since World War Two.     

Police uniforms,attitudes, and citizens

This study focuses on identifying the relationship between the citizen's attitude toward the police and the police uniform and authoritarian attitude. The perceived authority associated with the police uniform has been an essential ingredient of the police role. Consequently, the police uniform influences attitudes and behaviors of the wearers as well as the citizens with whom they interact. The citizen's attitude is negatively affected by the traditional military style police uniform in conjunction with the authoritarian attitude exhibited by police officers in performance of their duties. Consequently, when the uniform and officer's attitude are altered, there will be a corresponding change in the citizen's attitude toward the police. The attitude of the officer, in conjunction with the uniform, exerts considerably more influence on the citizen's attitude than does the uniform, officer's attitude, or any additional factor acting independently.