Black electoral power,white resistance,and legislative behavior

This paper examines the relationship between black electoral power and white legislative behavior in Mississippi. The initial theoretical foundation is provided by the work of William R. Keech. Keech's implicit model is presented and a more elaborate model which views black payoffs as a function of black electoral power and white resistance, and the political generation of white legislators is developed and tested. A typology of electoral contexts is constructed, and the impact of such contexts on the relationships between the key variables is examined. The findings suggest that the processes responsible for the curvilinear relationship between black electoral power and black payoffs are more complex than previous research has implied and that the nature of electoral contexts may have a substantial influence on these processes.     

Friedman's theory of income redistribution up after being down for the count

Many years ago McKenzie set out to expose the hidden assumptions underlying the orthodox case for the collectivization of charity as put forward by Friedman. In doing so he argued that collectivization may reduce the degree of transfers and this will necessarily make the poor worse off. I demonstrate that McKenzie's analysis contains hidden assumptions of its own and that even if there is a reduction in the level of transfers it does not necessarily follow that this will result in a Pareto inferior redistribution.     

The MMPI-2 and statisfactory police academy performance: Differences and correlations

The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) and its later revision (MMPI-2) have been the most frequently employed psychological instrument in the selection of law enforcement officers (Bartol, 1996). In this study, state police trooper cadets were given a broad number of measures including the MMPI-2 prior to academy admission. Their performance at the police academy was then analyzed and related to their performance on the MMPI-2. Using step-wise multiple linear regression. Hy3 and Sc4 scores produced significant negative correlation’s with academy final grade point average. Student’s unpaired 1-tests between successful and unsuccessful cadets revealed differences between the groups for several MMPI-2 subscales including, but not limited to, K, MA, and SI, Lastly, logistic regression revealed no single subscale, or combination of subscales, which significantly predicted classification of the cadets as either successful or unsuccessful based on their MMPI-2 scores alone. Author Note: Elements of this article have been presented at the 27^th Annual Conference of the Society of Police and Criminal Psychology in Portland, OR, October 1998.     

Taxes, Subsidies, and Listeners Like You: Public Policy and Contributions to Public Radio

Public radio in the United States receives both direct and indirect government funding. Direct subsidies come in the form of lump-sum and matching grants, while indirect subsidies proceed from tax revenues forgone on tax-deductible private donations. Each of these sources of government money affects charitable giving to public radio. This article estimates both of these effects, using data on 91 public radio stations in the United States during 1995. Data analysis shows that public funding to stations has a positive impact on private giving, but this impact rapidly decreases as the level of government subsidies increases. The analysis also indicates that increases in state tax rates correspond with significantly higher donation levels. This article explores the implications of these and other findings for policy makers, public administrators, and nonprofit managers.     

Can we identify a benevolent hegemon?

Analysts frequently assess the underlying character of the state with the largest concentration of material capabilities in the system—the hegemon. Scholars typically differentiate a hegemon that is benevolent from one that is predatory. In the current era, many have wondered about how to best characterise the United States. Scholars became particularly interested in this question during the George W Bush administration and reached strikingly different answers. This article aims to provide greater clarity regarding how we reach a judgment about the underlying character of a hegemon, in general, and the United States, in particular. The first section analyses the policies that the hegemon adopts towards the global economic system. The second section considers the hegemon's policies in the security realm, focusing on the key issue of how unilateralism should be conceptualised. The final section discusses the potential significance the ‘hegemonic reference point’—that is, the comparison that is made between the hegemon and the leading alternative leader of the global system.     

Mediterranean neo‐democracies and the opinion‐policy nexus

This article empirically evaluates the previously unresearched relationship between mass public opinion and public policy in the Mediterranean neo‐democracies. By studying almost 250 issues over the last decade, the nature of contemporary democracy in Spain, Portugal and Greece is revealed in relation to the overall consistency between majority preferences and government action. In addition, the opinion‐policy nexus is explored in regard to the potential impact of alternative institutional structures, landslide majorities, different categories of issues (e.g., redistributive, foreign policy), and the partisan composition of the government (i.e., socialist versus non‐socialist).     

Bureaucratic Inefficiency: Failure to Capture the Efficiencies of Outsourcing

This paper analyzes the political economy ofoutsourcing by 16 federal bureaus during 1981-96. Inan era of restricted budgets and budget balancing, thepaper questions why federal bureaus did not exploitfully the efficiencies of outsourcing. It proves thatfederal bureaus can achieve technical and costefficiency through outsourcing when contracts can benearly fully specified. Federal bureaus outsource byobtaining inputs to their production processes throughcontracts with competitive market producing units. Econometric results substantiate the hypothesis that``institutions matter,'' and reveal that bureausachieve varying levels of technical efficiency throughdifferent levels of outsourcing.     

Trying differently: A relationship-centered approach to representing clients with cognitive challenges

This article demonstrates the usefulness of an innovative framework called "Relationship-Centered Lawyering" to enhancing real world legal practice. It uses the example of lawyers, particularly criminal defense lawyers, who often deal with clients with cognitive challenges. The article developed out of a series of workshops conducted jointly by the co-authors, an American law professor with a social work background, and a Canadian criminal defense lawyer and family mediator who is an international expert on Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder and other Neuro-Behavioral Disorders (FA/NB). The paper describes the relational theory Brooks developed (along with Robert Madden), along with the science of cognitive impairments, with a specific focus on FA/NB. The paper provides two illustrations of the relational framework by explaining Boulding's strategy of creating what is called the "external brain" and his techniques of relational interviewing.