Recalling the Fall of the Berlin Wall

Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the triumphant celebrations of the West, a new chapter of history has opened featuring the rising powers of Asia, led by China. Though embracing free markets, China has looked to its Confucian traditions instead of liberal democracy as the best route to good governance. Will China manage to achieve high growth and a harmonious society through a strong state and long‐range planning that puts messy Western democracy and its short‐term mindset to shame? Or, in the end, will the weak rule of law and absence of political accountability in a one‐party state undermine its promise? Francis Fukuyama and Kishore Mahbubani, the Singaporean thinker who has become the apostle of non‐Western modernity, debate these issues. In this section we also republish a collective memoir by George H.W. Bush, Mikhail Gorbachev, Margaret Thatcher and François Mitterrand, recalling their fears and hopes two decades ago as they brought the Cold War to an end.     

Regulation as the Mother of Innovation: The Case of SO2 Control*

This paper explores the relationship between government actions and innovation in an environmental control technology—sulfur dioxide (SO₂) control technologies for power plants—through the use of complementary research methods. Its findings include the importance of regulation and the anticipation of regulation in stimulating invention; the greater role of regulation, as opposed to public R&D expenditures, in inducing invention; the importance of regulatory stringency in determining technical pathways and stimulating collaboration; and the importance of regulatory‐driven technological diffusion in contributing to operating experience and post‐adoption innovation in cost and performance. A number of policy implications are drawn from this work.     

THE USE AND EFFECTS OF FINANCIAL PENALTIES IN MUNICIPAL COURTS

With prison, jail, and probation caseloads overloaded, financial penalties appeal as alternative sanctions. Using probation data for cases sentenced in municipal courts, this paper presents regression analyses suggesting that judges tended to employ rational discretion in imposing economic sanctions, for monetary assessments without jail were most likely to be given to low-risk offenders and assignment of probation alone and jail terms was most strongly influenced by offense. The amount of the financial sanction was also significantly related to the type of crime. Controlling for individual attributes and offense, the odds of subsequent arrest and incarceration were significantly less for those given a financial penalty than for those receiving a jail sentence.     

DELINQUENT PEERS,BELIEFS, AND DELINQUENT BEHAVIOR: A LONGITUDINAL TEST OF INTERACTIONAL THEORY*

Three theoretical models of the interrelations among associations with delinquent peers, delinquent beliefs, and delinquent behavior are examined. The socialization model views delinquent peers and beliefs as causally prior to delinquent behavior, whereas the selection model hypothesizes that associations with delinquent peers and delinquent beliefs are a result of delinquent behavior. The interactional model combines aspects of both the socialization and the selection models, positing that these variables have bidirectional causal influences on one another over time. Data to test for reciprocal causality are drawn from three waves of the Rochester Youth Development Study. Results suggest that simple unidirectional models are inadequate. Associating with delinquent peers leads to increases in delinquency via the reinforcing environment of the peer network. Engaging in delinquency, in turn, leads to increases in associations with delinquent peers. Finally, delinquent beliefs exert lagged effects on peers and behavior, which tend in turn to “harden” the formation of delinquent beliefs.     

Christine Parker's Peach: The Politics of Filming Desire in 1990's New Zealand

Christine Parker's 1993 live-action short begins with music, the kind of repetitive, slow, percussion-heavy, saxophone-dominated score usually associated with low-budget porn. The film's opening visual, however, is a close-up not of the expected soft flesh, but of the skin of a soft fruit. Lest the viewer miss the joke-i.e., that the rounded, indented, rosy surfaces on display are not attached to a human body at all-the main title Peach appears, underlining the witty substitution. As the exaggeratedly sensual music continues, there is a long dissolve to a fixed frame shot of green background foliage, while a truck drives into view and approaches the camera. The front grille soon fills the screen, as does the truck's license plate, which remains in sight for several seconds. It reads "PF 9037."