The Russian Election of 1993: Public Opinion and the Transition Experience

Two British specialists on Russia report the results of a nationwide survey of 2,030 Russian adults, randomly chosen from each of 50 provinces of the Russian Federation. A survey instrument containing 300 questions was administered in face-to-face interviews during summer 1993, and explored attitudes toward the market, privatization, social order, minority rights, and nationalism. Testing three alternative explanations for the results of the December 1993 Russian elections, the authors present a nuanced argument that the Russian public has been drawing negative lessons about market democracy from the transition itself, as experienced since January 1992. A higher voter turnout, they find, would have augmented the strength of anti-government parties and candidates. Journal of Economic literature, Classification Numbers: H19, P29     

Excavations at UR, 1929–30

Asia and the Road Ahead: Issues for the Major Powers. By Robert A. Scalapino. University of California Press, 1976. Pp. x +337. Map. Index. £7.10.

A Peace Denied: the United States, Vietnam, and the Paris Agreement. By Gareth Porter. Indiana University Press, 1975. $15.     

“A filmmaker and his film”

Abstract

I'm writing this review as a new-found devotee of filmmaker Kidlat Tahimik and as an old friend of Eric de Guia. I say this to lay out my prejudices and at the same time to try to explain my amazement at the transformation of Eric de Guia into Kidlat Tahimik.     

Bureaucratic Behavior in the Local Public Sector: A Revealed Preference Approach

Public sector bureaucratic utility is typically assumed to be a function ofbudget size or government employment. Although intuitively appealing, thereare no definitive direct tests of the assumption. To fill this gap, thispaper exploits data that isolate resource allocation decisions made by localpublic sector bureaucrats. We use revealed preference theory to find thatthe bureaucracy behaves ``as if'' bureaucratic utility is an increasingfunction of employment across government functions and public spending,providing direct evidence justifying the popular assumption in theoreticalmodels of government behavior.     

Pax Americana: Bumping into Diplomatic Culture

The existence of a deeply rooted, state-based diplomatic culture with its own distinctive institutions, values, and norms has been neglected in both the study and the practice of international relations, especially in the United States. This neglect has had consequences in recent years, notably in connection with the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Using Iraq as a case study, I argue that the United States transgressed five norms of diplomatic culture that are widely accepted: the use of force only as last resort, transparency, continuous dialogue, multilateralism, and civility. Criticisms of these transgressions and the US responses to these criticisms suggest that even a paramount America cannot avoid diplomatic culture's pervasive influence.     

Tolerance and Intolerance, 1976–1998

Early students of political tolerance projected a rapid rise in levels of tolerance, but subsequent research has failed to offer conclusive evidence regarding whether tolerance has, in fact, increased. The General Social Survey (GSS) included the same 15 dichotomous tolerance items in the period 1976–1998, seemingly permitting assessment of trends in tolerance through examination of a standard 0–15 scale. Unfortunately, the validity of these data is uncertain because we cannot rule out the possibility that changes in affect toward the five GSS target groups, not true changes in tolerance, drive movement in the longitudinal series. To address this problem, we reexamine the GSS data from the perspective of past discussions of the meaning of tolerance and intolerance. We argue that that the GSS scale captures two aspects of tolerance: whether respondents are tolerant or intolerant; and, among the intolerant, the breadth and depth of their intolerance. We further argue that the first of these dimensions can be measured validly using the GSS data. Our analyses reveal that, at most, tolerance has increased only marginally in the period 1976–1998.     

Reintegrative Shaming, Procedural Justice, and Recidivism: The Engagement of Offenders' Psychological Mechanisms in the Canberra RISE Drinking-and-Driving Experiment

Advocates of restorative justice (RJ) hypothesize that the diversion of criminal cases to RJ conferences should be more effective in lowering the rate of reoffending than traditional prosecution in court processing because the conferences more effectively engage the psychological mechanisms of reintegrative shaming and procedural justice. This study uses longitudinal data from the drinking-and-driving study in the Australian Reintegrative Shaming Experiments (RISE) to evaluate the long-term impact of reintegrative shaming and procedural justice on support for the law and on later recidivism as assessed through the use of police records and by self-report. Analysis first suggests that there is no direct effect of experimental condition on later recidivism. However, it further suggests that both traditional court-based prosecution and RJ conferences increase support for the law and lower the rate of future reoffending when they engage the social psychological mechanisms of reintegrative shaming and procedural justice and thereby increase the legitimacy of the law. Hence, the results argue for the potential value of procedures such as the RJ conference but indicate that those procedures will only achieve their objectives if they are effectively designed and implemented.     

Effectiveness of citizen police academies in changing the attitudes, beliefs, and behavior of citizen participants

The purpose of this study was to determine whether the citzen police academies (CPA) in two cities were effective in changing participants’ attitudes, beliefs, and behavior toward police. Pre-and post-test questionnaires were used to obtain participants’ ratings of their attitudes and beliefs concerning police officers and their willingness to cooperate with police. Participants were also asked to indicate what cooperative behaviors they had actually engaged in before and/or during the CPA. At the end of the CPA, participants in both cities rated themselves as having more positive attitudes toward police, and more willingness to engage in behaviors that would help police. There was also an increase in actual performance of some cooperative behaviors during the CPA. These changes did not seem to be overly dependent on the jurisdiction (large versus small city), the demographics of the CPA participants, or the specific characteristics of the CPA curriculum.