Responding to the New Europe and the Crisis: The Adaptation of Sub-national Governments' Strategies and its Effects on Inter-governmental Relations in Spain

This article analyses the evolution of the institutional setting that the Spanish multi-level system provides for regional European Union (EU) adaptation, and the effects that recent developments of the EU (the Eastern enlargement, the Treaty reform process and the Euro-zone crisis) have had on the more or less pro-European positions and adaptive strategies of Spanish regions and on inter-governmental arrangements. It thus describes the increasing institutionalization of regional participation and EU policy coordination, both at the domestic and supra-national level, and the evolution of regional strategies, looking at its effects both on the degree of vertical and horizontal coordination, and the actual relative power and discretion of both levels of government. It argues that regional strategies have increasingly become more defensive and less pro-European and that increasing participation in European matters seemed to have favoured multi-lateralism and increased coordination without having produced further centralization until the recent crisis and associated budget consolidation targets induced new coordination requirements and a centralization of power towards the central government and EU authorities. This has, as a side-effect, reinforced some centrifugal tendencies of the system and therefore may affect the operation of IGR.     

论恐怖主义犯罪的发展趋势及防治策略

恐怖主义犯罪具有恐怖性、破坏性、政治性或社会性、新闻效应性等特点,呈发生日益频繁、对象趋于泛化、威胁范围日益扩大、危害日益严重的发展趋势。防治恐怖主义犯罪,要注重标本兼治、预防与打击相结合,强化反恐情报的主导和预防作用,推进反恐法律体系建设以及国际合作。     

民主化内生力量视阈下的网络群体性事件探析

迄今为止,民主是人类追求政治文明和现代化进程中最好的制度选择,是中国特色社会主义制度建设的根基。网络群体性事件直接显示出我国网络民主的发展,对中国的民主化的发展有其双重作用。网络群体事件频发的原因是错综复杂的,民主化内生力量的发展不容忽视,民主本身也是一种自身发展中不断纠正和趋于完善的机制。因此,在应对网络群体性事件过程中,要坚持有经有权的网络民主发展理念,形成危机常态化的网络民主善治措施,建立长效的政府与网民信任合作对话机制,提高公民的民主意识和民主能力。     

Strategies moulding brand reputation building in the early 21st century

Abstract

Since the mid-1990s, the changing political, economic and social environment and globalisation have contributed to change business behaviour in South Africa. Nowadays, business strategies are built alongside sustainable business goals, with renewed emphasis on quality and brand reputation management. Business intelligence (BI) systems and research demand show clear emphasis on customer brand franchising and brand citizenship in particular. Brands are no longer used only as marketing communication tools. Nowadays, brand companies seem well aware of stakeholders’ concerns with non-financial business aspects and are responding through re-branding, improved customer relations and good corporate citizenship behaviour. Consequently, direct customer feedback via customer satisfaction and franchise-building research, as well as corporate citizenship image and perception surveys have emerged as key research tools that generate business intelligence used to build and protect company reputation. The way in which contemporary research designs are constructed to guide reputation building and protection, and how these inputs are used to guide business reputation strategies form the core of this article. The discussion reveals that corporate reputation and brand management functions are increasingly being synchronised in support of customer-based brand equity, customer franchise and reputation building. This suggests substantial communality between the management functions relating to corporate reputation and branding. Corporate branding and reputation are anticipated to evolve as a core business strategy aimed at building and protecting corporate identity and image. To meet this endeavour, companies will continue to brand their identity and image and create brand awareness and customer relations to enable stakeholders to differentiate company products, services and features from competitor offerings, but will simultaneously strive to enhance customer loyalty. Customer care and ethical behaviour will probably lead the thrust in creating positive corporate reputation. As long as corporate reputation building and branding are pursued, the demand for business intelligence information related to these topics will remain a priority and will guide future marketing and communication strategies in building and protecting corporate reputation.     

Police interviewing styles and confessions in Japan

Psychological studies of suspects' confessions have been conducted mostly in English-speaking and European countries, and the results may not generalise to countries whose cultures and policing practices differ. In particular, the difference between Japanese and Western laws may affect the roles that police interviewers play in suspects' confessions. This study examined the interviewing techniques used by Japanese police officers and associated features of the suspects' confessions. An extensive questionnaire was completed by 276 police officers across Japan. Detailed ratings of their interview techniques were factor analysed, yielding five factors: Presentation of Evidence, Confrontation, Rapport Building, Active Listening, and Discussion of the Crime. Based on these five factors, we identified four interviewing styles: Evidence-focused, Confrontational, Relationship-focused, and Undifferentiated. When interrogators employed the Relationship-focused interviewing style, suspects were more likely to make full confessions and to provide new information. By contrast, suspects were more likely to make partial confessions and were less cooperative when the police officers employed an Evidence-focused style.     

Sex offenders’ perceptions of the effectiveness and fairness of humanity,dominance, and displaying an understanding of cognitive distortions in police interviews: A vignette study

Abstract

Forty-three convicted sex offenders read each of four different offence vignettes that involved a man forcing a female victim into sex and the offender's subsequent police interview. The experimental manipulation involved giving participants each of four different scenarios concerning how the police interviewed the offender. These were interviews characterized by humanity, dominance, displaying an understanding of sex offenders’ cognitive distortions, or a neutral, control interview. Participants were required to rate the interviews on a variety of dimensions, such as the offender's likelihood of confessing, and the fairness of the interview. Where participants were told the man had been interviewed with humanity and compassion, they rated the offender as more likely to confess and rated the interview as fairer than the other conditions. In contrast, participants rated the offender interviewed with a dominant approach as less likely to confess, and for this procedure to be less fair than the other conditions. Displaying an understanding of sex offenders’ cognitive distortions appeared to have had no influence on perceived likelihood of confessions but was perceived to make the crime appear less serious.     

Getting the story from child witnesses: exploring the application of a story grammar framework

Abstract

Investigative interviews with children about alleged abuse were analysed to determine the degree to which the child's responses adhered to a story grammar framework, and whether the presence of story grammar elements was associated with interviewers’ adherence to best-practice (i.e. open-ended) questioning. The sample included 51 interviews with child witnesses from across Australia. The interviews were administered by a police officer with children (37 girls and 14 boys) aged 3–16 years (M age = 103.82 months, SD = 34.21 months). The interviewers’ questions were categorised as open-ended or specific and the children's responses were classified as a story grammar element, context/background information, or ‘don't know’ responses. The majority of interviewer questions were specific in nature and the majority of children's responses were context/background details. Open-ended questions were more successful in eliciting story grammar from children. Of the story grammar elements, the interviewers’ specific questions usually targeted setting and attempt details. These findings suggest that improvement in the narrative coherence of children's reports of abusive events can potentially be achieved by increasing interviewers’ use of open-ended questions.     

The effect of odour reinstatement on children's episodic memory

Children's memory reports are often sparse, which increases the need for efficient interview methods. The present study investigated whether odour reinstatement can aid children's memory and increase the amount of information recalled from an experienced event. Children (N = 106, mean age 10 years, 8 months) experienced a magic show where a vanilla odour was present and were interviewed about their memory of the event either one week, or six months, after the magic show. During the interview, half of the children re-experienced the same vanilla odour. In contrast to studies on adult participants, no odour-reinstatement effect was found with the child participants in the present study. On the other hand, odour reinstatement reduced the children's ratings of how strong their emotions were during the event. Thus, odour reinstatement may affect different forensically relevant factors, and this should be considered in future research.     

Cost and benefit of a new instruction for the cognitive interview: the open depth instruction

The quality and the quantity of information recalled by eyewitnesses during a criminal investigation is of crucial importance. To increase the volume of details recalled during an interview, the cognitive interview recommends using various retrieval strategies to enhance recall. We tested a new retrieval instruction, the open depth (OD) instruction. The efficacy of this new instruction was assessed with the number of unit of information and the accuracy rate. We also assessed the cost-and-benefit of this new instruction with measures of repetition. Students watched a video of a simulated robbery and participated later in face-to-face interviews. In Study 1 (N=60), the cognitive interview using the OD instruction increased recall compared to the interview using the change of perspective (CP) instruction, without affecting the accuracy rate. The redundancy rate was higher with the OD instruction than with the CP instruction. In Study 2 (N=40), the OD instruction generated more new information without affecting the accuracy rate than the interview using motivated recall (MR) instruction. The repeated information to new information ratio was lower with the OD instruction than with the MR instruction. The advantages of the OD instruction for investigative interviewing purposes are discussed.