USING RANDOM JUDGE ASSIGNMENTS TO ESTIMATE THE EFFECTS OF INCARCERATION AND PROBATION ON RECIDIVISM AMONG DRUG OFFENDERS*

Most prior studies of recidivism have used observational data to estimate the causal effect of imprisonment or probation on the probability that a convicted individual is rearrested after release. Few studies have taken advantage of the fact that, in some jurisdictions, defendants are assigned randomly to judges who vary in sentencing tendencies. This study investigates whether defendants who are assigned randomly to more punitive judges have different recidivism probabilities than defendants who are assigned to relatively lenient judges. We track 1,003 defendants charged with drug-related offenses who were assigned randomly to nine judicial calendars between June 1, 2002 and May 9, 2003. Judges on these calendars meted out sentences that varied substantially in terms of prison and probation time. We tracked defendants using court records across a 4-year period after the disposition of their cases to determine whether they subsequently were rearrested. Our results indicate that randomly assigned variations in prison and probation time have no detectable effect on rates of rearrest. The findings suggest that, at least among those facing drug-related charges, incarceration and supervision seem not to deter subsequent criminal behavior.     

Uganda's decentralised primary education: musical chairs and inverted elite capture in School Management Committees

Decentralisation policies in Africa increasingly place responsibilities and resources for the provision of public services in the hands of public bodies at the lowest level, for example in School Management Committees (SMCs). This paper questions whether elite capture, which is considered a major reason for the ineffectiveness of the management of public services at a national level, also characterises SMCs. On the basis of field research in Uganda, it is argued that elite capture does not trickle down to the lowest levels in the management of public services. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

社区矫正试点工作的突破、创新和总结——对社区矫正试点工作的反思

法律制约与法律突破之间的冲突是社区矫正试点中的基本矛盾，创新和总结是试点工作的重心。现阶段试点中存在全局范围过窄、局部规模扩张、突破创新不足、工作缺乏独立性等偏失。社区矫正试点工作的目的是获取试点经验．而非急于收获矫正效果。试点工作应坚持法律制约与法律突破相统一、社区矫正与社区安全并重、符合国情、创新与总结相结合等原则。扩大全局试点范围、控制局部试点规模、深化突破、创新与总结是社区矫正试点工作的中心任务，试点阶段不宜过早启动社区矫正立法。     

知识分子的精英意识与启蒙文学的兴衰

在过去的一个世纪里,启蒙文学在中国经历了两次高潮,一次是在1920年代"五四"运动前后,另一次是在1980年代新时期文学之初.遗憾的是,两次启蒙文学都是昙花一现,未能为继.90年代以后,在文学领域,启蒙话语的失效已经成为一个不争的事实.启蒙文学的世纪兴衰,与知识分子主体的精英意识具有重要的关联.因为与作用于文学的政治、经济、文化等外围因素相比,创作主体主观精神世界的改变要更为直接地对文学创作发生影响,这是一种更为内在的驱动力.     

试论我国法官的精英化

现代社会精英是在民主政治、知识理性和社会分工潮流等因素共同作用下 ,通过开放、流动的社会竞争机制形成的卓越阶层。现代法官群体属于现代社会精英的一部分 ,它在构筑经验正义 ,推进民主与法治 ,维护法律统一实施等方面发挥着不可替代的作用。造就人文主义模式的精英法官群体是我国法官职业建设的目标 ,未来应通过保障宪法意义上的司法独立 ,改革法官选任制度 ,保持法官规模精当适度 ,以及防止法官异化等途径 ,推进法官精英化目标的实现     

Elite executives in issues management: the role of ethical paradigms in decision making

The perspectives of elite (or top‐level) issues managers on ethics are explored in this paper. From these elites we can learn how issues were managed at their global organisations and how questions of ethics were addressed in issues management. The organisations in this study were chosen because of their superlative rankings in measures of ethics and reputation. Research questions explored ethical decision making and the predominant paradigm of ethics in each organisation through six elite interviews and observation. Although both organisations attempted to address ethics, the elite issues managers at one organisation did so more thoroughly and effectively than did the managers at the other organisation. This efficacy was due to the depth of ethical study and training engaged in by the elites, the intense ethical analysis of issues, and the choice of a deontological approach to ethics. This paper argues that ethics should be concerted, codified, consistent, trained and rigorously analysed. A deontological paradigm of ethical decision making fits all of these criteria, and this research shows that a deontological ethical paradigm can contribute to effective issues management. Copyright © 2002 Henry Stewart Publications.     

失势的精英及其反抗--戊戌前后湖南新旧之争的政治学分析

本文论述了戊戌变法前后湖南维新运动中精英集团的分裂以及由此衍生的社会冲突状况.湖南维新运动是一个原本富有共识的官绅集团在民族危机面前自新和自救的努力.引起这个官绅集团分裂的直接原因是伴随着省政要员的更换和一批文化新锐的到来而出现的政治权力的重新分配,更深层的原因则是维新运动的急进尤其是科举改革的启动导致了文化权力以及与之相伴生的社会政治权力的急剧倾斜.在这个过程中被侵犯和面临被淘汰的旧精英于是联合起来,利用意识形态工具和各种实际措施对维新事业展开猛烈攻击.这个事例通常被用来说明湖南地域文化的特性,但从政治学的角度看,它呈现出更具普遍意义的特征.     

Public policy and privatisation: the case of the Qatari experience

This article uses a qualitative methodology employing the elite model to describe and analyse the complex interplay of political and economic factors in the privatization experience of the state of Qatar. The article begins by providing a theoretical framework for privatisation in the context of public policy and classifying policies of privatisation into two categories: macro‐ and micro‐privatisation. The second part uses this framework to discuss the factors that gives the Qatari experience its distinguished flavour. These factors include: elite legitimacy and social culture, bureaucratic power, international pressure and patron–client networks. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Elite Polarization and Public Opinion: How Polarization Is Communicated and Its Effects

Elite polarization has reshaped American politics and is an increasingly salient aspect of news coverage within the United States. As a consequence, a burgeoning body of research attempts to unravel the effects of elite polarization on the mass public. However, we know very little about how polarization is communicated to the public by news media. We report the results of one of the first content analyses to delve into the nature of news coverage of elite polarization. We show that such coverage is predominantly critical of polarization. Moreover, we show that unlike coverage of politics focused on individual politicians, coverage of elite polarization principally frames partisan divisions as rooted in the values of the parties rather than strategic concerns. We build on these novel findings with two survey experiments exploring the influence of these features of polarization news coverage on public attitudes. In our first study, we show that criticism of polarization leads partisans to more positively evaluate the argument offered by their non-preferred party, increases support for bi-partisanship, but ultimately does not change the extent to which partisans follow their party’s policy endorsements. In our second study, we show that Independents report significantly less political interest, trust, and efficacy when polarization is made salient and this is particularly evident when a cause of polarization is mentioned. These studies have important implications for our understanding of the consequences of elite polarization—and how polarization is communicated—for public opinion and political behavior in democratic politics.     

The impact of program developers as evaluators on criminal recidivism: Results from meta-analyses of experimental and quasi-experimental research

Using meta-analysis, we report on an investigation of the evaluator's influence in the treatment setting on criminal recidivism outcomes. Many evaluators and users of evaluation of social interventions worry that mixing of the roles of program developer and program evaluator may bias results reported in intervention studies in a positive direction. We first review the results of prior investigations of this issue across 50 prior meta-analyses, finding 12 that tested the impact of investigator influence in the treatment setting. Eleven of these reported that effect size increased positively, sometimes substantially so, when evaluators were influential or involved in the treatment setting. We followed this with a meta-analysis of 300 randomized field trials in individually focused crime reduction, also finding intervention studies in which evaluators who were greatly influential in the treatment setting report consistently and substantially larger effect sizes than other types of evaluators. We discuss two major views — the ‘cynical’ and ‘high fidelity’ theories — on why this is consistently the case, and conclude with a further agenda for research.