Political Liberalism. Neutrality and the Political

Abstract. The paper examines the current discussion in liberalism around the issue of the "neutrality" of the state. It scrutinizes the "political liberalism" defended by John Rawls and Charles Larmore and shows that the consequence of their approach is to evacuate the dimension of "the political" from the idea of a well-ordered society. By presenting the exclusions existing in their model of liberal society as the product of free agreement resulting from rational procedures, "political liberals" offer us a picture in which antagonism, violence and power have only disappeared because they have been made invisible. The consequence is to leave liberalism unable to conceptualize power and antagonism. The paper concludes that there cannot be such a thing as a "neutral justification of the neutrality of the state" (Larmore 1987) and that a pluralist perfectionist perspective like the one proposed by Joseph Raz offers a more adequate way to envisage the specificity of modern pluralist democracy.     

Managing Complex Collaborative Projects: Lessons from the Development of a New Satellite

This paper examines the case of a Complex Product System (CoPS)—a new satellite—and the combination of international firms and agencies that contributed to its development. Despite many political, organisational and interpersonal tensions, divergent objectives and strategic misjudgements, the satellite was successfully launched in 2002. It was found that a number of factors contributed to the successful conclusion of the project, including the evolution of organisational structures between different actors as the project progressed, the use of a range of innovation management tools accompanied by personnel with significant discretion and judgement, and a unifying methodology for satellite production called the Small Satellite Philosophy (SSP), which helped provide an approach for its effective integration. The paper describes the satellite project and the problems of technology transfer it confronted, then examines whether the solutions adopted could be appropriate for other complex innovative projects, particularly those involving joint public–private investments. It also describes the interaction between development time, mission cost, risk and return in reduced resource CoPS. Although the satellite itself was a technical success, government policy objectives for the project were not realised and the paper considers mismatches between policy objectives and mechanisms in complex projects.     

The effect of post-identification feedback, delay, and suspicion on accurate eyewitnesses

We examined whether post-identification feedback and suspicion affect accurate eyewitnesses. Participants viewed a video event and then made a lineup decision from a target-present photo lineup. Regardless of accuracy, the experimenter either, informed participants that they made a correct lineup decision or gave no information regarding their lineup decision. Immediately following the lineup decision or after a 1-week delay, a second experimenter gave some of the participants who received confirming feedback reason to be suspicious of the confirming feedback. Following immediately after the confirming feedback, accurate witnesses did not demonstrate certainty inflation. However, after a delay accurate witnesses did demonstrate certainty inflation typically associated with confirming feedback. The suspicion manipulation only affected participants' certainty when the confirming feedback created certainty inflation. The results lend support to the accessibility interpretation of the post-identification feedback effect and the erasure interpretation of the suspicion effect.     

Confidence inflation in eyewitnesses: Seeing is not believing

Purpose. Confidence inflation in eyewitnesses obscures a useful cue to identification accuracy and affects evaluations of eyewitnesses (e.g., Bradfield & McQuiston, 2004; Jones, Williams, & Brewer, 2008). We examine whether sensitivity to confidence inflation evidence is enhanced by seeing a videotape of the identification procedure. Methods. Participants (N= 131) watched a videotaped trial in which the witness's original confidence statement was presented as part of a previously recorded videotaped identification procedure or read by the witness at trial. In addition, the witness's identification confidence was either consistently high or low at the time of the identification and high at the trial (i.e., it was inflated). Results. Significant interactions demonstrated that confidence inflation evidence factored into judgments of the eyewitness and defendant guilt more strongly in the videotape condition compared with the read condition. Conclusions. The present results support recommendations to collect immediate confidence reports and videotape identification procedures. Using videotape evidence may help innocent defendants convince jurors that the eyewitness's identification is not accurate.     

A Problem with Double-Blind Photospread Procedures: Photospread Administrators Use One Eyewitness's Confidence to Influence the Identification of Another Eyewitness

In Experiment 1, photospread administrators (PAs, N = 50) showed a target-absent photospread to a confederate eyewitness (CW), who was randomly assigned to identify one photo with either high or low confidence. PAs subsequently administered the same target-absent photospread to participant eyewitnesses (PWs, N = 50), all of whom had viewed a live staged crime 1 week earlier. CWs were rated by the PAs as significantly more confident in the high-confidence condition versus low-confidence condition. More importantly, the confidence of the CW affected the identification decision of the PW. In the low-confidence condition, the photo identified by the CW was identified by the PW significantly more than the other photos; there was no significant difference in photo choice in the high-confidence condition. In spite of the obvious influence exerted in the low-confidence condition, observers were not able to detect bias in the photospread procedures. A second experiment was conducted to test a post-hoc explanation for the results of Experiment 1: PAs exerted influence in the low-confidence condition because they perceived the task as more difficult for the eyewitness than in the high-confidence condition. Independent observers (N = 84) rated the difficulty of the confederate's task as higher in the low-confidence condition compared with the high-confidence condition, suggesting that expectations of task difficulty might be driving the effect observed in Experiment 1. Results support recommendations for double-blind photospreads and emphasize that the same investigator should not administer photo lineups to multiple eyewitnesses in an investigation.