The Promise of a New Future

<正>Mixed feelings of grief and hope ran through my mind as I took part in a four-day tour of the most devastated areas hit by the great earthquake in Sichuan Province on May 12,2008.     

SEX CRIMES IN THE SUBWAY

This article describes the nature, extent, and empirical ramifications of nonfelonious sex crimes on the New York City subway. Nonfelonious sex crimes are defined as those offenses designated “sexual abuse” and “public lewdness” in the revised New York Penal Code of 1967. excluding sexual abuse in the first degree. Offenders are predominantly black and Hispanic; victims white, youthful, and unexceptional in looks. Contrary to psychiatric stereotypes, 50% of recidivists in rhese crime categories prove to have arrest records for violent crimes. including nonsexual ones: and sexual abuse and public lewdness recidivists tend to commit either offense interchangeably.     

Stability in Parliamentary Regimes: The Italian Case

Abstract: In this article, we distinguish legislative stability from government stability and argue that the character of the relationship that exists between them is a complex one in which various combinations are possible. We focus on Italy because of the manner in which it has combined legislative stability with government instability. Our findings indicate that the relationship between legislative and government stability in Italy is best seen as curvilinear, that the analysis of government stability must take the number of governments as well as the duration of governments into account, and that the attributes of the party system that stabilize the legislature destabilize governments. Given these findings, we discuss their implications for explaining stability in parliamentary regimes in terms of events, “strong parties,” and strategic calculation. We conclude that legislative stability should not be treated simply as a secondary or derivative effect of government stability and that Italy can serve as a benchmark for further study of the nature and determinants of the relationship between the two in other parliamentary systems.