Examining the empirical relationship between prison crowding and inmate misconduct: A meta-analysis of conflicting research results

Incarceration rates in the United States dramatically increased over the past several decades. This trend has drawn significant academic attention to prison overcrowding and its potential effect on inmate misconduct. The empirical relationship between inmate misconduct and overcrowding, however, is less than clear. To be sure, studies indicating positive, negative, and null relationships can all be found in the literature. The current research subjects this body of literature to a meta-analysis in an effort to: (1) clarify the direction and strength of the relationship between overcrowding and rates of prison misconduct across all studies, and (2) to uncover the degree to which variation in research outcomes can be attributed to methodological differences across studies. Results indicate that prison crowding has little substantive impact on inmate misconduct. Implications of the findings are discussed in detail.     

What difference does difference make? Reflections on neo- conservatism as a liberal cosmopolitan project

This article examines cosmopolitanism with specific reference to the 'realist turn' in United States foreign policy since 2001. In examining the evasions of cosmopolitanism, the article suggests that neo-conservatism in the US is not necessarily completely incompatible with some interpretations of liberal internationalism and cosmopolitanism, which in turn are linked to the idea of a benevolent US hegemony. Indeed, the Bush-Blair alliance should be seen in this light. Even on its own terms however, this is a project that is bound to fail, as it ignores the inequalities and hierarchies of the international order, which have intensified in the neo-liberal era, and the historical and sociological reasons for 'state failure'. If cosmopolitanism is to have a future, then it must evade the quick fix solutions proposed by advocates of 'liberal military intervention'. If it fails to do so, then it will remain complicit with an 'imperialist', US-led neo-liberal international order.     

Crime,time, youth and punishment

This paper examines current developments in the social control of youth crime and delinquency in England and Wales. It argues that the usual critical explanations of these developments, in the form of the dispersal of discipline or the social authoritarianism thesis are inadequate. Instead, it is suggested that the punishment has taken on a more effective and efficient format in the management of this problem group than either of the above would have made possible.     

New voices from the ship of fools

Conventional left accounts of Thatcherism have stressed the authoritarian nature of its political rhetoric. This paper suggests that convergences between the new conservatism and more fundamentalist moral positions, meeting on the ground of obscenity and violence in the media, are a relatively recent development, associated with renewed strategic concentration on the question of law and order. Indeed, the libertarian right, in adhering to a utilitarian laissez-faire understanding of private pleasures, has presided over a positive proliferation of erotic and other gratifications. We argue that in the United Kingdom the authentic constituency of the moral right is an increasingly socially marginal one, rendered progressively more so by the rapid development of technologies of communication and entertainment.     

Fresh Thinking on U.S. Engagement with Africa: Probing the Limits of Engagement

The Biden administration faces the opportunity to reset U.S. policy towards Africa and possesses a variety of tools to use in doing so, including traditional diplomacy, economic statecraft, development assistance, and military engagement. With the increased militarization of U.S. foreign policy over the past few decades, there is an unfortunate tendency to default to military engagement when confronted with even remote threats to U.S. national security interests, and Africa is no exception. With vital security interests in Africa, it can be argued that military engagement should be limited in its application and targeted to those situations that do not lend themselves to solution through traditional diplomacy or development assistance.     

Book reviews

Marju Lauristin and Peeter Vihalemm with Karl Erik Rosengren and Lennart Weibull, Return to the Western World. Cultural and Political Perspectives on the Estonian Post‐communist Transition (Tartu University Press, Tartu, 1997), xvi +387 pp., ISBN 9985–56–257–7

Peter H. Merkl and Leonard Weinberg (eds), The Revival of Right‐wing Extremism in the Nineties (Frank Cass, London, 1997), 289 pp., ISBN 0 7146 4676 8 (hb), 0 7146 4207 X (pb)

Arthur Lipow, Political Parties and Democracy (Pluto, London, 1996), 256 pp., ISBN 0 7453 1099 0 (hb), 0 7453 1098 2 (pb)

Gerald F. Gaus, Justificatory Liberalism: An Essay on Epistemology and Political Theory (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1996), ix + 374 pp., ISBN 0–19–509439–5 (hb), 0–19–509440–9 (pb)

Mark T. Berger and Douglas A. Borer (eds), The Rise of East Asia: Critical Visions of the Pacific Century (Routledge, London, 1997), 308 pp., ISBN 0–415–16167–3 (hb), 0–415–16168–1 (pb)

Paul Anderson and Nyta Mann, Safety First: The Making of New Labour (Granta, London, 1997), 456 pp., ISBN 1–86207–070–9     

Radical Islam: The Death of an Ideology?

Dr. Takeyh is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. Dr. Gvosdev is a senior fellow at the Nixon Center. The following is adapted from the conclusion of their recent book, The Receding Shadow of the Prophet: The Rise and Fall of Radical Political Islam (Praeger, 2004), reproduced with permission of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc., Westport, CT.     

Political Process and Widespread Protests in China: the 2010 labor protest

Existing studies of collective actions in China pay most attention to frequent but localized protests, but such protests are less likely to deeply drive China's political and social prospect. By contrast, widespread protests are more likely to affect the Chinese Communist Party's authority and policies once they emerge. The goal of this article is thus to probe the conditions under which a widespread protest can happen in China today. This article proposes four necessary conditions grounded in the political process model and tests them by explaining the successful outbreak of the 2010 labor protest. Identifying these conditions helps us understand and predict the political and social development of China.