Aid and ideology

Abstract. A conceptualization of international aid-giving behaviour, based on the notion of bounded rationality and involving the interaction of objective and subjective factors, is developed. From this conceptualization, four hypotheses are deduced to explain the variation of development aid expenditures as a percentage of GNP: the instrumental hypothesis, the humanitarian hypothesis, the ideological hypothesis, and the incremental hypothesis. These hypotheses are tested on data concerning aid allocations of 17 OECD donors for four points in time (1966, 1971, 1976, and 1981), through the use of a regression model. Results show that the model as a whole explains between 85% and 96% of the variance in the dependent variable. Tests of individual hypotheses show that the instrumental explanation is the best predictor of aid as a percentage of GNP if a lagged value of the dependent variable is used on the right-hand side of the equation. When the lagged value of the dependent variable is dropped from the equations, the best predictor is the ideological explanation. The contribution of the humanitarian explanation to the explained variance is negligible.     

DECISION-MAKING IN THE CRIMINAL COURTS:

This article attempts an analysis of the relationship between the guilty-plea bargaining process and presentence investigation reports. It is argued that because plea-bargaining has increasingly come to involve bargaining over sentence. probation officers, as a consequence, have increasingly come to experience encroachment upon their decision-making autonomy. In this predicament they have found little support from judges, who, committed to norms of managerial efficiency will reassert the primacy of the plea-bargain when probation officers refuse to ratify previously negotiated sentence agreements. The policy implications of this for the criminal justice system are discussed.     

VIOLENCE BEGETS VIOLENCE … BUT HOW? A DECISION‐MAKING PERSPECTIVE ON THE VICTIM–OFFENDER OVERLAP*

This study applied a decision‐making perspective to examine the causal mechanisms underlying the relation between violent victimization and offending. We theorized that having been victimized affects an individual's appraisal of subsequent potentially conflictive situations in such a way that victims become more attuned toward the benefits of violence perpetration than toward its costs. Furthermore, we argued that this altered appraisal mediates the relation between violent victimization and violent offending. We tested these hypotheses by using data from the Zurich Project on the Social Development of Children and Youths, a longitudinal study of Swiss youth (N = 1,013; 11–15 years of age). In line with expectations, path analysis results showed that prior victimization influenced the appraisal of decision‐making situations that, in turn, predicted subsequent self‐reported violent offending. Importantly, these mediation effects held when controlling for a variety of time‐stable factors, such as self‐control and risky activities, as well as prior victimization and delinquency. Implications for research and theorizing on the victim–offender overlap are elaborated in the discussion.