An American view: U.S. Relations with the PRC and Taiwan

Since Tiananmen in June of 1989 when U.S.-Chinese relations hit rock-bottom, the United States and China have gradually expanded and improved their relationship on the basis of reality, not wishful thinking and hype. At the same time, U.S. and Taiwan relations have substantially improved while China and Taiwan themselves have created a new atmosphere of economic cooperation. The new U.S.-China relationship based on human rights, nonproliferation, and trade reciprocity could bring greater stability but the United States must be on top of the emerging regional economic powerhouse of Taiwan-South China-Hong Kong and not be distracted by peripheral issues such as conditional MFN.     

Which Afghanistan? Military,Humanitarian, and State-Building Identities in the Afghan Theater

Proponents and critics of the democratic peace have debated the extent to which covert attempts by democracies to overthrow other elected governments are consistent with or contradict democratic peace theory. The existing debate, however, fails to acknowledge that there are multiple democratic peace theories and that inter-democratic covert intervention might have different implications for different arguments. In this article, we first distill hypotheses regarding covert foreign regime change from three theories of democratic peace. Relying primarily on declassified government documents, we then investigate these hypotheses in the context of U.S. covert intervention in Chile (1970–73). The evidence suggests that covert intervention is highly inconsistent with norms and checks-and-balances theories of democratic peace. The evidence is more consistent with selectorate theory, but questions remain because democratic leaders undertook interventions with a low likelihood of success and a high likelihood that failure would be publicized, which would constitute exactly the type of policy failure that democratic executives supposedly avoid.     

Did Drug Courts Lead to Increased Arrest and Punishment of Minor Drug Offenses?

Drug courts were implemented nationwide during the 1990s to expand alternatives to incarceration for individuals with substance use disorders that were charged with nonviolent felonies or misdemeanors. Although these courts were publicized as a facilitator of treatment and alternative to incarceration, researchers and advocates have suggested that this approach may have unintentionally intensified law enforcement focus on casual drug users and individuals with minor substance dependency. The primary objective of this study was to determine whether there is evidence that drug courts systemically increased the arrest and punishment of misdemeanor drug use and possession by conducting a series of panel data analyses among more than 8,000 city and county jurisdictions while controlling for economic, demographic, and nationwide law enforcement trends. Analyses in this study provide evidence that local police increased their attention toward minor drug offenses in jurisdictions where drug courts were implemented across the nation.     

MATERNAL INTIMACIES

This paper draws on the narratives of Australian mothers of pre-school children with autism as they struggle to make sense of, and sometimes resist, diagnosis. My analysis investigates the conflict and collusion between professional and maternal expertise. In the process of giving meaning to their grief, mothers frequently focus on the strengths of their children and the value of their own intimate expertise, which is grounded in a recognition of the full personhood of their child. While mothers frequently perceive their children through the shaping lens of diagnostic criteria, maternal counter-narratives allow a temporary disidentification from the diagnostic process and, in their valorisation of mother/child attachments, are an important source of personal and familial resilience.     

Police officer performance appraisal and overall satisfaction

Although the level of dissatisfaction with police officer performance appraisal systems in many agencies is substantial (Hughes, 1990; Lilley, 2002), a recent nationwide survey of six hundred police organizations indicated that overall satisfaction was significantly higher among agencies with greater levels of community policing implementation (Lilley & Hinduja, 2006a). Given that research has suggested that dissatisfaction with the appraisal process may impact future employee performance and retention (Daily & Kirk, 1992; Deming, 1986), the focus of this analysis was to examine differences among police agencies that might explain this variation. Utilizing structural equation models, results indicated that agencies with a high level of community policing implementation were not automatically associated with increased satisfaction. Rather, these organizations differed from their more traditional counterparts with regard to evaluation procedure in that they provided substantially more training to raters, emphasized the use of performance appraisal for officer development, and evaluated a broader range of performance criteria.     

Crime reduction outcomes associated with the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program

During the 1990s, the federal government began a program to reimburse local jails and prisons for the housing of alien repeat offenders. In this first ever nationwide assessment, crime reduction outcomes of the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program (SCAAP) were tested using twelve years of panel data from 10,339 jurisdictions. Results indicated that SCAAP funds were associated with reductions in robbery, burglary, and other UCR Part I offenses while controlling for changes in policing activity, receipt of other grants, and crime growth trends. The data analyzed also suggested that crime reduction outcomes were associated with COPS Hiring, COPS MORE, and Local Law Enforcement Block Grants. Although the specific mechanisms of SCAAP crime reduction remain unclear, these results were consistent with increases in jail capacity and improved coordination with immigration officials.