Mapping and Explaining Parliamentary Rule Changes in Europe: A Research Program

We outline a comprehensive research program on institutional reforms in European parliaments. Original data show that parliamentary rules in Western European parliaments have been changed frequently and massively during the period from 1945 to 2010 suggesting that actors use institutional reforms as a distinct strategy to pursue their substantive goals. We discuss how institutional instability affects existing theoretical and empirical arguments about institutional effects. Furthermore, we present four ideal‐typical approaches to analyzing rule changes, present new software tools for identifying and coding changes in large text corpora, and demonstrate their usefulness for valid measurement of the overall change between subsequent text versions.     

创伤的AIS评分与损伤程度评定的对比分析

目的 探讨损伤程度评定的分级方法。方法 收集546例损伤程度评定的案例资料,给予AIS评分,然后比较损伤程度评定和AIS评分结果。结果 两组一致性比较,经x2检验,P<0.001;两组相关性比较,经Spear-man等级相关检验,rs’=0.940,P<0.001,均有高度显著性。结论 两组比较结果,反映损伤程度变化与.AIS分级变化有密切关系,“轻伤”、“重伤”可参照AIS严重度进行分级、编码。     

Support groups for battered women: Research on their efficacy

An evaluation of 12 support groups for women victims of domestic assault revealed substantial benefits associated with group participation. A total of 76 women responded to an assessment package before, immediately after, and six months following the group. Significant improvements were found in self-esteem, belonging support, locus of control, less traditional attitudes towards marriage and the family, perceived stress, and marital functioning. Unexpectedly, clients currently living with their spouses also reported significant decreases in both physical and nonphysical abuse.     

Preferences and agreement in legislative parties: testing the causal chain

This research note focuses on two specific dimensions of legislative cohesion: the homogeneity of preferences within a party and party agreement. Although these two dimensions have often been considered as synonyms, it is argued that these two concepts refer to different realities. The authors therefore develop distinct measurements for these two concepts. The authors then examine their statistical relationship, putting to the test the widespread assumption that heterogeneous preferences increase the probability of disagreement. The authors do so by testing the effect of different measures of a member of parliament’s ideological distance to her/his party on her/his self-reported frequency of disagreement with her/his party. It is demonstrated that the causal chain linking both concepts is only verified in the case of a conscious ideological distance. The results have crucial theoretical and methodological implications for future research on party cohesion and party unity.     

Parliamentary questions in the European parliament: Representation,information and control

Parliamentary questions and the membership of the European Parliament have both remained under‐researched. This article redresses the deficit by using a content analysis of written questions to analyse the behaviour of MEPs. Since tabling a question is one of the last formal rights of the backbencher, the study of parliamentary questions may be regarded as a particularly useful tool for increasing our knowledge of the way that MEPs understand their role as representatives. First the formal rules, function, and importance of parliamentary questions are explained. The following dimensions of questions are analysed: the questioning activity of MEPs, party groups, and national delegations; the issues MEPs raise in their questions, and the territorial dimension of the questions.     

Political parties and corruption: Ten hypotheses on five vicious circles

Strong political parties and genuine competition among them feature in many anti-corruption strategies, but in practice the relationships between corruption and political parties are much more complex than is generally recognized. This article explores and illustrates ten hypotheses about those connections, drawing in detail upon Italian, Japanese, and other cases for evidence. These connections extend well beyond amounts and trends of corruption to include the motivations of party members and supporters, internal problems of party organizations, and links between parties and state institutions. Major concerns included party bureaucratization, membership, and resources; electoral volatility; party fragmentation; collusion among parties; and party influence in public administration. These hypotheses will be best understood, and tested, comparatively, but in so doing we need to look not only at basic causes of corruption but also at ways in which parties and other institutions reproduce the conditions that sustain it.     

Rules and Speeches: How Parliamentary Rules Affect Legislators' Speech‐Making Behavior

By extending existing theories of legislative speech making, this study explores the importance of parliamentary rules governing floor debates for government and opposition parties. An original data set including speeches of members of the Italian Chamber of Deputies between 2001 and 2006 is used to test two hypotheses under different institutional scenarios, that is, rules either restricting or granting open access to the floor. Parliamentary rules are found to affect allocation of speaking time within both governing and opposition parties. Governing parties' leaders exploit their agenda control to a higher degree when allocating speaking time. Under restrictive rules, government party leaders control their MPs by essentially limiting the number of speeches and allocating them to frontbenchers. Restrictive rules give opposition party leaders an important chance to select MPs who are closer to their own position.     

第三方物流合同及其相关法律问题

阐述第三方物流合同的概念、特征及主要内容,分析其法律性质,并在介绍与第三方物流合同相关的调整规范基础上,从合同的订立、归责原则、责任限制、时效及争议解决等方面分析第三方物流合同的法律适用。     

Parliamentary crisis and the removal of the speaker: The case of Trinidad and Tobago

The 1995 Speaker crisis in Trinidad and Tobago raised fundamental issues relating to Presiding Officers of Commonwealth Parliaments. The issue of the control of the office by the majority party in the context of removal and whether such action is a contempt of Parliament is addressed. Additionally, the role of the courts in settling internal parliamentary disputes is examined. This article argues that the courts have a role in parliamentary procedure owing to the existence of a Bill of Rights in the Constitution. However, unsavoury precedents established by the Speaker during the crisis need to be reversed by subsequent Speakers in order for the House to function with some degree of order. The application of Westminster parliamentary traditions and conventions in Commonwealth Parliaments is examined in theory and in the context of the crisis itself.     

Democratic Accountability and National Parliaments: Redefining the Impact of Parliamentary Scrutiny in EU Affairs

Abstract:  The question of strengths and weaknesses of national parliaments in EU affairs, one of the most salient in the debate on the democratic legitimacy of the EU, is generally answered by assessing formal parliamentary powers which can influence their governments' EU policy. Such an evaluation, however, is flawed: Formal mandating rights are usually incompatible with the overall logic of parliamentary systems, which explains why most national parliaments make very little use of them. Even more importantly, it unduly reduces parliamentary functions to the legislative or policy-making function. Drawing on agency theory, it will instead be argued that the functions of public deliberation and of holding the government publicly to account are at least as important and therefore need to be included in a redefined concept of parliamentary strength. In particular, the article proposes a distinction between two different elements of accountability—monitoring and political scrutiny—which recognises parliamentary majority and opposition as two distinct agents of the electorate.     

Substance abuse and crime: A local jail assessment

Conclusion The clear picture of multiple arrests and conviction patterns emerged from the study which might indicate long term problems, perhaps with subcultural motivation. Many inmates indicated informally that the pressures to use drugs and alcohol “on the streets” are quite strong, and will be difficult to resist after release. Several of the older inmates who had been heavily addicted before their arrests volunteered to serve as counselors to explain the hazards of drug and alcohol abuse to younger inmates. Unfortunately, a significant number of these inmates also stated that they would probably continue to use drugs upon It would appear that we may expect these relationships to continue in the future, unless some dramatic efforts are made in the enforcement of drug laws, prevention of the gross availability of illegal drugs and legal alcohol, and in the effective rehabilitation of substance abusing offenders. Of particular importance (and difficulty) will be isolating and curbing those social forces which motivate persons to continue using drugs and alcohol in seemingly irrational quantities and combinations, even after arrest and incarceration for substance abuse related behavior.     

Party unity in parliamentary democracies: A comparative analysis

The level and causes of party unity are under-researched topics in parliamentary democracies, particularly in comparative perspective. This article presents a non-formal model explaining party unity in legislative voting as the result of individual legislators' decisions reacting to the incentives and constraints created by their respective institutional environments. Hypotheses derived from the model are tested against empirical data on party unity in 11 western parliamentary democracies since 1945. On the system level, central party control over nominations and intra-parliamentary resources as well as the strength of parliamentary committees with regard to policy decisions are shown to affect party unity as expected by the model. On the level of individual parties, governing parties are less unified than opposition parties and larger parties show higher unity than smaller ones. Both results shed doubt on frequent claims in the literature.     

Informing patients about small risks: A comparative approach

This article relates to the question to what extent patients should be informed about risks in the context of obtaining consent in case of treatment. To explore this issue, a comparative study has been carried out. The legal position taken with regard to informing about treatment risks in the Netherlands has been compared to that in the UK and Germany.