Disturbed sleep as a risk factor for aggression in prisoners with a psychotic illness: a brief report

The objective of the present study is to examine whether a relationship exists between disturbed sleep and aggression in 19 male prisoners with a psychotic illness, incarcerated in the Penitentiary Psychiatric Centre in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. The sleep–wake rhythm was indirectly assessed by means of actigraphy. The results show that nocturnal restlessness was a significant predictor of aggression/agitation with a large effect size (R^2?=?.639, adjusted R²?=?.536). It was concluded that future research should focus on nocturnal restlessness as a possible cause of aggression in this population.     

The legal nature of shares in landowning joint stock companies in the nineteenth century

This essay examines some of the contexts in which women appear especially in non-royal deeds from the kingdom of Scotland in the years between roughly 1150 and 1350. It is based on a survey of several thousand charters written on behalf of both men and women, native, Anglo-Norman and European. It considers how charter evidence may be used to illuminate the extent to which women both used and shaped the laws and customs that governed the conveyance of land in medieval Scotland, and examines changes in women's legal capacity over time. Recent studies on literacy in later medieval Europe have shown that women participated actively in the literate culture of the period and that they exerted a sometimes profound influence on written texts themselves, and this theme is explored at some length in the context of Scottish charter evidence. Also examined is the extent to which traditional Gaelic customs in respect of women's property rights shaped and influenced the early common law of Scotland.     

The CSU as an Ethno-regional Party

The Christlich Soziale Union in Bayern, despite its dominant position in the Bavarian party system, remains a relatively rare object of enquiry in political science both nationally and internationally. Alf Mintzel noted this research gap back in 1993. Though progress has been made since then, his basic conclusion that the CSU is the least studied German party remains true. This article will review some landmarks of CSU research before establishing the criteria held as essential for an ethno-regional party. It will then assess the CSU against these criteria: first on the supply side (generally based on existing research), then on the demand side (based on the author's own research as the CSU's electorate still remains understudied).     

Cross-border metropolitan governance: the multi-faceted state power

Metropolitan regions have become one of the most appropriate scales to define efficient governance networks for economic and territorial development. The state still is the key actor of these partnerships. Yet the question remains whether cross-border metropolitan regions represent a new point of reference that puts state power in question or whether they only reorganize it. The centrality of state power will be examined by looking at two networks of actors (public transport and territorial marketing) working at the Eurometropolis Lille–Kortrijk–Tournai. The results reveal that a triple-faceted state power has emerged to define and organize cross-border metropolitan management.     

Interests groups in Parliament: Exploring MPs’ interest affiliations (2000‐2011)

This research note presents an innovative dataset of Swiss MPs’ interest ties between 2000‐2011. The longitudinal analysis shows that the average number of interest ties per MP has more than doubled: from 3.5 in 2000 to 7.6 in 2011. Since the mid‐2000s, public interest groups have accounted for approximately one out of two ties between MPs and interest groups, showing the strongest increase during the period. However, when looking at the most present individual groups, important business groups dominate and appear well connected with the governmental parties of the political right. Finally, interest groups are also able to forge themselves a strategic presence within the parliamentary committees that are the most relevant for their policy issues. Next research steps include the assessment of the (un)biased access of interest groups to the parliamentary venue and their policy influence.     

International Migration: Pacifier or Trigger for Military Conflicts?

Whereas the impact of trade relations on conflict has been studied extensively, this is not the case for the impact of international migration. The latter might influence the size of expected costs and benefits, and hence the likelihood of military conflict between countries. In this paper, we discuss the channels through which bilateral migration can affect the prevalence of interstate military conflict. We then estimate migration’s impact on conflict using bilateral panel data between 1960–2000. We find evidence of a positive and robust impact of South-North and South-South migration on the occurrence of conflict. These effects are even larger when we control for potential endogeneity using a GMM approach.