The Legal Subject in Althusser’s Political Theory

There are three dominant conceptual developments in Althusser’s work that suggest the significance of the subject. One is the perpetual work of ideology—its interpellation of individuals. The second is the primacy of the class struggle in relation to the state, and the consequential function of law and rights. The third is the materialism of the encounter as a process without subject. An examination of these three areas (in part, utilising a Foucauldian analysis of subjectivity and power relations) reveals the potentially and strategically important role of legal subjectivity in Althusser’s theory of the political.     

From issues to goals: a novel conceptualisation,measurement and research design for comprehensive analysis of electoral competition

Abstract

The analysis of issue politics has long suffered from a fragmentation between valence and positional conceptualisations, preventing the effective development of a general model of issue-based party competition. Building on an overview of the evolution of party competition in the Western world in recent decades, this article offers a theoretical development that builds on ‘issue yield’ theory to provide a conceptualisation of political goals that generalises across positional and valence issues. This in turn allows a common measurement strategy, offering the possibility to comparatively assess various characteristics (including the electoral potential) of both positional and valence issues. Finally, it describes the specific research design derived from this framework and its implementation in comparative perspective in six West European countries during 2017–2018.     

Effectiveness of Connected Legislators

Important work has been done to measure legislative effectiveness in the U.S. Congress and to explain the individual characteristics that drive it. Much less attention, however, has been devoted to study the extent to which legislative effectiveness depends on the legislators' social connections. We address this issue with a new model of legislative effectiveness that formalizes the role of social connections, and we test its predictions using the network of cosponsorship links in the 109th–113th Congresses. We propose a new empirical strategy that addresses network endogeneity by implementing a two-step Heckman correction based on an original instrument: the legislators' alumni connections. We find that social connections are a significant determinant of legislative effectiveness. We also study the influence of legislators' characteristics in shaping the network effects. In doing so, we provide new insights into how social connectedness interacts with factors such as seniority, partisanship, and legislative leadership in determining legislators' effectiveness.     

Perception of societal influence among civil society leaders – an elite perspective

ABSTRACT

This article explores the perception of societal influence of civil society leaders based on a survey study conducted in 2017 among leaders of Swedish civil society organizations. Civil society leaders represent organizations that are often based on and guided by religious, political, or cultural values and that often strive to achieve some sort of social change. To exercise influence on society is thus a crucial feature of civil society leaders. Drawing on elite theories, the article seeks to explain differences in the perception of influence by looking at the following factors: (1) personal qualities and resources such as age, gender, country of birth, education, and working experiences, (2) social networks and contacts with representatives of different institutions (media, government, etc.), and (3) organizational position and resources, including relations with public authorities. The analysis shows that two out of three surveyed leaders perceive they have great influence in society concerning the issues they work with. Among the factors explaining the perception of influence, we find being a leader of an organization at the regional level, being of older age, having leading representatives of the media in one’s personal network, and stating that one has great influence over the organization one leads.     

The institutionalisation of the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies

ABSTRACT

This article analyses the institutional development of the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies (BCD) from 1826 to the present. Legislature careers, the internal organisation of the BCD, the current system for filling positions within the committees and electoral rules are the objects of this study. The process of development of the BCD should be understood in light of the dynamics of the Brazilian political system, which has undergone significant ruptures of regime, and also in light of the nearly permanent fragility of the democracy, especially of its representative components. It is an institution with legislature career patterns that vary through time, but always point towards opportunities out of the BCD, a stable, hierarchical and complex mode of organisation that currently values parties as distributors of opportunities. It is, above all, an institution that is subject to external influences from other parts of the political system, which diminish its autonomy and self-determination, as shown by the example of the rule for the adjudication of terms. With its 190 years, the BCD has evolved along with Brazilian democracy and today, although boasting a great structure and large resources, it still needs to establish itself as a decisive and permanent actor in driving public policies and communication (parties and government projects) with voters.     

The importance of dark adaptation for forensic examinations; an evaluation of the Crime-lite Eye™

Forensic practitioners are recommended to dark adapt their eyes prior to conducting evidential searches in the dark. The dark adaptation process remains poorly standardised across the discipline, with little quantified regarding the benefits of such preparative steps. Herein, we report the findings of a study that recruited 50 participants to assess the effectiveness of the Crime-lite Eye?, a darkness adaptation device developed to assist forensic practitioners both in the laboratory and in field. Participants were tasked with searching for the fluorescent signatures left by reaction of 1,8-diazafluoren-9-one (DFO) with amino acids, in a manner akin to the fluorogenic fingerprint treatment of porous evidence. Using an Epson Stylus Photo R265 inkjet printer, ink cartridges were filled with alanine solutions of various concentrations, allowing different motifs to be printed onto copy paper and subsequently developed using DFO. Participants searched for this ‘evidence’ both with and without dark adapted vision. On average, participants were able to locate and correctly recognise 16% more evidence once dark adapted using the Crime-lite Eye?.The increase in evidence located by participants once dark adapted suggests that crime scene officers should be dark adapting in order to visualise as much as possible. The time taken to dark adapt, 10?min on average during this study, is not excessively long, and should not significantly slow the investigation.     

Age-at-death estimation by pulp/tooth area ratio in canines: study of a 20th-century Mexican sample of prisoners to test Cameriere's method

Accurate age estimation has always been a problem for forensic scientists, and apposition of secondary dentine is often used as an indicator of age. Cameriere et al. studied the pulp/tooth area ratio by peri-apical X-ray images of the canines, to observe the apposition of secondary dentine. The present study examines the application of this technique in a Mexican identified sample coming from the Department of Physical Anthropology of the INAH, at Mexico City. The main aim of this work is to test the reliability of this method in a skeletal sample of a specific population, different from the samples used for its development. The obtained regression model explained 96.2% of total variance (R(2) = 0.962) with a standard error of estimate of 1.909 and a standard deviation of 1.947. These results demonstrate great reliability and that the age/secondary dentine relationship is not variable in this specific population.