Finding Politics in Cinema: The Portuguese Democratic Transition

Taking into account the political and social transformations initiated by the 1974 April revolution and the process of democratic transition, this article analyzes the political context and issues registered in documentary films in the period 1974–76. In their own way, documentary films carried a certain cultural praxis and social memory through the variety of symbols, beliefs, values, attitudes, and discourses that lay within these documentaries, allowing us to evaluate the dynamics of both power and legitimacy implicit in political culture. This article will focus on the cultural and political implications of documentary films on political theory in regards to the Portuguese democratic transition.     

Back from the future: did the LETR really prepare us for the future?

The eagerly awaited outcomes of the Legal Education and Training Review provide a richness of data on the nature and content of legal education which is invaluable for legal education researchers. However, it is argued here that in so far as the Review was concerned with context and with preparing providers of legal services for a more challenging future, it neglected or understated some key issues. The extent of change in terms of the growth in the unregulated sector and in the way services are delivered, along with significant change in the way legal education and training itself is provided were perhaps all underestimated. Importantly, it is argued that the regulatory framework of the EU and its current developments and controversies were barely touched on yet not only is that framework directly relevant but it also has much to offer in terms of experience and ideas.     

A discrete choice experiment investigating preferences for funding drugs used to treat orphan diseases: an exploratory study

Policy debate about funding criteria for drugs used to treat rare, orphan diseases is gaining prominence. This study presents evidence from a discrete choice experiment using a convenience sample of university students to investigate individual preferences regarding public funding for drugs used to treat rare diseases and common diseases. This pilot study finds that: other things equal, the respondents do not prefer to have the government spend more for drugs used to treat rare diseases; that respondents are not willing to pay more per life year gained for a rare disease than a common disease; and that respondents weigh relevant attributes of the coverage decisions (e.g. costs, disease severity and treatment effectiveness) similarly for both rare and common diseases. The results confirm the importance of severity and treatment effectiveness in preferences for public funding. Although this is the first study of its kind, the results send a cautionary message regarding the special treatment of orphan drugs in coverage decision-making.     

Demographic and workplace characteristics which add to the prediction of stress and job satisfaction within the police workplace

Much research has been conducted into aspects of the police workplace that contribute to stress for individual officers. The current paper examines the influence of worksplace and job characteristics on both officers' stress and their job satisfaction. Police officers recruited from two divisions of an Australian state police service (n=749) were surveyed. Results show that there was a positive relationship between organizational support and job satisfaction and a negative relationship between organizational support and job stress. Difficulty in dealing with organizational change led to lower job satisfaction and higher levels of job stress. Working long hours led to increased job stress but it did not lead to lower job satisfaction. In contrast, shiftwork led to lowered job satisfaction but it did not lead to job stress. Of particular interest in this study was the finding that the job content factor of dealing with dangerous and unpredictable duties was not predictive of job stress but in fact led to higher job satisfaction. Authors' Note: Jeremy Davey, DipT, Bed, Med, is Deputy Director, Centre for Accident Research and Road Safety, School of Psychology and Counselling, Queensland University of Technology, Beams road, Carseldine, Qld 4034, Australia.     

Reliability and validity of the SCL-90-R PTSD subscale

Two studies examined the psychometric properties of the Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) subscale of the SCL-90-R. Study 1 examined SCL-90-R responses from 2,361 college women to determine whether this subscale can appropriately assess the three dimensions of PTSD. Factor analysis and Cronbach's alpha suggest that this subscale is best conceptualized as a unidimensional index of PTSD symptomatology. Study 2 confirmed these results in a sample of 1,044 college men and women. Findings in the second sample also supported the subscale's validity, as it correlates well with the Posttraumatic Diagnostic Scale and with trauma frequency and can discriminate between individuals with and without PTSD diagnoses. Results suggest that the SCL-90-R PTSD subscale is a reliable, but unidimensional, measure for screening for distress associated with PTSD. Although there is some support for the usefulness of this scale, especially with women, it should only be considered a general indicator of distress with limited use for men.     

Psychiatric Patients’ Comprehension of <Emphasis Type="Italic">Miranda</Emphasis> Rights

Seventy-five psychiatric inpatients were evaluated with respect to their Miranda-related abilities using Grisso’s (1998, Instruments for assessing understanding and appreciation of Miranda rights. Sarasota, FL: Professional Resource Press) instruments and Goldstein’s (2002, Revised instruments for assessing understanding and appreciation of Miranda rights) revision to determine: whether different versions of Miranda warnings translate into differences in understanding; the influence of psychiatric symptoms, diagnostic categories, and IQ upon Miranda comprehension; and the relative performance of persons with psychiatric impairment on Miranda-relevant abilities. Results indicated that although the Miranda language used in Goldstein’s revision generally showed lower grade reading levels and higher reading ease scores than Grisso’s original instruments, this did not translate into improved understanding. In addition, psychiatric symptoms were negatively correlated with Miranda comprehension, even after controlling for IQ. Finally, results revealed that psychiatric patients’ understanding and appreciation was substantially impaired compared to Grisso’s adult validation samples, and was roughly comparable to Grisso’s juvenile validation sample. Implications of these results for policy reform are discussed.

Republicanism, Freedom from Domination, and the Cambridge Contextual Historians

Philip Pettit, in Republicanism: a Theory of Freedom and Government (1997), draws on the historiography of classical republicanism developed by the Cambridge Contextual Historians, John Pocock and Quentin Skinner, to set up a programme for the recovery of the Roman Republican notion of freedom, as freedom from domination. But it is my purpose to show that classical republicanism, as a theory of institutional complexity and balanced government, could not, and did not, lay exclusive claim to freedom from domination as a defining value. Positive freedom was a concept ubiquitous in Roman Law and promulgated in Natural Law as a universal human right. And it was just the ubiquitousness of this right to freedom, honoured more often in the breach than the observance, which prompted the scorn of early modern proto-feminists like Mary Astell and her contemporary, Judith Drake. The division of society into public and private spheres, which liberalism entrenched, precisely allowed democrats in the public sphere full rein as tyrants in the domestic sphere of the family, as these women were perspicacious enough to observe. When republicanism is defined in exclusively normative terms the rich institutional contextualism drops away, leaving no room for the issues it was designed to address: the problematic relation between values and institutions that lies at the heart of individual freedoms.