Intentional and unintentional injuries across health regions in Alberta, Canada: an implication for policy

The growing practice of including intentional injuries (suicide and interpersonal violence) under the injury control umbrella has produced some controversy. The present study was designed to determine whether or not there might be an empirical basis for this initiative from an ecological point of view by examining the associations among unintentional and intentional injuries across 17 geographically defined health regions. The study was set in the Province of Alberta, Canada, where health services were delivered to a population of 2.96 million persons in 1999 through 17 regional health authorities. The results of a principal components analysis showed that nearly all causes of injury-hospitalization loaded on a single factor. It was not possible to produce separate factors for intentional and unintentional injuries. The strong intercorrelation among all measures suggests that there is an empirical basis for the view that intentional and unintentional injuries belong under the same conceptual umbrella, at least at the ecological level.     

Party convergence and vote switching: Explaining mainstream party decline across Europe

How can one explain the significant vote losses of mainstream parties across Europe in recent years? In this article, it is argued that mainstream party convergence is an important determinant of the recent political and electoral volatility in European party systems. More specifically, it is hypothesised that as mainstream parties converge on the left-right scale, voters will switch from supporting a mainstream party to a non-mainstream party in the next election as they look for an alternative that better represents their ideological views. To test these theoretical expectations, data is combined from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems and the Manifestos Project for nearly 15,000 vote choices of individual voters in 30 elections in 16 West and East European countries from 2001 until 2013. The findings have important implications for understanding the recent rise of non-mainstream parties, the changing nature of party systems and the increasing complexity of cabinet formation across Europe.     

Organised interests in the media and policy congruence: The contingent impact of the status quo

While a multitude of studies have investigated the link between opinion and policy, we have little knowledge of how and when organised interests affect this linkage. We argue that the alignment of organised interests affects opinion–policy congruence by influencing the weight decision-makers attach to citizen preferences. Moreover, we propose that alignment between majorities of groups and the public matters the most when status quo bias must be overcome for the public to obtain its preferred policy. We test our theoretical claims drawing on a comprehensive media content analysis of 160 policy issues in Germany and Denmark. Our results present a more sceptical picture of the ability of groups to suppress the opinion–policy linkage than the one frequently presented in the academic literature and public debate. We find that the capacity of groups to affect whether policy is congruent with the majority of the public is restricted to situations where the public supports a change in the status quo. In these cases, policy is less likely to end up reflecting public opinion if the majority of interest groups do not support the public position. In cases where the public is supportive of the policy status quo, the position of interest groups does not affect the likelihood that policy will eventually reflect the preferred position of the public. Our findings expand existing knowledge of organised interests in the study of policy representation and have important implications for understanding democratic governance.     

Rooted displacement: the paradox of belonging among stateless people

Abstract

Stateless people are noncitizens everywhere. Yet, unlike many noncitizens, they are not border crossers. Despite the majority’s physical rootedness in the countries of their birth, the stateless are nonetheless forcibly displaced. Their peculiar form of noncitizenship displaces them in situ as they lack the right to choose to belong to the specific communities within which they were born and raised. Using The Bahamas and the Dominican Republic as case studies, this article illustrates how the stateless are either forcibly cast into liminality or made to take on the nationality of a country with which they do not identify when the State can no longer tolerate their noncitizen status.     

Feminism on the frontier: the history of abortion law reform in 1973 in the Northern Territory,Australia

In 1973, the Northern Territory (NT) criminal law relating to abortion was reformed. The NT was one of only two Australian jurisdictions where the 1970s liberalisation of abortion was enabled by legislative reform. Unlike the 1969 South Australian reform, the NT bill was sponsored by a female, and feminist, parliamentarian, Dawn Lawrie, assisted by a small group of supporters. This article recovers the narrative of this pioneering reform achieved in a place dominated by white men. It argues that this achievement was enabled by the NT’s individualistic culture, its history of white women’s activism and the mood for progressive change in 1970s Australia. It contextualises the reform by keeping the position of Indigenous women, including the public opposition of some to abortion reform, clearly in view, thus keeping race at the centre of the analysis of liberal feminist reforms and of white feminism in the NT in the early 1970s.     

Does Size Matter? Reassessing the Relationship between Aquaculture and Poverty in Bangladesh

Aquaculture has long been promoted by development institutions in Bangladesh on the understanding that it can alleviate poverty. Most of this attention has focused on forms of the activity commonly referred to as ‘small-scale’. This article draws on concepts from the literature on agricultural growth and elaborates a typology of aquaculture based on relations of production which suggests that, in Bangladesh, quasi-capitalist forms of aquaculture may possess greater potential to reduce poverty and enhance food security than the quasi-peasant modes of production generally assumed to do so. The implications of this conclusion are explored.     

Muddy waters: citizenship and the right to vote in the Commonwealth Caribbean migratory context

Two global voting trends are noted in the electoral studies literature: the exclusion of resident noncitizens and the inclusion of non-resident citizens in national elections. These two research streams are rarely studied together. By analysing both of these trends in the Commonwealth Caribbean, the article reveals how the assumed relationship between citizenship and the right to vote does not always hold. Citizenship is neither necessary nor sufficient to exercise full political rights. The Commonwealth Caribbean thus diverges from global voting trends and illustrates the complexities and changing shape of the relationship between citizenship and the right to vote.