A Tri-Directional Examination of Parental Personality,Parenting Behaviors,and Contextual Factors in Influencing Adolescent Behavioral Outcomes

Journal of Youth and Adolescence - Links between parental personality, parenting, and adolescent behavior have been well established. However, extant research is limited by the sole focus on...     

Simulation Analysis of the Effect of Party Identification on Finnish Parties' Optimal Positions

The Finnish National Election Study of 2003 revealed that most voters in Finland do not identify with parties and are self‐described as independents. In this article it is asserted that partisan attachments affect Finnish parties' optimal positions despite the large amount of independents. To show this, the article is divided in two parts. In the first part, voters' decisions are assumed to be deterministic. To show the effect of party identification under deterministic voting, two different types of simulations are conducted: the partisan type, where the partisans' voting behaviour depends on their distance from the party and on a degree of partisan attachment, and the apartisan type, where voting behaviour depends solely on policy issue distance. Results show that partisan attachments drive parties to adopt different ‘one‐off’ optimal positions than they would if party competition was solely based on policy issue distance. In the second part of the article, it is assumed that voters' decisions are probabilistic. Upon showing that party identification makes a voting model solely based on distance significantly more fit, the predicted probabilities of party choice are computed. Results indicate that the probability that a voter will vote for a party is higher when the party is located at its optimal position according to the partisan type of simulations rather than the apartisan one.     

The New 'Dubliners': Implementation of European Council Regulation 343/2003 (Dublin-II) by the Greek Authorities

The paper analyses a recent practice applied by the Greek asylumauthorities in the case of many asylum applicants who are returnedto Greece by another European Union Member State by virtue ofthe ‘Dublin-II’ Regulation. This practice consistsin interrupting the examination of their asylum claim on thegrounds that the applicants have arbitrarily abandoned theirplace of residence. Greek legislation provides for this actionin similar cases but was not used, up till recently, on casesof ‘Dublin’ returnees. The paper examines the reasonsthat led the Greek authorities to adopt this policy and itsfoundation in Greek asylum law and procedures, and challengesthe practice legally and politically. It argues that, in adoptingsuch a stance, Greece seems not only to go against the mainobjective of the Dublin-II Regulation (that an asylum applicationis examined once, and once only in the EU) but to contradictand undermine European Union policies on asylum, breaking theprinciple of good faith in its relations with its EU partners.In addition, it considers the possibility of similar problemsbeing repeated in other national legal orders.     

The role of the public sector in introducing operations research/management science within developing countries

This article examines the role the public sector has played in introducing operations research/ management science (OR/MS) in developing countries. To this end, some of the difficulties in applying OR/MS within the environment of a developing country in general, and within their public sector in particular, are briefly discussed, and the first applications of OR/MS in some such countries are reviewed. In spite of the fact that the application of OR/MS in the public sector is generally more difficult than that in the private sector, it is shown that OR/MS has, in most cases, entered countries through the public sector. Possible reasons for this phenomenon are discussed and an assessment of the contribution of OR/MS to public sector decision-making is made.     

Finnish parties’ positions in 2007: A matter of equilibrium or voters’ projection?

According to the Finnish National Election Studies (FNES) the positions of Finnish parties in the years 2003 and 2007 were almost identical. In FNES, party placement is based on the voters’ perceptions and therefore it is assumed that either the voters have correctly guessed the positions of the parties or they have been wrong in their judgments. In the first case, the Finnish parties are likely to have reached a state of equilibrium where no party has an incentive for unilaterally changing its optimal position. On the other hand, if the voters are incorrect, it is likely that they have projected their own positions to the parties. The results reject the equilibrium hypothesis and confirm the projection hypothesis.