Candidate Selection in British Second Order Elections: A Comparison of Electoral System and Party Strategy Effects

Whilst most UK political parties have now accepted the need to increase the number of women representatives, the stark reality is that women remain under-represented. The under-representation of women in UK politics is not just evident in the national legislature but is a pattern repeated, to varying degrees, in second order elections at local, devolved and European levels. Recent developments in political recruitment processes allow us to explore the extent to which political parties take advantage of different electoral systems to promote women candidates in second order elections. Providing analysis of (s)election data from across second order elections, this article explores the interaction between systemic and institutional strategies, questioning which combination of electoral system and party strategy is most beneficial for increasing levels of women's representation.     

Women's Substantive Representation: Defending Feminist Interests or Women's Electoral Preferences?

To what extent does the inclusion of marginalised groups in policymaking institutions influence policy outcomes? This article examines whether and under which conditions female legislators are more likely to represent women's interests compared with male legislators. Building on the literature on women's substantive representation, it is argued that the advocacy of women's interests by female representatives depends on a number of factors, namely party affiliation, contact with women's organisations, electoral district, and seniority. This argument is evaluated using vote-level fixed-effect models based on a unique data set from a direct democratic context that combines representatives' voting behaviour, women's voting preferences, and recommendations from feminist groups. The findings show that female legislators defend feminist interests more than their male colleagues but that they only marginally respond to women's electoral preferences. Moreover, gender has its most visible effect within the populist party.     

A Research Note

ABSTRACT

This paper deals with a sparsely researched topic-the victimization of females by fraud. A nationwide survey of victims of a large-scale telemarketing scheme showed that onlya small percentage of the victims were females. Both financial and emotional consequencesgenerally were more severe for the older than for the younger women.     

Gender and Social Control in Early 20th-Century Pennsylvania: The Role of the State Industrial Home for Women at Muncy in Reforming Fallen Women

The State Industrial Home for Women at Muncy in Pennsylvania opened in 1920 just as the reformatory movement began to wane and quickly became the sole correctional institution for women in the state, besides county jails. Despite the broader population that Muncy housed, traditional reformatory ideals were still supported and enforced. Yet the practices and programming of the institution also exemplified the changing economic and social role of women in society. Using recently uncovered primary sources from the institution, this article places Muncy within the broader context of the reformatory movement and argues that its dual emphasis played a significant role in its respect and longevity as an institution.     

The Impact Imprisonment has on Women's Health and Health Care from the Perspective of Female Inmates in Kansas

This multimethod study, conducted at the Topeka Correctional Facility during the summers of 2001, 2002, and 2003, investigated the impact of imprisonment on women's health and health care. The researcher hypothesized that 3 independent constructs—(a) extended strain, (b) level of health care received either before or during incarceration, and (c) detrimental social structural influences—could predict the health status of female inmates prior to and during incarceration. Multiple regression analyses conducted on 1 survey sample of 120 inmates revealed that only health care prior to incarceration and extended strain contributed significantly to explaining the inmates' self-perceived health status prior to and during incarceration. When life history interviews with 22 inmates were examined to determine inmates' perceptions of their health status and the health care they had received, prior to and during their imprisonment, qualitative results revealed inmates expressed dissatisfaction with the quality of health care received in prison, as well as the manner in which it was administered.     

The Partisan: Carl Schmitt and Terrorism

This article critiques and expands upon the jurisprudence of law’s violence from feminist and lesbian/gay/queer perspectives. The incorporation of gender and sexuality into the jurisprudence of law’s violence, via the social experiences of women and gay men, highlights the masculine and heteronormative character of law’s violence, while bringing into view particular forms of law’s violence, and forms of extra-legal but thoroughly legitimate heterosexual male violence, that have remained invisible in previous accounts. A feminist analysis of violence also suggests that law’s regime of violence is neither totalising nor inevitable, and that possibilities for resistance, if not avoidance, do exist.     

Women Prisoners at the Dawn of the 21st Century

Abstract

The contemporary experiences of women in prison at the beginning of the 21st century must be understood within the context of the monumental increase in incarceration of specific U.S. populations in the last three decades of the 20th century, a truly unique period in history. How race and class impact on the increase of women in U.S. prisons attests to the importance of an intersectional and structural analysis (of race, class, and gender) in explaining the huge number of poor, heavily Black and Latina women incarcerated today. Women are criminalized for the same kinds of crimes today as in the past (nonviolent larceny-theft, forgery, and prostitution)-with the critical addition of drugs (and the “net widening” of previously noncriminal or nonviolent behaviors). And with drugs, the racialized impacts are even more profound. The socially structured conditions of class, race, and gender in the context of globalization, unemployment, and the prison industrial complex help to explain these findings.     

Women's agency in Australia's first fertility transition: a debate revisited

The place of women's agency in the fertility transition of the late nineteenth/early twentieth century is a contested one. Some argue that the transition was achieved mainly through male methods of contraception. Others, including many arguing from an Australian perspective, contend that women's agency in fertility decline was significant. In this article, the authors revisit the issue of women's agency in Australia. Drawing on a range of archival sources and scholarship, they seek to demonstrate that women in Australia in the last quarter of the nineteenth century had access to contraception, albeit limited, and, where that failed, to abortion. The authors argue that the changing political and educational climate, which saw women gaining the vote in 1894 in South Australia and admission to secondary and higher education and paid work, provided the setting for women's changing status. Their increasing agency – an agency many women worked to secure – encouraged women to challenge many traditional practices.     

Listening to children: Participation rights of minors in Italy and the United States

This article compares laws and policies in Italy and the US regarding children's right to be heard and to engage in the life of the community. Italy has adopted a strong children's rights perspective, informed by the principles of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). The US, with its pre-modern constitution and resistance to international law, has been slow to recognise children's rights to voice and agency. The US Supreme Court has extended some due process rights to children in criminal court proceedings, but the US lags far behind Italy in recognition of children's rights to participate in civic life and collective decision-making. Child well-being rankings may reflect these differences in attitudes towards children's rights. Italy ranks significantly higher than the US on objective measures of child well-being and Italian children report superior peer and family relationships.     

Women's Accounts of Domestic Violence

Abstract

Critiques of behavioral inventories, qualitative studies of battered women's experiences, and communications research all suggest that women's accounts of violence contain information and a more complex structure than is captured by checklist measures that focus on types of abuse. We conducted a quantitative thematic analysis of 162 women's accounts of domestic violence to assess structure and content. Most women presented domestic violence as a “story” with an introduction, body and a conclusion: 59% presented a “complete story” and 33% a “near story.” Background information and problem statements were the most prevalent content statements in the “introduction,” and relationship issues and explanations were most common in the “conclusion.” Bivariate analyses revealed that accounts did not vary by socio-demographic factors and severity of the incident. Men were less likely to present complete stories, had far briefer narratives, and never discussed relationship issues. Knowledge of the structure and content of women's accounts provides greater understanding of women's responses to violence.     

The Role of Party: The Legislative Consequences of Partisan Electoral Competition

We examine the proposition that incentives for legislative organization can be explained by the nature of electoral competition. We argue that legislators in environments where parties are competitive for majority status are most likely to have delegated power to their leadership to constrain individualistic behavior within their party, which will in turn increase the spatial predictability of individual voting patterns. Using roll‐call votes and district‐level electoral data from the U.S. state legislatures, we show empirically that increased statewide interparty competition corresponds to more predictable voting behavior overall, while legislators from competitive districts and those in the minority party have less predictable behavior.     

The Impact of Partisan Gerrymandering on Political Parties

The relationship between votes and seats in the legislature lies at the heart of democratic governance. However, there has been little previous work on the downstream effects of partisan gerrymandering on the health of political parties. In this study, we conduct a comprehensive examination of the impact of partisan advantage in the districting process on an array of downstream outcomes. We find that districting bias impedes numerous party functions at both the congressional and state house levels. Candidates are less likely to contest districts when their party is disadvantaged by a districting plan. Candidates that do choose to run are more likely to have weak resumes. Donors are less willing to contribute money. And ordinary voters are less apt to support the targeted party. These results suggest that gerrymandering has long-term effects on the health of the democratic process beyond simply costing or gaining parties seats in the legislature.     

The adequacy of China's responses to wrongful convictions

This paper examines a series of reforms that followed the discovery of high-profile wrongful convictions in China since 2005. There have been two waves of criminal justice reforms to prevent future wrongful convictions and to improve China's criminal justice system more generally. But it will be suggested in this paper that China's responses are inadequate because they allow traditional police and judicial practices that will lead to future wrongful convictions to continue. Further reforms will be suggested. First, police interrogations should be fully recorded, and the entire recording should be played back at trial. Second, the role of the defense counsel should be expanded. The use of state secrets as evidence against the accused should be curtailed. The close cooperation between the police, procuratorates and judiciary in the criminal justice should be counteracted by the creation of an independent body to review all serious convictions. Finally, the Chinese criminal justice has proven itself not safe enough to allow the broad use of capital punishment as a punishment for non-violent offences and at the very least, the immediate execution of prisoners who lose their final appeal must be abolished.     

Translating police research into policy: some implications of the National Academies report on proactive policing for policymakers and researchers

ABSTRACT

In February 2018, the U.S. Committee on Proactive Policing published its report on the evidence regarding the effects of different forms of proactive policing, particularly on crime and disorder. In this essay, we explore three obstacles to evidence-based policymaking in policing, some of which were raised by the Committee, but we take occasion to develop here: (1) the mistrust of science; (2) the paucity of cost-efficiency analyses; and (3) the challenge of managing competing values. For each of these we describe the nature of the problem before identifying some possibilities for mitigating or overcoming it. Our goals are two-fold: (1) to provide some considerations that police leaders might take into account when making decisions about proactive policing; and (2) to illuminate avenues for future research.     

Litigation Public Relations: The Lawyers' Duty to Balance News Coverage of Their Clients

As the 20th century began its final decade, litigation public relations was more rigorously condemned than condoned. By the end of the decade, the proliferation of the practice and the failure of the bar and bench to forbid it had made the criticism virtually moot. This article considers whether there is a basis for making the right to practice litigation public relations an obligation to do so. The article concludes that the right properly belongs to clients and not their attorneys, and finds a basis in contract and malpractice law for requiring attorneys to tend to their clients' interests in the court of public opinion as zealously as they do in courts of law.     

Young children's responses to cross-examination style questioning: the effects of delay and subsequent questioning

In a single experiment with 5- and 6-year-old children, we examined whether the changes that children make in response to cross-examination style questioning vary as a function of delay and/or persist in subsequent interviews. Children visited the local police station; 1–3 days later they were interviewed in a direct examination format. Either 1–3 days or 8 months later, children were interviewed in a cross-examination format designed to persuade them to change their original responses. One week following the cross-examination interview, the direct examination questions were repeated. Relative to direct examination scores, the accuracy of children's reports decreased significantly during cross-examination, irrespective of delay. When children were interviewed again 1 week after cross-examination, however, their responses (and their accuracy levels) were very similar to those observed during the direct examination interview. That is, during cross-examination, children made changes to their earlier testimony even when their memory for the event remained intact.     

Women in parliament: assessing the effectiveness of gender quotas in Poland

Gender quotas aim to increase women’s parliamentary representation. However, the effectiveness of quotas varies. This article explores this issue further by examining the case of Poland, where gender quotas were introduced in 2011. The Polish case presents an interesting puzzle. Although the overall number of women candidates increased almost twofold in comparison with the pre-quota period, this translated into only a slight increase in the number of women deputies in 2011 and 2015. Hence, the impact of quotas was limited. However, the partisan analysis shows that there was a significant variation among individual parties: whereas some parties promoted wholeheartedly women’s access to political office, other parties did not facilitate it. By drawing on rational choice institutionalism, this article shows that institutions and preferences of political parties matter for the effectiveness of gender quotas. In the case of ineffective gender quota policy, political parties have a final say in women’s parliamentary representation.     

职员发明财产权利归属正义

我国以公权理念为基础,在职员职务发明成果财产权利分配方面存在绝对单一归属的问题,违背了智力财产私权性的法律原则和“投资决定产出”的经济公理,挫伤了发明人的创造积极性,影响了我国科技发展的进程。我国的“厚雇主”倾向、美国的“厚雇员”原则以及法国的"折衷"主义均有失偏颇。应当建立职务发明的类型化,以投资作为归属的基本考量,建立以财产权利共享、开发风险共担为核心的职务发明归属制度。