The Public Legitimacy of the National Assembly for Wales

This article examines the public legitimacy of the National Assembly for Wales. Both the Assembly and the broader system of devolved government for Wales initially enjoyed very limited public support. It is shown that support for devolution in general has risen substantially, while some elements of public attitudes towards the Assembly itself now appear distinctly positive. However, it is also demonstrated that public legitimacy, defined as ‘diffuse support’ for the Assembly, remains limited. The article then examines what factors explain levels of diffuse support for the National Assembly. It is found that variation in such support is best accounted for by factors associated with ‘non-material consequentialism’: perceptions of the impact of the Assembly on the process of government. The conclusion assesses the implications of the findings for the National Assembly, as well as for the study of devolution and political institutions more generally.     

机构改革背景下公务员职业生涯规划研究

本文通过分析机构改革引起的公务员职业环境的变化，明确了新环境对公务员职业素质的新要求。提出公务员的职业生涯规划应当契合职业环境的发展变化，结合工作实际，及时调整合适的职业奋斗目标。并为实现这一目标做出行之有效的安排。     

The study of legislative committees*

ABSTRACT

Proving that legislative committees really matter is not simple. The assembled papers aim to demonstrate fruitful paths to analysing when committees influence policy, what they can and should do, and how to detect their importance to the political process.     

Committee Inquiries in the Australian Parliament and their Influence on Government: Government Acceptance of Recommendations as a Measure of Parliamentary Performance

Committees in the Australian parliament often make recommendations to government and attempt to persuade the government to accept them. Using a sample of committee reports tabled between the 2001 and 2004 elections, this paper measures the government acceptance of committee recommendations as a proxy for committees' influence. On average, the government stated it accepted three majority recommendations out of 11 per report, although this figure drops to two and a half when viewed as recommendations implemented and not merely promised. The government accepted virtually no minority recommendations. The most important report characteristic is the extent to which it affects the government's reputation, but the breadth of political support that it can muster is also relevant.     

Party Legacies and Institutional Gravity: The Dynamic between Members of Parliament and Assembly Members in Wales

What does the creation of sub-national legislatures entail for the work of parliamentary representatives, and by what guidelines does the cross-level relationship evolve? This article considers the issue in the context of British devolution, relating the analysis of parliamentarians to the question of how parties adapt. The empirical analysis, drawing on a series of interviews with Assembly Members (AMs) and Members of Parliament (MPs) from Labour, the Conservative Party and the Liberal Democrats, shows that the infrastructure for communication between AMs and MPs differs considerably between the parties. Moreover, there are also key differences between parties with regard to how relations between individual representatives are resolved. Drawing upon insights from the institutionalist literature, the paper argues, first, that the creation of sub-national legislatures challenges party cohesiveness and, secondly, that how this challenge is met by the parties is guided by their distinct ideational and organisational legacies with regard to devolution.     

法眼和钱眼：深化中国院校研究的两维视角

院校研究需要多学科介入。在高等学校不断推进依法治校和科学理财的过程中,迫切需要院校研究不断深化高校管理和运行中的法学和经济学研究,以提供有针对性、专业性的政策咨询。     

The reluctant activist: the Italian parliament and the scrutiny of EU affairs between institutional opportunities and political legacies

ABSTRACT

The article analyses the participation of the Italian Parliament in the scrutiny of EU affairs after the entry into force of the Treaty of Lisbon and its implementation through the national Law 234/2012. The empirical analysis highlights that notwithstanding the presence of favourable institutional and political conditions, the involvement of the Italian Parliament in EU affairs moderately increased. The Treaty of Lisbon and Italian legislation improved Parliament’s rights to participate in the ascending phase but without altering significantly the balance of powers between the European Commission and NPs, and between the Italian Parliament and the Government. Moreover, MPs perceive the EWS and the PD as not impactful on decision-making at the EU and the national level.     

After Waterhouse: vicarious liability and the tort of institutional abuse

As evidence of the extent of the abuse of children in residential care increases, our understanding of this terrible wrong has altered. These assaults are an institutional syndrome, at the same time that they are individual crimes; certain systems of institutional care are conducive to/foster abuse behaviour (acting as 'crucibles' rather than 'honeypots'for rogue paedophiles). A theory of vicarious (institutional) liability is appropriate if we understand a syndrome of institutional abuse in this way, as involving institutional responsibility in addition to individual fault. The recent decision of the Canadian Supreme Court in Bazley v Curry found a children's home vicariously liable for sexual assaults of an employee on the basis of responsibility through the creation of risk, an analysis of and apportionment of liability which is appropriate to the special syndrome of institutional abuse, while encouraging deterrence and providing fair and practical compensation to victims. This analysis/liability is supported by an economic analysis of institutional child abuse and decision making in child protection.     

Vehicles of opposition influence or agents of the governing majority? Legislative committees and private members’ bills in the Hungarian Országgyűlés and the Israeli Knesset

ABSTRACT

In this article, we assess the role and the strength of the legislative committee system of two legislatures: the Hungarian Országgy?lés and the Israeli Knesset, by looking at the fate of private member bills over the past four legislative cycles (1998–2014 in Hungary and 2006–2019 in Israel). We find that Israeli committees allow opposition PMBs to succeed at a significantly higher rate than Hungarian committees do, even though the formal properties of the two committee systems are very similar: during the examined period, more than one-fifth of the laws that were passed by the Knesset were initiated as opposition sponsored PMB, whereas the corresponding number in the Országgy?lés was only one per cent. The central reason for this unexpected divergence in the success rate of opposition sponsored PMBs, in spite of a favourable institutional setting shared by the committee systems of the two parliaments, may lie in the different degrees of party concentration in the two legislative party systems.     

In search for rules that secure gains from cooperation: the heuristic value of social dilemmas for normative institutional economics

We ask how normative statements are possible within an economic theory framework that recognises the importance of institutional arrangements. Instead of applying established outcome-oriented criteria of social welfare, we examine whether the rules of economic interaction allow the acquisition of gains from cooperation. We suggest to reconstruct any interaction as an existing or repealed social dilemma. This approach helps to identify common rule interests which create room for improvement of all parties involved, and to suggest desirable institutional reforms. Our policy applications include the unemployment problem and rural credit markets.      

Discovering Directions for Change in Higher Education Through the Experiences of Senior Women Faculty

The Women in Science and Engineering Leadership Institute (WISELI) at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, an NSF-funded ADVANCE Institutional Transformation project, employed the “discovery interviews” method to characterize the experiences of senior women faculty in science and engineering on campus. This method allowed WISELI to reach its aims of (1) gaining information from senior women that would inform the programs developed by WISELI, and (2) building relationships among the senior women and WISELI. The discovery interview process also had some unintended consequences, including creation of an expectation of advocacy that exceeded the original intent of the project. This method was well-matched to the needs of WISELI as a change agent at the UW-Madison, and has contributed a great deal to its Institutional Transformation efforts, primarily by changing WISELI’s perceptions of what leadership means to senior women faculty.     

行政诉讼司法变更权研究

行政诉讼司法变更权,是法院行政审判权的重要组成部分。确立司法变更权,是我国民主法制建设的要求。我国现行《行政诉讼法》规定的司法变更权是有限的,只适用于行政处罚案件。为了有效地监督和制约行政机关行使行政职权,更好地实现行政诉讼保护公民、法人和其他组织合法权益的目的,应当适当扩展司法变更权的范围。     

Pig-mentation: postmortem iris color change in the eyes of Sus scrofa

Experienced forensic pathologists and examiners may be familiar with the phenomenon of postmortem iris color change; however, only Knight, Simpson's forensic medicine, Arnold, London, 1997; Ref. 1 and Saukko and Knight, Knight's forensic pathology, 3rd ed., Arnold, London, 2004; Ref. 2 have referred to it in the literature, and to date, there have been no published scientific research studies on this taphonomic artifact. A controlled experiment was conducted of postmortem changes to isolated Sus scrofa eyes. The eyes (n = 137) were separated into three groups and each sample was observed for 3-day postmortem at a different temperature. In addition, a Sus scrofa head was obtained to observe postmortem changes of eyes in situ. All isolated blue eyes in the experiment, at room temperature and higher, changed to brown/black within 48 h. The in situ blue eye, at room temperature, turned brown/black within 72 h. If iris color consistently changes postmortem in humans, then this taphonomic artifact must be incorporated into victim identification protocol, including disaster victim identification software, and autopsy reports to prevent inaccurate victim identification and inappropriate exclusion from the identification process.     

The Psychological Inventory of Criminal Thinking Styles and Level of Service Inventory-Revised: Screening Version as Predictors of Official and Self-reported Disciplinary Infractions

A total of 159 male inmates screened with the Psychological Inventory of Criminal Thinking Styles (PICTS) and Level of Service Inventory-Revised: Screening Version (LSI-R:SV) were followed for a period of 24 months for evidence of disciplinary infractions (incident reports). Eighty-three of these inmates also furnished a self-report of disciplinary infractions occurring during the 24-month follow-up. The PICTS General Criminal Thinking (GCT) score and LSI-R:SV total score correlated with and accurately identified the presence of an officially recorded disciplinary infraction, an officially recorded severe disciplinary infraction, and a self-reported disciplinary infraction but only age and the GCT score achieved incremental validity when age, GCT, and LSI-R:SV were included as predictors in the same probit regression or loglinear survival equation.     

Longitudinal neighborhood profiles in delinquency: The decomposition of change

The methods that traditionally have been used to examine changing spatial distributions of crime and delinquency rates are not able to analyze parsimoniously the full range of within-community variation in these rates over time. In this paper, we present a variant of Bryk and Raudenbush's(Psychol. Bull. 101: 147–158, 1987) hierarchical linear model that can simultaneously examine the full range of within- and between-group variation contained in longitudinal data sets. The method is illustrated through an analysis of the delinquency rates characterizing Chicago's neighborhoods between 1930 and 1970.     

Mentoring and Change in Cultural Organizations: The Experience of Directors in British National Museums

In management and arts management literature, mentoring is generally associated with social reproduction and emulation, and illustrates a phenomenon that is rather conservative in nature. Rarely is mentoring associated with change. In this article, we explore how mentoring has been a force of renewal for the institutional culture of British museums. This qualitative research brings attention to mentoring as a lever for cultural change through the experience of a new cohort of museum directors—one that has translated a new vision and approach to museums and the public into reality, and has brought forward the Labour government's cultural policy ideals.     

National Identity as a Means of Reducing Ethnic Negativism

This article discusses how national identity in Russia is understood by the public and among experts who study ethnic issues. The author separates the notion of national identity into categorical identity and associative identity (i.e., the consolidating type of identity which is based on a strong feeling of connection with other citizens). The latter type of identity is present only among a third of people who identify themselves as Russian. The author further analyses the connection of this type of identity with inter-ethnic negativism. She finds that national identity does not remove bias toward abstract “others.” However, it affects direct inter-ethnic communication in the labor and family spheres. The positive impact of national identity on inter-ethnic attitudes is more apparent in the Astrakhan region, which has longer experience of inter-ethnic communication. It is argued that one obstacle to national identity having a positive impact on inter-ethnic attitudes is the lack of a clear and consistent understanding of national identity among education experts, social scientists, and journalists. The study utilizes data from Wave 24 of the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey conducted by the Institute of Sociology (“The dynamics of social transformation of modern Russia in the socioeconomic, political, sociocultural, and ethno-confessional contexts,” Wave 4) and several separate regional polls conducted by the Department of Ethno-sociology of the Institute of Sociology, Russian Academy of Science between 2014 and 2016.     

Diffusion as a Process of Creative Adoption

This paper elaborates an integrated framework for understanding diffusion as a process of creative adoptions in the business sector. Within the context of the economics of localized technological change, adoption is viewed as a complementary component of a broader process of adjusting the technology when unexpected events in the product and factor markets push firms towards a creative reaction. When the stock of adoptions exerts a suitable combined effect both on the gross profitability of adoption and on the costs of adoption, such that the net profitability of adoption and hence the rates of new adoption follow a quadratic path, the dynamics of creative adoption can engender a S-shaped diffusion process.     

Homicide and economic change: Recent analyses of the Joint Economic Committee report of 1984

The relation between recession and homicide is classic in the United States. This has been affirmed in the 1976 and 1984 Reports to the Joint Economic Committee (JEC) of the United States Congress. Recent analysis confirms the findings reported in both 1976 and 1984 and demonstrates that the influence of recession on homicide is greater than previously estimated. Differences in the 1976 and 1984 findings on homicide are related to differences in the hypotheses tested, as discussed in detail and highlighted in the 1984 report. JEC staff correctly interpreted and reported the 1984 findings. Reproduction of the 1984 homicide equation is straightforward, provided the same data and any of several standard estimation techniques are used. Evidence does not support any of Cook and Zarkin's claims in their critique of the 1984 homicide equation. The JEC report of 1984 used appropriate techniques in the attempt (a) to ensure that influences attributed to economic changes are not actually due to other social factors and (b) to minimize underspecification of models.     

知识产权变动登记效力模式探析——以专利权为例

专利权作为绝对权,在变动过程中关涉不特定多数人利益,因此其在变动中的公示方式及其效力模式的选择至关重要。通过分析,在我国现行法律体系下,专利权变动宜采登记证明主义和登记生效主义,但在应然层面上,或许采登记证明主义和登记对抗主义更为合适。专利权变动登记模式可以适用于整个知识产权。