‘Not without the Consent and Goodwill of the Common People’: The Community as a Legal Authority in Medieval Sweden

The article investigates the legal authority of the people in later medieval Sweden. Three features are especially focused on. The first aspect of communal legal authority is the representation and participation of the local laity in the judicial process as co-judges, members of the nämnd, the Swedish equivalent of the jury, or town councillors. They also acted as surveyors, compurgators and inspectors in legal disputes. The second aspect is the role of the community, the people of the province, as lawmakers. Finally, the article looks at the role of medieval Swedish communities in choosing judges, juries and parish priests as well as electing kings. The article argues that the legal authority of the people in medieval Sweden was influenced by and reformulated through the church by learned doctrines on majority decisions and the quod omnes tangit maxim. After the Middle Ages, the nämnd and the representation of the peasant estate at parliament became some of the constituents of the national legal identity of Sweden vis-à-vis other countries.     

Potential of Inmate Self-Government

Inmate self-government is one of the strategies for moving correctional institutions away from the crime control establishment model and toward the community subsystem model Authentic participation in government of these institutions, however, awaits resolution of basic questions. With the prison organization provide the prerequisite conditions?. Will the inmates be prepared for effective participation. since the suicide processes of criminal justice administration heavily from those segments of the American population king expunge and incentives for significant political participation? Penal dorm depends on sociocultural changes in the society of which formations is a creature. Whether or not inmate self-government is o via reform strategy pivots ultimately on the revision of social attitudes toward deviants generally and the capacity of the prison to reduce significantly its social psychological isolation from the larger community system.     

Drug Addiction in Russia

[From the editors of Pravozashchitnik:] The Council on Foreign and Defense Policy (www.svop.ru) is a nongovernmental organization. It was founded on 25 February 1992 in Moscow by a group of well-known and influential politicians, heads of business associations, eminent entrepreneurs, political and social activists, and representatives of the power ministries, the military-industrial complex, academe, and the mass media. The independent status and the considerable scientific and political authority that the council has attained enables it to play an important role in Russia's emerging civil society, a niche that state structures cannot fill.     

Online Sexual Grooming in Sweden—Online and Offline Sex Offences against Children as Described in Swedish Police Data

The expansion in Internet use since the mid‐1990s has created a completely new and largely unmonitored forum for contacts between adults and children. The anonymity provided by Internet communications has been viewed as creating favourable conditions for adults wishing to develop manipulative relationships with children, and there has been a growing concern about the way the Internet may be used by adults intent on sexually exploiting and abusing young people. Much of the focus of this concern has been directed at adults using the Internet to create opportunities for the commission of offline sex offences. Based on police data from Sweden, this article describes the range of Internet‐related sexual offences against children currently being brought to the attention of the Swedish justice system. It focuses not only on the range of strategies employed by adults to persuade children to meet them offline for the purposes of sexual exploitation and abuse but also on the different types of online sexual offences that children in Sweden are currently being subjected to.     

Representative and Useful? An Empirical Assessment of the Representative Nature and Impact of the Scottish Youth Parliament

Youth parliaments provide a channel for young people to engage positively with the political system and benefit themselves and their communities. Using survey data of former members of the Scottish Youth Parliament (SYP), and comparing them with a variety of population data, the paper investigates whether the SYP is representative of the Scottish population, and whether engagement with the youth parliament has had an impact on members' personal and skills development, and associational activities in later life. Results suggest that former members of the youth parliament are representative of the general population and that personal and skills development has been high. In addition, an overwhelming majority of former members perceive positive impacts from their experiences. However, volunteering, although higher among former members compared with the population, is disproportionately favoured by the very same social groups that are known to volunteer more. The authors interpret this as evidence that the SYP has some way to go towards engendering volunteerism. These results are likely to be of interest to those who are either studying or engaging the younger generation in activities that sustain a healthy democratic regime.     

Sweden in 1930 and the 1930 census

The primary goal of censuses has always been to collect reliable information on the state’s population and provide a basis for governmental decision-making. This study examines the categories used in the 1930 census and links them to the context in which they were generated. We treat the census as a tool of state power, which can be discerned from the definitions of its categories and the way in which statistics are collected and used. The guiding question of the study was “how does the 1930 census differ from previous censuses and how can these differences and changes be explained?” We find that as in earlier censuses, Statistics Sweden used extracts from the parish books on the individual level to collect information for the 1930 census, but also used diverse supplementary sources including tax registers, income tax returns and language surveys. Thus, unlike in most countries, Sweden did not send out census takers or questionnaires to the population. Many of the new or updated variables we see in the 1930 census such as income, wealth, and number of children born, can be related to the political and social debate concerning the poor working class and the establishment of the welfare state. The inclusion of categories such as ethnicity, religion, and foreign nationality can be seen as part of a normative approach wanting to control, monitor and correct deviant elements of the Swedish population.

Sweden has several extraordinary longitudinal population databases built on the country’s excellent parish registers dating back to the 18th century. While the Swedish censuses have rarely been used as sources of data for historical analysis, this work demonstrates that the 1930 census has great potential to support new research.     

Collective efficacy and arson: the case of Malmö

The burning of cars and containers during social unrest has become a topic of both scholarly and public interest in Sweden over the past decade. Studies have suggested that social disorganization theory, or its modern expression collective efficacy, may be important for explaining why some neighbourhoods experience elevated levels of arson and unrest while others do not. To date, no study has explicitly studied the link between arson and collective efficacy at the neighbourhood level. The present study attempts to fill this gap by analysing the association between arson and collective efficacy in the city of Malmö, Sweden. Collective efficacy data from 96 neighbourhoods were collected in 2012 in the Malmö Community Survey (N = 4051). Arson data were collected from the rescue services, which employ GPS-receivers to accurately record the location of incidents. Regression models were fitted for arson, controlling for concentrated disadvantage, ethnic heterogeneity and residential stability. Results show no significant link between collective efficacy and arson following appropriate controls. This suggests that arson may depend on mechanisms other than collective efficacy, at least at the neighbourhood level. Future research may need to focus on alternative theoretical explanations such as strain, or on other levels of analysis than neighbourhoods.     

You can lead a horse to water …: A case study of a police department's response to stricter drunk-driving laws

We present a case study illustrating the complexity of the process that determines how vigorously local police agencies enforce recent drunk-driving laws. Police enforcement practices are influenced most strongly by the play of local factors in a system of “games.” The local forces exerting greatest influence are 1) the local demand for drunk-driving enforcement, 2) the police leadership's priority for DUI enforcement, 3) the police leadership's capacity for command and control of the organization, and 4) the disposition of the local police culture regarding drunk driving and related work issues. In “Melville,” the study site, there is little external demand for drunk-driving enforcement, and police management tries to suppress it while making only symbolic gestures of support. Management's capacity to control street-level enforcement practices is limited, however, and a small cadre of officers generates a disproportionate number of arrests for personal financial gain (bounty), giving the department a much higher arrest rate than the department desires. Thus Melville's responsiveness to the state's drunk-driving law is not due to external political pressure or formal policy, but rather to the inability of local authorities to impose their will on street-level practices. Melville's case suggests that the degree to which police implement a new criminal law may be entirely independent of efforts to ensure political accountability and organizational control.     

A Struggle for Competence: National Security,Surveillance and the Scope of EU Law at the Court of Justice of European Union

In Privacy International and Quadrature Du Net, the Grand Chamber of the CJEU ruled that the e-Privacy Directive generally prevents bulk retention and transmission of traffic and location data, unless Member States can prove serious threats to national security. In such cases, bulk data can be retained during a strictly necessary period, subject to review by a court or independent administrative body. The judgments will impact other data retention and sharing arrangements, such as the PNR, proposed e-Privacy Regulation and e-Evidence package, and adequacy decisions under GDPR, including for post-Brexit UK. The rulings suggest the CJEU's significance in national security, which has been outside of European integration, but has become a ground for political struggle between EU institutions and Member States. While Privacy International unequivocally asserts CJEU's authority in national security and is a victory for data protection, Quadrature Du Net does not oppose indiscriminate data retention in principle and is an ambivalent response to political pressure.     

The Politics of Rule of Law Reform: From Delegation to Autonomy

How can we understand the delegation of power and authority – for example, from a polity to an administrator - in a world of fragmented governance? In this paper, I introduce the practices of contemporary ‘rule of law’ and ‘governance’ reform, which reframe this question in politically powerful ways. These practices are increasingly important in development contexts, and beyond. Practitioners begin with the assumption that some sort of administration occurs in the development contexts in which they work. They then focus on how to convene a political community in which to embed – and potentially legitimate - that administration. They thereby reconfigure the question of delegation into one of autonomy – or managing the extent to and ways in which the administrative legal system self-produces. In doing so, I argue that contemporary rule of law practitioners wield constitutional power under the rubric of workaday administrative reform. At the same time, they efface their political accountability.     

The Programme de recherche en démographie historique: past,present and future developments in family reconstitution

The Programme de recherche en démographie historique (Historical Demography Research Programme) (PRDH), founded in 1966 and based at the Département de Démographie of the Université de Montréal, has since its inception featured a central project, a family reconstitution database of Quebec’s Catholic population from 1621 to 1799 named the Registre de la population du Québec ancien (Population Register of Historic Quebec) (RPQA). This article, which marks the fiftieth anniversary of the project, explores the development of the RPQA over the five decades in the context of similar international databases, explains the current state of the database as well as our record linkage methodology, describes an important collaboration now underway to build a larger Quebec historical data infrastructure, outlines new and renewed international collaborations, and summarizes research conducted using these data as well as future research possibilities. The particular geographic context, historical development and manageable colonial population size of Quebec favoured family reconstitution of the whole colony from the beginning of the project. Today, the RPQA comprises 438,193 individual biographies and 74,000 family files encompassing up to nine generations. To reconstitute families, we must identify and incorporate into the database all demographic events, including those whose existence can only be inferred through other sources. Future efforts to link nineteenth-century parish acts will need to deal with large case counts, mixed Catholic–Protestant marriages, and increased geographic and social mobility. The integration of complementary data will provide information on household co-residence, occupations, help track the destinies of mixed-religion persons and persons outside nuclear families and provide additional points of observation.     

Kinship,ritual kinship and political milieus in an alpine Valley in 19th century

In my paper I will present some results about ritual kinship and political mobilization of popular groups in an alpine Valley: the Val de Bagnes, in the Swiss canton of Valais. There are two major reasons to choose the Val de Bagnes for our inquiry about social networks: the existence of sharp political and social conflicts during the 18th and the 19th century and the availability of almost systematic genealogical data between 1700 and 1900.

The starting point of my research focuses on this question: what role did kinship and ritual kinship play in the political mobilization of popular groups and in the organization of competing factions? This question allows us to shed light on some other uses and meanings of ritual kinship in the local society. Was ritual kinship a significant instrument for economic cooperation? Or was it a channel for patronage or for privileged social contacts? The analysis highlights the importance of kinship and godparentage for the building of homogeneous social and political networks.

If we consider transactions between individuals, the analysis of 19th century Val de Bagnes gives the impression of quite open networks. Men and women tried to diversify their relations in order to avoid strong dependency from powerful patrons. Nevertheless, when we consider the family networks, we can notice that most relations took place in a structured social space or a specific “milieu”, were intense contacts enhanced trust, although political allegiances and social choices were not fully predictable on the basis of such preferential patterns.

In a politically conflictual society, like 19th century Bagnes, ritual kinship interacted with kinship solidarities and ideological factors shaping dense social networks mostly based on a common political orientation. Such milieus sustained the building of political factions, which show surprising stability over time. In this sense, milieus are important factors to understand political and religious polarization in 19th century Switzerland.     

The Demand for Cinema in Sweden: An Application of Proportional Odds Model

ABSTRACT

This article examines the determinants of demand for cinema using a randomly drawn sample of the movie-going population in Sweden. A proportional odds model is applied to capture the natural ordering of dependent variables and any inherent nonlinearities. The findings show that individual demand for cinema depends on gender, age, educational attainment, income, marital status, critical reviews, word of mouth, and willingness to pay. The fact that cinema demand is correlated with economic and socio-demographic variables has important implications for theoretical and empirical research in cultural economics and human decision-making processes.     

Electoral Reform and Changes in Legislative Behavior: Adoption of the Secret Ballot in Congressional Elections

There is widespread agreement that the Australian ballot fundamentally altered the American electoral system. One common approach to test the effects of ballot reform is to examine legislators elected under the party and secret ballot. An alternative research design, which we adopt here, compares changes in the behavior of legislators who were elected under both ballot types. We use this approach to investigate whether ballot reform directly influenced legislators' decisions to seek renomination and their behavior within the institution. Our results raise a number of important implications for understanding the effects of electoral reform on political behavior.     

Mixed marriage, ‘a grave injury to our church’: An account of the 1957 Fethard-on-Sea Boycott

The family was central to the religious formation and indeed the survival of southern Irish Protestantism in the mid-twentieth century. The largest Protestant denomination in the Republic of Ireland, the Church of Ireland (comprising approximately 5% of the national population in 1950) was challenged by demographic trends of late and low rates of marriage, emigration and the ever-prevalent threat of mixed marriage. Against this backdrop the church emphasised the essentiality of the socialisation of children into the church community. It cautioned against the dangers of inter-church marriage where the enforcement by the Catholic church of the 1908 Ne Temere decree obliged the Protestant partner in a mixed marriage to consent in writing to the upbringing of any children of the union as Catholics. The actions of one woman in the small village of Fethard-on-Sea in county Wexford in 1957 in challenging this dictate led to a sectarian and divisive boycott of Protestant business in the locality. Eileen Cloney, a member of the Church of Ireland, chose to leave her home with her two daughters, against the wishes of her husband Seán, rather than allow her eldest daughter attend the local Catholic school in the village. Her ‘abduction’ of her children was condemned by local and national Catholic clergy culminating in the call for a boycott of Protestant businesses and farms by the local Catholic Curate, Fr. Stafford on 12 May 1957. In this article, original oral history research as well as previously unseen documentary sources will be used in an examination of this divisive boycott and its local and national repercussions. The article will explore contemporary discourse on marriage as well as highlighting the significance of the family in church and state discourse.     

New right,new left,new challenges: understanding and responding to neoconservatism in contemporary criminology

This essay examines the rise of neoconservative thought within criminological discourse from the enlightenment ‘quarrel’ with ancient philosophy and church supported scholasticism in the 1700s to the present day. From the perspective of criminology, it is argued that there is little new about the ‘new right’ with the exception that it has managed to galvanize itself as a popular retributionist alternative among the working class in the United States, Canada, and England. The current organization of social institutions in a modern ‘risk society’ facilitates the easy re-definition of the crises of late-modern capitalism into issues of social control. It is not surprising we find the right reinvigorated and prominent under these conditions. New left realism and crime control through social development are offered as competitive platforms from which to advance critique of barbaric right-wing crime-control policies. Despite all my rage, I am still just a rat in cage (Smashing Pumpkins 1996)     

The Political Organization of Soviet Society: Principal Emphases in Scholarly Research (A Survey of the Literature of 1973-75)

The decisions of the Party orient all the social sciences, including the legal disciplines, to deeper and more diverse investigation of various spheres of the sociopolitical life of Soviet society and to study of the most recent tendencies and phenomena in the work of various sociopolitical institutions. An important place in this regard is occupied by the treatment of questions pertaining to the political organization of Soviet society. Considerable attention has been paid in our literature and in that of the socialist countries to study of this subject, particularly in recent years. This is shown, in part, by the appearance of a number of specialized books treating various aspects of the political organization of Soviet society and also by a large number of articles. (1)     

Between Law and Transnational Social Movement Organizations: Stabilizing Expectations of Global Public Goods

This article draws on Niklas Luhmann's theory and method to present transnational social movement organizations as a solution to the problem of increased expectations of global public goods which fail to find adequate accommodation in law. As a concrete example of the limits of law in this respect, it examines the non liquet of the World Court on the question of the illegality of nuclear weapons. The trajectory of anti‐nuclear norms is traced beyond the limits of law to the alternative structure of transnational social movement organizations, and the article presents such organizations as stabilizing increased expectations of global public goods through their recursive decision making and their capacity to continuously project those expectations at the legal and political systems. This generates observations on the concept of ‘global governance ‘, the structural relations between global civil society and international law, and the role of this form of organization in the evolution of the global political system.     

Targeting the Treatment: The Strategy behind Lyndon Johnson's Lobbying

Lyndon Johnson woke up studying whip counts, went to bed reading the Congressional Record, and invested countless hours in between translating that political intelligence into a lobbying offensive. The result, famously christened “The Johnson Treatment,” remains the archetype practitioners and political scientists cite when appraising presidential leadership on Capitol Hill. Yet Beltway folklore aside, we know little about how LBJ helped forge winning legislative coalitions. Stepping back from the (countless) colorful anecdotes, this study offers a new and systematic look at Lyndon Johnson's lobbying. Specifically, after exploring theoretical models of presidential coalition building, we then investigate their operational tenets using original data on all President Johnson's contacts, with each member of Congress, in both chambers, for every day he was president.     

Pathways to Power: The Role of Preparliamentary Careers and Political Human Capital in the Obtainment of Cabinet Positions

Understanding the rise to power is central to the study of politics. Yet, we still know little about the career paths of influential politicians like ministers. The literature assumes that dominant preparliamentary occupations (e.g., lawyer, local offices) predict promotion. We move beyond this potential ecological fallacy and suggest a perspective that emphasizes the role of gatekeepers and political human capital like national political experience and education. We leverage complete career data of all Dutch MPs (N = 1,263; 1945–2012) and study their (N = 4,966) opportunities to obtain a cabinet position. A sequence analysis with fuzzy clustering reveals eight career paths in both the professional and political domain. A logistic regression analysis that uses these career paths as predictors shows that prominent occupations and communicative experience do not constitute the pathway to ministerial power; a university education and preparliamentary national political experience do. Findings support the value of political human-capital theory to understand political promotion.