Civic Protest. Version 2.0

The author discusses the involvement of Russian-speaking members of the Ukrainian population in the Euromaidan protests. She argues that protesters of all cultural backgrounds had united in opposition to the corruption of the Yanukovych government and highlights the potential inherent in their participation in protests in creating a civic Ukrainian nation     

Ukraine's “Eurorevolution”

The author reconstructs a selective chronology of the protest events that took place in Ukraine in November 2013–January 2014 and comments on various aspects of the political and economic crisis—unprecedented in the post-Soviet history of Ukraine—that brought to the fore the question of the further existence and development of Ukrainian society and the Ukrainian state. He argues that the protests showed that a substantial segment of Ukrainian society was seeking a fundamentally new European structure of political and economic life, a development that took the Yanukovych government by surprise and led to its downfall.     

On the Same Side of the Barricades

The author discusses the role of radical groups in the Euromaidan protest movement. She argues that extraparliamentary right-wing groups have partially displaced the Svoboda party through their actions during the protest. She also shows that during the Maidan protest, the right-wing groups maintained a truce with left-wing groups based on their shared opposition to the Yanukovych government.     

The Constitution of Counterreforms

With the restoration of the old constitution, Yanukovych gets the opportunity to pass off responsibility for his failures onto someone else     

Radicalized Europeans?

Based on an original survey, the author examines the values of participants in the Euromaidan protest. He finds that the protestors’ values are much more comparable to those of the population of Western Europe and Scandinavia than to the general population of Ukraine. The protestors placed relatively high value on the common good and cared relatively little for personal achievement.     

Public-College Student-Athletes and Game-Time Anthem Protests: Is There a Need for a Constitutional-Analytical Audible?

National-anthem-related protests among NFL players have revealed complexities associated with symbolic counter-speech tied to American symbols of patriotism. For public-college officials and coaches, who are bound by the First Amendment, the handling of game-time anthem protests may reverberate beyond the court of public opinion. Because uniformed collegiate student-athletes occupy a constitutional limbo-land in which they are distinguishable both from members of the general adult population and their non-athlete student peers, the traditional framework for evaluating limits on their game-time political counter-speech may prove unwieldy. This article presents an alternative constitutional-analytical approach that contemplates the unique status of collegiate student-athletes and the nature of competitive teams. Within this potential framework, administrator-imposed limits on anthem protests would be reviewed strictly. Courts considering coach-imposed limits on anthem protests, however, might opt for a less rigid form of review that allows for a more direct balancing of interests.     

Post-Soviet Gravitation

The author argues that the unexpected victory of Viktor Yanukovych in the 2010 presidential elections reflects popular fatigue regarding political conflict and a willingness to return to the post-Soviet oligarchic model of the Kuchma period. In rejecting the dictatorial tendencies of Yulia Tymoshenko, however, the electorate remained true to the democratic ideals of the Orange Revolution.     

论四要件犯罪构成理论的合理性暨对中国刑法学体系的坚持

主张取消四要件犯罪构成理论,推翻现行中国刑法学体系的观点是不可取的。四要件犯罪构成理论是一种历史性的选择,具有历史合理性;符合中国国情,具有现实合理性;逻辑严密、契合认识规律、符合犯罪本质特征,具有内在合理性;与德日三阶层犯罪论体系相比,相对稳定、适合中国诉讼模式,具有优势。当前应坚持罪-责-刑的中国刑法学体系,同时,也应改变静态的研究方法,加强刑事责任理论的探索,注重具体问题的解决,进一步促进中国刑法学体系的完善。     

Re-election isn't everything: legislators’ goal-seeking and committee activity in Japan

A number of political scientists have explained legislators’ behaviour as a function of their re-election, influence, and policy goals, but these goals are sometimes incompatible. This study seeks to explain under what conditions legislators emphasise the goals of building influence or shaping policy over re-election. The study focuses on Japanese legislators’ Diet committee attendance as a proxy for their attention to an influence or policy goal. It shows that legislators elected from an open-list proportional representation seat are most likely to emphasise building influence or shaping policy, while legislators elected from a district using a single non-transferable vote system are least likely to do so. Legislators are more likely to do so in a non-election year than in an election year. In addition, electorally stronger legislators are more likely to focus on influence or policy goals in an election year, while electorally weaker legislators are more likely to do so in a non-election year.     

Law and Social Protests

This paper deals with the relationship between law and social protests, a topic that seems particularly relevant at this time, when recent public events show the existence of growing tension between citizens and public officers. The paper does not explore the ultimate causes that triggered these social protests, but rather the normative and legal questions raised by these conflicts. The main question that it addresses is the following: How should the law act in the face of these growing expressions of social discontent? The main point that it defends is that social protests are political expressions that, as such, deserve a special public (and particularly judicial) protection. The argument is particularly directed at studying the legal consequences of taking the expressive components of social protests seriously. The exploration may have a further theoretical interest for those who are interested in reflecting upon the scope and limits of the theory of deliberative democracy.     

Belief in a Just World and Commitment to Long-Term Deserved Outcomes

We investigated whether people need to believe in a just world in part because such a belief helps people to work toward long-term goals and to do so in such a way that they are deserved. We assessed participants' long-term goal focus and also their commitment to deserving their outcomes (via a psychopathy scale). In a second session, participants were then exposed to a victim whose situation did or did not contradict a belief in a just world. When the victim's situation contradicted a belief in a just world, the greater the participants' tendency to focus on long-term outcomes, the more they blamed the victim for her misfortune; but this relation only occurred for participants with a strong commitment to deserving their outcomes (i.e., those low in psychopathy). The results are consistent with our argument that, given the function of the belief in a just world proposed in this article, people would have a greater need to preserve the belief (e.g., by blaming victims of injustice) the greater their investment in long-term and deserved outcomes.     

Representatives' Attitudes Toward Citizen Protests in Sweden: The Impact of Ideology,Parliamentary Position,and Experiences

What affects political representatives' attitudes toward citizen protests? We test the impact of political representatives' left‐right ideology, parliamentary position, and earlier experience of citizen protests. Using data from a pioneering survey covering all local political representatives in Sweden (n = 9,101, response rate 70%), we examine attitudes toward controversial noninstitutionalized forms of citizen protests. The results show that representatives to the right show considerably lower protest acceptance than those to the left. Representatives in office show significantly lower levels of acceptance than those of the opposition. Finally, the results show that representatives with more protest experience show higher protest acceptance.     

Lawyers' perspectives on ‘what is court-connected mediation for?’

This article analyses the results of an empirical investigation into lawyers' perspectives of the goal of court-connected mediation in the Supreme Court of Tasmania, Australia. The findings of other empirical studies are drawn upon to contextualise the results. The data reveal a tendency for lawyers to emphasise settlement in accordance with the law as the main purpose of court-connected mediation. There was evidence that some lawyers maintain a competitive approach to court-connected mediation, seeking to ‘win’ for their clients with minimal regard to the other party's goals or to achieve outcomes that reflect a legal assessment of the case. However, where non-legal, satisfaction-related needs were met, many lawyers viewed such outcomes as particularly positive. A mixed range of views was revealed, with the common goals of an opportunity for settlement and a focus on law as a reference point. The findings contribute to knowledge about lawyers' understandings of ‘what is mediation for?’.     

This is What a Police State Looks Like: Sousveillance, Direct Action and the Anti-corporate Globalization Movement

Activists across the globe have increasingly incorporated digital communication technologies into their repertoire of direct action tactics to challenge state and corporate power. Examining the anti-corporate globalization protests at the September 2009 Group of Twenty (G-20) meetings in Pittsburgh, this paper explores how activists used sousveillance and counter-surveillance as direct action tactics to make excessive force by police more visible to the public. Collaborative endeavors such as the G-20 Resistance Project, the Tin Can Comms Collective and independent media centers provided activists with the necessary tactical and strategic communication networks to coordinate direct actions during the G-20 protests. Through the use of surveillance technologies widely available to the public such as video cameras, cell phones and the internet, activists created an environment of permanent visibility in which the behaviors of police were subjected to public scrutiny. The images captured by anti-globalization activists raises a salient question: Is this what a police state looks like?     

The “war on cops,” retaliatory violence,and the murder of George Floyd*

The police murder of George Floyd sparked nationwide protests in the summer of 2020 and revived claims that public outcry over such high-profile police killings perpetuated a violent “war on cops.” Using data collected by the Gun Violence Archive (GVA) on firearm assaults of U.S. police officers, we use Bayesian structural time series (BSTS) modeling to empirically assess if and how patterns of firearm assault on police officers in the United States were influenced by the police murder of George Floyd. Our analysis finds that the murder of George Floyd was associated with a 3-week spike in firearm assaults on police, after which the trend in firearms assaults dropped to levels only slightly above that which were predicted by pre-Floyd data. We discuss potential explanations for these findings and consider their relevance to the contemporary discussion of a “war on cops,” violence, and officer safety.     

Can a leopard change its spots? Strategic behavior versus professional role conception during Ukraine's 2014 court chair elections

Do judges respond to institutional and strategic incentives or do they strictly follow dominant professional role conceptions? This article weighs in by exploring whether an ideational shift toward judicial empowerment and independence can germinate from institutional reforms. Ukraine's 2014 Euromaidan revolution and the comprehensive judicial reform adopted in its wake provide a test of the competing theoretical accounts. A judicial lustration law sacked all incumbent court chairs, who had been appointed by the executive, and gave Ukrainian judges the right to elect new chairs via secret ballot. I analyze this radical step toward judicial self-government using an original data set with individual- and court-level data. The key finding is that less than a fifth of Ukrainian judges embraced their newly granted agency and elected a new chair for their court, whereas the overwhelming majority followed dominant professional norms of deference and reelected the sacked court chairs. This finding holds for all rungs of the judicial hierarchy and for all regions of Ukraine. Even protégés of ousted president Yanukovych won the secret ballot vote by their peers more often than they lost it. Beyond Ukraine, these results suggest that empowering individual judges in the highly hierarchical structure of a civil law judiciary is unlikely to lead to a judicial behavior shift, at least in the short run.     

Advancing Accountability: Moving Toward Victim Restoration

One of the goals of Pennsylvania's juvenile justice system is the “imposition of accountability” for offenses committed. This White Paper, originally published in 2006, takes the position that true accountability requires juvenile offenders to repair the harm caused by their offending behavior and to understand and acknowledge the wrongfulness of their actions, their responsibility for causing harm, and the impact of the crime on the crime victim and community. It identifies system responsibilities, restorative practices, and outcomes relative to accountability. This White Paper was the result of debate among focus group participants under the auspices of the State Advisory Group.     

Hope Springs Eternal: An Exploration of Hope at a Local Jail

Prevention and intervention research has indicated the malleability of hope in a variety of populations and the positive impact on treatment outcomes in general clinical settings and substance use treatment. However, despite its prospective role in improving well-being, research on hope is not often situated behind bars. Thus, the current project intended to explore the nature of theory-driven hope discussions for women involved in justice systems. The aim was to maintain and enhance hope, activate positivity, and thereby enhance the quality of life.

Four weekly focus group sessions were conducted with women detained at a local jail (n?=?23), with discussion prompts based on Snyder’s theory of hope (goal setting, agency thinking, and pathway thinking). Using interactional delivery methods, we emphasized hope among jailed women by: (1) facilitating the development and maintenance of hopeful thinking; (2) developing concrete goals towards rehabilitation and a positive life; (3) enhancing the capacity for developing enduring, cross-sectional strategies for goal attainment; and (4) facilitating self-analysis on their overall ability to produce workable plans required to reach the goals. Weekly journaling was also included to complement the process.

Results from the qualitative analysis suggest hope for these jailed women was constructed as belief in a better future and was also often embedded within a religious worldview. Further, jailed women’s perceptions of meeting goals were heavily dependent upon outside sources that would provide structure and discipline. Implications include providing strength-based reentry programs, offering mentorship, emphasizing goal-setting strategies, and reviewing visitation policies.     

Profiles of State Technological Transfer Structure and Its Impact on Small Manufacturers

This paper presents the results of an empirical examination of the methods 10 state agencies use in coordinating technology assistance to small manufacturers. The strategies that agencies use to transfer technology are evaluated in light of 15 economic variables. Where appropriate, regression analysis was used to measure the impact of these variables on the growth rate of small manufacturers. State assistance strategies were determined by mailing a questionnaire to the chief technology transfer officer in each of the states. Survey participants were asked to discuss the mission, goals, degree of goal accomplishment, and size of budget/staff. The study compares their responses and discusses how these agencies might improve the transfer process.Five economic variables were found to be significantly related to the number of small manufacturers in a state. However when growth rates of the significant variables and small manufacturers were compared the results were not as clear. The states with the fastest growth rates of small manufacturers did focus their technical assistance on small firms. These states tended to place a priority on providing technical assistance to small manufacturers.