‘From weird to wired’: MPs,the internet and representative politics in the UK

On 14 May 2002, the House of Commons voted on proposals put forward by the Modernisation Select Committee for reform of the departmental select committee system. This article examines the origins of those proposals, and the outcome of the vote, focusing on one particular proposal to create a Committee of Nomination to place MPs onto select committees. This raises questions regarding two competing academic approaches to explaining parliamentary reform, the ‘attitudinal’ approach and the ‘contextual’ approach, and concludes that, of the two, the ‘contextual’ approach is better placed to explain the failure to create a Committee of Nomination.     

Is the doctor in? The evolving role of organized medicine in health policy

Until recently, physicians were viewed as the dominant player in health policy. Now, however, they compete with many other effective interest groups. This article analyzes this changing role, and specifically how organized medicine has changed its approach to influencing health policy. The essay begins with a review of the reasons for the growth and subsequent decline of physicians' influence. This is followed by a case study of physician payment reform under Medicare, which illustrates the ways in which organized medicine chooses when and when not to cooperate with government. The article concludes with a discussion of where physicians are likely to continue to be influential in future health policy reform. Three such areas are noted: payment policy, quality and clinical innovation, and medical education and training.     

The ‘good’, the ‘bad’ and the ‘Charlie’: the business of cocaine smuggling in Greece

This article examines the social organisation of cocaine smuggling in Greece. Emphasis is placed on the involvement of professionals from the shipping industry and actors from the ‘upper society echelons’ who play a pivotal role in the transportation and importation of cocaine to Western Europe and Greece. After considering empirical evidence from a variety of sources, our findings indicate that the cocaine market in Greece is ‘organised’ by a system of collaborative relationships between state, business and civil society actors. It is suggested that to better understand the nature of this illegal market, further research is required to take a closer look into the economic, socio-cultural and political incentives of these actors.     

From a ‘peasant parliament’ to a ‘professional parliament'? Change in the Icelandic Althingi

The present article seeks to describe and analyse parliamentary change in the Icelandic Althingi, probably one of the least known of the west European legislatures. The first question asked is ‘Has there been a professionalisation of the Icelandic parliament?’ and, secondly, ‘Has there been a professionalisation of Icelandic legislators?’ The article is in three sections. The first gives a very brief overview of the main institutional features of the Althingi before 1991. The second focuses on changes in the legislative capacity of the Althingi, whilst the third explores possible changes in the legislative culture of the assembly. The study draws on three sources: official statistical material and other parliamentary documentation; discussions with senior parliamentary staff; and hour‐long interviews with three veteran Atlhingi members boasting a total of 80 years parliamentary experience between them.     

The problem with ‘dots’: questioning the role of rationality in the online environment

Regulatory theorists often use the ‘dot’ as a metaphor to help conceptualise their models of a given environment. Lessig famously used the ‘pathetic dot’ in his classic, ‘Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace’ and Murray’s ‘Regulation of Cyberspace’ used interconnected dots to help describe networked communitarianism and to discuss the effectiveness and implementation of symbiotic regulation. However in both models, the dot is seen as a rational actor. The rational ‘dot’ is presumed to have a complete set of preferences and the ability to gather all the necessary information in order to make an informed decision that optimally reflects their choices and preferences. However, research from psychology and, increasingly, economics has shown that humans are often prone to making errors in judgements. The paper argues that using the metaphor of dots to describe how rational actors behave in the digital environment is problematic. Actors deploy heuristics when making judgements, resulting in systematic errors and biases, often compromising the assumptions of the regulator. Accordingly, the way actors behave in the online environment is not rational at all; thus, models built on rationality start from a false premise.     

Expanding ‘Community’ in the Community Response to Intimate Partner Violence

Community coordination refers to a formalized system of collaboration between various social service agencies to help meet the needs of specific populations. In cases of intimate partner violence (IPV), community coordination includes a system of policies, information sharing, and referrals between the criminal justice system and counseling centers and shelters for survivors. The life model of social work practice suggests that social workers utilize both formal and informal groups as environmental resources for clients. In an effort to address the failures of community coordinated responses to IPV, community needs to be reconceptualized to include these additional groups, especially employers.     

Is the label ‘minimal legislature’ still appropriate? The role of the National People's Congress in China's political system

To discuss the type of legislature, this article explores what role the National People's Congress (NPC) plays in China's political system, particularly in legislation. According to Mezey's study (Comparative Legislatures, 1979), he defines ‘minimal legislatures’ as being characterised by having little or no policy-making power and being more supported by the elite. The assumption is that the NPC is a minimal legislature, acting as a rubber stamp for the executive. This study is used to test this assumption. The findings show that the NPC does play an important role in the whole political system, especially in legislation, though the NPC has typically been under the control of China's Communist Party. The findings also call into question the continued applicability of Mezey's classic typology legislatures given the development of the Chinese legislature. A new approach for classifying legislatures is introduced based on the institutionalisation and professionalisation of a legislature.     

‘Are the ‘others’ coming?’: Evidence on ‘alien conspiracy’ from three illegal markets in Greece

In the early 1990s Greece accepted a large number of immigrants from a variety of contexts. Since then ‘organised criminality’ has become an important aspect of the immigration nexus in the country, and ethnicity has been viewed as an extremely important-if not the primary–explanatory variable. Simultaneously, there has been very little empirical research on ‘organised crime’ in Greece in general and ‘organised crime’ and ethnicity in particular. The purpose of this article, which is based on previous research that the author has conducted on three illegal markets in Greece (a. migrant smuggling business, b. the cigarette black market, and c. the market of stolen cars and car parts), is to show the extent to which these illegal markets are controlled by foreign nationals, and establish whether there is such thing as an ‘alien conspiracy’ in the particular country.     

‘Welcome to the rape camp’: Sexual exploitation and the internet in cambodia

Abstract

Summary: This article reports a piece of original research into the links between the trafficking in women and children across the globe and how such trafficking practices have been facilitated by developments in technology and telecommunications. The connections between prostitution in the Mekong Sub-Region, pornography on the Internet, and sex tourism have also been researched, based on the experiences of women and children and the men who exploit them.     

The role of soft law in advancing the rights of persons with disabilities in the EU: A ‘hybridity’ approach to EU disability law

This article discusses the role of soft law in advancing the rights of persons with disabilities in the European Union (EU). In doing so, it revisits the emergence of the standalone, yet cross-cutting, field of ‘EU disability law’ through the lens of the ‘hybridity theory’ advanced inter alia by Trubek and Trubek. Being speculative in nature, this article construes EU disability law as a fruitful area for an enquiry into the dynamic relationship between hard and soft law. Until the entry into force of the Treaty of Amsterdam, soft law was crucial to attract disability within the sphere of action of the EU and to embed the social model of disability, displaying a value-setting role. In the post-Amsterdam period, soft law and hard law coexisted, being complementary to one another. Both contributed to a common objective, namely that of advancing equality of opportunities for persons with disabilities. After the conclusion of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, the dynamic relationship between hard and soft law has become more complex and akin to what Trubek and Trubek define as ‘transformation’.     

‘A Fair Day’s Wage for a Fair Day’s Work’? Exploring the connection between the parliamentary work of MPs and their electoral support

Electoral systems across Europe increasingly invite candidates to build up a personal reputation to earn votes. In this article, we investigate whether parliamentary work can be considered as a personal vote-earning attribute for incumbent MPs based on data of the 2014 elections in Belgium. The results show that when parliamentary work is operationalised in a narrow way (i.e. as the number of bills and the number of oral and written questions of an MP), this has no influence on the amount of preferential votes. When parliamentary work is defined in a broader way (i.e. also including other aspects of the legislative and control function of MPs), parliamentary work has a significant positive effect for MPs from opposition parties. This supports the claim that the number of legislative and control activities is not sufficient to measure the impact of parliamentary work on preferential votes, but that also other aspects of the work should be taken into account.     

Pussy Riot and feminist cultural criminology: a new ‘Femininity in Dissent’?

This comment considers the mainstream, online Western news media’s reaction to the imprisonment of three members of the Russian feminist punk band, Pussy Riot, in August 2012. Of particular concern is the band’s style of feminist political protest; it argues that their case is of significance to feminist cultural criminology. Drawing on Young’s analysis of media censuring of feminist political protest as deviance, the contrasting, positive representation in this case of Pussy Riot as dissidents is explored. This positive representation can be understood with regard to Western geopolitical concerns, but also stresses the effectiveness of Pussy Riot in communicating their political message.     

What has the ‘first sexual revolution’ to do with kinship transition? ‘Kin marriages’ and illicit sexuality in nineteenth-century Alpine Switzerland

This paper questions the link between two major transformations observed in eighteenth century Europe: the reorganization of kinship structures and kinship solidarities on the one hand and the so-called ‘sexual revolution’ of the eighteenth century on the other, i.e. the spectacular rise of illegitimacy throughout Europe. Raising the question of this link has far-reaching theoretical implications, since the fundamental changes in kinship and sexuality have been treated so far as two independent phenomena in separate domains. The results presented in this paper refer to mountain villages of the Swiss Alps and base on genealogical data extracted from a large dynamic database called the Registre historique de la population du Valais. They suggest that the remarkable increase of close kin marriages was closely connected with changes in sexual habits and with the building of different sexual milieus. The ‘sexual revolution’ in the Entremont region was largely the issue of a few families and kin groups tending to build tightly knitted networks. In this perspective, the increase of kin marriages reflected the diversification of political and sexual milieus, characterized by different values, ideologies and attitudes. This profound diversification of life styles shows that social change did not affect local societies as a whole, but was supported by particular milieus made cohesive by privileged alliances within kin groups and by particular network patterns.     

Citizenship,Belonging and Attachment in the ‘War on Terror’

The ‘war on terror’ has had an enormous impact on citizens’ legal rights and legal status. Using data from interviews with British Pakistani Kashmiri Muslims, this paper explores how the change to citizens’ legal rights and legal status in the ‘war on terror’, the legal dimension of citizenship, has impacted the psychological dimension of citizenship. Through denoting legal rights, equality and status the study revealed the powerful role of the state and the police in shaping citizens’ perceptions of the legal dimension of citizenship. The paper explores how changes to participants’ perceptions of their legal status and legal rights are instrumental in shaping the psychological dimension of citizenship—participants’ sense of loyalty, belonging and attachment to their British identity and their Islamic identity.     

‘Female Husbands’, Community and Courts in the Eighteenth Century

While there was no specific law prohibiting sex between women in the eighteenth century, some women were prosecuted as a consequence of same-sex relationships. These ‘female husbands’, women who married other women under male identities, often lived highly individual lifestyles; but their path through prosecution and punishment involved a much more intricate web of relations. Thus an exploration of their cases highlights important features of the contemporary criminal justice system as well as popular and elite attitudes to the specific offences. In particular, understandings of the role of the community in the discovery, prosecution, and punishment of criminal offences are complicated by an examination of the female husband cases. In a crucial period of change for the legal system, the complexities of its processes as well as the impact of class, gender, and culture are exposed. Light is shed upon the shifting roles and interests of the individual, the local community, and the courts at a point when criminal cases were in the early stages of a shift from private prosecution and public punishment to greater formality and state control. These unusual cases bring into focus the complex role of community relationships in an evolving legal system.