Notes on Contributors

In the 1990s, several public corruption scandals were uncovered in Sweden. This article focuses specifically on local corruption, and our purpose is to examine whether a case can be made that problems of public corruption in Swedish municipalities have increased. By applying instruments from the institutional rational choice framework, we reach the conclusion that there are indeed reasons to suspect that retrenchment initiatives and organisational reforms over the last two decades, often labelled ‘new public management’, have increased the risk of corruption. Although hard empirical data do not yet exist, the suspicion that public corruption in Swedish municipalities may have become an increasing problem cannot be disregarded. Hence, we conclude by calling for further empirical research in this field.     

Throwing the rascals out? The electoral effects of corruption allegations and corruption scandals in Europe 1981–2011

Corrupt politicians have to a surprisingly great extent been found to go unpunished by the electorate. These findings are, however, drawn from case studies on a limited number of countries. This study, on the contrary, is based on a unique dataset from 215 parliamentary election campaigns in 32 European countries between 1981 and 2011, from which the electoral effects of corruption allegations and corruption scandals are analyzed. Information about the extent to which corruption allegations and scandals have occurred is gathered from election reports in several political science journals, and the electoral effects are measured in terms of the electoral performances—the difference in the share of votes between two elections—of all parties in government, as well as the main incumbent party, and the extent to which the governments survive the election. The control variables are GDP growth and unemployment rate the year preceding the election, the effective number of parliamentary and electoral parties, and the level of corruption. The results show that both corruption allegation and corruption scandals are significantly correlated with governmental performances on a bivariate basis; however, not with governmental change. When controlling for other factors, only corruption allegation has an independent effect on government performances. The study thus concludes—in line with previous research—that voters actually punish corrupt politicians, but to a quite limited extent.     

Totalitarianism and justice: Hannah Arendt’s and Judith N. Shklar’s political reflections in historical and theoretical perspective

We locate Arendt’s and Shklar’s writings within what Katznelson has identified as an attempt to create a new language for politics after the cataclysm of the twentieth century, and Greif has called the new ‘maieutic’ discourse of ‘re-enlightenment’ in the ‘age of the crisis of man’. More specifically, we compare and contrast two related, but in many ways also differing, ways of thinking about totalitarianism and its legal repercussions. To this end, we examine two sets of studies: Arendt’s The origins of totalitarianism and Eichmann in Jerusalem: A report on the banality of evil and Shklar’s After utopia: The decline of political faith and Legalism: An essay on law, morals, and politics. While The origins of totalitarianism and After utopia discussed totalitarian ideology and its consequences for modern political thought, the Eichmann report and Legalism dealt with the question of whether and how justice is possible after the extreme experience of totalitarianism. We argue that the maieutic impulse led Arendt and Shklar to find distinct routes to address a common concern. Our paper ends with a discussion of some of the surplus meaning that was generated by the different maieutic performances of the two thinkers.     

The design of international trade agreements: Introducing a new dataset

Preferential trade agreements (PTAs) have been proliferating for the last twenty years. A large literature has studied various aspects of this phenomenon. Until recently, however, many large-N studies have paid only scant attention to variation across PTAs in terms of content and design. Our contribution to this literature is a new dataset on the design of trade agreements that is the most comprehensive in terms of both variables coded and agreements covered. We illustrate the dataset’s usefulness in re-visiting the questions if and to what extent PTAs impact trade flows. The analysis shows that on average PTAs increase trade flows, but that this effect is largely driven by deep agreements. In addition, we provide evidence that provisions that tackle behind-the-border regulation matter for trade flows. The dataset’s contribution is not limited to the PTA literature, however. Broader debates on topics such as institutional design and the legalization of international relations will also benefit from the novel data.     

Shame on you,John! Laws,stigmatization, and the demand for sex

The present article contributes to the literature on prostitution by shedding light on the effects of the criminalization of buying sex on the amount of prostitution bought, as well as on the proposed theoretical mechanisms underlying this change. We find indications that criminalizing the buying of sex may decrease the quantity of sex bought. While we find that stigma influences the demand for sex, we do not find that stigma increases as a result of the law. Therefore, the possible reduced quantity of sex bought is probably due to the more direct risk of getting caught.     

Von Geschäftsirrtümern und Sollbeschaffenheiten beim Wertpapierkauf,irrtumsrechtlichen Kausalitätsbeweisen und Mitverantwortlichkeiten von Irrenden

Die aktuellen Entscheidungen des OGH zu "Meinl European Land" beinhalten einige grundlegende Aussagen zum ?sterreichischen Irrtumsrecht. Im folgenden Beitrag werden diese Aussagen n?her analysiert und gewürdigt.     

Doping control analysis of selected peptide hormones using LC-MS(/MS)

With the constantly increasing sensitivity and robustness of liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry-based instruments combined with enhanced reproducibility as well as mass accuracy and resolution, LC-MS(/MS) has become an integral part of sports drug testing programs particularly concerning the detection of peptide hormones. Although several of the relevant peptidic drugs such as insulins (Humalog LisPro, Novolog Aspart, etc.), growth hormone releasing peptides (GHRPs, e.g., GHRP-2, GHRP-6, Hexarelin, etc.), and insulin-like growth factors (e.g., IGF-1, IGF-2, long-R(3)-IGF-1) are currently analyzed using dedicated top-down analytical procedures, i.e. employing specifically tailored sample preparation procedures followed by targeted LC-MS(/MS) measurements focusing on intact analytes, first approaches towards multi-analyte methods have been established. These allow the determination of the prohibited substances in blood and urine doping control specimens following therapeutic applications. In addition, the use of new complementary devices such as ion mobility analyzers, e.g., in hybrid mass spectrometers yielded promising data for the differentiation of isobaric insulins, which outlines the potential to further accelerate and multiplex doping control analytical assays to meet the continuously increasing demands of rapid and unambiguous test methods. Moreover, the potential of LC-MS/MS to target recombinant peptide hormones such as human growth hormone using bottom-up approaches has been demonstrated by targeting proteotypic peptides that unambiguously differentiate the recombinant molecule from the naturally occurring and endogenously produced analog.     

Campaigning on an upper level? Individual campaigning in the 2009 European Parliament elections in its determinants

Election campaigns are not only party campaigns, but depend to a significant degree on the efforts and activities of individual candidates. While some country-specific analyses of candidate campaigning have been done, large-N comparative studies are missing. The 2009 European Election Candidate Study, conducted in all 27 EU countries, does allow for such a comparative analysis. On the basis of this data, the article takes a closer look at three core components of individual campaigns and their respective determinants: duration, intensity, and the use of different campaign tools. Our findings show that only a combination of factors on the individual, party, and country level is able to explain significant amounts of the observed variance in each of the core components.     

Do laws affect attitudes? An assessment of the Norwegian prostitution law using longitudinal data

The question of whether laws affect attitudes has inspired scholars across many disciplines, but empirical knowledge is sparse. Using longitudinal survey data from Norway and Sweden, collected before and after the implementation of a Norwegian law criminalizing the purchase of sexual services, we assess the short-run effects on attitudes using a difference-in-differences approach. In the general population, the law did not affect moral attitudes toward prostitution. However, in the Norwegian capital, where prostitution was more visible before the reform, the law made people more negative toward buying sex. This supports the claim that proximity and visibility are important factors for the internalization of legal norms.     

The effects of political design and organizational dynamics on structural disaggregation and integration in Norway 1947–2019

In countries with long-standing agency traditions, the creation of new agencies rarely comes as a large-scale reform but rather as one structural choice of many possible, most notably a ministerial division. In order to make sense of these choices, the article discusses the role of political design—focusing on the role of political motivations, such as ideological turnover, replacement risks and ideological stands toward administrative efficiency—and organizational dynamics—focusing on the role of administrative legacies and existing organizational palettes. The article utilizes data on organizational creations in the Norwegian central state between 1947 and 2019, in order to explore how political design and organizational dynamics help us understand the creation of agencies relative to ministry divisions over time. We find that political motives matter a great deal for the structural choices made by consecutive Norwegian governments, but that structural path dependencies may also be at play.