Lobbying and the 2006 U.S. midterm elections

• Lobbyists are inextricably intertwined with the electoral process in the United States, but rarely have they ever featured so prominently in an election year as in 2006. The midterm elections came at the end of a year in which the political news was often dominated by stories of lobbying scandal, most notably that involving Jack Abramoff. Lobbying was an important issue in many peoples' voting decisions, and moreover one of the immediate outcomes of the election was a raft of lobbying reform measures both in Congress and in the individual states. As one commentator put it: ‘For lobbyists, 2006 rolled by like a late‐night B movie where the earthquake wipes out the villagers who refused to heed the warning signs’ (Divis, 2006 ). This article reviews some of the most substantial lobbying scandals which emerged during 2006, considers how lobbying and lobbyists fared during the election campaigns, and analyses the various reforms which have recently been considered and implemented, before briefly examining how lobbyists will impact upon the 2008 election races.

Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Framing lobbying messages: defining and communicating political issues persuasively

• The concept of product positioning is well established in the commercial communication sphere, as are the notions of issue definition and agenda setting in the field of political science. Less thoroughly researched, though, is an area which intersects these two fields—the way in which lobbyists use language in order to frame policy issues so as to position their organization and its policy preferences to greatest effect. Lobbyists consciously frame and define issues in an effort to encourage policy makers both to share the lobbyist's perspective on a given policy problem, and to suggest to those policy makers what policy solution ought to be adopted. In doing so, they explicitly draw upon ideas and practices more commonly associated with other forms of commercial communication such as advertising and marketing. This paper suggests that the use of language by lobbyists is a potentially fruitful field for both academics and practitioners interested in political communication broadly defined—indeed, lobbying is essentially a form of persuasive communication in the political arena. It is well understood that how political issues are presented is an important factor in the extent to which an issue will be supported; this paper focuses on how lobbyists make use of this understanding in their efforts to achieve a desired policy outcome.

Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Institutional review board approaches to the incidental findings problem

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) are confronted with new challenges in the face of expanding technologies while fulfilling their existing regulatory mandate to ensure that plans are in place to protect subjects and to inform them of risks and benefits of research participation. Existing regulations and guidance do not address the issue of incidental findings (IFs), thus leaving awareness of the issue and the application of ethical principles to IRB judgment alone. In order to assure that researchers are aware of the potential for IFs, IRBs must identify which studies are likely to identify IFs and establish what plans should be put into place prior to study initiation to assure the subjects are appropriately informed of the likelihood of IFs, how IFs will be communicated to subjects, and whether the burden of follow-up falls on the researchers or is the subject's responsibility.     

The Partnership–Conditionality Binary in the Western Balkans: Promoting Local Ownership for Sustainable Democratic Transition

This article addresses themes relating to the principles of conditionality and partnership, together with the principle of local ownership in the Western Balkans, notably in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia-Montenegro and Kosovo. Specifically assessing the emotive territorial questions facing these Western Balkan countries, the article posits that the international community should aim to promote local ownership in the will to sustainable political transition. Given the EU's focus on the Western Balkans as set out in the European Security Strategy and Thessaloniki summit (2003) and developed through the process of Stabilisation and Association, the author advocates a partnership approach that instils local ownership. It is argued that such an approach has a better chance of responding imaginatively and functionally to unresolved territorial questions. In the second section of this article the author applies the concept of partnership to the territorial challenges facing Bosnia, Serbia-Montenegro and Kosovo. Partnership, as based on the concepts of local ownership and needs-based responsiveness, as opposed to strictly codified conditionality set by Dayton, UN Resolution 1244 and the EU Stabilisation and Association process, is more likely to resolve the ongoing principal territorial political tensions in the Western Balkans.     

Beyond Discretion: Prosecution, the Logic of Sovereignty, and the Limits of Law

Today it is widely recognized in both academic literature and the mainstream media that prosecutors have substantial discretion. Yet prosecutorial decisions involve, in our view, something more than a straightforward exercise of discretion. In this article we move from the language of discretion to that of sovereignty to describe prosecutorial power. In so doing we want to move from the language of administration to the language of power. Focusing on the decision not to prosecute, we argue that prosecutorial decisions participate in, and exemplify, the logic of sovereignty and its complex relationship to legality.
By drawing on Carl Schmitt and Giorgio Agamben, we seek to recast prosecutorial decision making as something that allows prosecutors to grant exemptions from the reach of valid law. The sovereign power of prosecutors is most vividly on display when they decline to bring charges where there is a legally sufficient basis for doing so. By exercising what is, in most jurisdictions, an all but unreviewable power, they can and do exempt individuals from the reach of valid law.     

The inhibiting factors that principal investigators experience in leading publicly funded research

Securing public funding to conduct research and leading it by being a principal investigator (PI) is seen as significant career development step. Such a role brings professional prestige but also new responsibilities beyond research leadership to research management. If public funding brings financial and infrastructure support, little is understood about the inhibiting factors that publicly funded PIs face given the research autonomy offered by publicly funded research. Our study finds that there are three key PI inhibiting factors (1) political and environmental, (2) institutional and (3) project based. Traditional knowledge, skills and technical know-how of publicly funded PIs are insufficient to deal with the increasing managerial demands and expectations i.e. growing external bureaucracy of public funding agencies. Public funding is no longer the ‘freest form of support’ as suggested by Chubin and Hackett (Peerless science: peer review and US science policy. Suny Press, New York, 1990) and the inhibiting factors experienced by publicly funded PIs limits their research autonomy. We also argue that PIs have little influence in overcoming these inhibiting factors despite their central role in conducting publicly funded research.