Handout or Hand‐up: Ongoing Tensions in the Long History of Government Response to Drought in Australia

In 2014 the Coalition government announced a 320 million dollar package for drought‐hit farmers. In describing this initiative as a “hand‐up” not a “hand out” Prime Minister Tony Abbott encapsulated more than 150 years of tension over whether government drought response should be unconditional limited relief or conditional longer‐term assistance. This paper considers the long history of drought assistance in Australia as seen through government legislation, year books, newspapers and personal papers. It argues that despite changing political and social circumstances, contradictions in the approach to government drought response, as well as in public and personal reactions to those policies, have remained remarkably consistent. We further suggest that lack of consensus over the inherent nature of drought is not sufficient to explain the dilemma.     

Cities as Lobbyists

Individual cities are active interest groups in lobbying the federal government, and yet the dynamics of this intergovernmental lobbying are poorly understood. We argue that preference incongruence between a city and its parent state government leads to underprovision of public goods, and cities need to appeal to the federal government for additional resources. We provide evidence for this theory using a data set of over 13,800 lobbying disclosures filed by cities with populations over 25,000 between 1999 and 2012. Income inequality and ethnic fragmentation are also highly related to federal lobbying activities. Using an instrumental variables analysis of earmark and Recovery Act grant data, we show that each dollar a city spends on lobbying generates substantial returns.     

Strengthening the Connection Between Acquired Brain Injury (ABI) and Family Violence: The Importance of Ongoing Monitoring,Research and Inclusive Terminology

Family violence (FV) harms communities worldwide so FV prevention strategies and effective responses are urgently needed. This article reports on FV apparent in a study which explored the experiences of people with both ABI and justice system encounters in Victoria, Australia. One hundred interviews and one focus group consulted people with ABI, their families and carers, and various stakeholder groups in the Victorian justice system in Australia. Qualitative content analysis determined dominant themes and sub-themes and the less common themes. Inductive interpretive content analysis identified themes commonly found in previous published research and themes that appeared unique to, or unanticipated in, our data, such as the FV theme upon which this article focuses. Our findings reveal that FV has adversely affected many people with ABI who came into contact with Victoria’s justice system. Further, as ABI and FV often co-occur with substance abuse, mental health problems, socio-economic and many other significant disadvantages, for some FV perpetrators with an ABI, their ABI symptoms and characteristic co-morbidities may be a mitigating factor in their offending. The connection between ABI and family violence emerged as a troubling research theme. Indeed, the impact of FV on too many of our participants with an ABI compels us to call for further related research and secondary prevention programs targeted at FV victims, and offenders, living with ABI. An intersectional understanding of family violence and TBI/ABI in social ecological contexts is required to better understand brain injury at both individual and population levels.

     

Guilty Plea Decisions: Moving Beyond the Autonomy Myth

When a defendant pleads guilty to a criminal charge against them their conviction may be justified on the basis of autonomy rather than accuracy. In this context, autonomy can make the difference between a legitimate conviction and the breach of fundamental rights. However, autonomy in this context is not clearly defined. This article argues, based on philosophical conceptions of autonomy and empirical realities, that true autonomy is an ideal rather than a practical reality. It considers the level of autonomy necessary to legitimise a criminal conviction via plea, and suggests that current conceptions of autonomy are inadequate since they rely on a formalistic autonomy ‘myth’, presuming autonomy in the absence of threats. An analysis drawing on original empirical data from two studies demonstrates how autonomy may be being depleted to unacceptable levels in the current system. The article concludes by presenting reform proposals.     

Analytical thinking,prosocial voting,and intergroup competition: experimental evidence from China

Public Choice - We investigate whether and how analytical thinking affects Muslims’ prosocial voting towards in-group (fellow Muslims) and out-group (Han Chinese) members. We conduct an...     

Blame,Responsibility, and the Tea Party in the 2010 Midterm Elections

There is a general consensus both in the news media and scholarly research that 2010 was a highly nationalized election year. Reports have indicated that anti-Obama sentiment, the Democrats’ legislative agenda, the economy, and the Tea Party were all factors contributing to Democratic losses in the congressional elections. In this paper, we use data from 2010 Cooperative Congressional Election Study to examine the individual-level dynamics that contributed to the heightened nationalization of the 2010 congressional elections. Our analysis shows that Tea Party support and the attribution of blame and responsibility by voters are essential to understanding the 2010 election outcome, beyond what we would expect from a simple referendum model of midterm elections. Not surprisingly, Tea Party supporters blamed Democrats for the state of national affairs, disapproved of the Democrats’ policy agenda, and overwhelmingly supported Republican candidates in the congressional elections. However, our analysis shows that not all voters who supported Republican candidates were driven by high levels of opposition to President Obama and the Democrats. Another key group of voters blamed both Democrats and Republicans for the nation’s problems but ultimately held Democrats responsible in the voting booth by supporting Republican congressional candidates.     

Preliminary evaluation of the use of pharmacological treatment with convicted sexual offenders experiencing high levels of sexual preoccupation,hypersexuality and/or sexual compulsivity

The current study presents the preliminary evaluation of the impact of pharmacological treatment (Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors and anti-androgens) on hypersexuality, sexual preoccupation and sexual compulsivity. The participant pool comprised 64 convicted UK sexual offenders who had been voluntarily referred for pharmacological treatment to reduce their hypersexual arousal, 51 of whom agreed to take the medication (with a further five individuals on hold or under assessment at the time of data extraction). The preliminary findings were very encouraging; analysis on measures assessing sexual preoccupation, hypersexuality and sexual compulsivity indicated a significant reduction between pre- and post-medication, across both types of medication. Limitations of the current research are discussed.     

Forensic STRs as potential disease markers: A study of VWA and von Willebrand's Disease

In recent years it has been established that non-coding variants may be in linkage disequilibrium (LD) with coding variants up to several thousand base pairs away forming haplotype blocks. These non-coding markers may be haplotype specific and, therefore, informative regarding the surrounding coding sequence. In this study, we chose to study the VWA short tandem repeat (STR) as it is targeted in all major commercial kits utilized in routine forensic DNA profiling and is located in the von Willebrand Factor (vWF) gene; a gene associated with von Willebrand's Disease (vWD). We examined the VWA STR together with single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) located throughout the vWF gene to identify haplotype structures and the extent of LD between markers in the region. Several areas exhibiting LD were identified by population data analysis in the 178 kilobase (178kb) vWF gene, which was supported by family studies. However, there appeared to be no evidence of LD blocks surrounding the VWA STR and evidence for recombination within 3 kb of VWA, hence, it is unlikely that VWA STR alleles could be used to predict haplotypes within the vWF gene that are associated with different forms of vWD.