The Social Representativeness of German Party Membership

The present article empirically examines the social composition of German political party membership. In the first stage of the analysis, party members are compared with the total population and with voters. This makes it possible to identify potential deficiencies in the political representation of certain social groups. In the second stage, party membership is regressed on individual characteristics. This makes it possible to study cleavage structures. Since the empirical analysis includes data from the 2009 German Party Membership Study as well as from the 1998 Potsdam Party Membership Study, we are able to investigate changes over a period of eleven years. In light of the empirical findings, we then consider whether German parties are socially representative of the German population and their respective voters.     

Anti-Americanism and Public Attitudes toward Transatlantic Trade

The recent debate about the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) has triggered widespread opposition to the trade agreement in Germany. It is not clear, however, what factors drive public attitudes toward transatlantic trade. This article explores the role of anti-Americanism in predicting attitudes toward TTIP among the German public. It argues that the impact of anti-Americanism depends on the extent to which political elites frame the TTIP proposal as a basic conflict between American and European values. Using data from two national representative surveys, it is found that attitudes toward America strongly predict support for the TTIP agreement. The results further demonstrate that the effect of national resentment is moderated by issue awareness, with citizens with a strong anti-American sentiment being significantly more likely to oppose the agreement if they follow the elite debate more closely. Taken together, the results suggest that national resentments are more important for the explanation of TTIP preferences than traditional factors such as partisanship, ideology and material concerns.     

The Holocaust Through Latvia's Eyes: How the Nazi Party Became the Lesser of Two Evils

Internationalization of exhibitions creates cost structure distortion. What costs are being reduced thanks to international collaboration in the museum field? To determine the profitability of the model, international strategies are analyzed with two exhibitions—“Matisse, Cézanne, Picasso…the Stein Adventure,” coproduced by the Réunion des Musées Nationaux–Grand Palais organization, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and “Masterpieces from the Musée National Picasso, Paris,” exhibited in major museums such as Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid, the Hermitage in Saint Petersburg, or the Seattle Museum of Art.     

When Mayors Matter: Estimating the Impact of Mayoral Partisanship on City Policy

U.S. cities are limited in their ability to set policy. Can these constraints mute the impact of mayors’ partisanship on policy outcomes? We hypothesize that mayoral partisanship will more strongly affect outcomes in policy areas where there is less shared authority between local, state, and federal governments. To test this hypothesis, we create a novel dataset combining U.S. mayoral election returns from 1990 to 2006 with city fiscal data. Using regression discontinuity design, we find that cities that elect a Democratic mayor spend a smaller share of their budget on public safety, a policy area where local discretion is high, than otherwise similar cities that elect a Republican or an Independent. We find no differences on tax policy, social policy, and other areas that are characterized by significant overlapping authority. These results suggest that models of national policymaking are only partially applicable to U.S. cities. They also have implications for political accountability: mayors may not be able to influence the full range of policies that are nominally local responsibilities.     

Social Anxiety and Aggression in Early Adolescents: Examining the Moderating Roles of Empathic Concern and Perspective Taking

Guided by a social information processing perspective, this study examined the unique and interactive contributions of social anxiety and two distinct components of empathy, empathic concern and perspective taking, to subsequent relational and overt aggression in early adolescents. Participants were 485 10- to 14-year old middle school students (54% female; 78% European-American) involved in two waves of a study with one year between each wave. Hierarchical regression analyses showed that higher levels of empathic concern were directly associated with decreases in subsequent relational and overt aggression one year later and buffered the impact of social anxiety on subsequent relational aggression. Although perspective taking did not moderate the impact of social anxiety on either form of aggression, it was a unique predictor of increased relational aggression one year later. Findings call for future research to assess both components of empathy separately as they relate to relational and overt aggression.     

The effectiveness of reintegrative shaming and restorative justice conferences: focusing on juvenile offenders' perceptions in Australian reintegrative shaming experiments

This article examines the effectiveness of diversionary restorative justice (RJ) conferences through the eyes of juvenile offenders. In Australia, Reintegrative Shaming Experiments (RISE) are based on Braithwaite's theory of reintegrative shaming. Previous studies, although showing that RISE reported high levels of victim satisfaction and positive changes in the attitudes of offenders, also demonstrated that it has different outcomes for juvenile offenders depending on the type of offense with which they were charged. However, the effectiveness of RISE in terms of the offenders' perceptions has not been addressed, and the impact of the offenders' perceptions about RISE still remains under investigation. Using Australian data from RISE between 1995 and 1999, this article examines juvenile offenders' perceptions on preventing reoffending, repaying the victim and society, and the degree of repentance. The data were taken from interviews with juvenile offenders to measure their perceptions after the court or RISE processing. A comparison of standard court processing effects and RISE on juvenile offending, including property crime, shoplifting, and violent offenses, was undertaken. The results from this study were somewhat inconsistent with previous research. In this study, there was no significant relationship between RJ conference and the offenders' own perceptions on the prevention of future offending. However, it was found that there were treatment effects on repaying the victim, repaying society, and the degree of feeling repentance, and that younger offenders wanted to repay the victim/society and feel repentance.     

If Brain Scans Really Detected Deception,Who Would Volunteer to be Scanned?

Abstract: Recent neuroimaging studies investigating the neural correlates of deception among healthy people, have raised the possibility that such methods may eventually be applied during legal proceedings. Were this so, who would volunteer to be scanned? We report a “natural experiment” casting some light upon this question. Following broadcast of a television series describing our team’s investigative neuroimaging of deception in 2007, we received unsolicited (public) correspondence for 12 months. Using a customized template to examine this material, three independent assessors unanimously rated 30 of an initial 56 communications as unequivocally constituting requests for a “scan” (to demonstrate their author’s “innocence”). Compared with the rest, these index communications were more likely to originate from incarcerated males, who were also more likely to engage in further correspondence. Hence, in conclusion, if neuroimaging were to become an acceptable means of demonstrating innocence then incarcerated males may well constitute those volunteering for such investigation.     

Public Experiences of Police Violence and Corruption in Contemporary Russia: A Case of Predatory Policing?

“Predatory policing” occurs where police officers mainly use their authority to advance their own material interests rather than to fight crime or protect the interests of elites. These practices have the potential to seriously compromise the public's trust in the police and other legal institutions, such as courts. Using data from six surveys and nine focus groups conducted in Russia, we address four empirical questions: (1) How widespread are public encounters with police violence and police corruption in Russia? (2) To what extent does exposure to these two forms of police misconduct vary by social and economic characteristics? (3) How do Russians perceive the police, the courts, and the use of violent methods by the police? (4) How, if at all, do experiences of police misconduct affect these perceptions? Our results suggest that Russia conforms to a model of predatory policing. Despite substantial differences in its law enforcement institutions and cultural norms regarding the law, Russia resembles the United States in that direct experiences of police abuse reduce confidence in the police and in the legal system more generally. The prevalence of predatory policing in Russia has undermined Russia's democratic transition, which should call attention to the indispensable role of the police and other public institutions in the success of democratic reforms.