Radical Change at the Ballot Box: Causes and Consequences of Electoral Behavior in Venezuela's 2000 Elections

This study aims to explain the victory of Hugo Chávez and his party in the 2000 Venezuelan elections, to analyze the factors that made this victory possible, and to examine the consequences for future developments in the Venezuelan political system. The decay of traditional party loyalties without the emergence of new parties deeply rooted in society (dealignment without realignment); underdevelopment; and an institutional setting dominated by a president elected by a plurality electoral system have opened the door to personality-centered politics and weak parties, which are the main features of the current political situation. Compared to the 1993 and 1998 elections, the 2000 elections once again confirm an increase in personality politics and the decay of parties as instruments for articulating interests, representation, and governance. As a consequence, this article argues, instability is likely to remain a feature of Venezuela's party system for some time.     

The impact of ideological positions and personal attributes of candidates in intraparty competition: A study under the Swiss open-list PR System

Intraparty preference voting systems offer different incentives for candidates to cultivate a personal vote, but little is known about how the candidates' policy positions affect their electoral success in intraparty competition. This article analyses the effect of candidates' ideological positions and personal attributes on their preference vote share in the 2015 and 2019 Swiss Lower House elections. We used candidate survey data combined with official election statistics. Our findings demonstrate that the ideological distance between candidates' positions and their party's median position is of minor importance for their electoral success when compared to their personal attributes. However, ideological distance between candidates and their party's median position reduce their preference vote share.     

How management team composition affects academic spin-offs’ entrepreneurial orientation: the mediating role of conflict

This research has been designed with the purpose of analysing the influence of both the composition of academic spin-offs’ management teams and the potential conflict emerged within such teams on the degree of entrepreneurial orientation exhibited by academic spin-offs. To this end, we have used the upper echelon theory as theoretical background and have analysed the impact of the proportion of non-academic managers within management teams, the heterogeneity of such teams with respect to the age and main educational area of their managers, as well as the potential mediating role of the conflict emerged. Drawing on a database of 167 Spanish academic spin-offs, results show, on the one hand, that the presence of non-academic managers within management teams is a key factor in the academic spin-offs' exhibitions of higher levels of entrepreneurial orientation and, on the other hand, that conflict fully mediates the relationship between management teams' age heterogeneity and entrepreneurial orientation.     

Identifying Insanity Acquittals: Is It Any Easier?

Law and Human Behavior - Following the highly publicized insanity acquittal of John Hinckley in 1982, legislators throughout the country attempted to reform the insanity defense. At the time,...     

Lone parent families within New Labour welfare reform

The reform of the British system of welfare undertaken by the Labour government places a great emphasis on paid work, which is seen as the main route to escape poverty and the natural way to fulfil citizen obligations. Lone parents are a target group for welfare to work policies and, if they are on benefits, they are strongly encouraged to get a job. This article explores the main policies designed to promote employment among them—the New Deal for Lone Parents being the most significant—and the issues they raise. It is argued that the success of the welfare to work strategy for lone parents could be severely compromised without the consideration of at least two sensitive issues: the potential dangers of a compulsory scheme and the recognition of the relevance of caring activities and their integration into a more comprehensive concept of citizenship.     

Typing of 49 autosomal SNPs by SNaPshot in the Slovenian population

A total of 157 unrelated individuals residing in Slovenia were typed for 49 of the autosomal single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in the SNPforID 52plex with the SNaPshot^® assay. We obtained full SNP profiles in all but one individual and perfect concordance was obtained in duplicated analyses. Allele frequencies are presented for the 49 SNPs. No deviation from HWE was observed for any SNP. F_IS and F_ST were estimated. A principal coordinate analysis performed on six populations (Slovenian, Danish, Somali, Greenland, Turkish and Chinese) showed that the Slovenian population grouped with the Danish population. The mean power of discrimination for the Slovenian population was 1.1 × 10⁻¹⁹, and the mean exclusion probability for trios was 99.96%.     

The relationship between NGOS and businesses in the public arena: An empirical analysis for Spain

• At the beginning of this century, corporate social responsibility was included in the public agenda. In certain countries, policy‐making takes place in semi‐public forums, in which NGOs are asked to participate. However, a different situation may be found in other countries. This paper analyses the relationship between businesses and NGOs in the public arena in Spain. By applying grounded theory, the authors summarize this relationship in the dynamics of approach‐withdrawal. Firms have pushed to withdraw Advocacy NGOs from public forums, whose main purpose was policy‐making. The explicit argument to justify this collective decision is the lack of foundational legitimacy of NGOs. Firms understand that these NGOs are not legitimized to be a counterbalancing force of corporations.

Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

‘A career in christian charity’: women's benevolence and the public sphere in a mid-nineteenth-century Canadian city

This article investigates the relationship between women's charitable work and the public sphere, focusing on the Hamilton Ladies Benevolent Society which operated in nineteenth-century Ontario. It argues that although women were barred from participation in the public sphere by patriarchal notions of ‘reason' and ‘independence,’ charitable associations offered political schooling wherein women internalized and problematized ‘publicness.’ An investigation of the annual reports of the Hamilton Ladies Benevolent Society and Orphan Asylum reveals that charitable women used particular discursive tactics and techniques of display to make claims upon the public sphere. In their attempt to appear public – universal, rational, and in pursuit of an objective, common good – these women rejected the tropes of true womanhood and evoked Christian metaphors to justify their activities. For these women, Christianity provided the language with which they claimed universality, rationality and even citizenship