Parliamentary Prorogation in Comparative Context

This paper examines the power to prorogue (or suspend) Parliament following the 2019 prorogation controversy in the UK. We outline the legal basis of prerogative-based prorogation, survey its uses in the UK and other Westminster systems, and compare it with equivalent rules in other European parliamentary democracies. The comparative perspective highlights the outlier status of the UK among comparable European democracies. In the UK, the absence of explicit legal limits on the use of prorogation gives the executive exceptional scope to employ the power for political purposes to sidestep Parliament. We conclude by discussing the implications of these findings for current discussions about the desirability of reforming the UK’s prorogation rules and placing express legal limits on the executive’s power.     

The Catalytic Effect of IMF Lending: Evidence from Sectoral FDI Data

Our study contributes to the search for the elusive catalytic effect of International Monetary Fund (IMF) lending on inflows of foreign direct investment (FDI). Recent scholarship has found that the catalytic effect is conditional on political regime and program stringency. We contribute to this literature by developing and testing a theory which describes how the catalytic effect also varies by economic sector. This is a departure from existing studies, which have tended to focus on aggregate FDI flows after crises. Our findings corroborate previous research, which finds that in general IMF lending has a substantial and negative effect on FDI. However, we find that the negative effect is concentrated in sectors that are highly dependent on external capital and have low sunk costs in the host country. Our findings are robust to several alternative explanations common in IMF literature, namely the importance of IMF program design and the ability of governments to make credible commitments to reform. Substantively, our findings suggest that investors are more likely to use IMF lending as an escape hatch in countries where FDI is dependent on external capital and has low sunk costs.     

Impact of a Secondary School Depression Prevention Curriculum on Adolescent Social-Emotional Skills: Evaluation of the Resilient Families Program

Journal of Youth and Adolescence - School-based mental health intervention programs have demonstrated efficacy for the prevention and reduction of depressive symptoms, though the effect tends to be...     

Early Adolescent Gender Development: The Differential Effects of Felt Pressure from Parents,Peers, and the Self

Journal of Youth and Adolescence - Most empirical research examining youth’s gender development measures felt pressure to conform to gender norms using a composite value of felt pressure from...     

Discourses on countering violent extremism: the strategic interplay between fear and security after 9/11

This article explores the construction of extremism in media discourse, the factors driving specific constructions and the implications of these constructions for counterterrorism policy. We contend that extremism has predominantly and increasingly been framed as a security issue. This article explores the implications of this practice through the framework of securitisation. We measure the average intensity of security framing in 38,616 articles found in three major US newspapers, New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Los Angeles Times, between 20 January 1993 and 19 January 2017 comprising the Clinton, Bush and Obama presidencies, and look at factors influencing the shift in intensity over time. Through our analysis, we show that it is possible to return to a pre-9/11 discourse but that the confluence of real-world events and the strategic choices of political actors have so far prevented this from fully occurring. We then explore the effect of securitisation on public perceptions of the threat from terrorism, finding that increases in the intensity of security framing artificially increases the public’s worry about becoming a victim of terrorism. We conclude by discussing implications for the communication of counterterrorism policy and the requirements for an after, after 9/11 approach     

EU referendums in context: What can we learn from the Swiss case?

The rising number of referendums on EU matters, such as the Brexit and the Catalonian independence votes, highlight the increasing importance of referendums as a problem‐solving mechanism in the EU. We argue that the Swiss case provides essential insights into understanding the dynamics behind referendums, which are often lacking when referendums are called for in the EU. Referendums in EU member states on EU matters differ substantially from those in the Swiss context. Nevertheless, proponents of more direct democratic decision‐making regularly cite the Swiss example. Our systematic analysis of why referendums are called, how they unfold and their effects in the EU and Switzerland reveals that the EU polity lacks the crucial conditions that embed direct democracy within the wider political and institutional system. The comparative perspective offers fundamental insights into the preconditions required for direct democracy to function and its limitations in the EU.     

Implementing European case law at the bureaucratic frontline: How domestic signalling influences the outcomes of EU law

This article analyses the implementation of European case law at the bureaucratic frontline of European member states. Theoretically, insights from street‐level implementation studies are combined with judicial impact research. Empirically, we compare how EU rules on free movement and cross‐border welfare are applied in practice in Denmark, Austria and France. We find that when applying EU rules in practice, street‐level bureaucrats are confronted with a world of legal complexity, consisting of ambiguous rules, underspecified concepts and a recent judicial turn by the Court of Justice of the European Union. In order to manage complexity, street‐level bureaucrats turn to their more immediate superiors for guidance. As a consequence, domestic signals shape the practical application of EU law. Despite bureaucratic discretion and many country differences, domestic signals create uniform, restrictive outcomes of EU law in all three cases. Thus we show that there is considerable room for politics in EU implementation processes.     

Wasted Words? The Limitations of U.S. Strategic Communication and Public Diplomacy

For America's foes in Afghanistan and the Middle East, triumph on the battlefield is less important than winning the battle of perceptions. In response, the United States has turned to Strategic Communication and Public Diplomacy (SC-PD) to engage key audiences in ways that advance U.S. interests and to win the political-ideological contest for domestic and international legitimacy. But are these strategies effective? While winning hearts and minds is politically important, SC-PD—even at its best—is much less effective than other well-crafted and mutually supportive policies and strategies. Moreover, there are structural obstacles that greatly limit the effectiveness of SC-PD.     

A Profile of Violent Offenders in Spanish Prisons

In Europe, it is relatively uncommon to find studies that investigate the criminal profiles of violent offenders, especially infrequent are those that pay special attention to offenders’ mental health/substance use disorders and histories of violence during childhood. The current research explores whether inmates who are incarcerated for violent offenses (n = 536) in Spain are different in terms of the aforementioned factors as compared to inmates incarcerated for non-violent offenses (n = 536). Multivariate logistic regression analysis revealed that violent offenders, as compared to their non-violent counterparts, were more likely to be younger, younger at the time of their first arrest, single, use alcohol, receive treatment in prison for anxiety or schizophrenia, and report physical abuse during childhood.     

Flesh of the Same Flesh: A Study of Voters for the Alternative for Germany (AfD) in the 2017 Federal Election

Using the 2017 post-election German Longitudinal Election Study (GLES), this article examines the voters for the Alternative for Germany (AfD) in the 2017 German federal election. We show that AfD voters in 2017 were truly ‘flesh of the same flesh’ of the mainstream German political parties, with the AfD drawing its voters from across the political party spectrum as well as from previous non-voters in 2013. In contrast to previous scholarship, we find that in most respects AfD voters in 2017 did not differ demographically from voters for all other parties, be that in terms of gender, education, employment status, and union membership. Furthermore, we find that AfD voters were not driven by anxiety about their own economic situation: they are no ‘losers of globalisation.’ Instead, AfD voters in 2017 were driven solely by two factors: their attitudes towards immigrants/refugees and anti-establishment sentiment/satisfaction with democracy in Germany.