Reparations for Sexual and Reproductive Violence: Prospects for Achieving Gender Justice in Guatemala and Peru

Sexual and reproductive violence (SRV) perpetrated against womenduring war or under authoritarian regimes is one of the mostsevere manifestations of gender-based violence. The authorsask how governments in new or reforming democracies hope torepair SRV and how state programs for reparation might be conceptualizedand delivered. By examining the cases of Guatemala and Peru,they explore the problematic of repairing damage caused by SRVand comment on prospects for redress to victims in each country.     

Battles over numbers: the case of the Argentine consumer price index (2007–2015)

An unprecedented crisis of confidence in Argentina's public statistics rendered the declaration of a ‘National Statistical Emergency’ in 2016. This paper examines the battle over the Argentine consumer price index (CPI) between 2007 and 2015. It argues that in this dispute the index became the object of political struggle rather than a methodological controversy. The main characteristics of the Argentine CPI, its trajectory and the country’s inflationary history influenced the type of debate and the dispute that was possible and feasible. The battle was linked to the erosion of confidence in and social support for official statistics and to the emergence of alternative price indices. Both processes seriously undermined the government's ability to control inflation.     

Creating a ‘what works’ translational tool for police: a researcher-city government partnership

ABSTRACT

In recent years, a number of translational tools have been developed in policing to make the growing research evidence base more accessible and useful for practitioners and policymakers. Here we focus on the creation of the ‘What works in policing?’ website, which resulted from a collaboration between a government agency in Seattle, Washington and researchers at George Mason University and Arizona State University. We describe the site in detail and its similarities to and differences from existing translation tools, as well as the rationale for a local government’s involvement in translational work. In particular we focus on efforts to link the site with the work of the Seattle Police Department through a case study approach. We review indicators that suggest the site is being well-utilized and close with thoughts on the future of translational work in policing and efforts to ensure translational tools are useful to practitioners.     

Second chamber, ‘congress of ambassadors’ or federal presidency. Parliamentary and non-parliamentary aspects in the European Council's rules of procedure

The development of the European Union (EU) regime, with the frequent changes of institutions and their competencies by treaty revisions, allows for new opportunities for parliamentary studies. This article discusses the role and competencies of the European Council (EC) in the EU regime, using the heuristic and methodological resources of procedural commentaries, parliamentary rhetoric, conceptual history and political regime analysis. This study is a textual analysis, based on the 2009 Lisbon Treaty and especially on the EC's rules of procedure. The Lisbon Treaty and the respective rules of procedure serve as key documents that fix the rules, the framework and the margin of manoeuvre for the EU's institutions. This is particularly relevant in the European Union as a ‘polity in the making’, as continuous changes in institutional competencies are the rule. These changes both leave room for and are shaped by acting politically between and within the institutions. Taking Quentin Skinner's thesis that ‘political life itself sets the problems for the political theorist’ as a point of departure, it is suggested that these ongoing challenges in power relationships between the EU institutions also lead to interesting theoretical and conceptual moves. From this perspective the authors discuss possibilities to extend the conceptual apparatus of parliamentary studies to such quasi-parliamentary institutions focusing especially on the EC.