Shaping Political Preferences: Information Effects in Political-Administrative Systems

Information is at the heart of politics. However, since information is always sent by someone who is more or less powerful, it is difficult to disentangle the effect of information from the power of the sender. Drawing on a standard model of attitude formation, we argue that presenting information can affect preferences of politicians regardless of the power of the sender. We test this proposition in a survey experiment with 1205 Danish local politicians in which the experimental groups were presented with varying levels of cost information but where sender remained constant. The experiment shows that even in a setting where the information is not disclosed by a powerful sender, information may have a stronger impact on political preferences than other well-known determinants such as committee and party affiliation. Our findings speak to learning theories, knowledge perspectives and the literature on the determinants of politicians’ preferences.     

The breakdown of the sex/gender distinction in anthropological discourse

This contribution to the ongoing process of questioning the sex/gender distinction in feminist research sets out from two different points of departure. First, from an anthropological perspective, examples are given to help us “rethink” sex as a universal “given”. Second, it is examined how the distinction, when used in feminist analyses, has confused rather than clarified our understanding of sex/gender. Finally, the implications of the breakdown of the sex/gender distinction for feminist research are discussed in brief.     

Broad Anthology on Situated Health Studies

Feminist science and technology studies — a challenge to science and to feminism?

Lynda Birke, Feminism, Animals and Science: The Naming of the Shrew. 167pp. Buckingham, Philadelphia: Open University Press, 1994.

Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature. 239 pp. London/New York: Routledge, 1993.

Londa Schiebinger, Nature's Body: Gender in the Making of Modern Science. 289 pp. Boston: Beacon Press 1993.

Nelly Oudshoorn, Beyond the Natural Body: An Archeology of Sex Hormones. 195 pp. London/New York: Routledge 1994.

New understanding of women battering in marriage

Margareta Hydén, Woman Battering as Marital Act: The Construction of a Violent Marriage. 172 pp. Oslo: Scandinavian University Press, 1994.

Learning and life

Maaret Wager, Constructions of Femininity in Academic Women: Continuity Between Private and Professional Identity. 287 pp. Helsinki: Suomalainen Teidekatemia, 1994.

Gunilla Bjerén and Inga Elgquist‐Saltzmann, eds, Gender and Education in a Life Perspective: Lessons from Scandinavia. 170 pp. Aldershot, UK: Avebury, 1994.     

Offending,drug abuse and life chances—a longitudinal study of a Stockholm birth cohort

There are many factors, both empirical and theoretical, which indicate that drug abuse can play an important role in explaining the links between criminality and life chances when viewed from a life-course perspective. In this article, we examine the links between crime and drug abuse and social inclusion and exclusion in adult life, and look at whether there are gender-specific patterns in these regards. The Stockholm Birth Cohort database allows us to follow a birth cohort born in 1953 to age 56. The results show that drug abuse is central both to processes of continuity in and desistance from crime and to life chances in adulthood. For the adult outcomes that relate to work and health, we also note a tendency towards polarization; the size of both the relative and the absolute differences between the comparison group and offenders with registered drug abuse increases over time. The same general pattern can be seen for males and females.     

MPs and the Internet – An Empirically Based Typology

In recent years, both an increase in and a process of differentiation of ‘new’, digital media devices, including rising numbers of citizens turning to them, have stimulated recurring speculation about a readjustment of the communicative relationship between political representatives and the people. The debate about ‘electronic democracy’ has so far focused predominantly on technical potentials on the one hand and citizens' exposure to interactive political communication channels on the other. By contrast, the ‘supply side’, that is, the internet activities of political actors and especially their motives, has been investigated relatively rarely. Against this backdrop, two representative surveys were conducted among German and Austrian members of parliament that investigated their attitudes towards the internet. The results demonstrate similarities and differences in internet-related competences and assessments which are explained by micro- and meso-level factors. Foremost, an age-related ‘digital divide’ was found crossing the parliamentarian rows in both countries.     

Size,Democracy, and the Economic Costs of Running the Political System

The search for the optimal size of political systems is one of the most enduring in political thought. Given the validity of arguments for and against small units, one might expect variation in rearrangements of unit sizes. However, the reform trend is uniform: units, often at the local level, are amalgamated to harvest scale effects. The purpose of this article is to evaluate the argument on economies of scale in the economic costs of running political systems. Our testing ground is a recent Danish reform. It allows us to avoid endogeneity problems often facing researchers of size reforms. The reform was directed by the central government and constitutes an exogenous shock to 239 municipalities, whereas 32 municipalities were left untouched. We thus have a quasi‐experiment with pre‐ and posttreatment observations for both an experiment and a control group. Our findings show that scale effects, measured as administrative costs per inhabitant, are considerable.     

Reform Strategies Matter: Explaining the Perplexing Results of Regional Government Reforms in Norway and Denmark

Reforming the public sector often means imposing immediate costs on well-organised interests in return for longer-term, diffuse benefits to voters and taxpayers. Nonetheless, reforms sometimes are carried through. Investigations of this puzzle have followed two approaches: The first is structural and explains reforms as a consequence of the institutional setting in which policymakers operate. The second focuses on human agency. It investigates how reformers search for ways to overcome structural obstacles. This approach has lived a quiet life in recent decades. In this paper, we investigate recent attempts to reform the regional government level in Norway and Denmark. Despite very similar structural settings and political preferences, the reforms failed in Norway, but were successful in Denmark; failure and success being defined by the two governments' intensions. We argue that the explanation lies in the different reform strategies pursued by the central governments in the two countries.