Museums and Feminist Matters: Considerations of a Feminist Museology

This article speaks to a post-human feminist museology. It argues that considerations of a feminist museology would benefit from engaging with post-human feminist dialogues currently unfolding within academia. Dynamic political landscapes and global circumstances challenge dualist paradigms. Theorizations of museums are not exempt from these challenges. Critiques of androcentricity indicate that feminist theorizations have never fully centred on “the human”, but always already contextualized how we affect the world, and how the world affects us. Discussions in this article follow Barad’s agential-realist theorization of the material-discursive practices that shape our understandings in and of the world, and Haraway’s notion of diffraction that engages the material and re-tools recordings of object histories as entangled human and non-human processes that can be taken apart and reassembled, making different possibilities possible. The article demonstrates that museological alternatives that emerge from conversations about entanglements not only aim to move beyond the paradigms they have been circling within for so long, but towards a re-thinking of museology and cultural heritage museums. Thus, considerations of a feminist post-human museology re-imagine museums as entangled becomings that make different possibilities possible.     

Risk Factors and Drivers of Financial Sustainability in Local Government: An Empirical Study

The current international crisis in public finances has made financial sustainability a key issue for governments. Although the European Union (EU) and other international organisations have recommended governments to monitor demographic and economic variables, few studies have considered the influence of these variables on financial sustainability. This paper seeks to identify and analyse the drivers and risk factors that influence the financial sustainability of local government. The findings identify both risk factors (unemployment and population aged under 16 years) and drivers (budgetary outcome) of financial sustainability, which may constitute a useful basis for decision-taking by managers and policy-makers.     

Debating Agrarian Capitalism: A Rejoinder to Albritton

Despite the multiple usages of star anise, a spice harvested from trees native to northeast Vietnam and southeast China, and notwithstanding its potential as a ‘flex crop’ due to being a key component in the pharmaceutical production of the anti-influenza drug Tamiflu, little is known about who cultivates this spice and how it reaches consumers around the world. Putting commodity chain analysis literature into conversation with recent ‘flex crop’ debates, we analyse the roles of actors along star anise commodity chains originating in rural, upland northern Vietnam. Our qualitative fieldwork reveals the intricate and idiosyncratic nature of these commodity chains upon which ethnic minority cultivator livelihoods depend, and which connect uplands and lowlands through manifold linkages. Cultivators, intermediaries, wholesalers, exporters and marketplace traders are constantly having to renegotiate their positions along these chains to maintain viable livelihoods due to uncertain financial returns and shifting demands. Adding to livelihood insecurities, financial gains have fluctuated wildly over time. The segmented knowledge individuals have of these commodity chains keep many in a vulnerable position, while the Vietnamese state's approach to promoting this commodity as a way to improve local livelihoods is questionable.     

Referendum design, quorum rules and turnout

In this article, we focus on the consequences of quorum requirements for turnout in referendums. We use a rational choice, decision theoretic voting model to demonstrate that participation quorums change the incentives some electors face, inducing those who oppose changes in the status quo and expect to be in the minority to abstain. As a result, paradoxically, participation quorums decrease electoral participation. We test our model’s predictions using data for all referendums held in current European Union countries from 1970 until 2007, and show that the existence of a participation quorums increases abstention by more than ten percentage points.     

Social spending,partisan bias and vote choice. Evidence from the US

Most models in political science and political economy assume that benefiting from public spending increases the likelihood of voting for the government. However, we do not have much empirical evidence on the conditions under which recipients of public spending reward governments for their public transfers. This article studies the electoral implications of welfare spending cuts in the early years of the Reagan Presidency, when public spending changes were particularly pronounced. Using 1982 NES data, this paper demonstrates that voters who lost public benefits punished Reagan but this only occurred when they identified with the Democratic Party. By contrast, benefit recipients not affected by government cuts were more likely to support Reagan, but again this was only significant among voters identifying with the party of government. This paper thus finds that governments cannot automatically “buy” votes by using welfare spending, the influence of which is instead cushioned by party identification.     

Human Rights and Ethnic Data Collection in Hungary

The article analyzes ethnic data collection pertaining to criminal justice in Hungary. With such a sensitive and delicate issue at hand, Hungary has decided on an evasive approach, resisting ethnic data collection by law enforcement authorities. The author argues that this approach has become one of the obstacles in fighting discrimination and ethnic profiling. Moreover, Hungary’s restrictive approach to ethno-national data classification also causes severe constitutional problems in other, noncriminal legal circumstances, where ethnic data is used in the context of additional rights and affirmative protection provided for ethno-national minorities. The first part of the article describes general problems relating to ethnic data collection and analyses of the Hungarian minority protection framework, in particular, the minority self-government structure (a unique constitutional institution). The second part focuses on the criminal justice system; the author’s aim is to show that prohibiting the official recognition and collection of data on ethnicity by criminal justice authorities has potentially ethnically discriminatory consequences. This paper was written under the aegis of the Bolyai Research Scholarship of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.

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Is Populism Bad For Business? Assessing The Reputational Effect Of Populist Incumbents

This article seeks to assess whether populist incumbents affect their country’s perceived political stability and business climate. Existing evidence contends that populist governments in European democracies produce more moderate policy outcomes than their agendas would suggest. However, populist parties are still regarded as disruptive, as they are perceived to not conforming to the politics of negotiation and compromise that are central to liberal democracies. Therefore, their presence in government may generate political uncertainty and negatively affect the business climate. Drawing on a sample of 26 European democracies between 1996 and 2016, we find that populist incumbency initially generates market uncertainty, but after about two years in office, the negative effect on the business climate vanishes.     

Privatisations in Spain: Process, Policies and Goals

This paper analyses the privatisation process carried out in Spain through the period 1985–1998. Firstly, an updated overview of the magnitude of the process is presented, paying also attention to the legal background, the economic features of the privatised firms, and the ways and procedures. And secondly, the paper provides a critical assessment of the objectives that the successive governments have actually pursued through privatisations; so, we attempt to verify to which extent privatisations carried out could be related to the usual explanatory hypotheses based in the property rights theory. As a result it is argued here that the main goals actually pursued by Spanish governments (given the features of the privatised firms) do not fit well with such hypotheses.     

A controlled study of the time-course of breath alcohol concentration after moderate ingestion of ethanol following a social drinking session

This paper evaluates the breath alcohol concentration (BrAC), nausea (feeling of being slightly intoxicated) and subjective driving performance after ingesting a moderate dose of alcohol in the presence of a light meal, which intends to approach a social drinking setting. 119 healthy individuals (69 males and 50 females, aged 21.7+/-3.0) ingested three glasses of wine (95mL each) and their BrAC was determined by an Alcotest 7410 at 15, 30, 45, 60, 90 and 120min post-drinking. 46% of females and no male subjects exceeded a BrAC of 0.25mg/L, the legal limit for driving fixed by some Western countries. 53% of the study population felt nausea during the experimental session and 20% self-reported impairment of their driving skills. In both cases these subjective effects were more pronounced in females. The major determinants of mean BrAC were time post-drinking, gender (male) and body mass index (BMI), all these variables being inversely associated. Females and individuals with a BMI lower than 22.5kg/m(2) were at an increased risk of exceeding the legal limit of BrAC. The feeling of nausea was significantly associated with gender (females), the ingestion of up to 2 drinks on weekdays, and having exceeded a BrAC of 0.25mg/L during the experimental study. The main predictor of self-perception of impaired driving skills was the feeling of nausea, followed by a BrAC in excess of 0.25mg/L. In conclusion, both females and subjects with lower BMI are at an increased risk of exceeding the legal limit of BrAC after moderate alcohol consumption resembling a social drinking setting.     

A middle-aged female serial killer

The case of a 48-year-old woman accused of killing at least 12 elderly women and attempting to kill another one during the last 3 years is presented. Extensive neuropsychological, electrophysiological, and neuropsychiatric testing showed no evidence of a DSM-IV-TR Axis I diagnosis, but a decrease in executive functions and abnormalities in the processing of affective stimuli were found. Behavioral and psychophysiological studies revealed dissociation between knowing how to behave and actually behaving in socially acceptable ways. According to the woman, killing was just her response to "humiliating situations." Two potentially significant conditions in her past history are found: (i) childhood abuse; and (ii) multiple head injuries. It is conjectured that the nature of her crimes, paranoid and personality traits, a probable frontal brain dysfunction, as well as a specific demographic and social context represent unusual factors accounting for her violent behavior.