Estimation of party positions: A comment on?Schofield?and Zakharov (2010)

We show how choice of the method of measuring the party positions impacts the conclusions about equilibrium positions of parties in a spatial model. We find that for the same set of voters’ ideal points we should observe either divergence or convergence to the mean, depending on the choice of the measure.     

International mutual legal assistance in criminal law made redundant: A comment on the Belgian Yahoo! case

This article offers a critical examination of the court judgements in a recent Belgian case against Yahoo!. It examines the challenges related to the establishment of jurisdiction for Internet-based services and the role that procedures of mutual legal assistance should play. Belgian law obliges providers of “electronic communications services/electronic communications networks” to cooperate with Belgian law-enforcement authorities and to handle over communication and personal data. Although the terms are derived from the EU Electronic Communications Regulatory Framework, a much broader interpretation to them was finally given by the Belgian Supreme Court. Seemingly this implies that, from now on, a US-based company such as Yahoo! is, at least under Belgian law, under a legal obligation to directly comply with an order issued by Belgian law-enforcement authorities.     

二十一世纪的叙事学:叙事研究的认知方法

进入二十一世纪之后,叙事学以前所未有的迅猛态势向前发展.本文在以历时路径回顾梳理文学理论和叙事学发展的基础上,重点审视了文学研究的认知方法之于叙事学研究的影响.认知科学的崛起为叙事学研究提供了重要的理论框架,直接促成了认知叙事学的崛起.认知叙事学的未来发展在于进一步整合多种认知方法,并以实证的方式对它们加以检验.尽管这种路径可能会加速叙事学、乃至文学研究的危机,但同时也可以见证一个新范式的产生.     

Trust and Safety in the Segregated City: Contextualizing the Relationship between Institutional Trust,Crime‐related Insecurity and Generalized Trust

Trust is a crucial asset for any society, and the quest to generate and uphold trust is as crucial as ever. Several contemporary societal developments are proposed as being particularly challenging for upholding and restoring the levels of trust in society, including increasing ethnic diversity, rising inequality and the related geographical segregation. It has been convincingly argued that democratic institutions may generate trust by neutralizing some of these effects. This article explores how the mechanisms of trust differ in segregated, disadvantaged neighbourhoods as opposed to the surrounding general society. The empirical material consists of individual‐level data from a segregated neighbourhood (Vivalla) in a medium‐sized city in Sweden (Örebro), with a random sample from the population of the city (the Vivalla area excluded) as the comparison reference point, representing the general society. In the article, perceived safety is introduced as an important mediator between trust in legal and government institutions and generalized trust, through which the differing mechanisms become evident. In the disadvantaged neighbourhood, it is shown that trust in government institutions has the function of primarily decreasing crime‐related insecurity, which in its turn affects generalized trust. Thus, the relationship is indirect. In the city population, the effect instead goes directly from trust in government institutions to generalized trust. The results suggest that the potentials of different means to build and restore trust are dependent on local context.