Les comites permanents de l'assemblee nationale constituante française mai 1848 — mai 1849

Summary

For most of this century the history of the Elizabethan and Jacobean parliaments was dominated by the interpretations of Sir John Neale and Wallace Notestein. They argued that the major feature of these parliaments was the emergence of an organized opposition which contributed greatly to the constitutional development of England through their conflicts with the monarchy. This view has recently been challenged by a number of historians who stress parliament's role as a legislative body, arguing that there was a high degree of co‐operation and agreement, and that there was no organized opposition.

This paper suggests that these two alternative models — political arena/ conflict and legislative body/co‐operation — are overstated and that a better model is to consider parliament as an arena in which different ‘interest groups’, ‘factions’ or ‘lobbies’ operated. It investigates a number of lobbies which are discernible from parliamentary, state and local archives and concludes that such a model enables us to return the organized puritan opposition to the history of these parliaments without their becoming the dominant feature. It allows for the interpretation that the primary function of parliament was legislative, and that this was achieved through co‐operation and consensus, while not under‐estimating the conflicts that legislation could provoke.     

The British Parliament and ministerial responsibility c. 1740–60*

This article deals with certain matters concerning the issue of the political accountability of ministers to parliament during the last twenty years of the reign of King George II. It emphasizes the fact that there was no constitutional convention during this period that would have allowed parliament or the House of Commons alone to force the dismissal or resignation of ministers (as the ultimate sanction of political accountability). At that time, the king was the real master of his ministers. On the other hand, and as a matter of fact, only those ministers who could best manage the king's business in parliament were kept in office by the king. These propositions are demonstrated by examining the practice of the various administrations between 1740–60. It was also especially important for the leading ministers, such as Robert Walpole, Henry Pelham, the Duke of Newcastle and William Pitt to secure both the favour of the king and the confidence of parliament to remain in office. The Pitt-Newcastle administration (from 1757) additionally confirmed the general principle in times of war that administrations can only have firm parliamentary majorities to hold onto power as long as they would lead a war successfully.     

Testosterone reactivity and identification with a perpetrator or a victim in a story are associated with attraction to violence-related cues

Background

Recent field research has demonstrated that an attraction to aggressive behavior and cruelty is common among combatants and perpetrators involved in organized violence. The biological basis of this appetitive perception of aggression in humans has to date not been studied.

Aims

We examined testosterone as a potential hormonal moderator during induction of specifically appetitive aggressive behavior in the laboratory.

Method

To activate physiological responding related to appetitive aggression, 145 university students (72 women) listened to tape recordings of variants of a violent story. The perspective of the listener in the story was randomized between subjects. Participants were required to either identify as perpetrator, neutral observer, or victim. We assessed changes in saliva testosterone in response to the story. Subsequently, a series of pictorial stimuli (IAPS) with different valence ratings was presented and participants determined the length of viewing time with a button click. This viewing time for negative IAPS was assessed as a dependent variable indicating level of interest in violent scenes.

Results

Men identified themselves with the perpetrator more than women irrespective of the particular perspective presented by the story. Men who responded with an increase in saliva testosterone when adopting the perpetrator perspective chose to view the negative IAPS pictures for longer intervals than participants in other conditions or those who did not exhibit a release in testosterone.

Conclusions

Testosterone moderates attraction to cruel and violent cues in men, as indicated by extended deliberate viewing of violence cues.     

Elections and the strategic use of budget deficits

We present a model in which a conservative incumbent with preferences for low public spending can strategically run a budget deficit to prevent the left-wing opposition candidate from choosing high public spending if elected, and possibly also to ensure his own reelection. We find that the incumbent never manipulates the opposition candidate??s public spending if he can ensure his own reelection; and that a conservative incumbent who runs a budget deficit to ensure his reelection may somewhat paradoxically choose high public spending before the election.     

Flat affect? Revisiting emotion in the historiography of human rights

Across the preceding 15 years, the study of the post-1945 human rights project has emerged as one of most rapidly developing fields of transnational and international history. This article surveys the current state of the art of emotionalist historiography in the sphere of human rights and humanitarianism. It identifies the value of histories of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century social movements, which have successfully begun to incorporate emotion into their analyses. The historiography of the deeper humanitarian past may well serve as the road to more nuanced histories of contemporary human rights struggles and means for integrating grand-scale political and intellectual history with the interior sentiment of individuals. Through a brief survey of emotion at various moments of the postwar rights story, the article argues that the study of shifting sentiment can substantially enrich accounts of human rights history, as it already has done in other fields.     

Harsh Discipline and Child Problem Behaviors: The Roles of Positive Parenting and Gender

This study examined harsh verbal and physical discipline and child problem behaviors in a community sample of 2,582 parents and their fifth and sixth grade children. Participants were recruited from pediatric practices, and both parents and children completed questionnaire packets. The findings indicated that boys received more harsh verbal and physical discipline than girls, with fathers utilizing more harsh physical discipline with boys than did mothers. Both types of harsh discipline were associated with child behavior problems uniquely after positive parenting was taken into account. Child gender did not moderate the findings, but one dimension of positive parenting (i.e., parental warmth) served to buffer children from the detrimental influences of harsh physical discipline. The implications of the findings for intervention programs are discussed. This research was supported by a grant from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.     

Judicial detection skill and contractual compliance

Mutually beneficial agreements might fail if the parties fear contractual opportunism. Litigation is supposed to be a remedy, but it gives scope for another kind of opportunistic behavior, which we call litigational opportunism: Even known that the opponent has fulfilled his obligations, a party might bring suit. We introduce a new concept, called judicial detection skill, and show that positive judicial detection skill is a prerequisite if the court system is to deter opportunistic suits and simultaneously induce bilateral contractual compliance. The traditional literature on litigation either assumes judges with zero detection skill, or simply neglects that opportunistic suits might be successful. We prove that those models are unable to provide an answer to the question of how to prevent both types of opportunism simultaneously.