Out of Many,One? Strasbourg's Ibrahim Decision on Article 6

This case comment considers the European Court of Human Rights decision of Ibrahim v United Kingdom on 13 September 2016. Relying on Salduz v Turkey, the applicants claimed, largely unsuccessfully, that denial of access to a lawyer during police questioning, and subsequent admission into evidence of statements made in the course of that questioning, violated fair trial rights protected by Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The comment suggests that the decision's unusually emphatic statements about Article 6's ‘internal structure’ have consequences for assessing violations in future applications. Further, the decision creates greater room for public interest balancing in Article 6 cases. The decision may thus undermine the Article 6 guarantees.     

The sins of the father: The destruction of the Republican family in Franco's Spain

The postwar years in Spain were little more than the perpetuation of the Civil War on an ideological terrain, as the Franco Regime consistently vilified the memory of the Second Republic and remorselessly persecuted the defeated Republicans. In fact, nationalist diatribes against communism and its attendant ills of separatism and laicism were invariably expounded in medical terminology, referring as they did to the “cancer” and “virus” which had devastated the nation during the Civil War. This empirically unverifiable theory sustained that a large scale extermination (the Civil War) had to be carried out to rid Spain of this “virus” thus preempt the contagion of this fervently Catholic and patriotic nation. Horkheimer affirms that the family is the microcosm of the fascist state, as the relationship between siblings and parents replicates the obedience of the citizen to the fascist state. As Republican traits were at antipodes to the prescribed national attributes, the Francoist State sought to destroy the Republican family by a myriad of measures such as the inculcation of a zealous National Catholicism in their children, which in turn precipitated both selfhatred and the children's outright rejection of their parents. However, the social persecution of the defeated transcended indoctrination: in the postwar years, the horrendousness of life for the Republicans was compounded by the State's quasi reconversion policy, which resulted in Republican children being forcibly removed from their homes, and been adopted by pro-Francoist families, or in many cases, rehoused by religious orders which, within a decade, witnessed a huge increase in the number of supposed orphans becoming seminarists. In this article, I intend to elaborate on both the means by which the Francoist State eradicated the Republican family, and its long-term consequences.     

‘Walking in two worlds’: A qualitative review of income management in Cape York

The Cape York Welfare Reform (CYWR) initiative aims to reduce ‘passive dependence’ on welfare and restore ‘positive social norms’ to revitalise cultural and social networks and support economic engagement in Indigenous communities in the Cape York Region of Australia. Critics of the initiative and, in particular, its income management (IM) policies have associated it with a broader neoliberal reform agenda that delineates social ‘problems’ from their historical and structural context. This paper discusses key qualitative findings from a strategic review of CYWR, paying particular attention to the ways in which Cape York IM (CYIM) straddles both Indigenous and settler social norms, while perpetuating neoliberal conceptualisations of welfare ‘dependency’. We situate these findings within the existing literature on Australia's other IM models and also consider them in relation to subsequent government responses to the review and associated policies. We argue that CYIM represents a unique initiative, the subtle nuances of which have been largely ignored or misunderstood by critics. Further, we conclude that any extension or revision of this initiative should be considered with respect to deep and wide-ranging consultation of the Indigenous communities subject to CYWR. However, such consultation has not been the standard practice in Australian contexts.     

The Separation of Powers and Supreme Court Agenda Setting

This study employs the first systematic, empirical analysis that relies on archival data to examine whether the separation of powers influences justices' agenda votes. It spatially models how justices set the Court's agenda under a sincere approach as well as an SOP approach and compares the competing expectations derived therefrom. The results suggest that legislative and executive preferences fail to influence justices' votes. Across every model tested, the data show justices uninfluenced by the separation of powers. These results provide a strong rejoinder to SOP models, since the Court's agenda stage is the most likely stage of the decision‐making process to show signs of an SOP effect.     

Is International Relations a Global Discipline? Hegemony,Insularity, and Diversity in the Field

Using data from the Teaching, Research, and International Policy (TRIP) project, we address several questions posed by students of the international relations (IR) discipline, specifically, whether and to what extent: US scholars, institutions, and journals dominate the field; national communities of IR scholars are insular or inward-looking; and/or the discipline is theoretically, methodologically, and epistemologically diverse. We draw from two major data sources: a series of cross-national surveys of IR faculty in thirty-two countries and a database of journal articles published in the twelve leading IR journals from 1980 to 2014. We find obvious signs of US hegemony and insularity. Other national IR communities are relatively open to foreign ideas, if not to hiring scholars trained in other countries. Finally, despite US hegemony in the discipline and pockets of geographic insularity, we see a diverse field characterized by a wide range of theoretical, methodological, and epistemological commitments. We conclude with a discussion on the sources and consequences of diversity in the international relations discipline.     

Taking stock: A Meta-Analysis of the Predictors of Restrictive Housing

Two competing views on the use of restrictive housing have emerged in the literature. The first position has argued that restrictive housing helps make correctional institutions safer and more secure environments, largely by incapacitating violent and dangerous inmates. In contrast, a second perspective has maintained that restrictive housing not only causes serious psychological damage and increases criminal coping, but also that it has served as a mechanism for officials to punish certain groups of inmates unfairly. This study tests these competing hypotheses by meta-analyzing the literature on the predictors of placement in restrictive housing. The results of this investigation provide support for both perspectives. The implications of the study’s findings are discussed.     

Following the Party in Time of War? The Implications of Elite Consensus

Prominent perspectives in the study of conflict point to two factors that exert substantial influence on public opinion about foreign intervention: (1) news about casualties and (2) signals from partisan elites. Past work is limited, however, in what it can say about how these two factors interact. We present an experiment designed to understand the surprisingly common scenario where elites send competing messages about whether the public should support war or oppose it—and these messages do not coincide with party divisions. We find that partisans are generally insensitive to news about casualties, but they become noticeably more sensitive when they perceive within-party disputes over support for the war. Independents, however, respond to news of casualties irrespective of what messages elites send. These findings shed light on when and how the public responds to competing and unclear cues and speak to the role of public opinion in determining conflict outcomes and democratic foreign policy-making more broadly.     

No Compromise: Political Consequences of Moralized Attitudes

Evolutionary, neuroscientific, and cognitive perspectives in psychology have converged on the idea that some attitudes are moralized—a distinctive characteristic. Moralized attitudes reorient behavior from maximizing gains to adhering to rules. Here, I examine a political consequence of this tendency. In three studies, I measure attitude moralization and examine how it relates to approval of political compromise. I find that moralized attitudes lead citizens to oppose compromises, punish compromising politicians, and forsake material gains. These patterns emerge on economic and noneconomic issues alike and identify a psychological phenomenon that contributes to intractable political disputes.     

Helpful local surtaxes? Florida and disadvantaged families

Well-intended tax policy often produces unintended consequences. In this article, we look at one such tax policy, specialised surtaxes in the State of Florida. Surtaxes are frequently adopted to provide financial assistance to poverty-based local programmes and services. Despite the intended benefits, we show that the contributors of the tax have been able to capitalise the cost into the residential property market, ultimately placing the burden of the surtax upon the population its revenue intends to help.     

Multidimensional incongruence and vote switching in Europe

Does ideological incongruence hurt parties in elections? Research on the representational relationship between parties and voters suggests that ideological congruence can boost a party’s electoral prospects. However, while the mechanism is at the individual-level, most of the literature focuses on the party-level. In this article, we develop a set of hypotheses based on a multi-issue conception of party-voter congruence at the individual-level, and examine the electoral consequences of these varying congruence levels in the 2014 European Parliament elections. Consistent with our expectations, comparative analysis finds that ideological and issue-specific incongruence is a significant factor in voting behavior in the European Parliament elections. Although the substantive effects of incongruence are understandably small compared to partisanship, government, or EU performance evaluations, party-voter disagreement consistently matters, and voters’ issue salience is an important moderator of the impact of incongruence on vote choice.