At the end of a fairy tale: romantic relationships in female juvenile offenders

This study explores romantic relationships among female juvenile offenders. The entire female population of a juvenile detention center at the moment of the study participated in a semi-structured interview. Using a semi-structured interview, the girls answered questions on four main topics: (a) available dating partners before entering the detention center; (b) dating partner preferences; (c) intimate relationships within the center; and (d) romantic relationships. A 34-item scale was also used to assess their dating partner preferences. Most girls depicted dysfunctional families and a reduced range of dating options, many involving male offenders. Most participants had also been precocious in their relationships and experienced victimization at the hands of their intimate partners. Implications to prevent female involvement with criminal and violent men are discussed.     

Priority goals in international co-operation of the Republic of Serbia in the field of environment and sustainable development

The paper points to the significance of some factors of international co-operation in the field of environment and sustainable development as a general framework for understanding of the fundamental goals in international co-operation of the Republic of Serbia (RS). It is especially pointed to the place and importance of the activities that are carried out in the European Union (EU), to the harmonisation of national legislation with EU legislation including regulations in the field of climate change, to the significance of international environmental agreements and various forms of global, regional, subregional and bilateral co-operation as well as to the co-operation with international financial institutions which are important for environment and sustainable development. The paper is based on the thesis that the fundamental goals in international co-operation of RS in the field of environment and sustainable development are mostly determined by the “European perspective” of RS and in accordance with this, with global trends in the contemporary environmental and sustainable development policy and law. Opening the prospect of the EU membership (potential candidate status and the status of the candidate for EU membership) has resulted in the acceleration of the process of harmonisation of national legislation with the EU’s as well as speeding up the process of ratification of the international treaties in the field of the environmental protection.     

Euvoluntariness and just market exchange: moral dilemmas from Locke’s Venditio

It is a maxim of Public Choice that voluntary exchanges should not be interfered with by the state. But what makes a voluntary market exchange truly voluntary? We suggest, contra much of the economics literature, that voluntary exchange requires consent uncoerced by threats of harm, but that this is not sufficient. In particular, a person pressured to exchange by the dire consequences of failing to exchange—e.g., dying of thirst or hunger—is still coerced, and coerced exchange cannot be voluntary. The weaker party’s desperation gives the other party unconscionable bargaining power. We argue for a distinction, based on a neologism: in the case of coercion by circumstance but not by threat, exchange is still voluntary in the conventional sense, but it is not euvoluntary (i.e., truly voluntary). We will argue that all euvoluntary exchanges are just, while non-euvoluntary exchanges may or may not be unjust; that in competitive markets all exchanges are just, even those that are not euvoluntary, while in bilateral monopolies some exchanges are neither euvoluntary nor just. We will propose a mental device, the “fictitious negotiation”, to determine the just price in non-euvoluntary market exchanges. A primitive version of these ideas can be found in a little known monograph by John Locke, which we will analyze in detail.     

Taking Risks in Social Media Campaigning: The Early Adoption of Blogging by Candidates

This article concerns whether and how political candidates adopt social media in their election campaigns. For campaigns, the openness and interactivity of social media tools bring about risks in terms of losing control over the message. Departing from a cost‐benefit perspective, this study addresses the question as to whether certain groups of candidates – differing in incumbency status, party type, gender, generation and urbanization level of the constituency – are more prone to adopt and utilize new social media tools and practices. In order to study how candidates approach social media in an early stage when the benefits are uncertain and the risks are apparent, candidate blogging in the 2007 Finnish national elections is examined. The findings show that the candidates generally were not ready to pursue the full potential of blogs and thereby to accept the risks associated with this open, interactive and personalized way of campaigning. Rather, the candidates took a cautious approach by not engaging extensively in the social media features and practices. However, female candidates and candidates not representing major parties were more likely to utilize a broader range of social media features and practices. The study adds support to the claim that campaigns do not simply adopt and utilize novel social media tools with the purpose of being innovative; they assess risks, costs and benefits. Social media do not alter the basic need of campaigns to control the message and to avoid stress in the campaign organization.     

Forecast dispersion,dissenting votes,and monetary policy preferences of FOMC members: the role of individual career characteristics and political aspects

Using data from 1992 to 2001, we study the impact of members’ economic forecasts on the probability of casting dissenting votes in the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC). Employing standard ordered probit techniques, we find that higher individual inflation and real GDP growth forecasts (relative to the committee’s median) significantly increase the probability of dissenting in favor of tighter monetary policy, whereas higher individual unemployment rate forecasts significantly decrease it. Using interaction models, we find that FOMC members with longer careers in government, industry, academia, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), or on the staff of the Board of Governors are more focused on output stabilization, while FOMC members with longer careers in the financial sector or on the staffs of regional Federal Reserve Banks are more focused on inflation stabilization. We also find evidence that politics matters, with Republican appointees being much more focused on inflation stabilization than Democratic appointees. Moreover, during the entire Clinton administration ‘natural’ monetary policy preferences of Bank presidents and Board members for inflation and output stabilization were more pronounced than under periods covering the administrations of both George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush, respectively.     

Identifying the bandwagon effect in two-round elections

Albert Heckscher (1857–1897) was a Danish lawyer. In his dissertation (Bidrag till Grundlæggelse af en Afstemningslære), accepted in 1892 at the University of Copenhagen, Heckscher dealt with numerous issues related to voting, especially those related to vote-aggregation in parliaments, courts and committees. He knew the works of Condorcet and Borda quite well, and analyzed many topics that would nowadays fall into the domain of the theory of social choice. These include Condorcet-cycles, differences between Condorcet-effective rules and the Borda rule, strategic voting, the influence of the voting order under the parliamentary voting rules, the likelihood of single-peaked preference profiles, and the problems created by non-separable preferences. Heckscher’s treatment of the Judgment Aggregation Paradox is especially noteworthy. Although Kornhauser and Sager (Yale Law Journal 96: 82–117, 1986) are usually mentioned as the inventors of this problem, Heckscher’s earlier treatment confirms the suspicion that the problem is not of recent origin. Numerous issues studied in the post-Arrowian theory of voting may already be found in Heckscher’s dissertation; some of them have become subjects of systematic study only in the twenty-first century. It is argued that Albert Heckscher, the unknown nineteenth century Danish lawyer, deserves a place in the pantheon of the theory of social choice alongside his better known contemporaries Charles Dodgson and E. J. Nanson.     

Public affairs in Hungary today: summarized through the eyes of a practitioner

This is not an academic overview on public affairs in Hungary, as this has already been written very well by many others. I would like to share my views and experience as a practitioner and give a quick insight into how public affairs is regarded in my country and how it developed after the change of the political system in Central and Eastern Europe. I will refrain from explaining what public relations or public affairs entails as I think this is unnecessary for anyone reading this. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Domestic European Union Coordination and Interest Group Mobilization in Three Member States: Looking Beyond the Formal Mechanisms

One conclusion in the literature on domestic European Union (EU) coordination is that the formal institutional properties of countries—devolved versus centralized or unitary—affect the nature of coordination practices. Basically, the view has emerged that domestic coordination is a largely bureaucratic process in which political control mechanisms remain relatively weak. Instead of only looking at public authorities and their formal networks, this article relies on a data set that allows us to analyse informal political-administrative networks and look at how societal interests mobilize and target policymakers in order to shape the position governments defend at the EU level. One of our conclusions is that despite devolution in Belgium, its intergovernmental coordination shows a considerable level of network centralization, even when compared to unitary countries such as France and the Netherlands, meaning that there are large differences between the three states with respect to the connectedness of the actors involved.     

Immunohistochemical detection of fibronectin and tenascin in incised human skin injuries

Immunohistochemical detection of molecules involved in inflammatory reaction can be useful for the diagnosis of vitality in skin wounds. We studied the expression of fibronectin (FN) and tenascin (TN) in 58 human skin wounds (48 vital and 10 postmortem). The age of vital injuries ranged from 3 min to 8 h and postmortem specimens were collected after a postinfliction interval of 15-180 min. One hundred thirty-seven formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded sections (mean: 2.3 sections per case) were stained with each of two monoclonal antibodies against FN and TN using the streptABC technique. A reticular staining for FN in wound edge and dermis was observed in 50% of vital specimens versus 0% in postmortem cases. Immunoreactivity was reduced in 10 autolysed cases. FN positivity exclusively at the injury margin was observed in 39.4% of vital wounds and 10% of postmortem cases. TN was negative in all specimens. Vital and postmortem hemorrhage areas showed positivity for FN and TN. Due to its low sensitivity, immunohistochemical analysis of FN is useful for determining vitality only in a minority of cases. Different factors in everyday practice, including autolysis and technical problems often produce false negative reactions with the result that FN cannot be regarded as a reliable parameter of vitality. Positive reactions (network staining) are more valuable than negativity but are not pathognomonic. Both vital and postmortem hemorrhages show an enhanced positivity for FN and TN, thus impeding the diagnosis.