Regionalisation as a Driving Force of EU Widening: Recovering from the EU ‘Carrot Crisis’ in the ‘East’

This article focuses on the ‘globalisation-cum-regionalisation’ process in the European Union that has led to the emergence of functional macro-regions. It provides first a classification of regionalisation, and describes the organisational and mental barriers of the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP). The second part traces the shift of the ENP from the South to the East that has also activated the EU's pre-accession policy in the West Balkan region and the Eastern Partnership programme. Finally, it argues that the Baltic Strategy and the Danube Strategy as functional macro-regions are the main instruments to overcome the weaknesses of the incentive-based approach in the EU's conditionality (or, as it is described here, its ‘carrot crisis’).     

AN EXPLORATION OF WHY PUBLIC ORGANIZATIONS ‘INGEST’ INNOVATIONS

Organizational change sometimes occurs as organizations ‘ingest’ innovations from without. This process represents a vital form of organizational learning and adaptation to the external environment. This study seeks to understand the factors that predict the adoption of Foreign Professional Specialty Occupation Visas, or H‐1B visas, by Texas public school districts. The use of H‐1B visas to hire foreign skilled workers is a staffing innovation that is growing in use among public and private organizations. Three sets of factors frequently used in studies of organizational innovation are considered: organizational size and slack; attitudes and dispositions of organizational leaders; and environmental influences. The findings contribute to our understanding of ingested innovations, indicating that slack resources, influences from the task and institutional environments, and the organizational leader's disposition and behaviour relating to change influence the probability of adopting this staffing innovation.     

Genetics and Racial Difference in Contemporary Brazil: Haemoglobinopathies,Whiteness and Admixture in Biomedical Literature

The historical role of biomedicine in shaping and legitimising ideas of race in Brazil has long been documented. Much less discussed, however, is how contemporary biomedicine helps recreate notions of race. In this article I explore some of the uses of race, and particularly whiteness, in current biomedical research, using as a case study articles published on the prevalence of haemoglobinopathies, including sickle cell anaemia and β‐Thalassaemia. One can only properly understand how race features in these texts by pointing to the links between ideas about admixture and purity, existing historical discourses about difference and Nation and new genetic knowledge.     

Comparing Cosponsorship and Roll‐Call Ideal Points

We use bill cosponsorship and roll‐call vote data to compare legislators' revealed preferences in the U.S. House of Representatives and the Argentine Chamber of Deputies. We estimate ideal points from bill cosponsorship data using principal‐component analysis on an agreement matrix that included information on all bills introduced in the U.S. House (1973–2000) and Argentine Chamber (1983–2002). The ideal‐point estimates of legislators' revealed preferences based on cosponsorship data strongly correlate with similar estimates derived from roll‐call vote data. Also, cosponsorship activity in the U.S. House has lower dimensionality than cosponsorship has in the Argentine Chamber. We explain this lower discrimination as a function of individual‐ and district‐level factors in both countries.     

Cultural Stress,Emotional well-being,and Health Risk Behaviors among Recent Immigrant Latinx families: The Moderating Role of Perceived Neighborhood Characteristics

Journal of Youth and Adolescence - Latinx families can experience cultural stressors, which can negatively influence their emotional and behavioral health. Few studies have examined if perceived...     

Putin,Erdogan and Orbán: Band of Brothers?

In 1990, right after the Berlin Wall fell, NPQ published our Spring edition, titled “The New World Disorder,” about the nationalistic chaos and up‐in‐theair sensibility of that fraught new historical moment. Nearly a quarter of a century later, the regime of globalization that had supplanted the Cold War world of blocs is itself coming apart at the seams. Even Henry Kissinger these days says “the world order is crumbling.” Will this New World Disorder 2.0 revert to a system of conflicting blocs, as during the Cold War, or will we be mature enough to save the interdependence of plural identities that is the foundation of a new global civilization? In this section our contributors offer their perspectives on what the future holds.     

Patterns of Ethnic Homogenisation,Fragmentation and Polarisation and the Vote Shares for Nationalist Parties in Latvia

Abstract

The focus of this article is on ethnic diversity and polarisation in Latvia after 1989. Our fundamental question is that if we interpret diversification as a dynamic process, and include polarisation as a potential direction of diversification, how much will the results differ, compared to the explanations usually proposed in the literature? The recognition that apparent homogenisation results, in particular cases, in polarisation (in this case in 35% of Latvia’s entire population) is the major contribution of our empirical analysis. Taking into account the broad scale of the potential impact of polarisation, our findings raise significant questions for the classification mechanisms that may be employed in further investigations.     

A Better Deal? Negotiated Responses to the Proceeds of Grand Corruption

Criminal Law Forum - Judicially supervised negotiated settlements have featured heavily of late in discourse on responses to financial crimes committed by corporations. The United States has...     

National protest agenda and the dimensionality of party politics: Evidence from four East-Central European democracies

Contemporary democracies show considerable differences in the issue composition of their protest politics, which tends to remain relatively stable over time. In countries like Germany or the Czech Republic, the vast majority of protests have been mobilised around sociocultural issues, such as human rights, peace, nuclear power or the environment, and only a tiny portion of protest has focused on economic issues. At the opposite extreme, protest in France or Poland usually has a strongly economic character and voices demands relating to material redistribution and social policy. What lies behind the cross-country differences in national protest agendas? In this article, the national protest agenda depends on what issues mainstream political parties are contesting: the content and strength of the master-issue dimension. In reference to the literature on the multidimensional political space and niche political parties, one should expect that there is a substitutive effect; where the stronger a specific master-issue dimension is in party politics, the less salient that issue dimension is in protest politics. This substitutive effect results from the tendency of electoral politics to reduce political conflict to a single-dimension equilibrium, which decreases the importance of other issues and relegates the contest over secondary, niche issues to the realm of policy-seeking strategies, with protest being a common type of this political strategy. In party systems where single-dimension equilibrium does not exist and the master-issue dimension is weaker, the same dynamics result in a more convergent relationship between party and protest politics and a greater similarity between the protest- and party-system agendas. To investigate this theory, the national protest agendas in four countries are examined. The Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia show four combinations of two crucial factors that are not available in the old Western democracies: the content and the strength of the master-issue dimension. The study draws on an original dataset of protest events organised in the four countries between 1993 and 2010, and on qualitative and quantitative data on issue dimensions of party politics obtained from studies on party politics and expert surveys. The results show that in the Czech Republic, where the master-issue dimension has remained strongly economic, protest has been predominantly sociocultural. In Poland between 1993 and 2001 and Hungary between 1993 and 2006, the master-issue dimensions are strongly sociocultural, while protest is predominantly economic. There is no single-dimension equilibrium in party politics in Slovakia or in post-2001 Poland and mainstream parties compete on both economic and sociocultural issues. Consequently, the substitutive dynamics between party and protest politics is weaker and the issue agendas in party and protest arenas are here more alike.     

Analysis of Dental Case Reports in the Context of Court Decisions: Causal Nexus and Aspects of Fault

The purpose of expert reports is to support the judge in his decisions, by providing technical information. However, it remains uncertain as to what extent the content of these reports is used, and if they are effectively associated with judicial decisions. The aim of this study was to perform a qualitative analysis of case reports in relation to the judicial decisions rendered in association with these reports, by determining the connection between causal nexus and aspects of fault. The case reports included lawsuits against dentists, issued by the Medical Justice Department of the State Court of Appeals of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, between 2010 and 2013. Comparing the percentage of agreement between case report and judicial decision, causal nexus was 79.9% and fault was 86.7%. The high percentages of agreement found in relation to fault and causal nexus highlight the relevance of expert reports in weighing the judge's decision.