The Spirit of Compromise: Why Governing Demands it and Campaigning Undermines it

SUMMARY

This article aims to reconstruct the debates that developed in the Italian Constituent Assembly, 1946–47, concerning two important issues: the form of the Italian government and the structure of the Italian Parliament. These issues are placed in the historical and chronological context whereby the text of the Italian Constitution was written and enacted between 2 June 1946 and 22 December 1947 (the date of enactment). This Italian Constitution is still in force today. These two themes are of contemporary relevance because the choices of Italian constituents, based on the nature of parliamentary government and symmetrical bicameralism, are still at the centre of current political debate about institutional reform in Italy. These historical debates are reconstructed through consideration and analysis of the official records of the Italian Constituent Assembly, the contemporary literature of the period and recent historiography.     

Negative emotional states,life adversity,and interrogative suggestibility

Purpose. Interrogative suggestibility has been shown to vary according to cognitive and personality factors and if reliably measured may predict performance in real forensic interviews. It is therefore of both theoretical and practical interest to identify which psychological factors are most closely related to suggestible responding. This study examines the extent to which individual differences in negative emotional states predict performance on a measure of interrogative suggestibility and also tests the assumption that self‐reports of negative life events are associated with suggestibility. Method. A non‐clinical sample (N= 80) of participants was administered the brief form of the Depression Anxiety Stress Scales (DASS‐21), the Life Experiences Survey (LES), and the Gudjonsson Suggestibility Scale (GSS‐1). Results. Negative emotional states were found to correlate positively, although moderately, with all of the suggestibility measures. Multiple regression analyses found significant predictive models emerged for Yield 1, Yield 2, and Total Suggestibility. Each of these predicted a small proportion of the variance. Negative life event impact ratings were not associated with interrogative suggestibility. Conclusions. The findings suggest that brief self‐report measures of negative emotional states are limited as predictors of interrogative suggestibility. The results also call into question the predictive utility of traditional checklist measures of life adversity for forensic purposes.     

The Frequency of Excess Auto Personal Injury Claims

This study analyzes auto personal injury claims across the statesto estimate the frequency of claims for nonexistent or preexistinginjuries. We develop a series of hypotheses regarding the specificclaiming patterns that would signal the presence of excess claims.We draw on a nationally representative sample of auto-accidentinjury claims closed during 1987 to test these hypotheses. Theresults strongly support the hypotheses. We conclude that approximately42% of reported soft-injury claims in the dollar-threshold andtort states are for nonexistent or preexisting injuries.     

Building a New Democracy in Ukraine: The Unacknowledged Issue of Ethnic and Linguistic Diversity in Public Administration Education and Training

The fall of the Soviet empire and the transition to democracy that has taken place in Central and Eastern Europe (and elsewhere) during the past three decades has focused new attention on both the processes of, and the issues involved in, democratic institution building. These experiences have shown that issues of linguistic and ethnic difference are often key elements in such matters. Ukraine, a country of considerable strategic importance, has struggled with both the transition to democracy and the relative roles of the Ukrainian and Russian languages in the task of nation-state building. This article examines the emergence of linguistic conflicts in Ukrainian government and public policy and explores, through a survey of higher education institutions, its impact on the preparation of the next generation of the nation's public administrators. The article concludes by explaining why the impact of this politically divisive issue has been more modest than might have been expected.