How do gender quotas affect public support for women as political leaders?

Gender quotas have shown themselves to be an effective means of getting more women into political office. Less clear is the broader effect of gender quotas on egalitarian attitudes. This article uses a cross-national dataset of 48 countries worldwide to examine the role of gender quotas in the generation of individual-level attitudes to women as political leaders. Firstly, gender quotas appear to improve perceptions of women’s ability as political leaders in countries where they are present, having controlled for a range of individual-level and contextual influences. Second, this effect differs by sex. For women, the presence of gender quotas alone increases their support for women’s political leadership, something theorised as a ‘vote of confidence’ effect. Thirdly, this effect is not dependent on the type of quota implemented and holds for quotas adopted voluntarily by political parties and those that are brought about via a broader legal change.     

证据法的法域范围

法庭科学家和证据法学者所处的是两个不同的世界,就像英国和美国一样,由一种共通的语言划分开来。虽然在一些重要方面彼此关联,但法庭科学和证据法学作为两个独立的学科,有着各自独特的构造和演进,关注不同的问题并运用各具特色的认识论。因此,这两个学科之间存在着自说自话的重大风险。该风险的迹象体现在了法庭科学家与证据法学者之间时常沟通不畅。“证据法”的概念对于法庭科学和证据法学而言均至关重要,且在这两个学科中均被高频地运用。本文通过聚焦“证据法的法域范围”之基础概念讨论,希望造成该学科间冲突的个别成因能够明朗化,并诚挚地期盼这样做能有利于法庭科学与证据法学学科之间更有效地交流。     

Gender symmetry, sexism, and intimate partner violence

This study of a predominantly Hispanic sample of 92 male and 140 female college students examines both gender symmetry in intimate partner violence (IPV) and inconsistent relationships found in previous studies between sexist attitudes and IPV. Results indicate that although comparable numbers of men and women perpetrate and are victimized in their relationships with intimate partners, the path models suggest that women's violence tends to be in reaction to male violence, whereas men tend to initiate violence and then their partners respond with violence. Benevolent sexism was shown to have a protective effect against men's violence toward partners. Findings highlight the importance of studying women's violence not only in the context of men's violence but also within a broader sociocultural context.     

The political economy of Australian regulatory reform

The problem of regulatory accumulation has increasingly been recognised as a policy problem in its own right. Governments have then devised and implemented regulatory reform policies that directly seek to ameliorate the burdens of regulatory accumulation (e.g. red tape reduction targets). In this paper we examine regulatory reform approaches in Australia through the lens of policy innovation. Our contributions are twofold. We first examine the evolutionary discovery process of regulatory reform policies in Australia (at the federal, intergovernmental, and state levels). This demonstrates a process of policy innovation in regulatory mechanisms and measurements. We then analyse a new measurement of regulatory burden based on text analytics, RegData: Australia. RegData: Australia uses textual analysis to count ‘restrictiveness clauses' in regulation – such as ‘must’, ‘cannot’ and ‘shall’ – thereby developing a new database (RDAU1.0). We place this ‘restrictiveness clauses’ measurement within the context of regulatory policy innovation, and examine the potential for further innovation in regulatory reform mechanisms.     

Psychopathy in a mixed gender sample of adult stalkers

The authors present data on a mixed gender sample of 78 adult stalking perpetrators, each of whom was assessed with the Psychopathy Checklist:Screening Version (PCL:SV). Results indicate a generally low frequency of psychopathy in this group, although 15% of the sample was composed of psychopaths. Comparisons between this sample and other forensic samples indicate that both the frequency and degree of psychopathy were lower in the stalking group. The findings support previous theory and empirical findings, including the concept that underlying attachment pathology among stalkers and psychopaths is quite different, and psychopathy--in contrast to other areas of violence risk assessment--is usually not relevant when evaluating dangerousness among stalkers.     

The roles of conflict resolution scholars in Georgian–Abkhaz and Georgian–South-Ossetian conflict and conflict resolution

The evolving close relationship between the scholarly study of conflict resolution and the practice of waging and resolving conflicts can be seen in Georgian–Abkhaz and Georgian–South-Ossetian relations from 1992 to 2008. This article focuses on two related case studies of the many roles played by international conflict resolution scholars in Georgian–Abkhaz and in Georgian–South-Ossetian relations from 1992 to 2008. Drawing on interviews with insider-partial conflict resolution scholars, relevant international scholar-practitioners of conflict resolution, and the leadership of all parties of the conflicts, conducted between 1996 and 2008, the article presents a comprehensive analysis of the variety of roles conflict resolution scholar-practitioners have played in these conflicts during the wars and the recovery from war. The analysis suggests the need for clear ethical guidelines that cover traditional scholarly roles as well as scholar-practitioner roles including advising conflict parties, facilitating conflict resolution processes and analysing the conflicts. In particular, dilemmas emerge as scholar-practitioners move back and forth between these modes of engaged scholarship.     

Examination of Illicit Drug Use Frequency Using Multiple Drug Assessment Methods in Mothers Referred to Treatment by Child Protective Services

It has long been established that illicit drug use contributes to child maltreatment. However, investigators have yet to comprehensively examine illicit drug use in mothers referred to treatment by Child Protective Services (CPS). In this study, 77 mothers who were referred to treatment by CPS for co-existing drug abuse and child neglect were administered the Timeline Follow-Back measure to assess their substance use frequency during the four months preceding treatment. Reports of the mothers’ substance use were obtained for the same time period from the mothers’ significant others and CPS caseworkers, and mothers were administered urinalysis testing. The purpose of this study was to examine the concordance of these multiple reports, and identify unique predictors of different drug use reporting patterns. The practice of using urinalysis results as a prompt during the mothers’ Timeline Follow-Back administration may have contributed to greater frequency of drug use reporting in mothers. Mothers reported progressively more drug use for more distant time periods, as compared with caseworkers. Findings also suggested mothers’ reports of drug use were influenced by CPS investigatory case status (i.e., open or closed), ethnicity, and defensive responding. Implications of these findings for clinical practice and future research are discussed.     

The prospects for democratization in China: Evidence from the 1995 Beijing area study

Assessing the prospects for democratization in The People's Republic of China has been a mostly normative exercise over the past 20 years. Newer empirical work has focused on public opinion and the implications for a democratic transition but this literature is still in its infancy. This paper focuses on the distribution of public opinion in Beijing with respect to a direct, close end question about the respondent's most important value. Among the choices were political democracy and individual freedom. We hypothesize that if younger, more educated and wealthier people are more likely to select either of these options as their most important value then, over the next few decades, there would be increasing public pressure for democratization because of generational replacement and the expected increases in both wealth and average levels of education in China over the same time span. While there are some indications that in the future Chinese public opinion will be more favorable to a transition towards democracy, on balance the results of this paper provide scant evidence that the future will lead to increasing public pressure for democratization.