Anomalies in Political Economy

Results in cognitive psychology and experimental economics indicate that under identifiable conditions individuals do not act in an economically rational way. These results are important for Political Economy. Anomalies appear in the behaviour of voters, politicans and administrators. Economic markets do not fully eliminate anomalies in the aggregation process. It is shown that political aggregation by democracy, bargaining or bureaucracy may weaken or strengthen such individual anomalies. Moreover, institutions can partially be interpreted as endogenously emerging as a result of individuals' demands to cope with anomalies.     

Policy Diffusion: The Issue‐Definition Stage

We put forward a new approach to studying issue definition within the context of policy diffusion. Most studies of policy diffusion—which is the process by which policymaking in one government affects policymaking in other governments—have focused on policy adoptions. We shift the focus to an important but neglected aspect of this process: the issue‐definition stage. We use topic models to estimate how policies are framed during this stage and how these frames are predicted by prior policy adoptions. Focusing on smoking restriction in U.S. states, our analysis draws upon an original data set of over 52,000 paragraphs from newspapers covering 49 states between 1996 and 2013. We find that frames regarding the policy's concrete implications are predicted by prior adoptions in other states, whereas frames regarding its normative justifications are not. Our approach and findings open the way for a new perspective to studying policy diffusion in many different areas.     

Advance directives in bipolar disorder, a cognitive behavioural conceptualization

Mental Health Advance Directives (MHADs) are potentially useful for bipolar patients due to the episodic characteristic of their disease. An interest for the development of a Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) approach in the creation process of MHADs arises because of a lack of efficiency of the non-collaborative processes, the potential impact of psychopathology and the awareness of the illness in MHADs' content, the link between the patient's directives interest and the case manager's interest, and the lower interest reported by the potentially high MHADs beneficiary. The CBT intervention in the MHADs creation process that is proposed in this article is based on: the self-determination model for adherence, the cognitive representation of illness model, and the concordance model. The principles of the intervention were adapted from Motivational interviewing's (MI), emphasising personal choice and responsibility, and focusing on the patient's concerns about the treatment through Socratic dialogue. During the course of 2004, 20 advance directives written by patients (17 with bipolar disorder, 3 with schizoaffective disorder) have been collected following the described intervention. Therefore, this intervention seems to be relevant for patients with bipolar disorder.     

Mental disorders and request for psychiatric intervention in an Italian local jail

The issue of the prevalence of psychiatric illnesses in Italian prison samples has not received the same attention paid at an international level. The aims of the present study were to evaluate the prevalence of psychiatric disorders diagnosed according to DSM-III-R criteria among an Italian prisoner population, and to examine prisoners' requests for psychiatric intervention in relationship to the presence or absence of different psychiatric disorders. One hundred forty-two Italian male subjects from the Casa Circondariale of Messina, Italy, were evaluated using the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-III-R Non-Patient Version - SCID I and SCID II. A very high rate of disorders was found among inmates: 85.2% (n=121) of the sample were affected by a psychiatric disorder. Of the total sample, 51.4% (n=73) had requested psychiatric treatment during detention. The detection, diagnosis and treatment of the mentally ill prisoners is a primary goal for a better organization of services and prison settings; screening procedures for evaluating the presence of psychiatric disorders, with the aim to promote differential strategies for the care and rehabilitation of inmates, are needed.     

Sex offender management using the polygraph: a critical review

Reducing recidivism is a central goal in the treatment of sex offenders. In Europe, there is an increased interest in using the polygraph ("lie detector") as a tool in the treatment and risk assessment of convicted sex offenders. This interest originated from optimistic reports by American clinicians who argued that polygraph testing in the treatment of sex offenders is akin to urine analysis in the treatment of drug addiction. In this article, we critically examine the validity and utility of post-conviction sex offender polygraph testing. Our review shows that the available evidence for the claims about the clinical potential of polygraph tests is weak, if not absent. We conclude that portraying post-conviction polygraph testing as analogous to urine analysis is inaccurate, misleading, and ultimately, risky.     

The role of deception in P300 memory detection

Purpose. P300 memory detection test is a neuroscientific procedure to assess memories stored in the brain. P300 memory detection can and is currently applied to assess criminal suspects on recognition of critical crime information. Contrasting memory detection with lie detection, researchers have argued that P300 memory detection does not involve deception. We empirically investigated this argument by manipulating deception between groups. Methods. Thirty‐four community volunteers participated in a P300 memory detection test, answering either deceptively (deceptive condition) or truthfully (truth condition) to their own name. Results. P300 memory detection was significant in the truth condition, indicating that deceptive responding is not a prerequisite for valid P300 memory detection. However, there were clear indications that deceptive responding improved memory detection. Conclusions. Deception seems involved in the P300 memory detection test; and deceptive responding may add to test accuracy.     

Child Income Appropriations as a Disease-Coping Mechanism: Consequences for the Health-Education Relationship

This paper analyses the relationships between HIV/AIDS and education taking into account the appropriative nature of child income. Using a theoretical model, we show that considering remittances from one’s child as an insurance asset can reverse the usual negative relationship between disease prevalence and educational investment. This prediction confirms the results of an empirical study conducted on data compiled from the Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) database for 12 sub-Sahara African countries for children aged between 7 and 22-years-old. Using regional HIV prevalence as a measure of health risk, we find that the ‘sign of the slope’ between health risk and the enrolment of children is not constant. Splitting the data based on expected remittance patterns (for example rural versus urban), we obtain that the effect is most likely driven by household characteristics related to child income appropriation.     

Inter-parliamentary European Union–Latin American Caribbean (EU-LAC) relations and the increasing political convergence among Latin American regional parliaments (2006–15)

Europe and Latin America present a long-standing tradition of parliamentary diplomacy and particularly in the development of regional parliaments. Since the 1970s, inter-parliamentary relations between the two regions have been institutionalized, first by the regular dialogue of the European Parliament with the Latin American Parliament (Parlatino) and more recently, in 2006, with the creation of the Euro-Latin American Parliamentary Assembly (EuroLat). Apart from representatives of Parlatino, EuroLat includes in the European Union-Latin American Caribbean (EU-LAC) parliamentary dialogue members of other regional assemblies created in recent decades, such as the Andean Parliament, the Central American Parliament and the Mercosur Parliament. However, recent EuroLat meetings have made evident a polarization of positions on regional politics between European and Latin American sides, especially regarding the political and human rights situation in Venezuela. In this sense, the present paper analyzes the impact of EU-LAC relations on the political convergence of Latin American parliaments concerning regional political issues. The aim is to discuss how institutionalized relations with the European Parliament, through EuroLat, increased convergence among Latin American parliamentarians. This argument is exemplified by the joint defensive position on the Venezuelan political situation adopted by Latin American parliamentarians vis-à-vis the European Parliament's condemnatory position.