The use of referendums in Ireland: an analysis

The referendum is a phenomenon which is becoming increasingly normalised in the constitutional practice of many countries. Ireland is an EU member state with particularly extensive experience of the referendum as a decision-making tool. To date, it has held 39 referendums on a variety of issues – ranking it among the top four states in Western Europe in this regard.

This article seeks to review the emergence of referendums in Ireland as a decision-making instrument and to ask what constitutional, legal or institutional factors have led to referendums enjoying such comparatively extensive use there. It seeks to examine which political issues have formed the subject of referendums in Ireland, and to investigate what kinds of issues have succeeded in gaining electoral approval and what kinds have not. The extent of electoral participation in (and thus representativity of) Irish referendums is also scrutinised, and factors affecting participation rates examined.     

Political action committees at the state level: Contributions to education

This paper examines campaign contributions from educational political action committees (PACs). Using a new and unique data set of political activity of the educational PACs across the fifty states and throughout the decade of the nineties, the authors describe the contributions' patterns of these groups. The authors argue that teachers occupy a low cost position for organizing. Approximately 90 percent of educational PAC spending is on behalf of teachers' organizations. Generalized least squares analysis of the state-year variance in contributions indicate that competition between teachers' groups and other education interest groups is a significant factor that influences the educational PACs expenditures.     

Explaining the First Contested Senate Confirmation of a Director of Central Intelligence: John McCone,the Kennedy White House,the CIA and the Senate, 1962

This article explores the first nomination for Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) that was seriously contested in the US Senate. Unlike three previous DCIs who headed the Central Intelligence Agency, John A. McCone faced harsh criticism from some in the news media and 12 negative votes in the US Senate after he was nominated for the position by President John F. Kennedy. The article considers factors, including McCone's personal attributes and recent years' controversies about the CIA, as reasons that provoked some opposition to his confirmation as DCI.     

Gender and Perceived Control in the Russian Federation

The consequences of the socioeconomic transition for male physical health in Russia are widely documented, but much less research examines psychological well-being and mental outlook, or how these outcomes differ for men and women in Russia. Exploring gender differences in personal control, an important aspect of psychological well-being, we find that, controlling for social and economic factors, Russian women report lower levels of control than men. Gender differences in the social determinants of perceived control highlight the importance of gender roles for understanding psychological stress and inform how social expectations differentially influence men's and women's paths to well-being in Russia.     

Evidence About Harm: Dual Status Victim Participant Testimony at the International Criminal Court and the Straitjacketing of Narratives About Suffering

Criminal Law Forum - Although victims at the International Criminal Court (ICC) are not parties, they can apply to become “victim participants” and may be authorized by an ICC Chamber...     

Application of a modified stage classification in evaluating wisdom tooth eruption in a German population

The evaluation of the eruption status of the wisdom teeth constitutes a significant component of the spectrum of dental methods available for purposes of forensic age diagnostics. In the present study, the status of wisdom tooth eruption was identified in 606 conventionally created orthopantomograms of 515 female and 91 male Germans, divided by sex and tooth, using a modified classification comprising four stages. Instead of the original stage C (gingival eruption) which cannot always be reliably identified on X-ray images of suboptimal quality, stage C of the modified classification was considered reached when the erupting wisdom tooth had reached at least half the length of the crown of the adjacent second molar, without however having yet reached the occlusal plane. The new stage classification is especially recommended for age estimation based on X-ray images in which a conclusive delimitation of the gingiva is not possible.