Local level political and institutional changes in Japan: An end to political alienation?

Background  In Japan, a steady increase of non-voters is evident on the national and local levels over the past few decades. However, since the mid-1990s, a new wave of political participation at the local level has attracted politicians as well as social scientists. Citizen participation is increasing in terms of the number of non-profit organizations, participatory procedures, and engagement in new political networks. Citizens growing involvement in local politics coincides with institutional changes that offer new autonomy in respect of local policy-making.Objectives  In this paper, we will argue that these local trends might have an impact on national politics through the repolitization of citizens. However, preconditions are, ceteris paribus, the restoration of political trust through participation and institutional changes that support citizen involvement in politics.The authors have been engaged in a project on “Civil Society in Japan: Partnership as a New Item of Japan’s Local Politics” since 1 March 2006. The project is located at the Department for Japanese Studies at the Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg (Germany) and financed by the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, DFG).

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Sexual violence and reproductive health among young people in three communities in Jamaica

A secondary analysis of data collected from 1,130 young people ages 15 to 24 in a population-based household survey to assess the reproductive health needs of young people in three communities in Jamaica was conducted to determine the relationships among three measures of sexual violence, background variables, three measures of sexual risk taking (early sexual debut, multiple partners, and no condom at last sex), and two reproductive health outcomes (genital discharge within the past 12 months and pregnancy). In the multivariate analyses, forced first sex increased the likelihood of genital discharge among males (odds ratio, OR = 5.33) and females (OR = 2.02) and pregnancy among females (OR = 2.05), controlling for background characteristics and sexual risk taking. Associations between sexual violence and reported genital discharge and pregnancy that were not mediated by our measures of sexual risk taking were found. More research into the causal mechanisms for this association is needed.     

Chess algorithms of supreme court decision making: A bioconstitutional politics analysis

This paper examines, from a biopolitical perspective, the methodologies by which Supreme Court justices have interpreted the Constitution, assessing their decisional algorithms against models owing an intellectual debt to evolutionary theory. The models themselves are drawn from the chess literature, itself the most viable game theoretic context for living constitutional play. A proper appreciation of chess mastery yields the salient conclusion that a functionalist algorithm of data characterization is optimally adaptive for these purposes, usually proving more robust than competing structuralist and heuristic algorithms in resolving complex constitutional issues.     

Committee Parliamentary Specialization Index. Explaining MPs’ specialisation in the Spanish Congreso de los Diputados*

ABSTRACT

Nowadays legislatures are largely based on committee systems. This enables a division of work and specialisation, in the context of highly complex politics and policy development. It seems clear that MP specialisation in the field of the committee they serve on is an important political asset, both for MPs and their parliamentary party group. This paper presents the Committee Parliamentary Specialization Index. This index measures the degree an MP is specialised in the jurisdiction of the committee they serve on. In the second part of the paper, the index is applied to the Spanish Congreso de los Diputados, an interesting case for testing this multi-faceted index, to find institutional, political and individual factors that better explain the degree of MP specialisation.     

Part-Time Work,Gender and Job Satisfaction: Evidence from a Developing Country

Abstract

This paper investigates the relationship between part-time work and job satisfaction in Honduras. In contrast to previous work for developed countries, this paper does not find higher job satisfaction among women working part-time. Instead, for both women and men, job satisfaction is higher when in full-time work, although this finding is stronger for men. Consistent with an interpretation of working part-time as luxury consumption, the paper finds that partnered women with children, poor women or women working in the informal sector are more likely to report higher job satisfaction when working full-time than single women, partnered women without children, non-poor women or women working in the formal sector.     

“China in South America: Argentina, Brazil and Venezuela”

The growing presence of the People's Republic of China (PRC) in South America highlights its domestic priorities. On the economic side, high levels of development, source of political stability and international recognition, exacerbate the need of importing natural resources and exporting manufactured products. Politically, the policy of national reunification, which is also an important provider of stability drawn from nationalism, demand strengthening relations with countries in areas attracted by Taiwan, isolating the island in the international arena. Beijing is actively working to increase its political leverage and shape the agenda of international politics giving South-South cooperation a strategic dimension well beyond mutual development. This fits South American objectives, namely the ones of Brazil, Argentina and Venezuela, that aim at diversifying international partnerships and perceive China as an alternative to the traditional orientation towards Latin America, the US and Europe. Positioning itself as a stakeholder, China creates the basis for an alternative international order using persuasion. The Chinese soft power in South America may be a drop of water in a much broader strategy.     

Viewing time measures and sexual interest: another piece of the puzzle

Abstract

The present study compared a viewing time (VT) measure with the Sexual Deviance Card Sort (Laws et al., 2000 Laws, D. R., Hanson, R. K., Osborn, C. A. and Greenbaum, P. E. 2000. Classification of child molesters by plethysmographic assessment of sexual arousal and a self-report measure of sexual preference. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 15: 1297–1312. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) and past sexual behaviour. Twenty-six adult males who committed a contact sexual offence (19 of whom had child victims and seven with adult victims) each completed the self-report card sort and viewed 640 slides of nude and clothed males and females, ages 5, 9, 13 years and adult. The offenders were unaware that their viewing time was being recorded. VT allowed for greater consistent classification of sexual interest: for gender preference, 79% for individuals with child victims, 86% for individuals with adult victims; for age preference, 84% for individuals with child victims, and 57% for individuals with adult victims. Results demonstrated that a combination of nude and clothed computer-modified imagery can provide accurate sexual interest classification.     

A follow-up study of sex offenders treated by Thames Valley Sex Offender Groupwork Programme, 1995–1999

The following paper is a reconviction study of 183 sex offenders treated by the Thames Valley Project between 1995 and 1999. Some demographic details are provided about the sample. Subjects were monitored for a mean of 3.9 years. A total of 10 subjects (5.4% of total) were reconvicted for a further sexual offence. A further 19 men (10.3%) either had allegations made against them or committed a behaviour that may have involved or been the preparation for further sexual offending, defined here as “recidivism”. Details about post-treatment behaviour were drawn from three sources: two national police databases which indicated any formal sexual reconviction and the files kept on each sex offender registered with Thames Valley Project (TVSOGP), a multi-funded community-based sex offender treatment programme. The pre-treatment re-conviction risk status of each man was calculated using part one of the Risk Matrix 2000 algorithm (static factors). Risk levels were compared for those where reconviction, re-offending or recidivism was identified and those where it was not and a correlation was found in the predicted direction although this was not statistically significant. The advantages and limitations of this kind of follow-up study are discussed, together with some recommendations for future research.