When to Tell? : Disclosure of Concealable Group Membership,Stereotypes, and Political Evaluation

Although their group membership is normatively irrelevant to vote choice, members of politically underrepresented groups (e.g., women, nonwhites, and gays and lesbians) are often evaluated through the prism of their group memberships and related stereotypes when competing for elective office. Because membership in groups defined by gender, race, or ethnicity is easily perceptible, women and nonwhite candidates may have little control over the political effects of their group membership. Membership in groups defined by a candidate's sexual orientation is concealable, in contrast, and thus potentially gives gay and lesbian candidates some control over the impact of their homosexuality and accompanying stereotypes on voters' responses. Using an experimental design, I examine the relationships between timing of group membership disclosure, group stereotypes, candidate sex, and political responses to gay and lesbian candidates for office—taking into consideration voters' attitudes toward homosexuality and their sex.     

Law,Love and Legality

The argument of this paper is that our lives have meaning because theyare structured by rules which are open to the outside, through which theoutside can reflexively fold back into the rules so that it canregenerate and transform them. It is this process that constitutes theunity and integrity of our lives and gives them coherence. Our lives donot have certainty in the sense that there is always a definite answeras to how we should live. It is in the reflexive unity of law and lovethat we have the confidence to respond to the outside and create andtransform our narratives, however dangerous that may seem. We might callthis ``legality' – the ability to go beyond the law at theappropriate time. In this sense then, it is a creative activity and isto be distinguished from legalism, which thinks that following the rulesis all that there is. But following the rules is important, for it isonly in following them and being faithful to them that we gain theunderstanding of when to break them. That creativity, which stems fromthe precarious linking of the arbitrary and the structured, might leadus to think of legality as a form of anarchy – not of thenihilistic variety but of the ability creatively to break the law andthus regenerate it.     

Case-study of fatal gunshot wounds from non-lethal projectiles

The authors present a case of the death of a 60-year-old man shot using rubber projectiles that were fired by a police officer from a Mossberg smooth-bore shotgun in an enclosed space from a distance of a few metres. The post-mortem examination revealed that death had been due to gunshot wounds in the chest which had caused heart and lung damage with subsequent massive internal haemorrhaging.     

Assessment of the cause and mode of death of victims of a mass industrial accident in the Halemba coal mine

On 21 November 2006 in the Halemba coal mine, Ruda ?l?ska, a mass industrial accident occurred. The underground catastrophe was probably due to combustion of methane followed by explosion of pulverised coal and resulted in death of twenty-three miners. The occurrence has been acknowledged to be one of the most serious accidents in Polish mining industry. Post-mortem examinations of the deceased were carried out in Department of Forensic Medicine, Medical University of Silesia, and in some cases additional dissecting techniques were employed. Photographs were taken as well as numerous specimens for various laboratory tests were collected. Toxicological analyses of blood samples revealed high levels of carboxyhaemoglobin saturation in seventeen cases, and detected presence of methane in the lungs of seven individuals, whereas microscopic specimens mainly showed lesions characteristic of putrefaction. The post-mortem procedures eventually allowed to establish the cause of death of all victims. The authors attempt to determine a range of requisite medico-legal proceedings and examinations that should be carried out in case of a mass industrial accident, and emphasise the need for development of appropriate guidelines.     

Local Nomenklatura in Communist Poland: The Case of the Warsaw Voivodship (1956–1970)

The nomenklatura system granted Poland’s communist party the opportunity to control key recruitment processes. This article analyses the rules whereby party authorities, between 1956 and 1970, introduced and implemented the nomenklatura system locally. The main goal is to examine how the system functioned, focusing on the strategy pursued by local party structures. The article shows that the agents manipulated the system and modified its rules. As a result, the nomenklatura system became one of the key forces behind the growing importance of informal political practices in Poland’s socialist-state system.     

What are the factors behind the successful EU-China cooperation on the subnational level? Case study of the Lodzkie region in Poland

Asia Europe Journal - Analysing the relations between the EU and China one can notice a growing network of links on all levels, including subnational. Within the framework of the One Belt One Road...     

Moderators and Mediators of Framing Effects in Political Marketing: Implications for Political Brand Management

Due to its important practical implications, there has been a growing number of studies on framing conducted by scholars from various research domains. There has been, however, no paper that would provide a comprehensive overview of various moderators and mediators of the effect. The aim of this paper is to address this research gap, concentrating on psychological moderators and mediators of framing characteristic for political marketing. The paper consists of three parts. In the first part, the concepts of framing, priming and agenda-setting as well as the similarities and differences between them are presented in order to resolve common terminological inconsistencies. In the second, we discuss the moderating role of such variables as knowledge, trust in media and values on framing effect. In the third section, psychological mechanisms that underlie framing and priming are reviewed. Here, cognitive mediators such as accessibility and applicability effects are presented, followed by the discussion of the moderating and mediating role of emotions in framing effects, with special attention given to positive-negative asymmetry observed in the evaluation of political candidates and events. Finally, implication for political brand management are discussed. Our findings can be relevant for politicians, specialists dealing in political brand image and scholars studying framing effects.     

The Power of Mass Mobilisation: Argentina's Struggle for the Legalisation of Abortion

The mass pro-abortion mobilisation which took place in 2018 has been arguably the most successful attempt in Argentina's history at altering the existing legal framework regulating access to voluntary termination of pregnancy. Never before has any legislative project legalising abortion reached the upper chamber of the Congress. Could this result be attributed to the support it received from a mass social movement? What are the limitations of mass mobilisations when a structural change to a long-lasting narrative is required? In order to address these questions, the issue of abortion will be examined through the perspective of power-making and counterpower-making strategies.     

Implementing Prior Judicial Decisions as Precedents: The Context of Application and Justification

The paper concerns the conditions and methods of using previous judicial decisions as a kind of precedents in the processes of application of law within the statutory legal order. The use of such decisions, not announced by the legislator, depends on the courts, undertaking such actions on the grounds of similarity of cases or of decisional processes. Such decisions do not become an exclusive validation argument and may create a situation of their potential conflict with legal regulations as well as an inferential supplementation of their content. Dissemination of such activity of the courts leads to the development of precedential practice (relevant to the statutory legal order), though, its actual jurisdictional role depends on proper justification of decisions, within which reference to these decisions should be adaptive (in relation to the elements of the current case), generalizing (forming elements of ratio decidendi) as well as argumentative and discursive (in respect of the way in which the decisional reasoning and arguments expressed in the prior justification are used).