The “Anglo-Saxon” Orientation of Wartime Hungarian Foreign Policy: The Case of Antal Ullein-Reviczky

The political élite of Hungary included a group that expected British and American support for Hungarian revisionist claims after the Paris Peace Conference. Their acknowledged leader was Count István Bethlen, the prime minister from 1921 to 1931 and an adviser to Regent Vice-Admiral Miklós Horthy until 1944. This analysis investigates a largely forgotten member of this group. Antal Ullein-Reviczky, a diplomat and scholar, shifted from being a Hungarian nationalist with an anti-Nazi attitude towards secret efforts to establish political relations with Britain during the Second World War. Press chief of the Foreign Ministry and the prime minister’s office, Ullein-Reviczky’s last appointment was Hungarian minister at Stockholm in 1943–1944. Both the Germans and the British put little trust in a man whose wife was the daughter of a British diplomat, yet who maintained superb connexions in pro-German Hungary. He changed his mind gradually when he realised that the price for revising the Treaty of Trianon was unacceptable. His long journey through international politics made him a significant player in a global drama, also assisting Raoul Wallenberg’s mission to Budapest. It is a political odyssey worth remembering.     

Reforming Counterterrorism: Institutions and Organizational Routines in Britain and France

This article seeks to explain why two states faced with a similar terrorist threat, perceiving it in a similar way, and drawing the same broad implications for their counterterrorist investigations, have nevertheless put in place significantly different types of organizational reforms in response to that threat. The study shows that although France and Britain have embraced a common preventive logic in the face of Islamist terrorism, the changes that they have made to the coordination of intelligence, law enforcement, and prosecution in that context have differed because of contrasting organizational routines and interinstitutional conventions in the two states. An analysis of the British and French cases shows that law enforcement can be preventive but that western states are likely to pursue different ways of bringing security agencies and the law together to prevent and prosecute terrorism. The organizational and institutional factors that give rise to such divergent practices have important consequences for the ability of a state to develop a coordinated operational response to terrorism and convict terrorist suspects of crimes in a court of law.     

How the Media Shape Perceptions of Right-Wing Populist Leaders

It is often argued that right-wing populist party leaders are dependent on the media for their public image, which in turn is key for their electoral success. This study tests this assumption by comparing the effects of the media coverage of 2 Dutch right-wing populist leaders with the effects of the coverage of leaders of established parties, in a real-life setting, by tracking campaign developments in the Dutch 2006 national election campaign. We combine panel survey data (n?=?401) with repeated measurements of the party leaders' public images with a systematic content analysis of 17 media outlets (with a total of 1,001 stories), on the basis of the media consumption of individual respondents. Our results show significant effects of the content of media coverage on the public image of political leaders. However, only in 1 case (out of 10) is there a significant difference between right-wing populist party leaders and leaders of other parties in the strength of media effects. It thus seems that leaders of right-wing populist parties are just as dependent upon the media as leaders of other parties. The findings are discussed in the light of extant research on right-wing populist parties and media populism.     

All News is Bad News: Newspaper Coverage of Political Parties in Spain

Spain has a highly partisan media system, with newspapers reaching self-selected partisan audiences and espousing explicitly partisan editorial preferences. Do the newspapers of the left and right differ in how they cover politics in ways that can be predicted by their partisan leanings? We review theories of issue ownership, journalistic standards, and information scarcity and test hypotheses derived from each. We find that the parties converge substantially in virtually every aspect of their coverage. Few differences emerge when we look at what topics are covered or in the dynamics of which topics gain attention over time. However, we confirm important differences across the papers when they make explicit reference to individual political parties. Journalistic norms result in a surprising focus on the faults of one’s enemies, however, rather than the virtues of one’s allies. Our assessment is based on a comprehensive database of all front-page stories in El País and El Mundo, Spain’s largest daily newspapers, from 1996 through 2011.     

The relation between cultural values and models of democracy: a cross-national study

The relation between democracy and culture is a long-lasting subject of interest in political science. In the contemporary approach to cultural analysis, value orientations are studied as fundamental manifestations of culture. The mainstream research has focused on finding a relation between the quality of a democratic system and the existence of essential values in a society. There is, however, an understudied question as to what the relation between cultural values and models of democracy in different countries exactly is. We know that there are different models or patterns of democracy (for example, majoritarian versus consensus and participatory versus spectator democracy) discernible in various countries. But what is the reason that a particular country, or set of countries, appreciates and accepts one type of democracy, while suspecting and discrediting other types? This article aims to find an answer to this question from the perspective of cultural differences. Using the empirical data derived from the operationalization of dimensions of democracy and dimensions of culture at the national level, we examine hypotheses regarding the relation between societal cultural values and the practice of different models of democracy in various countries.     

Sexually abusive behaviour in juveniles: Deviant and non-deviant pathways

Abstract

In this paper a theoretical framework is presented in an attempt to find an answer to the question of why some juveniles display sexually abusive behaviour and others do not. Until recently, this question has been approached mainly in terms of the presence of psychiatric illness, deviant sexual interests and/or impaired psychosocial development. Empirical research has as yet generally failed to demonstrate this approach to be adequate. It is estimated that only about 40% of juvenile sex offenders appear to show some kind of psychological or developmental deviance. The theoretical framework that is presented here approaches sexual abuse committed by juveniles in terms of normal developmental processes, next to deviant processes. It describes this behaviour, and its presence or absence, as a result of the interaction of biological, psychological and situational factors.     

Lawmaking and News Making: Different Worlds after all? A Study on News Coverage of Legislative Processes in the Netherlands

Over the last decades the importance of the media for understanding the functioning of democracy in the contemporary world has become evident. Yet despite the developing body of knowledge on political communication and newsworthiness there is little research about why and how the media cover legislative processes in a European context. Therefore this study analyses media coverage of lawmaking in the Netherlands and investigates which characteristics of legislation influence the amount of news coverage. It shows that only one out of five laws is covered at all and that no more than one out of 10 laws receives substantial media attention. This leads to the question why some laws get extensive news attention, whereas most laws are completely ignored. Press coverage for the legislative process turns out to be both selective and predictable. Traditional news values such as political conflict and significance are good predictors of media coverage for lawmaking. In addition, laws are largely ignored when they are part of the budgetary cycle.     

Labour of love: Female juvenile prostitution in the Netherlands

Summary

Although the number of young prostitutes increases, little systematic research has been undertaken to gain more insight into the trafficking of these young women. The main object of the present study was to describe the processes (that is, grooming, incorporation, and maintenance) that underlie the trafficking of young women for prostitution. Police records of 16 adolescent prostitutes were analysed. Results show that these prostitutes were recruited by so-called ‘lover boys’ who applied various seduction techniques to make the vulnerable young women fall in love with them. In general, the young women were incorporated into prostitution by means of physical violence. To protect and secure their income and organization, the pimps used a wide range of power and control tactics, of which the use of physical violence can be considered the most effective.