“Getting off the Tiger”: The Spanish Transitional Model and its Influence on the Democratic Transitions in Argentina and Chile, 1977–1990

The article explains how the Spanish transition from dictatorship to democracy, as a “model” for a political reform devoid of transitional justice, informed the Argentine and Chilean democratic transition of the 1980s. It indicates that during the mid-1980s, Spanish figures promoted Spain’s “pacted transition” in Latin America within particular intellectual networks. While ultimately failing to impact the Argentine democratisation, the Spanish discourse of “consensus” made a more salient impact in Chile during the late 1980s. The goal of this article is ultimately to suggest that while Chilean reformers designed their transitional model building on both the Spanish and Argentine precedents, their discourse bore a strong consistency with the core principles of the Spanish political reform, a fact that should be attributed to a decade of Chilean-Spanish dialogue.     

Nordic Cultural Baselines: Accounting for Domestic Convergence and Foreign Policy Divergence

The five Nordic countries converged remarkably when developing domestic institutions, but they diverged significantly when developing foreign policies. Grid-group theory prescribes four contending cultures—hierarchy, egalitarianism, individualism, and fatalism—and offers a basis for understanding the structure of political coalitions and conflicts. Surveys from the five Nordic countries measuring cultural baselines are used to estimate the degree of convergence and divergence. The countries converge with reference to high agreement with egalitarianism, individualism, and hierarchy, and disagreement with fatalism. This concords with the historically strong regime of social democracy in this region. The five countries diverge with reference to their foreign policy in that they polarize along two dimensions. To the east, there is increasing fatalism associated with countries not being members of NATO; to the north, there is increasing egalitarianism associated with countries not being members of the European Union. Given the importance of popular support through referenda, an eventual accession of Norway and Iceland to the EU cannot happen unless egalitarianism diminishes among their publics.     

Contacts with public services, with special reference to mental health care, preceding a serious crime: a retrospective study of 268 subjects of forensic psychiatric investigations

Between July 1995 and June 1996, 533 subjects underwent forensic psychiatric investigation I Sweden. Odd case numbers (n = 268) were included in the study. Of these 268 people, 50% had been in contact with psychiatric services during the six-month period preceding the crime leading to forensic psychiatric assessment. Contacts with psychiatric services during the six-month period preceding the crime were significantly more common in three categories of individuals than others. These were: women, individuals who were diagnosed as having a psychotic disorder during the forensic psychiatric investigation, and individuals found to suffer from a serious mental disorder as defined in the legislation. Subjects who were found not to suffer from a serious mental disorder and were thus not eligible for special sanctions on medicolegal grounds had significantly less psychiatric contacts before the crime, as did subjects under 20 years of age. However, these two groups still had considerably more psychiatric contacts than the general population. The present results suggest that the patient category studied requires special monitoring and case management in general psychiatry in Sweden. To this end, we call for closer studies of high-risk individuals, particularly of previously violent offenders and potentially violent offenders, and closer studies of their psychiatric contacts. This will provide a basis for the development of adequate programs and guidelines for effective care and treatment within the psychiatric sector.     

Priming,Issue Ownership,and Party Support: The Electoral Gains of an Issue-Friendly Media Agenda

Issue ownership theory posits a positive relationship between electoral support and public attention to issues that a party “owns.” We investigate this key prediction of the issue ownership theory in a dynamic analysis of 20 years of party support and media coverage across multiple parties and issues. The results provide support for the basic electoral implication of issue ownership theory, showing that increased media attention to owned issues increases support for the issue owners. Furthermore, the article demonstrates that the effect of the ownership mechanism materializes differently for opposition and government parties. Opposition parties benefit from media attention to owned issues without losing ground when news concentrates on issues owned by government parties, while government parties, always struggling with the electoral cost of ruling, lose votes when news about opposition-owned issues increases without gaining support when the media agenda is “issue-friendly.”     

Roadside oral fluid testing: comparison of the results of drugwipe 5 and drugwipe benzodiazepines on-site tests with laboratory confirmation results of oral fluid and whole blood

Drugged drivers pose a serious threat to other people in traffic as well as to themselves. Reliable oral fluid screening devices for on-site screening of drugged drivers would be both a useful and convenient means for traffic control. In this study we evaluated the appropriateness of Drugwipe 5 and Drugwipe Benzodiazepines oral fluid on-site tests for roadside drug screening. Drivers suspected of driving under the influence of drugs were screened with the Drugwipe tests. Oral fluid and whole blood samples were collected from the drivers and tested for amphetamine-type stimulant drugs, cannabis, opiates, cocaine and benzodiazepines by immunological methods, GC and GC-MS. The performance evaluations of the tests were made by comparing the results of the Drugwipe tests with laboratory GC-MS confirmation results of oral fluid or whole blood. In addition to the performance evaluations of the Drugwipe tests based on laboratory results, a questionnaire on the practical aspects of the tests was written for the police officers who performed the tests. The aim of the questionnaire was to obtain user comments on the practicality of the tests as well as the advantages and weak points of the tests. The results of the performance evaluations were: for oral fluid (sensitivity; specificity; accuracy) amphetamines (95.5%; 92.9%; 95.3%), cannabis (52.2%; 91.2%; 85.1%), cocaine (50.0%; 99.3%; 98.6%), opiates (100%; 95.8%; 95.9%), benzodiazepines (74.4%; 84.2%; 79.2%) and for whole blood accordingly, amphetamines (97.7%; 86.7%; 95.9%), cannabis (68.3%; 87.9%; 84.9%), cocaine (50.0%; 98.5%; 97.7%), opiates (87.5%; 96.9%; 96.6%) and benzodiazepines (66.7%; 87.0%; 74.4%). Although the Drugwipe 5 successfully detected amphetamine-type stimulant drugs and the police officers were quite pleased with the current features of the Drugwipe tests, improvements must still be made regarding the detection of cannabis and benzodiazepines.     

To What Extent are Cost Savings Passed on to Consumers? An Oligopoly Approach

Competition policy often asks whether a “fair share” of the benefits from cost savings obtained through mergers or agreements is passed on to the consumers. We assess the factorsthat determine cost pass-on in some partial-equilibrium oligopoly models, and show that, although the strength of the pass-on varies from one situation to another, there are some rules of thumb that give a first approximation of the pass-on rate. We also show that, contrary to common belief and to what is written about the subject in the European Commission's guidelines on the application of Article 81(3), in most circumstances cost pass-on does not depend on the price elasticity of demand nor on the market share of the cost saver, and that with competition the pass-on of firm-specific cost savings is weaker than without. JEL Classification: C72 (non-cooperative games), D43 (oligopoly), L40 (antitrust policy)