Under Which Conditions Do Parties Attract Voters’ Reactions to Issues? Party-Varying Issue Voting in German Elections 1987–2009

Are voters’ choices influenced by parties’ position-taking and communication efforts on issues during a campaign? And if so, do voters’ reactions to issues differ across parties? This article outlines a research design for the statistical identification of party-varying issue reactions within the established paradigm of the Spatial Theory of Voting. Using a special feature of conditional logit and probit models – i.e. the estimation of alternative-specific coefficients instead of fixed ‘generic’ issue distance effects – it is possible to detect asymmetrically attached issue saliencies at the level of the voters, and hence at the demand-side of politics. This strategy opens a new way to systematically combine insights obtained by saliency approaches with the Spatial Theory of Voting. An application to the German parliamentary elections from 1987 to 2009 demonstrates that it is predominantly parties taking polar positions – and, more specifically, niche parties taking polar positions – that induce such asymmetric issue voting.     

Registration Fees for Same-Sex Unions,Local Party Politics and Societal Demand

This article addresses registration fees for same-sex unions and the number of registered gay couples in the German state of Baden-Württemberg. In contrast to the other 15 German states, in Baden-Württemberg each administrative district decides independently about the level of registration fees. Consequently, there is not only considerable variation of the number of registered gay couples across the individual administrative units, but also among the registration fees, which we seek to explain by relying on theories of public administration, policy analysis and political economy. Our findings show that the varying levels of registration fees for same-sex unions are primarily determined by the preferences of parties in the regional legislative committees. In this way, we can demonstrate that the definition of registration fees is politicised, which contradicts the legal principles of equivalency and cost recovery.     

How Second Order Are Local Elections? Voting Motives and Party Preferences in Belgian Municipal Elections

A defining characteristic of second-order elections is that voters base their decision on considerations that were developed for a different policy level. Therefore, this kind of elections does not contribute to the quality of democratic representation. Municipal elections are often considered as second-order elections. In this article, we use data from an exit poll (n = 4,591) held during the 2012 municipal elections in Belgium. Results suggest that although voters predominantly invoke local aspects as determining their vote choice, still three-quarters votes for the same party locally as for federal elections. Among voters who deviate from their federal party preference, knowing local candidates and concern about local policy issues are the main sources of deviation. The conclusion therefore is that local candidates do make a difference and contribute strongly to the salience of electoral decisions on the local level.     

A Comment on the Comments

Private diplomacy and secret agreements among adversaries are major features of international relations. Sometimes secret reassurance has resulted in cooperation and even peace between longtime adversaries. Yet rationalist theories consider private diplomatic communication as cheap talk. How do we explain this gap between theoretical expectations and the empirical record? I offer a theory that explains how, why, and when a leader may convince an enemy that his private reassurances are credible even when they are not costly to undertake. I also account for the conditions under which recipients of such reassurance infer the leader's benign intentions from these secret interactions. I claim that leaders engage in secret reassurance with the enemy when they face significant domestic opposition. The adversary can leverage the initiator's domestic vulnerability by revealing the secret reassurance, thereby imposing domestic punishment on the initiator. Further, by entering into private or secret negotiations and offering their adversary such leverage, initiators generate “autonomous risk” that exists beyond their control. I evaluate this theory against two empirical cases. The first case looks at Richard Nixon's secret assurances to the Chinese leadership in 1972. The second examines the secret negotiations between Israeli officials and the leadership of the Palestine Liberation Organization that ended with the signing of the Oslo I Accord in 1993.     

Domestic factors influencing Ukrainian foreign policy

Ukraine is currently undergoing several large‐scale transitions: political, economic and democratic. At the same time Ukraine is gaining in importance internationally. These facts make Ukraine an important country to understand. This article explores the internal factors that affect Ukraine's foreign policy decision making, with the goal of providing an insight into the Ukrainian government. Internal influences are dividing into five broad categories: military capabilities, economic capabilities, political structure, interest groups, and competing élites. It has been found that economic factors, the presidential administration, and competing élites prove to have the most influence on Ukrainian foreign policy.     

A New Approach for the Carbon Monoxide (CO) Exposure Diagnosis: Measurement of Total CO in Human Blood Versus Carboxyhemoglobin (HbCO)

The aim of the study is to present the application of a headspace–gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (HS‐GC‐MS) method for the determination of the carbon monoxide (CO) blood concentration and to compare it with carboxyhemoglobin (HbCO) saturation. In postmortem cases, the HbCO measured by spectrophotometry frequently leads to inaccurate results due to inadequate samples or analyses. The true role of CO intoxication in the death of a person could be misclassified. The estimation of HbCO from HS‐GC‐MS CO measurements provides helpful information by determining the total CO levels (CO linked to hemoglobin (HbCO) and CO dissociated from hemoglobin). The CO concentrations were converted in HbCO saturation levels to define cutoff blood CO values. CO limits were defined as less than 1 μmol/mL for living persons, less than 1.5 μmol/mL for dead persons without CO exposure, and greater than 3 μmol/mL for dead persons with clear CO poisoning.     

Recent Supreme Court of Canada rulings on criminal defendants' right to counsel

The Supreme Court of Canada recently issued a trilogy of decisions pertaining to suspects' right to legal representation. These rulings further a major difference between the US and Canadian law: Canadian criminal suspects have far less access to legal counsel than suspects in the USA. This paper summarizes these decisions and draws comparisons between Canadian and the US criminal procedure with respect to a suspect's rights to legal representation. We present preliminary data on Canadian citizens' misunderstanding of criminal suspects' right to counsel and also Canadian legal professionals' opinions about the right to counsel. We recommend empirical investigation of the hypothesis that Canadian suspects are more likely than the US suspects to make false confessions.     

Squaring the speed of light? Regulating market access in algorithmic finance

Abstract

We examine the sociomaterial regulation of algorithmic trading against the background of the European Union’s directives on Markets in Financial Instruments (MiFID/MiFIR). Tracing the purification and translation of regulatory practices within a French brokerage firm, we examine the impact of electronic trading on the nature of market access. Central to our analysis is the ‘Blackbox’, a tool designed to manage market access efficiently by collating trade flows and automatically pairing them with trading algorithms. Our findings show that, through a process of ‘abstracting’, purification and translation are kept strictly separate, allowing the broker to meet the regulatory requirements de jure whilst retaining de facto the unregulated advantages of high-speed materiality. We discuss the implications for both the policy and practice of high-speed financial trading.     

中英海上保险法中的保证制度

保证源于英国的海上保险实践 ,是海上保险法中特有的法律制度 ,各国规范海上保险的法规中都有与此相关的内容。本文分别对中国海商法和英国 190 6年海上保险法中有关保证制度的规定进行了介绍 ,并且分析了大陆法系特别是比利时法对有关保证的一些实践做法 ,对中国海商法的修改提出了一些建议。     

Fatal intoxication due to ackee (Blighia sapida) in Suriname and French Guyana. GC-MS detection and quantification of hypoglycin-A

Between 1998 and 2001 the deaths of 16 Surinamese children were recorded along the Maroni River, which forms the border between Suriname and French Guyana. After a metabolic origin was eliminated, ethnobotanical research in the field led to a hypothesis of intoxication through the ingestion of ackee. Ackee (Blighia sapida) is a large green leafy tree of West African origin. Its unripe fruit contains large quantities of two toxic molecules: hypoglycin-A and hypoglycin-B, the former being the more toxic. We have developed a GC-MS procedure allowing us to demonstrate the presence of hypoglycin-A in the gastric fluid of one of the deceased children, and to compare the content of hypoglycin-A in fruit collected on the road to Paramaribo in Suriname (5.1mg/g) with samples from Burkina Faso (8.1mg/g) and Jamaica (9.2mg/g). Field research showed the misuse of this little-known plant by Maroon witch doctors. The Bushinengue witch doctors were informed about the dangers of ackee, and no new cases have been reported to date.