Identifying with the Nation: Spain's Left-Wing Citizens in an Age of Crisis

This study analyses the extent, sense, and strategies employed by sympathisers with Spanish state-wide left-wing parties to ‘reconstruct’ their affective ties with the Spanish nation after the ‘monopolisation of patriotism’ by Franco's regime. Such an undertaking is further complicated within the context of economic crisis and intensified peripheral nationalism found in Catalonia and the Basque Country. This article applies qualitative analysis to the discourse of left-wing participants from 11 focus groups held in March 2012 amidst the economic (and political) crisis. As expected, this context of crisis favoured the emergence of explicit discourse on the Spanish nation, providing an opportunity to gain a better understanding of its nature. Findings show that welfare nationalism and social patriotism define the kind of attachment developed by the interviewees towards Spain better than the concept of constitutional patriotism, or any kind of ethnic-cultural feeling of belonging.     

Brazilian judges in-between professionalism,gender and difference

This paper analyzes how Brazilian judges experience difference, focusing on how professionalism, gender, generation and diversity intersect in identity formation among women and men who are judges in the state of São Paulo, Brazil. In attempting to avoid attaching one fixed meaning to the concept of difference, we work with Avtar Brah's typology; this in turn enables us to capture how difference is perceived and experienced by our interviewees. Our results provide a look at how the specificities of the professionalization process influence the composition of the two courts we have studied (one at state and another at federal level), and how they increase or reduce the gender stratification within these careers. Being a judge is experienced through difference, in particular as the ‘Other' to those outside the career, and wherein identification is intersected by questions of gender, sexuality and generation. Although professionalism establishes boundaries between ‘us' and ‘them', it is also diluted through the ways in which the above-mentioned social markers and attributes permeate the self and professional groups. We interviewed 18 judges (women and men) from the São Paulo State Courts (Tribunal de Justiça de São Paulo) and 10 judges from the Regional Federal Courts (Tribunal Regional Federal) from the São Paulo circuit.     

Effects of Homeopathic Mother Tinctures on Breath Alcohol Testing

In some countries, it is illegal to drive with any detectable amount of alcohol in blood; in others, the legal limit is 0.5 g/L or lower. Recently, some defendants charged with driving under the influence of alcohol and have claimed that positive breath alcohol test results were due to the ingestion of homeopathic mother tinctures. These preparations are obtained by maceration, digestion, infusion, or decoction of herbal material in hydroalcoholic solvent. A series of tests were conducted to evaluate the alcoholic content of three homeopathic mother tinctures and their ability to produce inaccurate breath alcohol results. Nine of 30 subjects gave positive results (0.11–0.82 g/L) when tests were taken within 1 min after drinking mother tincture. All tests taken at least 15 min after the mother tincture consumption and resulted in alcohol-free readings. An observation period of 15–20 min prior to breath alcohol testing eliminates the possibility of false-positive results.     

Understanding public agency communication: the case of the Swedish armed forces

This article suggests a diagnostic framework of public communication intended to capture new communication strategies used by Armed Forces across Europe to legitimize new tasks and recruit new personnel. Three distinct communicative models that impact differently on democratic values and public support are suggested: an Old Public Administration (OPA) model influenced by bureaucratic values, a New Public Management (NPM) model fuelled by market values and a deliberative model labelled ‘New Public Service’ (NPS) that is largely influenced by proponents of ‘e‐democracy’. A case study of the communication of the Swedish Armed Forces identifies a lingering bureaucratic (OPA) ideal. The market ideal (NPM) however clearly dominates. The article concludes that communication along market purposes, principles and practices risks distancing Armed Forces further from society. Yet, an embryonic deliberative ideal (NPS)—much fuelled by the use of social media such as blogs—was also identified. This growing ideal holds the potential of infusing deliberative vigor into the organization and presumably facilitates the bridging of the gap to society. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Has machine learning rendered simple rules obsolete?

European Journal of Law and Economics - Epstein (Simple rules for a complex world, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1995) defended the superiority of simple legal rules over complex,...     

A historical review of the critical judgement of Il Gattopardo (1958) on the Risorgimento

The Leopard (Italian: Il Gattopardo) is a novel by Prince Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa that chronicles the end of the Bourbons' kingdom and the beginning of the Savoy dynasty, the first sovereigns of the new Kingdom of Italy (1861). Published posthumously in 1958, it became the top-selling novel in Italian history and it is considered one of the most important novels in modern Italian literature. In 2012 The Observer named it as one of the ‘10 best historical novels’. The purpose of this article is to refute the negative image of the Risorgimento as presented in this novel. The Leopard, with its broad resonance, has strongly contributed towards distorting the historical judgement on the foundations of the Italian nation, above all by failing to do justice to Prime Minister Cavour's courageous and judicious political strategy in the choice of the leadership class – also Sicilian – in the newly created Kingdom of Italy (1860–61).     

The Policy Influence of Sustainability Indicators: Examining Use and Influence of Indicators in German Sustainability Policy Making

In 2002 Germany adopted an ambitious national sustainability strategy, covering all three sustainability spheres and circling around 21 key indicators. The strategy stands out because of its relative stability over five consecutive government constellations, its high status and increasingly coercive nature. This article analyses the strategy's role in the policy process, focusing on the use and influence of indicators as a central steering tool. Contrasting rationalist and constructivist perspectives on the role of knowledge in policy, two factors, namely the level of consensus about policy goals and the institutional setting of the indicators, are found to explain differences in use and influence both across indicators and over time. Moreover, the study argues that the indicators have been part of a continuous process of ‘structuring’ in which conceptual and instrumental use together help structure the sustainability challenge in such a way that it becomes more manageable for government policy.