Seeking the Soul of Democracy: A Review of Recent Research into Citizens' Political Talk Culture

This article provides a review of extant empirical research on ordinary citizens' everyday political communication, its phenomenology, determinants, consequences, and relevance for democratic politics. It highlights the recent upsurge in interest in the study of political conversations against the background of both classic and more recent developments in democratic theory and empirical research that served as intellectual inspirations. The article discusses conceptual and methodological issues of research into interpersonal political communication and presents key findings with regard to the background and consequences of political talk, tapping into fundamental aspects of democratic citizenship such as political preferences, participation, cognitive involvement with politics as well as orientations towards fellow citizens and towards the democratic political system. It concludes with an assessment of the state of the art in this field of study, highlighting desirable avenues for future empirical research.     

Gezi Park Protests in Turkey: A Party Politics View

One year on from the widespread protests in Turkey, the question of why small environmental protests against the building of a shopping mall on Gezi Park in the centre of Istanbul turned into the biggest example of mass civil movement in the republic's history remains unanswered. This article suggests that one can easily detect signs of instability and social unrest in the country long before these mass demonstrations took place. By analysing the evolution of the Turkish party system over the past decade, I argue that the political upheaval in the country is the result of a crisis of representation. This has two aspects: a high degree of polarisation has left certain segments of society unrepresented, while the AKP government has ceased to maintain the balance between responsiveness and responsibility.     

The Loss of Property Rights and the Construction of Legal Consciousness in Early Socialist Romania (1950–1965)

What happens to legal and rights consciousness when rights previously protected are taken away? In this article, I investigate the process of contesting urban housing nationalization in Romania in the early 1950s in order to understand how the loss of property rights led to new hybrid types of legal consciousness. I find that the construction of socialist legal consciousness was grounded in the interaction between the legally constituted selves of former owners and state bureaucrats who drew from distinct legal and property rights ideologies. This process underscores continuities in legal consciousness even under drastic regime changes, which in turn has implications for the construction of new hegemonic legalities and power regimes. The article is based on extensive document and archival research.     

Regime Change and Property Rights Consciousness in Postcommunist Romania

This article analyzes rights consciousness as distinct from legal consciousness, and uses the post‐1989 housing restitution in Romania to study property rights consciousness as a type of rights consciousness. I argue that property rights consciousness is only partially an outcome of state power and the political regime, and that rights consciousness more generally must be explicitly analyzed beyond formal rights, legal mobilization, and litigation. I explore sources of rights consciousness for former owners and their heirs, state tenants, and lawyers. Sources of rights consciousness include state policies under distinct property regimes, value systems and ideologies, history, identity, practices, supranational actors, and expectations of what rights can deliver. I find clear distinctions between legal and rights consciousness, as well as variations between and within the groups. The article is based on extensive archival research, interviews conducted in the city of Timi?oara, Romania, textbooks, academic articles, and court decisions pre‐ and post‐1989.     

Comparison of the three age estimation methods: Which is more reliable for Turkish children?

BackgroundThree atlases—the GÖK, the Greulich–Pyle (GP), and the Tanner–Whitehouse (TW3)—are used frequently for age determination in Turkey. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the applicability of these three methods related to the skeletal age assessment for Turkish adolescents.Materials and methodsThe conventional roentgenograms of the left hands and wrists, elbows, shoulders, and pelvises of 333 healthy Caucasian children (164 females, 169 males) who fit the study and the criteria of each atlas were obtained. The mean differences (± standard deviation [S.D.] in years) between the chronologic age (CA) and the skeletal age (BA), which were obtained by using each age estimation method, were calculated and tested using t-test.ResultsFor girls, the most accurate method was the TW3 (mean differences (d): ?0.21 (p < 0.05)), following by the GP (d: 0.66 (p < 0.001), and the GÖK (d: 2.99 (p < 0.001)). For boys, the most accurate method was the GP (d: ?0.02 (p > 0.05)), followed by the TW3 (d: ?0.18 (p < 0.05)) and GÖK (d: 1.05 (p < 0.001)).Discussion and conclusionsResults show that the TW3 (for girls) and the GP (for boys) methods are more appropriate than the GÖK atlas for estimating the BA. GÖK could be used for boys aged 11–14 years but it should not be used for girls.     

Catering to Organizational Needs in Ethics Management: The Case of the European Commission

This article examines the ethical challenges encountered by European Commission officials in their day-to-day work. Based on an intra-organizational comparison between three Directorate Generals (DGs), the analysis reveals that ethical questions differ in these settings, depending on the type of external actors employees engage with. This internal heterogeneity makes the European Commission an interesting (unusual) case, which highlights the challenges of practising ethics management in a way that is truly responsive to organizational needs. The policy solution implemented by the Commission as a response—the appointment of “ethics correspondents” at DG level—has been only moderately successful.     

Simultaneous Homicide–Suicide: A Case Report of Double Drowning

Homicide–suicide is a tragic phenomenon which typically does not result in a criminal charge or trial. However, correct diagnosis and classification of homicide–suicide cases are important to determine the perpetrators and dynamics of each category properly. The deaths in the homicide–suicide acts can be divided into two categories with respect to the number of involved individuals: dyadic deaths and triple or multiple deaths. These two categories can also be divided into two subgroups according to the chronology of the incidents: simultaneous deaths and consecutive deaths. Herein, a simultaneous homicide–suicide case of a father and daughter where both deaths occurred through drowning which was not found in the selected literature review and where the victim was a child is presented. The article aims to clarify the term discrepancies about multiple death cases in the literature and to discuss the pathological and psychosocial characteristics of the simultaneous dyadic death cases.