Timespacing competence: multilingual children's linguistic worlds

Drawing on Kramsch's conceptualization of the multilingual subject and the symbolic self, in this paper, we explore how multilingual children re-signify three intertwined myths about the bilingual student, linguistic diversity and language competence, when, in the researcher-generated activity My linguistic world 2014, they are invited to map and talk about their lived experiences as multiple language users seen in the light of place and movement. By demythifying themselves and their linguistic worlds, the children also raise important questions about the notion of linguistic competence. By perceiving competences from a subjective child perspective, we learn how children do what we call timespacing competence. On that basis, we suggest paying attention to how children themselves timespace competence by focusing (more consistently) on the subjective, social, spatial and temporal dimensions of (knowing) language.     

Regulatory relationships across levels of multilevel governance systems: From collaboration to competition

The European Union and the United States are paradigmatic examples of multilevel governance systems that are also regulatory states. In both settings, informal networks of regulators preceded and existed alongside supranational (federal) regulatory agencies. The literature understood their rationale as preparatory to the creation of higher level agencies. This approach, however, cannot explain why informal regulatory networks still exist, years after the establishment of higher level agencies. What explains the persistence of informal regulatory networks? The argument of this article is that in multilevel governance systems, the relationship between regulatory networks and the supranational level of governance is coevolutionary and embodies struggles for autonomy and authority: as the multilevel governance system consolidates, the character of this relationship evolves from collaborative to competitive. The argument relies on a comparative historical analysis of two voluntary networks of energy regulators from the European Union and the United States, based on 27 interviews and archival research.     

Book reviews

Tetsuya Kataoka, The Price of a Constitution: The Origin of Japan's Postwar Politics New York: Crane Russak, 1991, 237 pp.

Denis Lacorne, Jacques Rupnik, and Marie‐France Toinet, eds., The Rise and Fall of Anti‐Americanism: A Century of French Perception (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1990), 258p.     

Does the Prior Application of the Field Kit Bullet Hole Testing Kit 3 on a Suspected Bullet Hole Bias the Analysis of Atomic Absorption Spectrophotometry?

Forensic ballistics is the study of bullet trajectory and consists of determining gunshot residue (GSR) to identify bullet holes. Among several highly sensitive methods, atomic absorption spectrophotometry (AAS) is employed to analyze GSR in the laboratory. However, it is sometimes necessary to identify bullet holes immediately at a crime scene. The purpose of this examination was to determine whether the use of the field test Bullet Hole Testing Kit 3 (BTK3) on a suspected bullet hole would influence the outcome of AAS‐analysis: Three commonly encountered firearms (Glock17, Tokarev, and Colt) were fired at skin, wood, and cloth. AAS‐analysis was performed with and without previous BTK3 application. The results clearly indicate that there is no significant interaction on the grounds of BTK3 use (BTK3 vs. no‐BTK3 [kit_nokit] [Pb: p = 0.1309; Sb: p = 0.9111], material*kit_nokit [Pb: p = 0.5960; Sb: p = 0.9930], distance*kit_nokit [Pb: p = 0.4014; Sb: p = 0.9184], and firearm type*kit_nokit [Pb: p = 0.9662; Sb: p = 0.9885]); hence, applying this field kit does not falsify later AAS outcomes.     

Unwitting subjects of surveillance and the presumption of innocence

Mass surveillance programmes introduced by several EU Member States influence the protection that citizens enjoy on the basis of fundamental rights and freedoms. This paper focuses on the impact that these programmes have on the legal principle of presumption of innocence. The authors argue that even in those circumstances where the principle does not immediately apply because mass surveillance is undertaken before any criminal charge is issued, the collection of information and potential evidence limits the guarantees offered by the principle during the stages of a legal process. It is argued that mass surveillance programmes undermine the role of the principle of presumption of innocence at the stages of a criminal process and compromise, therefore, the very effectiveness of the legal process.     

Fault Lines: The Effects of Bureaucratic Power on Electoral Accountability

This article introduces a new explanation for why citizens may fail to vote based on government performance. We argue that when politicians have limited capacity to control bureaucrats, citizens will not know whether government performance is a good signal of the incumbent's quality. We develop a selection model of elections in which policy is jointly determined by a politician and a bureaucrat. When politicians have incomplete power over policy, elections perform worse at separating good and bad types of incumbents. We test the theory's predictions using survey experiments conducted with nearly 9,000 citizens and local officials in Uganda. We find that citizens and officials allocate more responsibility to politicians when they are perceived as having more power relative to bureaucrats. The allocation of responsibility has electoral consequences: When respondents believe that bureaucrats are responsible for performance, they are less likely to expect that government performance will affect incumbent vote share.     

Science, PIC and POPs: Negotiating the Membership of Chemical Review Committees under the Stockholm and Rotterdam Conventions

Multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs) often have close relationships with scientific and technical advisors, and as international policy makers negotiate the post-Rio generation of MEAs, there has been an increased emphasis on establishing science advisory bodies (SABs) as part of the institutional design of MEAs. This article will examine the negotiations of the design, membership and roles of the science advisory bodies to two of the most recent additions to the MEA landscape: the Rotterdam Convention on the Prior Informed Consent Procedure for Certain Hazardous Chemicals and Pesticides in International Trade; and the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants. A particular emphasis will be placed on concerns over membership, examining how policy makers have sought to achieve representative membership by ensuring that the limited number of experts on a SAB reflect the national, economic and geographic diversity of stakeholders (capturing interests of those benefiting and suffering from the problem or its solution), while also maintaining an institutional and disciplinary diversity suitable to the nature of the problem (including those directly or traditionally implicated in the study or management of the problem, whilst still allowing input from other experts more tangentially related, who are likely to identify inter-problem linkages).