Chile's (Inter)National Identities: Framing the Relations with Bolivia and Peru

National identities play a significant role in Latin American international relations. They affect the ways in which policy‐makers view themselves and others, as well as influencing the ways in which their policies are ‘received’ abroad. In this way, identities create opportunities and constraints for foreign policy‐making, framing the relations between Latin American countries. The author argues that, since 1990, three main patterns of Chilean identity recently affected the country's relations with its northern neighbours Bolivia and Peru: a ‘neoliberal identity’, a ‘legalistic identity’ and a ‘progressive identity’. These three patterns of identity have created opportunities for cooperation as well as causes for conflict.     

National parliamentary control and voting in the Council of the European Union

This article explores the different ways governments express dissent in the Council of the European Union (EU) through ‘No’ votes, abstentions and recorded negative statements. A game-theoretical model is presented that studies voting behaviour and analyses how the national parliaments’ levels of control over their governments’ EU policies affect it. It is concluded that governments that are strongly controlled by their parliaments are not more likely to express dissent. However, when they do express dissent, they vote ‘No’ more often. Parliamentary control depends on the presence of formal oversight institutions as well as the motivation of parliamentarians to hold their governments accountable. Empirical support is found in an analysis of votes on 1,387 legislative proposals that represent more than a decade of Council decision making in the period 2004–2014. This article contributes to the discussion on the involvement of national parliaments in EU affairs, and clearly distinguishes the different forms of dissent in Council decision making.     

Opening Pandora's Box: Protecting Children Against Torture or Cruel,Inhuman and Degrading Treatment or Punishment*

Children are rarely perceived as torture victims, although they may be easier targets. International inertia is compounded as not only torture, but also ‘other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment’ is prohibited. Some of these occur in the private sphere, which traditionalists erroneously assume outside of international human rights law. Children may also be unprotected because they suffer from trauma in different ways from adults. Jurisprudence of human rights fora based principally on adult victims, despite some dicta to the contrary, risks international standards being inappropriately applied to child victims. This promotes an analysis which fails to address the particular vulnerabilities of children and their role as social actors.     

SELF-REPORTED DELINQUENCY AND A COMBINED DELINQUENCY SERIOUSNESS SCALE BASED ON BOYS,MOTHERS, AND TEACHERS: CONCURRENT AND PREDICTIVE VALIDITY FOR AFRICAN-AMERICANS AND CAUCASIANS*

The Pittsburgh Youth Study is a prospective longitudinal survey of three samples of Pittsburgh boys (each containing about 500 boys) initially studied in first, fourth, and seventh grades. The first two data collection waves yielded self-reported delinquency and combined delinquency seriousness scores (the combined scores based on information from boy, mother, and teacher) for the middle sample (up to an average age of 10.7 years) and oldest sample (up to an average age of 13.9 years). These scores were compared with records of petitions to the Allegheny County Juvenile Court for delinquency offenses before and up to six years after the assessments. The area under the ROC curve was used as a measure of validity. Concurrent validity was higher than predictive validity. The combined scale had similar concurrent validity but greater predictive validity than the self-report scale, and the combined scale also identified a greater number of boys as serious delinquents. Concurrent validity for admitting offenses was higher for Caucasians, but concurrent validity for admitting arrests was higher for African-Americans. There were no consistent ethnic differences in predictive validity. There was an increase in predictive validity, for both African-Americans and Caucasians, by combining self-report data with information from other sources. Afrer controlling for delinquency measures, African-Americans were more likely than Caucasians to be petitioned in the future, but not in the past. In this research, ethnic differences in official delinquency were partly attributable to ethnic differences in delinquent behavior and were not attributable to differential ethnic attrition or differential ethnic validity of measures of delinquent behavior.     

REPRESENTING CUSTOMERS’INTERESTS: THE CASE OF THE PRIVATIZED WATER INDUSTRY IN ENGLAND AND WALES

Privatization has been one of the most important and controversial policy initiatives to emerge in the UK over the last decade. However, to date there has been little attempt to assess the impact of privatization on customers, despite the fact that much of the justification for the privatization of the public utilities was couched in terms of the benefits it would bring for customers. In the case of the water industry opportunities for competition are virtually non-existent, and the ten regional water authorities were privatized with their monopoly position intact. Consequently customers’interests have been represented and protected through new regulatory arrangements operated by the Office of Water Services. The purpose of this article is to offer some provisional assessment of the effectiveness of these new regulatory arrangements. In doing so, the article regards the model of private sector consumer sovereignty as inappropriate given the continued absence of competitive arrangements for the representation of customers’interests against some of the criteria currently being discussed in the development of more consumer-oriented approaches to the delivery of public services.