All News is Bad News: Newspaper Coverage of Political Parties in Spain

Spain has a highly partisan media system, with newspapers reaching self-selected partisan audiences and espousing explicitly partisan editorial preferences. Do the newspapers of the left and right differ in how they cover politics in ways that can be predicted by their partisan leanings? We review theories of issue ownership, journalistic standards, and information scarcity and test hypotheses derived from each. We find that the parties converge substantially in virtually every aspect of their coverage. Few differences emerge when we look at what topics are covered or in the dynamics of which topics gain attention over time. However, we confirm important differences across the papers when they make explicit reference to individual political parties. Journalistic norms result in a surprising focus on the faults of one’s enemies, however, rather than the virtues of one’s allies. Our assessment is based on a comprehensive database of all front-page stories in El País and El Mundo, Spain’s largest daily newspapers, from 1996 through 2011.     

French MPs and Law-making: Deputies' Activities and Citizens' Perceptions

Legislative studies research often insists on the weakness of the French Parliament compared with the executive. Yet very little qualitative and quantitative empirical research has been done into the work of deputies in the French National Assembly, or into the institution's role in policy and law-making. This article addresses these research gaps by first analysing the characteristics and drivers of French MPs' involvement in law-making rather than in other parliamentary activities, either in the Parliament or in their constituency. Second, it takes an original approach by comparing MPs' perceptions of their activities with those of their electorate through the use of mixed-method analyses (open and closed questionnaires with 230 MPs; 13 focus groups with ordinary citizens). This is indeed a crucial issue in order to better understand the causes fuelling citizens' criticism of their representatives.     

Towards a Theory of Institutionalized Judicial Exceptionalism

What happens when the exception becomes the norm, what happens when the law becomes a form for that which cannot have a legal form, that is, the political? The focus of this article is a form of power politics that is institutionalised and set up to work side by side with the existing legal system as a sort of normalized, co‐ordinated court procedure, initiated with the aim of subjecting specific groups (terrorists, criminals) to extended regulatory control and enforcement. These strategic bureaucratic mechanisms of exclusion appear as security enforced measures, which side by side with the existing ‘normal’ legal system govern a specific judicial‐political area. The normalised (or rooted, if one wishes) incorporation of extra‐judicial authority within the legal system will in the article be refered to as institutionalised judicial exceptionalism. The purpose of the article is to theorise and conceptualise the in many ways murky or indistinct phenomenon of institutionalised judicial exceptionalism.This task includes suggesting a model capable of assimilating within its theory the displacement in the relationship between the state, the law and the citizen that stems from the fact that the ever more securitized discourses on terrorism and crime increasingly take priority over the ordinarily non‐derogable principle of equality before the law.     

Psychosocial functioning among inmates in prison-based drug treatment: results from Project BRITE

Objective

To assess the impact of a positive behavioral reinforcement intervention on psychosocial functioning of inmates over the course of treatment and on post-treatment self-reported measures of treatment participation, progress, and satisfaction.

Method

Male (n?=?187) and female (n?=?143) inmates participating in 12-week prison-based intensive outpatient (IOP) drug treatment were randomly assigned to receive standard treatment (ST) or standard treatment plus positive behavioral reinforcement (BR) for engaging in targeted activities and behaviors. Participants were assessed for psychosocial functioning at baseline and at the conclusion of treatment (post-treatment). Self-reported measures of treatment participation, treatment progress, and treatment satisfaction were also captured at post-treatment.

Results

The intervention affected female and male subjects differently and not always in a way that favored BR subjects, as compared to the ST subjects, most notably on measures of depression and criminal thinking.

Conclusions

Possible explanations for the results include differences in the male and female custody environments combined with the procedures that study participants had to follow to earn and/or receive positive reinforcement at the two study sites, as well as baseline differences between the genders and a possible floor effect among females on measures of criminality. Limitations of the study included the inability to make study participants blind to the study conditions and the possible over-branding of the study, which may have influenced the results.     

Welfare Dualism in Two Scandinavian Welfare States: Public Opinion and Party Politics

Recent research on the legitimacy of the welfare state has pointed to a potential negative impact of immigration. While much of this research has been concerned with a possible weakening of the general support for economic redistribution, this article analyses popular support for the introduction of a two-tier (dualist) welfare system, and focuses on the interplay between public opinion and party competition. It uses survey data from Denmark and Norway: two similar welfare states where elite politics on migration and welfare dualism has been markedly different over the last decade. It finds that the level and structure of popular support for welfare dualism are fairly similar in the two countries, but that attitudes toward dualism have a stronger impact on left–right voting in Denmark where the politics of welfare dualism has been actively advocated by the populist right party and pursued by a right-wing coalition government.     

Saving virgins,saving the USA: heteronormative masculinities and the securitisation of trafficking discourse in mainstream narrative film

Sex trafficking has become a high-profile, celebrity endorsed issue, attracting much international attention. Accompanying this has been a proliferation of films, including full-length feature films, which address the topic and have done much to influence public perception of the issue. This paper analyses two of these films which were made for the mainstream US market: Trade and Taken. Both films present a conservative and heteronormative perspective revolving around middle-aged North American law enforcement officers rescuing innocent young girls. Hence, these films participate in the general securitisation of trafficking discourse in which the US has been a leader. In spite of their ostensible concern about the exploitation of women, these films present trafficking mostly as an occasion for the redemption and rehabilitation of the beleaguered white American male, appropriating the problem of trafficking in the service of a US-led neo-imperialism bolstered by masculinism and xenophobia, and implicitly problematising women's independence and justifying the control of their movements and sexuality.     

Gentrification in tourist cities: Evidence from New Orleans before and after Hurricane Katrina

Abstract

Tourism‐led redevelopment often provides city residents with increased opportunities for employment, leisure, and cultural enrichment, but it can also have dramatic and unpredictable effects on their lives. One of these effects involves the repercussions of redevelopment that transforms working‐class neighborhoods into middle‐ or upper‐class areas catering to tourists. We use the city of New Orleans as a case study to explore the connections between tourism and gentrification.

We first discuss the growth of tourism in New Orleans, paying particular attention to its geographic scope. We then consider the ways in which gentrification and tourism are connected in New Orleans and what their relationship adds to theories of tourism development and urban revitalization. The analysis concludes with an in‐depth look at one of the nation's oldest black neighborhoods, Tremé, where both tourism and the nonblack population have been increasing in recent years.     

The bounds of smart decline: a foundational theory for planning shrinking cities

Economic decline has led to a new wave of population decline throughout the US, meaning more and more cities are shrinking. Growing interest in using smart decline principles to respond to shrinkage has been met with controversy in cities such as Detroit and Cleveland. This paper advances a foundational theory of smart decline that takes as its starting point discussions of ethics, equity, and social justice in the planning and political theory literature, but is well grounded in observations of successful smart decline practice.