The Political Consequences of National Crisis Management: Micro-Level Evidence from German Voters during the 2008/09 Global Economic Crisis

How does national crisis management affect the electoral fortunes of coalition governments? Drawing on micro-level data from just before the 2009 federal elections in Germany, this article investigates how voters' evaluation of specific policies against the global financial crisis affected approval of and voting intentions for the then-governing grand coalition. We find that voters in favour of the two most prominent anti-crisis policies, the car-scrap bonus and the public guarantee for banks, were more likely to approve of and to vote for the two incumbent parties. These evaluations of specific policies influenced individuals' vote choice in addition to their assessments of the economic situation more generally and in addition to party identification. This suggests that even in the greatest economic turmoil with blurred political responsibilities, government parties can win or lose voters through the implementation of specific economic policies.     

Mind the Gap: Interface Problems between EC Chemicals Law and Sectoral Environmental Legislation

Amidst the debate on risks to human beings and the environment resulting from chemicals being used on an increasingly large scale, the European Community's proposed Registration, Evaluation, Authorization and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH) Regulation presents a new approach. However, under this new legislation it cannot be guaranteed that all problems that have been experienced under the existing EC chemicals legislation will be addressed satisfactorily. One of the problematic aspects is the question of how chemicals legislation, on the one hand, and sectoral environmental legislation, on the other hand (i.e. specific legislation referring to specific environmental media such as water, air, soil, etc.), complement one another. This article outlines these interface problems against the background of existing legislation and REACH.     

Splitting the Difference: Modeling Appellate Court Decisions with Mixed Outcomes

In rendering a decision in a particular case, judges are not limited to finding simply for the appellant or for the respondent. Rather, in many cases, they have the option to find for the former on one or more issues and for the latter on one or more other issues. By thus “splitting the difference,” judges can render a judgment that favors both litigants to some degree. What accounts for such mixed outcomes? Several theoretical perspectives provide potential explanations for this phenomenon. First, Galanter (1974) suggests that litigants with greater resources will achieve more favorable outcomes in the courts. Where two high‐resource, repeat‐player litigants meet in the appeals courts, these more sophisticated and successful parties may be able to persuade the court to render decisions with mixed outcomes that at least partially favor each party. Second, split outcomes may result from strategic interactions among the appeals court judges on the decisionmaking panel. Where majority opinion writers seek to accommodate other judges on the panel, split outcomes have the potential to serve as an inducement for more ideologically extreme judges to join the majority opinion. Finally, Shapiro and Stone Sweet ( Stone Sweet 2000; Shapiro & Stone Sweet 2002 ) propose that courts will sometimes split the difference in order to enhance their legitimacy (and ultimately enhance compliance by losing parties). For example, in highly salient cases, where noncompliance would more clearly threaten court legitimacy, judges may be more likely to split the difference in order to mollify even the losing party. We develop an empirical model of mixed outcomes to test these propositions using data available from the U. S. Courts of Appeals Database and find evidence supportive of all three theoretical perspectives.     

Wirtschaftspolitischer Handlungsspielraum im Zeitalter der Globalisierung. Eine empirische Untersuchung am Beispiel von Währungskrisen

This article assesses the popular view that currency crises represent a prime example of the constraints that globalization imposes on governments’ policy autonomy. We show that governments in fact have the possibility to respond to speculative pressure in different ways. Whether or not policymakers succumb to this pressure is not solely determined by economic factors but also a question of political considerations. Political preferences, institutions, and events significantly affect policy responses to currency crises. Our results suggest that national governments retain substantial short-run policy autonomy even in highly internationalized policy areas such as monetary and exchange rate policy.     

Degradation of biomolecules in artificially and naturally aged teeth: implications for age estimation based on aspartic acid racemization and DNA analysis

Postmortem teeth are the most stable structures, and can be used to gain different information (age estimation, genetic data). Over long postmortem intervals (PMI), degradation processes may alter the molecular integrity and thus affect the reliability of applied molecular methods. Whereas some knowledge on the degradation of biomolecules in bone during the PMI exists, data for teeth are lacking. In particular, the impact of degradation processes in dentine on age estimation based on aspartic acid racemization (AAR) cannot be estimated yet. Hence, the molecular stability of both collagen and DNA was analyzed systematically, and their impact on the reliability of age estimation based on AAR and genetic analyses was checked. Two hundred and ten human and 59 porcine teeth were heated (90 degrees C in water) to simulate collagen and DNA diagenesis; 14 naturally aged teeth (PMI: 3 days to 1700 years) were analyzed comparatively. Peptide patterns of cyanogen bromide (CNBr)-cleaved collagen were employed as a new approach to check the collagen integrity. In the same samples, collagen yields, amino acid compositions, AAR in different protein fractions, and DNA integrity were analyzed. In heated human and porcine teeth the collagen content declined during the heating experiment. The amino acid composition in human samples was collagen-like until 12 days of heating. In naturally aged teeth, the collagen yielded from 9.5 to 15%, and no discrepancy of amino acid composition to that of modern collagen was observed. Electrophoresis of CNBr-peptides showed an altered pattern in experimentally degraded samples from day 10 on; naturally aged collagen displayed the typical collagen pattern. AAR increased in all protein fractions with increasing duration of the heating experiment; naturally aged samples displayed a slow accumulation of AAR. DNA degraded progressively, and after 32 h of heat exposure no more DNA was detectable, whereas the amplification of nuclear and mitochondrial DNA was successful up to 48 h. STR typing was reliable up to 16 h, and sex determination up to 40 h of heat exposure. In naturally aged samples of DNA quality, yield and typing success did not correlate with PMI. The data highlight a remarkable stability of collagen dental proteins. Within relevant forensic periods a postmortem rise of AAR under normal conditions is negligible, and analyses of dental DNA has a high chance to be successful. However, after large PMI and/or extreme postmortem conditions age estimation based on AAR and genetic analyses lose their reliability.     

Comparing Attitudinal and Strategic Accounts of Dissenting Behavior on the U.S. Courts of Appeals

Students of judicial behavior have increasingly turned to strategic accounts to understand judicial decision making. Scholarship on the Supreme Court and state high courts suggests that the decision to dissent is better understood in light of strategic considerations rather than simply reflecting ideological disagreement. We investigate whether these findings comport with behavior by judges on the U.S. Courts of Appeals. We develop a spatial model of the decision to dissent that incorporates both attitudinal and strategic elements and subject this model to empirical analysis. We find that ideological disagreement between a judge and the majority opinion writer is a more persuasive explanation of the decision to dissent than a strategic account in which a judge conditions a dissent on whether circuit intervention would obtain the judge's preferred outcome. Though we do not discount the existence of other types of strategic behavior on the Courts of Appeals, our research suggests that strategic accounts of dissenting behavior are not generalizable to all courts .     

A review of the methodological aspects of aspartic acid racemization analysis for use in forensic science.

Accurate age determination of adult cadavers and human remains is a key requirement in forensic practice. The current morphological methods lack accuracy and precision, require specialist training and are costly. The use of aspartic acid racemization (AAR) in human dentine provides a simple, cost-effective solution and the method can achieve accuracies of +/- 3 years at best. Currently, there are differences in AAR methodology between laboratories which produce different results on the rate of racemization in teeth. These inconsistencies must be resolved if the technique is to be successfully applied to age determinations in forensic cases. This paper reviews the differences in protocol which have been used, discusses how each method will affect the results obtained from AAR analysis and gives recommendations for optimization of the methological protocol as a first step towards international standardization.