Soap,pin‐up and burlesque: Commercialization and femininity in Danish television

The article takes a close look at the performance and mise‐en‐scène of some new young Danish television hostesses in relation to commercialization and deregulation of television. It is observed that the female hosts not only incarnate visual pleasure as sexual objects and emotive images, but also personify extravagance and visualize abstract ideas. Thus female hosts are of vital importance in deregulated television, which is based on form and style and the ability to catch the eye. It is further observed that the hostesses perform in a detached and ironic mode. Their various pastiches on female stereotypes and their ambiguous playing with surface identify the new hostesses with the postmodern masquerade of the media. Postmodern television provides a space where some female performers can transcend the norms and turn the conventional image of women inside out.     

Norms that Confer Competence

The author maintains that norms that confer competence (or power) on persons should be understood as duty–imposing norms addressed to legal officials, rather than as special competence norms whose sole function is to confer competence, and which are addressed to the competence–holders themselves. The argument is that only duty–imposing norms are genuine norms in the sense that they give complete reasons for action. En route to this conclusion the author analyzes norms in terms of reasons for action, and considers the problem of norm–individuation and the action–guiding capacity of norms.     

Performance in Public Organizations: Clarifying the Conceptual Space

Performance in public organizations is a key concept that requires clarification. Based on a conceptual review of research published in 10 public administration journals, this article proposes six distinctions to describe the systematic differences in performance criteria: From which stakeholder's perspective is performance being assessed? Are the criteria formal or informal? Are the criteria subjective? Which process focus and product focus do they have, if any? What is the unit of analysis? Based on these distinctions, the performance criteria of existing studies used in an empirical review of management and performance are classified. The results illustrate how a systematization of the conceptual space of performance in public organizations can help researchers select what to study and what to leave out with greater accuracy while also bringing greater clarity to public debates about performance.     

Estimating the probability of allelic drop-out of STR alleles in forensic genetics

In crime cases with available DNA evidence, the amount of DNA is often sparse due to the setting of the crime. In such cases, allelic drop-out of one or more true alleles in STR typing is possible. We present a statistical model for estimating the per locus and overall probability of allelic drop-out using the results of all STR loci in the case sample as reference. The methodology of logistic regression is appropriate for this analysis, and we demonstrate how to incorporate this in a forensic genetic framework.     

Differences and Changes in Danish Party Organisations: Central Party Organisation versus Parliamentary Party Group Power

The subject of this article is the relationship between the central party organisation and the parliamentary party group. The article investigates whether Danish political parties are changing into parties dominated by their parliamentary party groups, as has been hypothesised. In contrast to most of the literature on party change, which is based on ideas of convergence caused by external changes, this article argues that party organisation is basically a party decision and therefore influenced by party preferences and characteristics. The analyses are based on data from the statutes of 16 Danish parties in over 50 years. One noteworthy finding is that Danish parties do not converge. Party ideology proves to be very important for the power structure of a party. Even though political parties are exposed to changing political circumstances they still organise according to their basic ideas about democracy and representation.