Zur Europäisierung der Handlungs- und Einstellungshorizonte: Ein makrosoziologischer Vergleich der EU-Mitgliedstaaten

Building on the transactionalist paradigm in the tradition of Karl W. Deutsch as well as on Arndt Sorge’s theory of tiered social spaces, this study examines why everyday actions and attitudes are more centered on Europe (i.?e. “Europeanized”) in some EU member states than in others. Analyzing a variety of survey data on the EU-27 countries with partial correlation models, it is shown that the macro-level determinants of Europeanization differ between actions and attitudes. While actions are more Europe-centered in small and affluent countries, attitudes are more Europe-centered in post-communist states as well as in countries that are located in the geographical center of the EU and that do not have a protestant religious tradition. Contrary to transactionalist theory, the Europeanization of actions does not coincide with the Europeanization of attitudes: “doing Europe” and “feeling Europe” do not go hand in hand.     

National Parliaments and EU Fiscal Integration

This article analyses the impact of the euro crisis on national parliaments and examines their response to the deepening of EU fiscal integration and the correspondent limitation of their budgetary autonomy. It argues that the sovereign debt crisis has provoked the emergence of new channels of parliamentary involvement in EU economic governance. National parliaments have acquired various rights of approval in the European Semester, strengthened the accountability of national governments, reinforced their scrutiny over budgeting, improved their access to information, and created domestic and supranational avenues for deliberation and political contestation of European integration. In these respects, they have undergone further Europeanisation. While these reforms do not outweigh the centralisation of EU powers, they represent an embryonic step in the parliamentary adaptation to the nascent EU fiscal regime. Yet they are unlikely substantially to influence EMU policy‐making processes, because of the democratic disconnect inherent in the EU's multilevel constitution.     

Identifying deviant sexual interest in a sex offender sample using dual-target rapid serial visual presentation task

To investigate the dual-target rapid serial visual presentation (dtRSVP) task as a measure of deviant sexual interest (i.e. a sexual interest in children), we administered a dtRSVP with gender- and age-specific pictorial stimuli to child sex offenders (n = 69), other sex offenders (n = 43), non-sex offenders (n = 14), and community controls (n = 88). We hypothesized that (1) stimuli belonging to the preferred gender and age group presented as targets (both T1 and the subsequent T2) in the serial sequence would be more accurately detected than non-preferred stimuli and that (2) this increased detection would reduce the detection of targets later in the serial sequence (T2) due to an attentional blink. Our findings supported hypothesis 1 and partly supported hypothesis 2. Although we found group differences, individual indices based on detection rates did not allow for individual-level diagnostic categorization of participants.     

Taking Threat Seriously: Prejudice,Principle, and Attitudes Toward Racial Policies

Drawing from group theories of race-related attitudes and electoral politics, we develop and test how anxiety influences the relative weight of prejudice as a determinant of individuals’ support for racial policies. We hypothesize that prejudice will more strongly influence the racial policy preferences of people who are feeling anxious than it will for people who are not. Using an experimental design we manipulate subjects’ levels of threat and find significant treatment effects, as hypothesized. We find that individuals’ racial policy attitudes are partially conditional on their affective states: individuals who feel anxious report less support for racial policies than those individuals who do not feel anxious, even when this threat is stimulated by non-racial content. More broadly, we conclude that affect is central to a better understanding of individuals’ political attitudes and behaviors.     

Understanding the changing role of public sector performance measurement in less developed countries

This article develops a framework for understanding changes in the demand for and supply of performance information in public sector organizations in less developed countries (LDCs). New Institutional Sociology (NIS) is used to argue that pressures from specific stakeholders stimulate organizations to produce particular performance information. The article distinguishes three groups of stakeholders (i.e. funding bodies, statutory boards and purchasers), and elaborates on the performance dimensions these stakeholders are interested in. The group of funding bodies, with their interest in financial performance information, used to be the most important group of stakeholders. However, statutory boards and purchasers are gaining importance as a result of recent public sector reforms, which include decentralization, marketization and the implementation of anti‐corruption programs. As a consequence of pressures coming from these stakeholders, new performance dimensions, such as the quality and quantity of services and the political governance structure, will be added to organizations' performance measurement (PM) systems. Whether these and other—often more traditional financial—performance dimensions will be balanced and integrated throughout organizations depends on the power positions of the various stakeholders. The arguments presented in this article intend to stimulate public sector organizations in LDCs to design and redesign PM systems as a response to changing stakeholder interests. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Global Constitutionalism: Editorial Introduction

Netherlands International Law Review -     

An Aquatic Decomposition Scoring Method to Potentially Predict the Postmortem Submersion Interval of Bodies Recovered from the North Sea

This study aimed to develop an aquatic decomposition scoring (ADS) method and investigated the predictive value of this method in estimating the postmortem submersion interval (PMSI) of bodies recovered from the North Sea. This method, consisting of an ADS item list and a pictorial reference atlas, showed a high interobserver agreement (Krippendorff's alpha ≥ 0.93) and hence proved to be valid. This scoring method was applied to data, collected from closed cases—cases in which the postmortal submersion interval (PMSI) was known—concerning bodies recovered from the North Sea from 1990 to 2013. Thirty‐eight cases met the inclusion criteria and were scored by quantifying the observed total aquatic decomposition score (TADS). Statistical analysis demonstrated that TADS accurately predicts the PMSI (p < 0.001), confirming that the decomposition process in the North Sea is strongly correlated to time.     

Multiple Giant Coronary Artery Aneurysms: A Rare Cause of Sudden Cardiac Death

Multiple giant aneurysms involving the coronary arteries are uncommon and rarely reported. In the presented case, a 63‐year‐old man with poorly controlled hypertension died suddenly. Gross autopsy examination showed multiple giant thrombus‐filled coronary artery aneurysms, atherosclerotic coronary artery disease, and cardiomegaly. Histological sections of the coronary aneurysms showed atherosclerotic changes with both organized and fresh thrombus. Giant coronary aneurysm is defined as a segmental enlargement of a coronary artery with a diameter exceeding 20 mm or more. The main etiology of this nebulous entity is attributed to atherosclerosis and inflammatory or inherited connective tissue disorders with the remainder being congenital, infectious, or idiopathic. Before its cataclysmic presentation, when ruptured or thrombosed, giant coronary aneurysm usually has a silent clinical course. Sudden death owing to giant multiple coronary aneurysms is rare and mandates careful classification of the aneurysms and prudent search for autoimmune‐mediated or genetically based factors for subsequent ancillary autopsy studies.