Threshold Insurance Voting in PR Systems: A Study of Voters’ Strategic Behavior in the 2010 Swedish General Election

This study investigates strategic voting for small parties in proportional representation systems, in previous work sometimes referred to as threshold insurance voting (Cox, 1997). Starting from theories of rational voting (Downs, 1957), three conditions for threshold insurance voting are developed: the voter considers potential government outcomes, votes for a party at risk of falling below an electoral threshold, and votes for another party than his or her most preferred one. The conditions are tested on the case of the 2010 Swedish general election. Using extensive data material and a conditional logit model of vote choice, the results show that in this election voters cast strategic votes for at least one of the small parties, the Christian Democrats which was included in the incumbent government coalition.     

Transnational spaces in national places: early activists in Polish–West German relations

This article investigates a legacy of transnational activism in Polish–West German relations during the 1950s and 1960s, connected to the borderlands/expellee background of several of the early activists who initiated the relations. At a time when the Polish and West German states maintained no official diplomatic relations with each other, the importance of non-state initiatives and dialogue breaking with the antagonistic nationalism of the two world wars grew disproportionately. These individuals' expellee background, bilingualism, cross-border networks and loosened national identities contributed to their effectiveness in Polish–German relations. Taking exception to the popular conceptions of expellees as necessarily identical with the negative or anti-Polish opinions commonly associated with the expellee organizations, the article also focuses specifically on how certain expellees and former borderlands inhabitants attempted to renegotiate their postwar roles, political stances and even identities by associating themselves with Polish–German relations. They challenged the dualistic and polarizing nature of media discussions about German expellees in politics. In addition, the article and these individuals pose a challenge to international relations/conflict resolution research to look to cross-border communities as key elements in postwar/post-genocide dialogues.     

Managers’ Turnover in the Public Sector—The Role of Psychosocial Working Conditions

An important challenge for public organizations is to attract and retain skilled managers. The present study explores how profiles of psychosocial working conditions, assessed by the combination of managerial-specific job demands and job resources, longitudinally predict managers’ turnover intentions and actual turnover in Swedish municipalities. Considerable effects of managers’ psychosocial working conditions on turnover intentions but not on actual turnover were found. Thus, poor working conditions may result in psychologically detached managers in public organizations, which may have considerable and costly effects on both the organizations and the managers, in terms of decreased commitment, performance, and impaired health.     

Schizophrenia and violent crime: the experience of parents

Individuals with schizophrenia have an increased risk of committing a violent crime, although their contribution to the overall criminality in society is small. In this qualitative study we have interviewed parents of adult sons, diagnosed with schizophrenia and who recently had been referred to forensic psychiatric treatment due to a violent crime, with an aim to explore the parents' experiences and emotional reactions. Four events, or status passages, emerged as crucial and common for all parents. These were the onset of the mental disorder, the diagnosis of schizophrenia, the violent behaviour/criminality and the recent referral to forensic psychiatric treatment. Every passage evoked strong emotional reactions such as guilt, fear, disappointment, anger and relief, which in return led to different actions taken. Unawareness of the character and severity of their sons' mental illness and the type of violent criminality they had committed were common and complicated contacts both between the parents and their sons, and also between family members and official authorities. The findings emphasize that psychiatric health care professionals must take the initiative and responsibility for information, education and support of family members.     

The stability and generalizability of young children's suggestibility over a 44-month interval

Abstract

We discuss a 44-month longitudinal study of the stability of the two-factor Norwegian Book Suggestibility Scale for Children (BSSC; Melinder, Scullin, Gunner?d, & Nyborg, 2005) in a sample of 7-year-old children (M _{Time 2 age}=94 months). Several measures of suggestibility were assessed: yielding to suggestive questions (Yield), shifting answers in response to negative feedback (Shift), the sum of Yield and Shift (Total Suggestibility), and suggestibility in response to open-ended and misleading direct and tag questions about an event experienced 44 months earlier. Results showed a moderate correlation for Total Suggestibility scores over time in spite of marked declines in Yield and Shift. Both Yield and Total Suggestibility were related to children's tendency to respond affirmatively to misleading tag questions about the past event. The two-factor model of suggestibility showed some weakening over time with a positive correlation developing between Yield and Shift.     

The Supply Side of Second-Order Elections: Comparing German National and European Election Manifestos

The second-order character of past European elections is a well-established hypothesis with respect to voter turnout and voting behaviour. This paper presents a conceptual framework for testing this hypothesis on the supply side of European elections. It includes three groups of indicators allowing for the comparison of national and European election manifestos to determine the latter's second-order nature: (1) resource allocation, measured by the number of actors involved in manifesto adoption and by the manifestos' length; (2) the manifestos' content, comparing issue congruence and framing; and (3) political competition, measured by the ideological distance between manifestos. Building on this, we analyse the manifestos of all relevant German parties in the 2009 European and national elections using Comparative Manifesto Project data as well as original, self-created data on election manifestos. We find major variations between parties which can neither be explained by government participation nor satisfaction with the European Union.     

Individual Criminal Responsibility in Article 25 ICC Statute

The collective nature of crimes under international law doesnot absolve us of the need to determine individual responsibility.Article 25 of the Statute of the International Criminal Court(ICC) now contains a detailed regulation of individual criminalresponsibility. While discussing the elements of various modesof individual criminal responsibility, this essay shows thatthe most important difference between prior legal frameworksand Article 25(3) ICC Statute lies not in the redefinition ofthe scope of individual responsibility in international criminallaw, but in the systematization of modes of participation. Thecase is made that Article 25(3) is best construed as a differentiationmodel with four levels of participation. In this model, modesof participation should be understood as indicative of the degreeof individual guilt, and thus as helpful guidelines in sentencingmatters. With particular reference to joint commission, theauthor shows that this concept also leads to a coherent interpretationof the various modes of participation.