Measuring Polyarchy

The authors have developed a scale based on Robert Dahl’s concept of polyarchy. The scale measures the degree to which national political systems meet the minimum requirements for political democracy, where real-world “democracies” rather than abstract ideals are the, standard. The Polyarchy Scale is constructed from indicators of freedom of expression, freedom of organization, media pluralism, and the holding of fair elections. The scale is (1) well grounded in democratic theory, (2) world-wide in scope., (3) demonstrably valid, (4) solves problems of weighting indicators and (5) is easy to interpret and replicate., Some limitations in the scale's applicability are discussed and suggestions are made for improvements and future research. Michael Coppedge is assistant professor in the Latin American Studies Program at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), 1740 Massachusetts Ave., N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036. He is completing a book on party factions and presidential democracy in Venezuela. Wolfgang H. Reinicke is a Ph.D. candidate at Yale University and a research fellow at the Brookings Institution, 1775 Massachusetts Ave., N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036. He is currently completing a dissertation on the politics of global integration in banking and finance.     

Political Journals in Germany

Germany in the 18th and 19th centuries possessed a wealth of monthly political journals. The period after the Second World War saw a renaissance of monthly journals, which offered orientation to a populace disoriented by National Socialism and war. Today there is a limited number of monthly political journals and their total circulation does not exceed 100,000. But their readership constitutes the small group of citizens who take an interest in politics and in political discourse. Their quantitative influence cannot be measured, their qualitative influence cannot be overestimated. The article focuses mainly on the magazines Neue Gesellschaft/Frankfurter Hefte and Die Politische Meinung. The former is supported by the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, the latter by the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung.     

Fatal crossbow injury in an adolescent

The authors present the case of a 14-year-old boy who died while handling a crossbow, which was a gift from a friend's mother. The bolt passed through the right nostril, penetrated the sinus sphenoidalis, the brain stem, the left occipital lobe and the occipital calvaria. Immediately after the accident, the victim was taken to a maximum care hospital. In spite of neurosurgical treatment and intensive care the victim died 4 days later. The case presented demonstrates that crossbows are not suitable as toys for underage persons, as they are deadly weapons which can cause serious penetrating injuries. In Germany, no license is required to buy and/or possess crossbows. In the authors' opinion, legal restrictions on the sale of crossbows and a special training of the users would be reasonable measures to reduce such accidents.     

The European Sourcebook of Crime and Criminal Justice Statistics: A New Tool in Assessing Crime and Policy Issues in Comparative and Empirical Perspective

Theories which suggest a relationship between crime or criminal justice variables on the one hand, and variables related to criminal justice policies on the other hand, cannot be tested without reference to historic or comparative data. Since international comparisons offer the most powerful test of such theories, policy-related research in Europe has suffered, so far, from a lack of valid comparative data. Whether crime data from different countries are comparable, has always been subject to controversies. In the case of the European Sourcebook of Crime and Criminal Justice, a network of specialists was established under the auspices of the Council of Europe in order to assess the validity of the data. Although some problems in cross-country level comparisons could not be settled, the European Sourcebook offers comparative data on 36 Member States of the Council of Europe on a variety of subjects (offences and offenders known to the police; prosecution, convictions, sentences, and corrections; survey data; and indications on manpower and budgets of police forces, prosecutors, and corrections).