A LITTLE HELP FROM OUR FRIENDS: Citizen Predisposition to Intervene in Spouse Abuse

Since victims' opportunities to seek help are constrained, observers can play an important role in aiding vicitims of spouse abuse. Many witnesses, however, are reluctant to act. By examining some of the reasons for this reluctance, this paper attempts to provide information that can be used to structure attempts to increase the propensity of observers to intervene—either personally or by summoning outside help. Hypotheses derived from a review of the literatures on crime reporting and helping behavior were tested in a random-digit dialed general population telephone survey of 1, 208 Chicago households. Measures of perceptions of crime, experiences with and opinions of the police, community ties, and standard demographic variables were included. In conjunction with census data on respondents' neighborhoods, this permitted an examination of the individual and joint influences of experiential, attitudinal, structural, and contextual effects on observer responses. Following presentation of findings, research and policy implications are discussed.     

Policy competition in the 2002 French legislative and presidential elections

Abstract.  The French two-round system of presidential elections forces candidates to choose strategies designed to maximize their votes in two different, potentially conflicting strategic contexts: a first round contest between many candidates, and a second round between (typically) a left- and a right-oriented candidate. Following a constitutional change in 2000, furthermore, presidential elections are synchronized with legislative elections, more tightly linking presidential candidates to the policy platforms of the parties they represent. This article examines the consequences of policy positioning by presidential candidates, measuring, comparing and assessing positioning in the legislative elections and in the first and second presidential election rounds. The measures come from an expert survey taken in 2002, from content analysis of party manifestos and presidential speeches, and from the 2002 French National Election Survey. The findings provide hard empirical confirmation of two commonly perceived propositions: first, that Jospin's first-round loss resulted from strategic error in moving too close to the policy centre, and second, that Chirac's won an overwhelming second-round victory because he collected all of the voters from candidates eliminated in the first round.     

Political constitutionalism in Europe revisited

This article traces the disconnect in the constitutional study of the European Union from the Maastricht era to the euro crisis. In the Maastricht era, a discourse of ‘post-sovereignty’ came to dominate theoretical enquiry, reflecting but also distorting a number of material developments: the ‘end of history’, the retreat of critical theory into discourse analysis and systems theory, and the prioritization of law over politics. Jürgen Habermas was a key intellectual figure in driving this ideological mix at the very moment when anti-systemic challenges began to return, both formally and informally, as exemplified in the German Constitutional Court and the French political scene. In revisiting the idea of political constitutionalism, we can foreground this constitutional disconnect and show how it contributes to the irresolution of the subsequent euro crisis conjuncture.