Unpacking pivotal politics: exploring the differential effects of the filibuster and veto pivots

Formal models of politics regularly combine assumptions about a variety of actors and institutions to produce equilibrium expectations, which serve as the primary target for empirical testing. Yet the underlying assumptions can vary in their accuracy among actors and across time and context. We focus on the pivotal politics model of lawmaking and argue that a full evaluation of the theory requires a granular analysis of its two primary components: the filibuster and veto “pivots” in Congress. We show that both types of pivots contribute to the success of pivotal politics in explaining postwar lawmaking, but that the relevance of each varies based on institution-specific contexts. Specifically, the filibuster pivot has little explanatory power before the 1970s, when norms of filibuster use were quite restrictive, while the veto pivot’s explanatory power is limited to situations in which the president has sufficient public backing to be a force in the legislative process.     

Rural industry and uneven development: The significance of gender in the Irish Linen industry

From the middle of the eighteenth century, the Irish linen industry grew on the basis of unequal relations of exchange between spinning and weaving households. This regional division of labour in turn depended on unequal relations of production between women and men within rural industrial households. The ‘proto‐industrialisation’ thesis has tended to obscure this process by focussing on the household as a bounded entity, and by failing to recognise the significance of inequalities within the household production unit. Once gender relations are made central to the thesis, it can be expanded to explain regional differences in rural industrialisation and deindustrialisation.     

Electoral Gender Quotas: Lessons from Argentina and Chile

This comparative case study examines the role of electoral quotas for increasing women's representation in Argentina and Chile. The Central hypothesis is that gender quotas in favourable electoral systems increase women's representation, and a corollary hypothesis is that more women in politics should also promote gender issues in public policy. Since the transitions to democratic regimes, many Argentine and Chilean women still promote gender issues, such as gender quotas, but the different transitions shaped the opportunity space for gender issues in politics. Thus, gender quotas can be effective, but the types of electoral and quota systems are important defining conditions and improvements in gender issues are not guaranteed.     

A Test of the Revised Auricular Surface Aging Method on a Modern European Population

The accurate age estimation of adults is an important step in the construction of the biological profile of skeletonized remains. The auricular surface of the ilium as it was developed in 1985 by Lovejoy et al., is one of the methods employed for age estimation. This study presents the results of a blind test of the revised auricular surface aging method developed by Buckberry and Chamberlain. A sample of 120 individuals from the Athens Collection was used to test this revised aging technique. Almost all features and composite score were positively correlated with known age‐at‐death. The calculation of bias demonstrated no obvious trend for either overestimation or underestimation of age when all individuals were pooled together. Inaccuracy showed that absolute errors of estimated ages against known ages are substantial. The data generated from this study suggest that the revised method can be reliable for age estimation on a modern European population.     

A Two-Way Street for Alcohol Use and Partner Violence: Who’s Driving It?

Using lifetime data from two waves of the National Epidemiologic Surveys on Alcohol and Related Conditions, this study sought to examine sex- and race-specific risks in the temporal relationship between adult onset severe physical intimate partner violence (IPV) victimization and alcohol misuse (binge drinking) and alcohol use disorders (abuse and dependence) and whether or not childhood trauma moderated these relationships among U.S. non-Hispanic White and Black women and men. IPV predicted most alcohol outcomes among White and Black women and White men. Conversely, binge drinking among White and Black women and alcohol abuse among Black women and men predicted IPV. Childhood trauma moderated the relationship between IPV and alcohol misuse mainly among Black respondents, with an increased risk of either outcome among those without childhood trauma. These findings suggest a reciprocal relationship between IPV victimization and alcohol misuse, with implications for sex- and race-specific prevention and intervention efforts.     

The Power of Contextual Effects in Forensic Anthropology: A Study of Biasability in the Visual Interpretations of Trauma Analysis on Skeletal Remains

The potential for contextual information to bias assessments in the forensic sciences has been demonstrated, in several forensic disiplines. In this paper, biasability potential within forensic anthropology was examined by analyzing the effects of external manipulations on judgments and decision‐making in visual trauma assessment. Three separate websites were created containing fourteen identical images. Participants were randomly assigned to one website. Each website provided different contextual information, to assess variation of interpretation of the same images between contexts. The results indicated a higher scoring of trauma identification responses for the Mass grave context. Furthermore, a significant biasing effect was detected in the interpretation of four images. Less experienced participants were more likely to indicate presence of trauma. This research demonstrates bias impact in forensic anthropological trauma assessments and highlights the importance of recognizing and limiting cognitive vulnerabilities that forensic anthropologists might bring to the analysis.     

Racial and ethnic disparities in police-reported intimate partner violence perpetration: a mixed methods approach

The objectives of this study were to examine racial and ethnic disparities in perpetrator and incident characteristics and discrepancies between police charges and reported perpetrator behaviors in police-reported intimate partner violence (IPV). This cross-sectional study used standardized police data and victim narratives of IPV incidents reported to the police in Dallas, Texas in 2004. The sample included non-Hispanic White, non-Hispanic Black, and Hispanic male perpetrators who were residents of Dallas (N = 4470). Offense charges were prioritized in descending order: sexual assault, aggravated assault, simple assault, kidnapping, robbery, and intimidation. Textual data from the victim narratives were coded, based on the revised Conflict Tactics Scales (CTS), and categorized in descending order of priority: sexual (severe, minor), physical (severe, minor), and psychological (severe, minor) assault. Perpetrators were more likely to be Black and Hispanic. Perpetrator and incident characteristics varied significantly by race/ethnicity, particularly age, age difference between partners, marital status, injury, and interracial relationships. Qualitative data revealed that greater proportions of Black and Hispanic men perpetrated severe physical, but not sexual violence, compared with White men. The greatest disparity between CTS categories and police charges occurred among those cases identified by the CTS as severe physical IPV; 84% were charged with simple assault. Significant differences by race/ethnicity were found only for simple assault charges, which were coded as severe physical as opposed to minor physical IPV more often among Black (69% and 31%) compared with White (62% and 38%) men. The disparities revealed in this study highlight the need to enhance primary and secondary prevention efforts within Black and Hispanic communities and to increase linkages between police, community, and public health organizations.     

Frontline Safety: Understanding the Workplace as a Site of Regulatory Engagement

The concept of frontline safety encapsulates an approach to occupational health and safety that emphasizes the “other side of the regulatory relationship”—the ways in which safety culture, individual responsibility, organizational citizenship, trust, and compliance are interpreted and experienced at the local level. By exploring theoretical tensions concerning the most appropriate way of conceptualizing and framing frontline regulatory engagement, we can better identify the ways in which conceptions of individuals (as rational, responsible, economic actors) are constructed and maintained through workplace interactions and decision making as part of the fulfillment of the ideological and constitutive needs of neoliberal labor markets.     

Rural Rebirth

Xihjiangyu Village, with only 500 in-bitants and hidden away in the mountains of Jizhou District of Tianjin, has reinvented itself into a must-see tourist site in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region over the past few years.