Issues,parties and attitudinal stability: A comparative study of Sweden and the United States

Though Converse's work has generated considerable debate about attitudes vs. nonattitudes, there has been surprisingly little new evidence concerning attitude stability in national electorates. We present data from three panel studies that show that the Swedish electorate is consistently more stable than its American counterpart. More importantly, the pattern of continuity levels across types of issues differs from that in the American electorate, with the highest continuity rates for abstract, ‘ideological’ issues. An explanation that accounts for the differences in continuity levels within as well as between countries is found in a structural factor, as suggested by Converse. That factor is the party system. In both countries there is variation in the relationship between party preferences and issue positions, but on the whole the parties in Sweden give clearer, more consistent cues about where to stand on issues.     

Sweden

European Journal of Political Research -     

Institutional Legacies and the Role of Citizens in the Scandinavian Welfare State

In this article, I attempt to explain the different roles of Swedish and Danish citizens when they encounter the welfare state. The case chosen is primary education, the area with the greatest variation. My thesis is that the differences arc primarily explained by the different institutional legacies in the two countries, rather than the often-suggested alternatives, i.e., the different strength of the labor movements and the importance of Grundtvigian ideas in Denmark. I argue that in the first decades of the 20th century, Sweden and Denmark established two very different systems of school administration. Once established, these have shown a high, though by no means total, stability and the development has been path dependent. Due to the different institutional legacies, the same political ideas have often resulted in different decisions and measures in the two countries.     

The Persistence of Corruption and Regulatory Compliance Failures: Theory and Evidence

This paper examines the reasons whycorruption and policy distortions tend toexhibit a high degree of persistence incertain regimes. We identify circumstancesunder which a firm seeks to evaderegulations through (i) bribery of localinspectors, and (ii) by lobbying high-levelgovernment politicians to resist legalreforms designed to improve judicialefficiency (rule of law) and eliminatecorruption. We show that in some casespolitical instability reinforces thesetendencies. The analysis predicts that inpolitically unstable regimes, theinstitutions necessary to monitor andenforce compliance are weak. In suchcountries, corruption therefore is morepervasive, and the compliance withregulations is low. We test thesepredictions using cross-country data. Theempirical results support the predictionsof the model. Political instability reducesjudicial efficiency, which in turnstimulates corruption. Thus, the effect ofpolitical instability on corruption is notdirect, but occurs indirectly via itseffect on the degree of judicialefficiency. Finally, corruption lowers thelevel of regulatory compliance. Thus,political instability indirectly affects compliance, via judicial efficiency andcorruption.     

Losing Touch? The Political Representativeness of Swedish Parties, 1985–1994

Political parties are often said to be in decline. In Sweden, the major parties have lost significant amounts of members and activists in recent years. The purpose of this study is to investigate whether the decline in participatory linkage via parties has been accompanied by a representative decline. Using data from the Swedish Election Studies and Parliamentary Studies, average self-placement on the left-right schema is compared between Members of Parliament, party activists, party members and voters. There is no evidence of a decline in the political representativeness of the parliamentarians. There is, however, some evidence that members and activists have become radicalized compared to the voters. This is particularly true of the Social Democrats, and also to some extent in the Moderate Party. Thus, while there is no general decline in the representative linkage provided by the Swedish parties, there is some justification to speak of a representational decline for the Swedish parties as membership organizations.     

Psychopathy (PCL-R) Predicts Violent Recidivism Among Criminal Offenders with Personality Disorders in Sweden

Psychopathy as conceptualized with Hare's Psychopathy Checklist Revised, PCL-R, has attracted much research during the 1990s. In the Scandinavian countries, few studies that empirically support the validity of North American risk assessment techniques in our regional context have been published. The purpose of this paper is to explore the predictive power of the PCL-R in a population of personality-disordered violent offenders subjected to forensic psychiatric evaluation in Sweden. Following release from prison (n = 172), discharge from forensic psychiatric treatment (n = 129), or probation (n = 51), a total of 352 individuals were followed for up to 8 years (mean = 3.7 years) with reconviction for violent crime as endpoint variable (base rate 34%). As the estimate of predictive power, the area under the curve of a receiver operating characteristic (AUC of ROC) analysis was calculated. For PCL-R scores to predict 2-year violent recidivism, AUC of ROC was .72 (95% CI: .66–.78). In addition, the personality dimension of psychopathy (Factor 1) and the behavioral component (Factor 2) both predicted 2-year recidivism significantly better than random: AUC of ROC .64 (95% CI: .57–.70) and .71 (95% CI: .65–.77), respectively. We conclude that psychopathy is probably as valid a predictor of violent recidivism in Swedish forensic settings as seen in previous North American studies.     

The provenance of émigrés: the validity of measuring knowledge of places

Establishing the origin of those seeking asylum is essential but difficult as asylum seekers often cannot corroborate their origin claim with documents. The aim of the present study was to assess whether asking knowledge questions, sketch questions and impossible questions are valid methods to determine the veracity of an origin claim. Participants (N?=?105) from Tilburg (truth-tellers), Maastricht (partial liars) and Gothenburg (full liars) were asked to convince an interviewer that they originated from Tilburg. Half of them prepared and half of them did not prepare themselves for the interview. They were asked 10 knowledge questions typically asked to assess the credibility of origin claims, 4 impossible questions and 1 sketch question. Participants from Tilburg answered more questions correctly than participants from Maastricht and Gothenburg. Performance also improved with preparation. Even though the results did provide some support for the validity of assessing claims about origin by asking knowledge questions, the differences between the groups were modest, and it was impossible to correctly identify all truth-tellers and liars. Changing the output modality from verbal answering to sketching contributed to the credibility assessment of origin claims, whereas impossible questions were not discriminatory.     

Chronic Alcohol Abuse Leads to Low Bone Mass with No General Loss of Bone Structure or Bone Mechanical Strength,

Chronic alcohol abuse (CAA) has deleterious effects on skeletal health. This study examined the impact of CAA on bone with regard to bone density, structure, and strength. Bone specimens from 42 individuals with CAA and 42 individuals without alcohol abuse were obtained at autopsy. Dual‐energy X‐ray absorptiometry (DEXA), compression testing, ashing, and bone histomorphometry were performed. Individuals with CAA had significantly lower bone mineral density (BMD) in the femoral neck and significantly lower bone volume demonstrated by thinner trabeculae, decreased extent of osteoid surfaces, and lower mean wall thickness of trabecular osteons compared to individuals without alcohol abuse. No significant difference was found for bone strength and structure. Conclusion: CAA leads to low bone mass due to a decrease in bone formation but with no destruction of bone architecture nor a decrease in bone strength. It is questionable whether this per se increases fracture risk.