Do We See Victims’ Agency? Criminal Justice and Gender Violence in Spain

The Spanish criminal justice system has a specific Law for Gender Violence (1/2004). This article addresses what happens when a law with a feminist perspective is implemented in a predominantly patriarchal institution. The main aim of this paper is to approach women’s experiences in the Spanish criminal justice system, analysed as a technology of power producing women’s subjectivities, and focusing on their agency. We used a qualitative methodology with participant observation (24 sessions) and in-depth interviews with professionals working with gender violence (17) and women who reported gender violence by their heterosexual partner (11 individual and 1 group). We analysed data with the qualitative analysis software Atlas.ti. The results focus on subjective processes and agency among reporting violence, the expedited trial, protection and restraining orders, and probation.     

Rules and Speeches: How Parliamentary Rules Affect Legislators' Speech‐Making Behavior

By extending existing theories of legislative speech making, this study explores the importance of parliamentary rules governing floor debates for government and opposition parties. An original data set including speeches of members of the Italian Chamber of Deputies between 2001 and 2006 is used to test two hypotheses under different institutional scenarios, that is, rules either restricting or granting open access to the floor. Parliamentary rules are found to affect allocation of speaking time within both governing and opposition parties. Governing parties' leaders exploit their agenda control to a higher degree when allocating speaking time. Under restrictive rules, government party leaders control their MPs by essentially limiting the number of speeches and allocating them to frontbenchers. Restrictive rules give opposition party leaders an important chance to select MPs who are closer to their own position.     

“I didn't Know You were Fighting So Hard for me”: Attorneys' Perceptions of Youth Participation in Child Dependency Proceedings

This study examined attorneys' perceptions of youth participation in child dependency proceedings. Surveys and semi‐structured interviews were conducted with attorneys who represent adolescents in child dependency proceedings. Three dimensions of participation were identified: receiving information, providing information, and self‐advocacy. Barriers to youth participation included individual‐level factors, such as the youth or the attorney not wanting the youth to attend, and system‐level factors, such as the scheduling of court hearings, large caseloads, long waits, and cases being adjourned multiple times. Recommendations for enhancing youth participation in child dependency proceedings are presented.     

Media in the Policy Process: Using Framing and Narratives to Understand Policy Influences

Policy scholarship has long sought to understand the role of knowledge and information in the policy process. Of the actors, institutions, and resources involved in shaping policy processes and outcomes, media and narratives have been incorporated into empirical policy scholarship and theories with varying success. The Narrative Policy Framework (NPF) is a framework through which scholars can bring analysis of narratives into studies of policy making. The NPF moves the field forward in understanding the role of narratives, communication, and stakeholder beliefs in the policy process, while at the same time striving for theoretical rigor. We embed the discussion of frames and narratives in the NPF to provide an empirical and theoretical cohesion to our understanding of media and public policy and then provide a brief empirical example of how such an integration may prove fruitful for policy scholars.     

The “first match” between high-tech entrepreneurial ventures and universities: the role of founders’ social ties

The Journal of Technology Transfer - This paper studies the collaborations between entrepreneurial ventures and universities by investigating the “first match”, namely, the probability...     

Police Implementation of the Partial Sex Purchase Ban in England and Wales

European Journal on Criminal Policy and Research - A main point of contention in the policy areas of prostitution and sex trafficking is whether the purchase of sex should be criminalised, whether...     

Mr Cameron's New Language Initiative for Muslim Women: Lessons in Policy Implementation

As the government announces a programme to teach Muslim women to speak English, this article examines how such a policy can be implemented successfully, arguing that lessons can be drawn from both academic research, especially that carried out with Muslim women themselves, and previous successful policy application. It focuses on two projects carried out in the recent past for the Learning and Skills Council (LSC) and Jobcentre Plus, and outlines the key factors that led to their success. The LSC project involved one of the largest in‐depth surveys of Muslim women's attitudes towards work, and their views on life in Britain, that has ever been undertaken. The Jobcentre Plus project was a highly successful and innovative employment training initiative for ethnic minority women piloted in Sheffield, the very kind of ‘targeted’ approach that Mr Cameron has claimed his government's new language initiative will be.     

Evolving structure of governments: Portfolio adoption across the Canadian provinces from 1867–2012

Based on work by Moon and Sayers on the assignment of ministerial portfolios in Australia, we use a new dataset on portfolio adoption across all ten Canadian provinces and the federal government from 1867–2012. This data set when analyzed shows four distinct patterns of portfolio adoption that point to key motivations behind the development of new portfolios. We show that much of the common wisdom fails to explain portfolio creation but that patterns of development may be better explained by a new typology. The work attempts to fill a gap in the understudied area of Canadian ministerial portfolios and comparative provincial politics.