The European Union as the next step of delegation and accountability

Abstract. The Principal–Agent approach guides a comparison of the scrutiny and implementation records of the EU member states. The main argument is that there is systematic co–variation. Cross–nationally, an influential scrutiny process is associated with a strong implementation record. But because both of these variables also co–vary with the North–South dimension of EU politics, a fundamental challenge for future research is to evaluate the importance of existing between–country variation relative to the new Principal–Agent relationships that are emerging within the integration process.     

Depressive Symptomatology and Program Efficacy: Examining a Program to Improve Communication in Community Families

Destructive conflict is linked with adjustment problems over time, putting families at risk even when conflict behaviors have not reached levels of clinical concern. The Family Communication Project (FCP) is a psychoeducational program designed to improve communication in families with adolescent children. The present study examines the role of depression in program efficacy over time. Data were collected across four time points, assessing aspects of marital and family conflict, adolescent emotional security, and depressive symptoms in mothers, fathers, and adolescents. Results indicated improvements in conflict strategies for families who received the psychoeducational program (relative to controls), and point to a role of depressive symptomatology in adolescents in relation to treatment outcomes.     

Eating Problems and Their Risk Factors: A 7-Year Longitudinal Study of a Population Sample of Norwegian Adolescent Girls

The longitudinal stability of eating problems and their relationships to risk factors were investigated in a representative population sample of 623 Norwegian girls aged 13–14 followed over 7 years (3 time points). Three eating problem symptoms were measured: Restriction, Bulimia-food preoccupation, and Diet, all taken from the12-item Eating Attitudes Test. The aim of the study was to investigate the stability of these eating problem symptoms both as separate components (as opposed to total symptom load) as well as from a syndrome perspective. Over 7 years, dieting behavior showed the highest correlational stability (0.32). Regarding stable eating problem syndromes, at all 3 time points, 1 group of girls with generalized eating problems was found, characterized by simultaneously pronounced bulimic tendencies and dieting. However, we did not establish individual stability across 7 years for this syndrome group. Through development, eating problem symptoms were associated with characteristic risk factors. Similarities and differences between findings regarding eating problems and eating disorders are discussed.     

Case comment: Moore v. Regents of the University of California.

The increasing use of human tissues in medical research has spawned a host of ethical and legal debates. Legal analysis in this area has almost exclusively focused on the question of property rights in both the tissues used in research and in the resulting products. One illustrative case is Moore v. Regents of the University of California, in which a patient sued his doctor for conversion of his spleen which had been removed for therapeutic purposes. The doctor later used the spleen to develop a patented and profitable cell-line. This Comment examines and rejects the property law approach to this issue. Instead, this Comment proposes two legislative changes which would 1) eliminate any trade in human tissues and 2) require doctors to inform their patients of any research interest in proposed medical procedures. These proposals resolve the problem presented in Moore, and avoid the misleading, and inevitably unanswerable, question of property rights.