Partisanship, Trade Policy, and Globalization: Is There a Left–Right Divide on Trade Policy?

Are there noticeable differences among political parties in a country over their trade policy positions? Do left parties advocate different trade policies than right parties? In the advanced industrial countries where labor tends to be scarce, are left parties more protectionist than right ones, which represent capital owners? Political institutions within these democratic countries may affect the role of partisanship. We also investigate whether increasing globalization has led to more or less partisan polarization over trade policy. We examine 25 developed countries from 1945 to 1998 to see how their parties have competed over trade policy. Controlling for various factors, partisanship matters. Right parties consistently take more free trade stances than do left ones. Globalization and other international forces have also shaped both the nature and the extent of the domestic debate over exposure to international trade.     

CONCEPTUALIZING VISITATION RESISTANCE AND REFUSAL IN THE CONTEXT OF PARENTAL CONFLICT,SEPARATION, AND DIVORCE

A child's visitation resistance and refusal (VRR) in the context of parental separation, divorce, and post‐divorce litigation must not prematurely be interpreted as evidence of alienation, a conclusion which can be as detrimental to the family system as it is ill founded. The present article proposes a child‐centered, developmentally informed heuristic with which forensic evaluators might begin to more uniformly approach the potential causes of and remedies for VRR. An attachment‐based, step‐wise decision tree is described together with an overview of the remedies presently believed most appropriate to each. Recommendations for empirical study of the multiple convergent dynamics which determine VRR and establishment of corresponding interventions follow.     

Berufszugangsregelungen am Beispiel des Verhältnisses von Rechtsanwaltsausbildung und Jus-Studium

Der derzeit kursierende Entwurf des BMJ über berufsspezifische Anforderung an das Jus-Studium ist nicht nur rechtspolitisch abzulehnen, sondern widerspricht auch Gemeinschafts- und Verfassungsrecht.     

Undoing Legal Violence: Walter Benjamin's and Giorgio Agamben's Aesthetics of Pure Means

Giorgio Agamben calls for a 'playful' relation to law as a way to counteract its inherent violence. Such a relation would prevent law from functioning as a means to an end, instead treating it as a 'pure means.' This article evaluates the significance of Agamben's proposal and of the concept of pure means, arguing that both implicitly draw on a Kantian model of aesthetic experience.     

The Politics of Threat Perception and the Use of Force: A Political Economy Model of U.S. Uses of Force, 1949–1994

A growing body of empirical research addresses the influence of domestic political and economic circumstances on the use of force. Most models explain the use of force as a function of various domestic and international demands for military force. This article uses data on U.S. uses of force between 1949 and 1994 to test a model that also considers the influence of these conditions on the supply of this policy instrument. Conditions that have complementary demand and supply effects—making military force both more useful and less costly to employ—are associated with frequent U.S. uses of force in the postwar era. These conditions include high unemployment, strong investor confidence, wartime presidential election years, and the absence of ongoing wars. Some of these same conditions contribute to a motivated bias in international threat perception, leading U.S. decision makers to perceive more opportunities for the use of force when it is most convenient for them to employ it.