Questions referred to the ECJ regarding scope of protection against allusive packaging and use of registered marks on comparison lists

The Court of Appeal is referring a number of questions to theECJ, including questions concerning the scope of protectionfor registered trade marks and the meaning of ‘unfairadvantage’ for the purposes of the Trade Marks Directiveand the Comparative Advertising Directive.     

Regional security arrangements as a filter for norm diffusion: the African Union,the European Union and the responsibility to protect

Regional security arrangements play a central role in modifying emerging norms as they travel from the global to the local level. This process of norm localization is shaped by various factors such as the characteristics of regional security cultures, corresponding resonance with the emerging norm, institutional voice opportunities, and mechanisms of framing and pruning as they are utilized by norm entrepreneurs. The article applies this analytical framework to the localization of the responsibility to protect (R2P) norm by the African Union and the European Union. Subsequently, the paper examines how localization of the R2P norm in both regions affected their reactions to the Libyan crisis in 2011. It also examines the likely ramifications that the intervention may have on the future reception of the R2P by African and European actors.     

Sources of Civic Engagement in Latin America: Empirical Evidence from Rural Ecuadorian Communities

The concept of civic engagement has greatly influenced the policy-making process in the field of development cooperation. However, in contrast to a vast quantity of empirical studies for the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)–world, there is only little knowledge with respect to developing countries. Using Ecuadorian rural communities as an example, this paper analyses socioeconomic, political and cultural sources of civic engagement with multivariate regression analyses, which demonstrate that volunteering strongly depends on the cultural tradition. Additionally, the empirical results show that a pure application of the theoretical assumptions and operationalisations from the OECD–world is misleading, when analysing social processes in developing countries.     

COMPETITIVE MARKETS AND THE PROVISION OF PUBLIC SERVICES

Abstract: There is no universal panacea to improve the efficiency of public enterprises. However there is a worldwide trend at present to place more emphasis on markets than on centrally devised planning. The ownership of public enterprises is examined and it is argued that the performance of public enterprises is related to placing them in a more competitive environment. The importance of industry structure to competition is then discussed. The next sections turn to more practical matters. The first notes the present federal reforms of public enterprises and notes some similarities with the reforms set out in British White Papers in the 1950s and 1960s; and these reforms did not work in the sense of providing greater efficiency. Finally by way of example the deregulation of the NSW egg industry is examined; and the role of the government as a shareholder is discussed in the context of Australian Airlines. The paper concludes with a short summary.     

Growing the Linköping Technopole—A Longitudinal Study of Triple Helix Development in Sweden

In the context of successful examples of regional development in Sweden, the Linköping region is often named. Whilst maintaining a historical reputation for culture and learning, Linköping has developed, during the last thirty years, as a major centre within Sweden for technological growth, especially in the creation and development of new technology-based firms. This high technology environment has been further enhanced by the presence of a growing international university, a number of significant multinational high-technology companies and the location of several public sector research establishments. Previous research on regional development suggests that this milieu could be characterised as a ‘technopole,’ namely an arena where these organisations co-operate with each other in a formal or informal way to develop the technological capability of the region. This paper sets out to examine and describe the different ‘actors’ that have contributed to the recent development of Linköping as one of the fastest growing technological regions in Europe. The linkages between the actors are examined in detail. The results of the study indicate that one of the most important actors behind the positive development is the university. In addition, the development that has taken place over the last thirty years can be likened to a spiral where success begets success to foster a positive entrepreneurial climate.     

Deliberative Qualities of Generic News Frames: Assessing the Democratic Value of Strategic Game and Contestation Framing in Election Campaign Coverage

News frames are patterns of news construction journalists rely on to present information to their audiences. While much of the research on news frames has focused on their identification and effects, less work has investigated the specific contributions these different frames make to democratic life. Value judgments about distinct news frames are often not generated in a systematic fashion, not grounded in democratic theory, and/or not supported by empirical evidence. In this article, we address these problems by arguing for and extending normative assessment as a standard operating procedure to determine the democratic value of political communication phenomena. We demonstrate the usefulness of normative assessment by showing how two important generic news frames (politics as a strategic game and as a substantive contestation) contribute to a deliberative public discourse prior to a general election. Using data on television news coverage of the German federal election campaign in 2009, we investigate how these frames are related to the inclusiveness and civility of public discourse and the extent to which it features exchanges of substantive reasons for political positions. Results show that mediated democratic deliberation suffers consistently from strategic game framing, while contestation frames make ambivalent contributions. Implications for political communication scholarship as well as journalistic practice are discussed.

[Supplementary material is available for this article. Go to the publisher's online edition of Political Communication for the following free supplemental resource(s): coding protocol used in content analysis.]     

A fast analysis system for forensic DNA reference samples

On January 1st, 2006, the Swedish legislation on obtaining DNA reference samples from suspects and the recording of DNA profiles in databases was changed. As a result the number of samples analysed at the Swedish National Laboratory of Forensic Science (SKL) increased from about 4500 in 2005 to more than 25,000 in 2006. To meet this challenge, SKL launched a new analysis system to create an unbroken chain, from sampling to incorporation of a profile in the national DNA database and subsequent automatic generation of digitally signed hit reports. The system integrates logistics, digital data transfer, new functions in LIMS (ForumDNA Version 4, Ida Infront AB) and laboratory automation. Buccal swab samples are secured on a FTA^® card attached to an identity form, which is barcoded with a unique sample ID. After sampling, the police officer sends a digital request to SKL. The sample is automatically registered in LIMS and processed on delivery. The resulting DNA profiles are automatically classified according to quality using a custom-made expert system. Building the evaluation around mathematical rules makes it reproducible, standardised and minimises manual work and clerk errors. All samples are run in duplicate and the two profiles are compared within LIMS before incorporation in the database. In the first year of operation, the median time for completion of an analysis was 3 days, measured from delivery of the sample to incorporation of the profile in the national DNA database. In spite of the dramatic increase in the number of reference samples there was no backlog.     

New Parties: Game Changers or ‘Much Ado About Nothing'?

This article is about the new parties that competed at the Danish parliamentary election of 2019. It addresses three key questions: why did they emerge, what types of parties were they and what impact did they have on Danish party politics. We can identify the causes for their emergence and participation in interplay of relatively lenient rules for party registration, personal ambition, recent events – particularly the Syrian crisis and arrival of refugees – as well as anti-establishment sentiments on the political right. The three new parties shared salient characteristics: they had dominant leaders, were genuinely new, had extraparliamentary origins and were independent of societal organizations. In terms of effects on the party system, the main impact was during the campaign where the strongly anti-immigration agenda proposed by two of the parties dominated the conversation and appeared to cause some movement by established parties in a more immigrant friendly direction. Only one of the far right parties won seats in parliament and its prospects of wielding influence on policy with a Socialdemocratic government are slim.     

Electorally unstable by supply or demand?—an examination of the causes of electoral volatility in advanced industrial democracies

The stability of voters’ partisan choices from election to election is a key feature of democratic politics, but why it varies across advanced industrial democracies and elections is not well understood. This study makes several key contributions to explaining electoral volatility. Firstly, it is argued and demonstrated that strategic voting plays an independent role in inducing vote switching. Secondly, the analysis shows that demand-side factors—such as socio-economic cleavages and organizations—do not predict voter stability, whereas supply-side factors—such as the party system, government performance, and strategic incentives—do. Thirdly, earlier contradictory findings with respect to the role of the electoral system are clarified, as its effects are shown to be indirect rather than direct. And finally, the importance of the temporal dimension to stability is demonstrated, as the time since the previous election is found to have a positive effect on volatility. The results are based on a comprehensive statistical analysis of 336 elections in 21 countries between 1950–2005, where the significance as well as the robustness of individual variables across different model specifications inform the conclusions.     

Between a rock and a hard place: Balancing the duties of political responsiveness and legality in the civil service

Civil servants play a key role in upholding the core democratic principles of majority rule and legality in daily government operations. Yet we know little about how civil servants balance these principles in practice—or why. This study asks and answers these questions by qualitatively and quantitatively analyzing Danish civil servants' responses to survey questions on dilemmas that force them to choose between their duty to be responsive to government and their duty to uphold the law. To explain their choices, the analysis draws on rational and sociological institutional theories of bureaucratic behavior. The results suggest that factors related to both rational self-interest and socialization explain that as many as one in four civil servants choose responsiveness over legality. Formal organizational roles also predict their behavior.