Changes and Fluctuations in Issue Ownership: The Case of Sweden, 1979–2010

Issue ownership (IO) has been an important concept in the analysis of party behaviour, party strategy and party competition for several decades. More recently, it has also been of growing interest for research on voting behaviour. Traditionally, IO has been regarded as a stable phenomenon where parties have different issue profiles and are advantaged by different political issues or issue‐areas. Recently, however, many studies have reported change and fluctuations of IO, and the same studies also makes it clear that we know surprisingly little about what might cause, or facilitate, change in issue ownership. In fact, we do not even have systematic studies of how stable issue ownership is, or how frequent shifts in issue ownership actually are. The aim of this article is to explore the extent of change and stability in issue ownership in Sweden. For this purpose, the Swedish national election studies from 1979 to 2010 are utilised. Although recent research has indicated that changes in IO have increased over time, this is not supported in the Swedish case. Instead, issue ownership seems never to have been a particularly stable phenomenon. However, in line with our theoretical expectations, we show that ownership of economic issues is more volatile compared to ownership of other issues.     

Volatile Emission of Decomposing Pig Carcasses (Sus scrofa domesticus L.) as an Indicator for the Postmortem Interval

This study aimed at correlating selected carcass borne volatile organic compounds (VOCs) with the postmortem interval (PMI). Selected volatiles should 1st be reliably emitted during vertebrate decay, 2nd be emitted at high concentrations, and 3rd show a reproducible quantitative dynamic during the decaying process. Four pigs (Sus scrofa domesticus L.) were placed in a deciduous forest in different seasons and volatiles emitted during the decaying process were sampled. Seventeen compounds were identified and quantified by GC-MS. Electrophysiological experiments on the antenna of female Calliphora vicina and additional data of Dermestes maculans were used as an evolutionary tuned information filter to evaluate the 1st criterion. The relative quantitative emission of hexanal, nonanal, dimethyl disulfide, dimethyl trisulfide, 1-butanol, and phenol were correlated with the PMI, and the observed stages of decay and the limitations of this model were discussed.     

CO<Subscript>2</Subscript> emission allowance allocation mechanisms,allocative efficiency and the environment: a static and dynamic perspective

The object of this paper is to place allocation mechanisms into a framework of Emission Trading Systems and thereby to establish a typology. It analyses how various assignment mechanisms deal with issues such as price determination, allocative efficiency and environmental considerations in a static and dynamic economy model. It analyses how allocation mechanisms are to be ranked and whether they serve the attainment of the general equilibrium. First the paper examines how market-based allocation mechanisms (auctions) perform in light of the above issues. Second the paper distinguishes between the two types of administrative allocation mechanisms: (1) financial administrative allocation mechanisms, combining payment schemes with bureaucratic expertise, and (2) free administrative allocation mechanisms, based inter alia on industrial policy considerations and on passed emission records (grandfathering). In particular, the value added of relative performance standards, which are for example included in the “Performance Standard Rate” (PSR) Emission Trading System, are examined as a means to provide allowances. The overall finding is that in a closed static economy and in the presence of an efficient trading market, different allocation methods produce equally efficient outcomes in allocative and environmental respects. With regard to an open dynamic economy, the impact of initial allocation mechanisms resembles those of a static closed economy. In such an economy the upper limit to the internalisation of negative externalities is given by operator’s costs of environmentally harmful relocation and hence the cost burden placed upon operators is crucial. Auctions and financial administrative allocation mechanisms perform less well than free administrative mechanisms. Relative standard base mechanisms, constituting an important element of the PSR Emission Trading System, perform better than grandfathering schemes because they take into account abatement possibilities of industries, minimise stranded costs and do not give rise to time shifting of abatement projects. It is therefore concluded that allocation mechanisms merit more attention than the discussion relating to capped trade and trade without a cap.      

The compliant court — Procedural fairness and social control in compulsory community care

Compulsory community care (CCC) was introduced in Sweden in 2008. This article investigates all written court decisions regarding CCC over a 6 month period in 2009 (N = 541). The purpose is to examine how the legal rights of patients are protected and what forms of social control patients are subjected to.     

Karl Renner and (Intellectual) Property—How Cognitive Theory Can Enrich a Sociolegal Analysis of Contemporary Copyright

This article deals with copyright regulation meeting the quite rapid societal changes associated with digitization, and it does so by reinterpreting Karl Renner's classical texts in the light of contemporary cognitive theory of conceptual metaphors and embodiment. From a cognitive theory perspective, I focus on the notion that the legal norms only appear to be unchanged—the Renner distinction between form and function. This includes social norms, technological development, and changes in social structures in general, which create a social and cognitive reinterpretation of law. This article, therefore, analyzes the contemporary push for copyright as property, which I relate to historical claims for copyright as property as well as de facto legal revisions in intellectual property faced with the challenges of digitization. Of particular relevance here is what Renner described in terms of property as an “institution of domination and control,” and thus the increased measures for control that are added to a digital context in the name of copyright.     

Democracy and Bureaucracy: How their Quality Matters for Popular Satisfaction

This study focuses on how citizens’ satisfaction with democracy is affected by system factors related to the input side of the democratic system, i.e. the electoral dimension, as well as to factors related to the output side, i.e. the quality of government. The study investigates the extent to which different election system characteristics and degrees of policy representation (in terms of ideological congruence between voters and representatives) and the presence of effective, professional and impartial governmental institutions are related to citizens’ satisfaction with the way democracy works. The study uses data from CSES on individual voters and party system characteristics together with data on governmental institutions from the QoG Institute. Overall, the results indicate that factors such as government effectiveness are of greater importance for citizens’ satisfaction with the way democracy functions, compared to factors like ideological congruence on the input side. Impartial and effective bureaucracies matter more than representational devices.     

Forecast dispersion,dissenting votes,and monetary policy preferences of FOMC members: the role of individual career characteristics and political aspects

Using data from 1992 to 2001, we study the impact of members’ economic forecasts on the probability of casting dissenting votes in the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC). Employing standard ordered probit techniques, we find that higher individual inflation and real GDP growth forecasts (relative to the committee’s median) significantly increase the probability of dissenting in favor of tighter monetary policy, whereas higher individual unemployment rate forecasts significantly decrease it. Using interaction models, we find that FOMC members with longer careers in government, industry, academia, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), or on the staff of the Board of Governors are more focused on output stabilization, while FOMC members with longer careers in the financial sector or on the staffs of regional Federal Reserve Banks are more focused on inflation stabilization. We also find evidence that politics matters, with Republican appointees being much more focused on inflation stabilization than Democratic appointees. Moreover, during the entire Clinton administration ‘natural’ monetary policy preferences of Bank presidents and Board members for inflation and output stabilization were more pronounced than under periods covering the administrations of both George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush, respectively.