Caught in the Act: The Smoking Gun View of Ministerial Responsibility

While any discussion of ministerial responsibility must in part focus on ministerial resignations, finding out when ministers resign is only the tip of the iceberg. A full assessment of ministerial responsibility would look at the relations between ministers and their senior bureaucrats, as discussed in Bill Blick’s article. It would look at the impact of managerialism on ministerial accountability, especially in the light of privatisation and contracting out. It would assess the impact of other mechanisms of accountability, including the senate. The subject of this article must always be put into a broader context. This article concentrates on ministerial resignations drawing on evidence from Britain, Canada, the federal government in Australia and the government of New South Wales. When do ministers resign?     

Simulating Models of Issue Voting

Ola Listhaug Department of Sociology and Political Science, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, N-7491 Trondheim, Norway e-mail: olal{at}svt.ntnu.no e-mail: rabinowitz{at}unc.edu (corresponding author) How should one analyze data when the underlying models beingtested are statistically intractable? In this article, we offera simulation approach that involves creating sets of artificialdata with fully known generating models that can be meaningfullycompared to real data. The strategy depends on constructingsimulations that are well matched to the data against whichthey will be compared. Our particular concern is to considerconcurrently how voters place parties on issue scales and howthey evaluate parties based on issues. We reconsider the Lewisand King (2000) analysis of issue voting in Norway. The simulationfindings resolve the ambiguity that Lewis and King report, asvoters appear to assimilate and contrast party placements andto evaluate parties directionally. The simulations also providea strong caveat against the use of individually perceived partyplacements in analyses of issue voting.     

Childhood Violence Exposure: Cumulative and Specific Effects on Adult Mental Health

Childhood exposure to violence and victimization is a significant public health problem, with potentially long-lasting, deleterious effects on adult mental health. Using a longitudinal study design, 123 young adults—identified in adolescence as at-risk for high school dropout—were examined for the effects of multi-domain childhood victimization on emotional distress and suicide risk, net of adolescent risk and protective factors, including family dysfunction. The hypothesis that higher levels of cumulative childhood victimization would be significantly associated with mental health maladjustment in young adulthood was confirmed by the analysis. However, the victimization predictors of adult emotional distress were different than the predictors of adult suicide risk. These findings indicate the need for prevention and intervention approaches that include thorough assessment, and focus on the childhood and adolescent problem areas that are most consequential for long-term psychological well-being.     

Utility of the Y-STR typing systems Y-PLEX 6 and Y-PLEX 5 in forensic casework and 11 Y-STR haplotype database for three major population groups in the United States

The Y-PLEX 6 and Y-PLEX 5 systems enable analysis for 11 Y-STR loci. We present here the utility of these systems in forensic casework. A total of 188 samples, including 127 evidence samples, were analyzed using either or both of the systems. The evidence sample types included fingernail scrapings, sperm or seminal fluid, epithelial cells, blood and other tissues. The Y-STR typing systems provided useful probative results in difficult cases. A reference database for Caucasian (n = 517), African American (n = 535), and Hispanic (n = 245) population groups within the United States was generated for estimating the haplotype frequency in forensic casework. Among the individuals profiled, 311 Caucasians, 412 African Americans, and 194 Hispanics provided unique profiles in their respective population datasets. This is the first report describing the haplotype database for the set of 11 Y-STR loci recommended by the Scientific Working Group on DNA Analysis Methods (SWGDAM). Linkage analysis reveals that the frequencies from forensically important autosomal loci can be multiplied with the Y-STR haplotype frequency. The results from Y-PLEX systems have been accepted in courts in the United States.     

Teaching Negotiation with a Feminist Perspective

Negotiation teachers encourage their students to be inventive,improve agreements, and push outward on the "pareto" frontier.Likewise, teachers can improve their practice by seeking value, sometimesin other disciplines. In general, negotiation is taught through acombination of lectures with simulation exercises and debriefings. Feministpedagogy enhances this normative model of teaching negotiation. Thisarticle links the traditional method of teaching negotiation with four keyprinciples of feminist pedagogy.