State-Local (Chicago) Relations in Illinois: The Harold Washington Era, 1984

Since Harold Washington became mayor of Chicago in 1983, relationsbetween the city and the state have changed significantly. Forone, the mayor is no longer the power-broker in state politics.The perception that Richard J. Daley controlled state governmentmay have been a myth, but today—after the mayoraltiesof Bilandic and Byrne, and with Washington now in office—eventhe myth no longer prevails. The continuing conflict in thecity council, with Washington's forces being in the minority,has also contributed to the change in state-local relations.The city council divisions carry over to a divided legislativedelegation in Springfield. Underlying the present situationare maneuvers by the various potential candidates for the 1987mayoral election. Some clues as to the outcome can be seen inthe election returns for U.S. Senator in the 1984 contest betweenincumbent Charles Percy and Congressman Paul Simon. Black votersdeserted Charles Percy in 1984; in the past, they had stronglysupported him.     

Clear, Simple, and Precise Legislative Drafting: How Does a European Community Directive Fare?

In 2001, Martin Cutts redrafted Toy-Safety Directive 88/378/EEC¹in plain language. He criticized the language of that Directiveas being archaic legalese.² He added that Directives, as a whole,were poorly drafted.³ The European Commissions Legal Servicerejected his criticisms. It stated that it had published theEuropean Commission’s plain language guidelines⁴ afterDirective 88/378/EEC had been drafted. In a previous articlein the Statute Law Review,⁵ Butt and Castle’s⁶ plain languageguidelines were explicated using examples from Directive 2002/2/EC.⁷In this article, their guidelines are applied to the whole ofthat Directive to see if its language is ‘clear, simple,and precise’.⁸ The criticisms made in the previous article,⁹combined with those made in this article, suggest that the draftersof Directive 2002/2/EC¹⁰ have not yet mastered the skill ofwriting in ‘clear, simple, and precise’ language.     

Analyzing the representativeness of internet political participation

Political participation researchers have developed several evaluative techniques to assess the representativeness of political participation patterns. Yet, while the Internet has become a mainstream avenue for political participation in the United States, current assessments of online participation insufficiently apply these methods. To incorporate these methods we begin by drawing upon resource theory to inform two-stage ordered-logit models of online and offline political participation. Our results suggest that the factors predicting online participation often differ from the factors that predict offline participation. Even so, we find that those from higher socioeconomic backgrounds tend to disproportionately possess these distinct online determinants. Next, we use a wide spectrum of political opinion questions to determine whether online participators opinions reflect or distort those of the general population. Overall, we find that online participation tends to relate moderately with liberal preferences. However, because offline participation relates to political attitudes similarly, the Internet only marginally advantages the political voice of liberals. Finally, we discuss the implications of these results.