Substance use and PTSD symptoms impact the likelihood of rape and revictimization in college women

The present study utilized a mixed retrospective and prospective design with an 8-month follow-up period to test a model of revictimization that included multiple childhood (i.e., child sexual, physical, and emotional abuse) and situational variables (i.e., substance use, sexual behavior) for predicting rape among 276 college women. It was of particular interest to determine whether traumatic responses (e.g., posttraumatic symptomatology or risky behavior) increased vulnerability for revictimization. During the 8-month follow-up period, 9% of participants were raped; 88% of assaults involved substance use by the victim. Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptomatology predicted rape, substance use, and sexual behavior. Substance use, but not sexual behavior, mediated the relation between PTSD symptomatology and rape during the follow-up period. Sexual behavior indirectly impacted risk for rape via substance use. Results suggest that college women with PTSD symptomatology may be at greater risk for rape if they use substances to reduce distress.     

An Examination of Authoritarian Personality Traits among Police Officers: The Role of Experience

This study compared authoritarian traits as determined by MMPI-2 scores between inexperienced versus experienced police officers. The purpose of this comparison was to investigate whether experienced police officers possessed higher levels of authoritarian traits which may be related to years on the job. Results found that inexperienced and experienced police officers tend to be psychologically healthy and do not possess high levels of authoritarian traits. Some specific differences emerged with inexperienced police officers demonstrating higher scores on ASP (antisocial practices) but lower scores on HY (emotional reactions to stress). Possible reasons for these results are discussed.     

Is Rule by Majorities Special?

One way of making decisions is for political associates or their representatives to vote on each issue separately in accordance with the majority principle and then take the cumulative outcomes of such majority decision making to define the collective choice for public policy. We call such a system one of majorities rule. Thought of in spatial terms, majorities rule is equivalent to the principle of making decisions according to the issue-by-issue median of voter preferences. If popular control and political equality are core democratic values, they can be rendered as requirements on a collective choice rule, involving resoluteness, anonymity, strategy-proofness and responsiveness. These requirements entail that the collective decision rule be a percentile method. If we then add a requirement of impartiality, as exhibited in a collective choice rule which would be chosen behind a veil of ignorance, then the issue-by-issue median is uniquely identified as a fair rule. Hence, majorities rule is special. Some objections to this line of reasoning are considered.     

'Moves on a Chess Board': A Spatial Model of British Prime Ministers' Powers over Cabinet Formation

We use an institutional rational choice approach to help us understand how prime ministers in the UK make cabinet appointments and the implications for prime ministerial power. Assuming that prime ministers attempt to form a cabinet so as to get an overall package of policies as close as possible to their ideal, we show why the trade-offs they face are so complex, why apparently common-sense rules for making appointments might not always work well and why apparently strange choices made by prime ministers might actually be rational. Acknowledging the power prime ministers derive from their ability to appoint, we argue that the literature commonly fails to distinguish between power and luck, where lucky prime ministers get their way because they happen to agree with colleagues.     

Parliament on “the Wireless” in Australia

Australia's parliament allowed the radio broadcast of proceedings in 1946, a decade after New Zealand, but well before the “Mother of all Parliaments” in 1978. In keeping with Australia's reputation as a pioneering democracy, early interest in broadcasting parliamentary debates can be traced to the 1920s. In the formative years of “wireless” it was imagined radio might close the gap between parliaments and the public. Proceedings of the New South Wales parliament were actually broadcast for several weeks during 1932 (and before the New Zealand parliament institutionalised this practice). Tasmania experimented with parliamentary broadcasting in 1934. Australia's embrace of parliamentary broadcasting in 1946 was less carefully planned than has been suggested. It was an opportunistic, caucus‐initiated Chifley government measure driven by a long‐held ALP concern about newspaper bias. It was however generally justified as reform to bring the people to their Parliament and, remarkably, did have bipartisan support.     

Field-portable detection of fentanyl and its analogs: A review

The need to detect fentanyl and its analogs in the field is an important capability to help prevent unintentional exposure or overdose on these substances, which may result in death. Many portable methods historically used in the field by first responders and other field users to detect and identify other chemical substances, such as hazardous materials, have been applied to the detection and identification of these synthetic opioids. This paper describes field portable spectroscopic methods used for the detection and identification of fentanyl and its analogs. The methods described are automated colorimetric tests including lateral flow assays; vibrational spectroscopy (mid-infrared and Raman); gas chromatography–mass spectrometry; ion mobility spectrometry, and high-pressure mass spectrometry. In each case the background and key details of these technologies are outlined, followed by a discussion of the application of the technology in the field. Attention is paid to the analysis of complex mixtures and limits of detection, including the required spectral databases and algorithms used to interrogate these types of samples. There is also an emphasis on providing actionable information to the (likely) non-scientist operators of these instruments in the field.     

Women and the Labour Party: Gender and the Writing of British Political History

This article takes stock of the state of women's political history in the twentieth century and suggests new lines of enquiry, drawing on the authors’ own work on the Labour Party. It identifies a number of key themes which have enriched histories of women and gender in the nineteenth and early twentieth century and considers how these might be developed. Firstly, it examines the significance of the local, and more particularly, the neighbourhood, in women's political lives. Secondly, it asserts the value of focussing on the membership, including the economic, social and cultural shifts that shaped their lives, the intersection of gender with factors such as age or ethnicity, and their own political identities. Finally, it stresses the importance of interrogating masculine cultures to understand how gendered dynamics played out. It concludes with a reminder that inserting women into established political narratives is insufficient: the point is to transform those narratives.     

Beyond Constitutionalism: The Search for a European Political Imagination

Two recent books, Joseph Weiler's The Constitution of Europe and Larry Siedentop's Democracy in Europe, seek to address one of the defining issues in contemporary European legal studies; the search for a European public philosophy. Both site their critiques within a particular jurisprudential tradition, the modernist; one that is bound up with anxieties about legitimacy and constitutionalism. This review article suggests that the ‘new’ Europe has been too easily distracted by the lures of constitutionalism, and more particularly by the temptations of Treaties. Public philosophies are not found in Treaty articles. Rather, a public philosophy is a state of mind, a product of the political imagination. And it is the absence of such an imagination which lies at the root of contemporary concerns regarding constitutionalism and legitimacy; the concerns which underpin Weiler's and Siedentop's books. A discussion of these books, in the first two parts of this article, is followed by a discussion of Godfried Wilhelm Leibniz's ‘universal’ jurisprudence. It is suggested that such a jurisprudence is better able to furnish a public philosophy for the ‘new’ Europe; just as, indeed, it was for the ‘old’ Europe. Moreover, such a jurisprudence is far more than a mere theory of laws and constitutions. Leibniz's jurisprudence requires that we think, not merely ‘beyond’ sovereignty, or even beyond democracy, but beyond constitutionalism.