Reviews and resources

Throes. Conceived and performed by Doorika. The Vineyard Theater, New York City, October 14, 1994.

Visiting Hours. An installation by Bob Flanagan in collaboration with Sherrie Rose. The New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York City, September 23‐December 31, 1994.

‘Aberrant Motion1–4.’ Videos by Cathy Sisler. Available through Groupe Intervention Video, Montreal, Quebec, H2T 1S6. Phone (514) 271–5506; Fax (514) 271–6980.

Converging Realities: Feminism in Australian Theatre by Peta Tait. Currency Press, Sydney, in conjunction with Artmoves, Melbourne, Australia, 1994. Released in the United States by Cambridge University Press, 1994.     

Mixing Habermas with Bayes: Methodological and Theoretical Advances in the Study of Deliberation

Two challenges stand out in the study of deliberation: the development of appropriate methodological tools and the development of more unified analytical frameworks. On the one hand, analysing deliberative processes is demanding and time‐consuming; hence we tend to have only few and non‐randomly selected cases at the group or context level. In addition, the real world of deliberation presents us with a complex matrix of nested, cross‐classified, and repeated speakers. This article shows that Bayesian multi‐level modelling provides an elegant way to tackle these methodological problems. On the other hand, we attempt to enrich comparative institutionalism with individual characteristics and psychologically relevant variables (such as group composition). Focusing on Swiss and German parliamentary debates we show that institutional factors ‐ in particular, consensus systems ‐, the gender composition of committees and plenary sessions, and age matter for the quality of deliberation. Furthermore, we also show that partisan affiliation ‐ government or opposition status of MPs ‐ affects deliberative quality and can refine institutional arguments. We conclude that a multi‐level approach to deliberation focusing on contextual and actor‐related characteristics and using Bayesian hierarchical modelling paves the way toward a more advanced understanding ‐ and methodological handling ‐ of deliberative processes.     

The cognitive and affective components of political attitudes: Measuring the determinants of candidate evaluations

Past research suggests that beliefs and emotions operate as partially distinct determinants of political attitudes. In addition, while positive and negative beliefs about a political object are bipolar in structure, positive and negative emotions have been demonstrated to be relatively independent. In this past research, beliefs and emotions have been assessed with different measures. Yet current models of survey responding suggest that responses to survey items are often influenced by the manner in which the researcher poses the questions. As such, it is not clear whether the uniqueness of these belief and emotion measures reflects a bona fide difference between two underlying constructs, or merely an artifactual difference induced by differing methods of measurement. In this study, beliefs and emotions are shown to operate as partially unique predictors of candidate evaluation even when employing corresponding methods of measurement. The independence of positive and negative emotion, however, only arises when employing a dichotomous measure. When employing ordinal measures, positive and negative emotions contain a substantial component of bipolarity. The theoretical implications of these findings are discussed.     

Government policy and citizen passion: A study of issue publics in contemporary America

This article describes the findings of a program of research exploring the cognitive and behavioral consequences of passionate concern about government policy issues. American citizens vary a great deal in terms of the personal importance they attach to their attitudes on particular policy issues. Citizens whose policy attitudes are especially important to them are likely to think frequently about those attitudes, to perceive competing candidates as being relatively polarized on the issue, and to form presidential candidate preferences on the basis of those attitudes. Also, policy attitudes that citizens consider personally important are highly resistant to change and are therefore especially stable over long periods of time. The American public appears to be structured into many small issue publics, each composed of citizens who are passionately concerned about a single issue. Most Americans fall into very few issue publics, the particular ones being determined by each individual's unique self-interests, social identifications, and cherished values. The implications of these findings for the workings of democracies are discussed.     

On the Design of Equalizing Grants

This article considers the design of grants to offset fiscaldisparities. We define a fiscal disparity as a condition inwhich towns must levy a different tax rate in order to providethe same level of public services. We consider ways of measuringdisparities, as well as ways of allocating grants to alleviatedisparities. In order to focus the presentation, we concentrateon lump-sum grants for unrestricted use from a state governmentto general purpose local governments within that state. We concludeby presenting an example of a grants formula for the state ofNew Jersey which meets our specifications.     

Detection of ketosis in vitreous at autopsy after embalming

Ketosis occurs in ketoacidosis or malnourishment. When either is suspected in relation to a death, it may be important to analyze for ketosis at autopsy. We encountered a case where starvation was suspected in a deceased nursing home resident, where the body had been embalmed prior to autopsy. Gas chromatography (GC) was unable to separate acetone from formaldehyde, a component of embalming fluid. The Acetest is a simple test that can detect acetone and acetoacetate in body fluids. We validated the Acetest with GC on vitreous. The Acetest and GC were consistent except at very low levels of acetone or acetoacetate. The sensitivity of the Acetest for acetoacetate in vitreous was 10 mg/dL, consistent with early starvation. Significant interference from embalming fluid did not occur. The Acetest was negative in the described case. The Acetest is a simple and useful test for the detection of ketosis in embalmed autopsies.