Potentially dangerous behavior in the mentally ill: attitudes of journalists and medical students toward compulsory admission

Compulsory admission is a critical measure that may lead to stigmatization of patients. The authors investigated what medical students and journalists consider legitimate conditions for compulsory admission. The most frequently quoted conditions in both groups were violent attempts against others. About one third of each group considered continuous neglect as a reason. Students significantly more often than journalists advocated for civil commitment in the case of suicide attempts and violent attempts. Medical students with personal contact with mentally disordered persons advocated significantly more often for coercive measures in the case of suicide attempts. Comparing journalists and medical students having personal contact with mentally disordered persons revealed that medical students significantly more often supported commitment. Journalists displayed a more liberal attitude toward the mentally ill than did medical students.     

An den Grenzen der Demokratie – Citizenship und Flucht

Current diagnoses of the crisis of democracy mostly refer to a specific type of mass democracy as it was characteristic of the second half of the 20th century. Its political space is the nation state. The presence of refugees in receiving countries now raises the basic democratic question: How can people participate in political decisions that determine their own living conditions? Refugees, lacking citizenship status, hardly have any formal political influence. The article discusses the relationship between democracy, citizenship, and forced migration in three steps. First, it presents the core arguments of the current debates on the crisis of democracy and outlines the main characteristics of democratic welfare capitalism. Thereupon, it analyzes current transformations of citizenship with regard to forced migration. It will be shown that citizenship is differentiated in the course of transnationalization and economization processes. Finally, the paper shows that potentials for democratization become visible when refugees come into view as “activist citizens” who politicize and scandalize the discrepancies between moral and legal norms as well as the limitations of democracy.     

The Right to Development in International Law: New Momentum Thirty Years Down the Line?

The right to development (RTD) is contested in international law, politics and practice. This remains the case, despite the 30-year existence of the United Nations Declaration on the Right to Development (UNDRTD), the many substantive leads that current international law provides, and the renewed inspiration that can be drawn from Agenda 2030 and its sustainable development goals. This article explores whether there is a possible new momentum for the RTD in international law. Deep substantive and political divisions about the exact content and implications of the RTD prevail between—and within—the North and the South. Up to now these divisions have stood in the way of achieving greater normative clarity, follow-up and implementation action. This state of affairs has directed us to adopt a pragmatic approach, by which we consider the scope for revitalizing the RTD through existing provisions of international law, rather than by creating additional normative frameworks. Thus, after a short sketch of the historical evolution of the RTD, we examine the nature, substance and implications of this right as conceived in the UNDRTD. Then, we pursue the question of how existing provisions of international law could be mobilized more explicitly for the sake of revitalizing the RTD and more in particular for its actual realization in the future. Three concrete means of implementation provide at least some prospect for positive change: international cooperation for development, accountability and monitoring mechanisms, and regional and inter-regional instruments and procedures.

     

Wages of Sin? The Link Between Offending, Lifestyle and Violent Victimisation

In this study the authors examine whether there is a link between offending and violent victimisation. They explore the extent to which this link can be explained by differences in people's lifestyle. In keeping with recent criminological developments, they seek to explain differences in the risk of violent victimisation throughout peoples life course. For this purpose, data has been analysed on the past 25 years in the lives of 1,939 respondents, who constituted a representative sample of the Dutch population in 1996. The data was taken from the Netherlands Survey of Criminality and Law Enforcement. For each year of their life, data were recorded on the respondents' marital, fertility, residential, educational and employment history. What is more, for each year in this period, data are available on their violent victimisation and their offending. The data was analysed with multi-level models. The results show that people who engage in violent crimes and vandalism are at greater risk of being victims than people who do not and that this relationship can only be partially explained by lifestyle.     

Local Councillors: Between Local 'Government' and Local 'Governance'

With a two-dimensional concept of 'New Public Management' as its point of departure, the article points to the development of a specific Danish model of NPM at the local level of government. In the municipalities the market-oriented NPM dimension has been almost absent and the managerial dimension has been interpreted and translated into a 'governance'-oriented model that combines decentralized self- and user-governance from below with centralized goal-steering from above. This combined model institutes new governing roles including a new leadership role for elected councillors as central goal-steering decision and policy makers. Rather than strengthening the local councillors, the new leadership role has turned out to be problematic for the elected councillors. The problems inherent in the new institutional role as goal-steering decision makers are discussed and arguments are put forward in favour of a more 'governance' and less NPM and government-oriented role for elected councillors. What seems to be needed is another new role that stresses local councillors as co-governors and guardians of an inclusive and democratic form of local governance.     

A Strategic Left? Starmerism,Pluralism and the Soft Left

This article places the Labour Party’s present post‐Corbyn renewal in the context of previous periods of renewal in the party’s recent history, associating with the new leadership of Keir Starmer a potential to rediscover the strategic project of the pluralist soft left as an alternative to the programmatic character of the hard left. After assessing the Corbynist hegemony established in the Labour Party between 2015 and 2019, it considers the current absence of any clearly defined set of principles or values underpinning ‘Starmerism’. It then looks back to the Kinnockite ascendency in the 1980s, and the Blairite ascendency in the 1990s, as possible templates for how the party reassesses its positioning with reference to changing electoral, social and economic circumstances. A critique of Corbynism’s left populism culminates in a consideration of the possible grounds for a new pluralist agenda attuned to the policy and electoral challenges Labour faces today.