The gender gap in populist radical-right voting: examining the demand side in Western and Eastern Europe

ABSTRACT

In most countries, men are more likely to vote for parties of the populist radical right (PRR) than women. The authors argue here that there are two mechanisms that might potentially explain this gender gap: mediation (women's attitudes and characteristics differ from men's in ways that explain the PRR vote) and moderation (women vote for different reasons than men). They apply these two mechanisms to general theories of support for PRR parties—the socio-structural model, the discontent model, and the policy vote model—and test these on a large sample of voters in seventeen Western and Eastern European countries. The study shows that the gender gap is produced by a combination of moderation and mediation. Socio-structural differences between men and women exist, but the extent to which they explain the gender gap is limited, and primarily restricted to post-Communist countries. Furthermore, women generally do not differ from men in their level of nativism, authoritarianism or discontent with democracy. Among women, however, these attitudes are less strongly related to a radical-right vote. This suggests that men consider the issues of the radical right to be more salient, but also that these parties deter women for reasons other than the content of their political programme. While the existing research has focused almost exclusively on mediation, we show that moderation and mediation contribute almost equally to the gender gap.     

Lingua franca and linguistic territoriality. Why they both matter to justice and why justice matters for both

The bottom line of my book Linguistic Justice for Europe and for the World (Oxford University Press, 2011, paperback 2015) can roughly be captured in the combination of two recommendations: that the democratization of competence English as a lingua franca should be fostered in Europe and elsewhere and that language communities should be allowed to protect their language against the invasion of English and other powerful languages by imposing their own language in public communication and public education within some territorial boundaries. Most of my critics attack one or the other of these recommendations and some question some of the presuppositions of my whole approach. In this response, I try to refute some of these critiques by clarifying my claims or spelling out my arguments, and I make whatever concessions I believe are required.     

Improving legal quality—a knowledge engineering approach

Many legislation drafting departments at the different ministries have their own quality insurance techniques. Furthermore in many cases the Ministry of Justice has a special role because it is usually responsible for the overall legal quality of a country. Despite all the effort that has been spent on improving legal quality using traditional measurements, such as co‐reading (peer reviewing etc.) many anomalies can still be found in recently drafted legislation. The situation is even worse in situations when existing legislation is adapted. This paper will show how a systematic approach that has its origins in knowledge engineering can help to improve legal quality. This approach was developed in the Dutch Tax and Customs Administration (DTCA) (in Dutch: Belastingdienst) and offers both a method and supporting tools that support a systematic translation of (new) legislation into the administrations' processes. This method—called the POWER‐method—not only helps to improve the quality of (new) legislation. It also supports codification of the legal knowledge into procedures, computer programs and other designs. One of the advantages thereof is the reduction of the time‐to‐market of the implementation of legislation and its increased transparency (which will lead to reduced maintenance costs). Focus will be placed on legal quality improvement and knowledge representation techniques that are used to enable this will be explained. In contrast to other knowledge modeling approaches, the POWER‐approach is focused on modeling legal sources rather than expert knowledge. Expert knowledge of course is indispensable to find the correct interpretations and also for efficiency reasons. Starting with representing the (legal) experts' knowledge (using scenarios) helps to find the adequate scope (the legal sources to be analyzed). Confronting the expert with differences between the models built out of the experts' knowledge and the conceptual models constructed of the other knowledge sources (specifically the law) causes the legal experts to see things in a different light and has often led to changes in the law.     

Job stress in police work: An exploratory analysis into structural causes

Police stress has received intermittent coverage in the literature for the last decade, and it remains a constant source of discussion today. One of the reoccurring problems with stress studies is that they attempt to examine the phenomenon globally. This almost always leads to generalized findings which may be representative of the overall problem, but certainly fail to adequately micro-examine the intracies of the issue. This article examines perceptions of stress relative to the demographic and assignment characteristics of police officers in a medium sized city. It identifies three specific patterns and suggests directions for additional research.     

The effect of procedural and interactional criteria on procedural fairness judgments

In studying procedural fairness judgments, distinctions are made between (i) the mere presence of rules and procedures in the process of outcome allocation and dispute resolution, (ii) the application of these rules by a decision maker, and (iii) the enactment of procedures and rules in the interaction between a decision maker and involved parties. In line with Bies and Moag (1986), criteria that must satisfy the application of rules to be judged as fair are called procedural fairness criteria as distinguished from interactional fairness criteria. The hypothesis that interactional fairness criteria are more important in affecting fairness judgments than procedural fairness criteria is tested. Fifty-four subjects received information about a fictitious job application situation. The subjects judged the decision maker's handling to the application procedure and his/her treatment of the applicant as fair or unfair. Three procedural and three interactional criteria and the final decision (hired or not) were used in the study. Results show that the decision maker's consistent application of rules and his/her truthfulness to the applicant were judged as the most important factors in determining the fairness of the procedure. Accurate processing of information about the applicant and respectful treatment were judged as least important factors. Contrary to expectation, procedural criteria were judged on the average as equally important for determining fairness as interactional criteria. It is argued that the smaller than expected impact of the interactional criteria may be due to the fact that in the present study the entire application situation was evaluated and not the specific face-to-face aspects of the interaction. Results are in agreement with those of Tyler and Schuller (1990).     

The Zeebrugge ferry disaster

On Friday 6 March, 1987, at approximately 19:30 the Herald of Free Enterprise ferry boat capsized just outside the Belgian harbour of Zeebrugge. Almost 200 people died as the ship sank very quickly. This article examines the emergency operations that followed the disaster from the perspective of information and communication dynamics. Five specific aspects are thus analyzed in greater detail and elements of an alternative scenario are suggested for each of them: the initial alert and the subsequent mobilization of the emergency services; the informationhandling performance of the crisis center; interorganizational communication between disasterrelief agencies; external communication to survivors, families and next of kin; the management of the mass media. It is concluded that, when examining the crisis management operations more closely, the alleged success of Belgian disaster relief operations at Zeebrugge appears in many respects something of a myth.The paper is commented on by John P. Heck, Head of Civil Defense at the Dutch Ministry of the Interior.     

GATS Article XVI and national regulatory sovereignty: what lessons to draw from US—Gambling?

The article examines the World Trade Organization (WTO) Appellate Body's ruling in US—Gambling that United States (US) prohibitions on the foreign supply of gambling and betting services via the internet to consumers in the US violated US market access commitments under Article XVI of the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS). The article reviews the main arguments criticising the decision and suggests that these views are (i) misguided because they rely excessively on a textual approach to interpreting Article XVI market access commitments, and (ii) lead to results that do not conform with the common intentions of the negotiating parties. The article argues for an approach that relies primarily on examining the facts of each case and the context in which WTO Members' commitments are negotiated. This approach also emphasises the importance of WTO Members making clear and precise market access commitments. In the author's view, the Appellate Body ruling adds more clarity to how GATS market access commitments will be interpreted in the future and, in doing so, facilitates market access negotiations and the making of additional commitments by WTO Members.     

UNANTICIPATED CONSEQUENCES OF A.I.D. PROJECTS: LESSONS FROM IMPACT ASSESSMENT FOR PROJECT PLANNING

We examine lJ.S. Agency for International Development project designs as described in pre-project design documents arid compare them using document review protocols to project outcomes as described in project impact evaluation reports for 40 projects. From this we draw three major conclusions concerning project designs: (1)most are unrealistic – estimated outputs greatly exceed actual outputs at the same time that considerable cost overruns occur, (2) they do not adequately assess the feasibility of the implementation, maintenance, and use of the project and its outputs, and (3) they do not adequately assess potential negative impacts. In light of these shortcomings we offer several recommendations for consideration and testing.