Politicians on TV news: Getting attention in Dutch and German election campaigns

Abstract. Different strategies apply in the Netherlands and in Germany when TV channels have to decide how often politicians are mentioned or shown in the news during national election campaigns. Extensive content analyses in the 1990s suggest that Dutch political and media traditions promote a more equally distributed attention to different political positions. In Germany, TV news focuses almost exclusively on the incumbent candidate for the top function of the national government (the office of Chancellor) and his challengers. The likely causes are not only the political system and the particular circumstances of the 1990s (with the pre–eminence of Helmut Kohl), but also recent developments in the way in which German journalists define their task.     

Small Firms’ Formalisation: The Stick Treatment

Firm informality is pervasive throughout the developing world, Bangladesh being no exception. The informal status of many firms substantially reduces the tax basis and therefore impacts the provision of public goods. The literature on encouraging formalisation has predominantly focused on reducing the direct costs of formalisation and has found negligible impacts of such policies. In this paper, we focus on a stick intervention, which to the best of our knowledge is the first one in a developing country setting that deals with the most direct and dominant form of informality, that is registration with the tax authority with a direct link to the country’s potential revenue base and thus public goods provision. We implement an experiment in which randomly selected firms are visited by tax representatives who deliver an official letter from the Bangladesh National Tax Authority stating that the firm is not registered and the consequential punishment if the firm fails to register. We find that the intervention increases the rate of registration among treated firms, while firms located in the same market but not treated do not seem to respond significantly. We also find that only larger revenue firms at baseline respond to the threat and register. Our findings have at least two important policy implications: i) the enforcement angle, which could be an important tool to encourage formalisation; and ii) targeting of government resources for formalisation to high-end informal firms. The effects are generally small in levels and this leaves open the question of why many firms still do not register.     

Choosing channels. Intra-state and extra-state strategies of Belgian subnational authorities in response to the European Semester

Europeanization literature has found that, in general, subnational authorities prefer to target the EU indirectly via member state channels. This article tests whether these findings hold in the non-legislative domain of the European Semester. With respect to the Belgian case, the article concludes that all Belgian subnational authorities indeed primarily use the cooperative intra-state channels as a response to the domestic division of competences and the EU decision-making procedures. It also finds that in addition especially Flanders invests substantially in extra-state strategies towards EU institutions. The article concludes that stronger time constraints, lower compliance pressure and the more politically salient issues of the European Semester trigger the most prosperous and identity prone region to adopt additional extra-state channels on top of the dominant intra-state channels.     

Can the hidden hand of the market be an effective and legitimate regulator? The case of animal welfare under a labeling for consumer choice policy approach

In Australia, labeling for consumer choice, rather than higher government regulation, has become an important strand of the policy approach to addressing food animal welfare. This paper illustrates the usefulness of “regulatory network analysis” to uncover the potentials and limitations of market‐based governance to address contentious yet significant issues like animal welfare. We analyzed the content of newspaper articles from major Australian newspapers and official policy documents between 1990 and 2014 to show how the regulatory network influenced the framing of the regulatory problem, and the capacity and legitimacy of different regulatory actors at three “flashpoints” of decisionmaking about layer hen welfare in egg production. We suggest that the government policy of offering consumers the choice to buy cage free in the market allowed large‐scale industry to continue the egg laying business as usual with incremental innovation and adjustment. These incremental improvements only apply to the 20 percent or so of hens producing “free‐range” eggs. We conclude with a discussion of when and how labeling for consumer choice might create markets and public discourses that make possible more effective and legitimate regulation of issues such as layer hen welfare.     

Developmental Changes in Adolescents’ Perceptions of Relationships with Their Parents

This 4-wave longitudinal study examines developmental changes in adolescents’ perceptions of parent–adolescent relationships by assessing parental support, conflict with parents, and parental power. A total of 951 early adolescents (50.4% boys) and 390 middle adolescents (43.3% boys) participated. Univariate and multivariate growth curve analyses showed that support declined from early to middle adolescence for boys and girls and increased from middle to late adolescence for girls, while stabilizing for boys. Conflict was found to temporarily increase during middle adolescence. Parental power (relative power and dominance of parents) decreased from early to late adolescence. Results indicated that: (1) parent–adolescent relationships become more egalitarian during adolescence, (2) parents perceived by adolescents as powerful are viewed as supportive, especially in early adolescence, and (3) perceived conflict with parents is related to but not an impetus for changes in parent–adolescent relationships towards more equality.

Linkages Over Time Between Adolescents' Relationships with Parents and Friends

This 5-wave longitudinal study examines linkages over time between adolescents’ perceptions of relationships with parents and friends with respect to support, negative interaction, and power. A total of 575 early adolescents (54.1% boys) and 337 middle adolescents (43.3% boys) participated. Path analyses mainly showed bidirectional associations between adolescents’ perceptions of parent–adolescent relationships and friendships with a predominantly stronger influence from parent–adolescent relationships to friendships than vice versa in early to middle adolescence and an equal mutual influence in middle to late adolescence. The findings support the theoretical ideas that perceptions of relationships with parents generalize to perceptions of relationships with friends and that relationship skills and principles of adolescent friendships generalize to relationships with parents. Furthermore, the results indicate that the influence of parents decreases, whereas the influence of friends increases, and that both social worlds become equally important and overlapping towards late adolescence.     

Friction and Party Manifesto Change in 25 Countries, 1945–98

Political processes are affected by "friction." Due to cognitive limitations and institutional delays, political agendas do not adapt smoothly to real-world impulses; political agendas either ignore them or overreact. The first question this article tackles is whether the same punctuated change process can be observed in party manifestos. Secondly, it examines whether there are differences across political systems and across party lines. Thirdly, the study tries to account for differences in the degree of "punctuatedness" of party manifestos. Drawing on the vast dataset of the Manifesto Research Group, the article shows that party manifestos are indeed characterized by friction and resistance to change; it also establishes that there are considerable differences in frictional patterns between parties and political systems; and it finds that electoral fragmentation, government participation, and electoral volatility are key to understanding these differences.     

A Small Population Study on Friction Skin Ridges: Differences in Ridge Widths Between Latent and Inked Fingerprints

Morphological changes in the width of latent fingermark ridges occur naturally over time. This could be used to examine the aging process of latents and eventually estimate time of deposition. In a crime context, it is common practice to compare a questioned (aged) fingermark with a database of known (inked) prints. Therefore, in the absence of fresh fingermarks for aging purposes, it is of interest to reveal correlations between these two categories of fingerprints with regard to the widths of their ridges. The present study explores correlations of ridge widths between flat and rolled inked prints with latent fingermarks visualized with carbon black (CB) and titanium dioxide (TiO₂)-based powders among a small population of ten donors. Results revealed consistent differences between the ridge widths of latent and inked prints as well as flat and rolled impressions. Latent fingermarks visualized with CB and TiO₂ powders showed ridges with comparable widths.     

On Crime and Punishment: Derrida Reading Kant

Law and Critique - This essay enquires into the implications for criminal law of Derrida’s analysis in the Death Penalty seminars. The seminars include a reading of Kant’s Metaphysics...