Attitudes Toward Intimate Partner Violence Against Women in Moscow,Russia

This study examines attitudes towards violence against women among the populace in Moscow, Russia using data drawn from the Moscow Health Survey. Information was obtained from 1,190 subjects (510 men and 680 women) about their perceptions of whether violence against women was a serious problem in contemporary Russia, and under what circumstances they thought it was justifiable for a husband to hit his wife. Less than half the respondents thought violence was a serious problem, while for a small number of interviewees there were several scenarios where violence was regarded as being permissible against a wife. Being young, divorced or widowed, having financial difficulties, and regularly consuming alcohol were associated with attitudes more supportive of violence amongst men; having a low educational level underpinned supportive attitudes among both men and women. Results are discussed in terms of the public reemergence of patriarchal attitudes in Russia in the post-Soviet period.     

Backlash Reconsidered: Neoliberalism and Popular Mobilization in Bolivia

This article argues that the common narrative of a Bolivian backlash against neoliberalism should be reconsidered in light of the continuities and mutual constraints between popular mobilization and neoliberal policy reforms. The study draws on literature that conceptualizes neoliberalism as a particular construction of state and social forms; but unlike those works, it includes an analysis of International Monetary Fund policy shifts to understand how popular mobilization constrains policy implementation. Responding to popular mobilization between 1985 and 2006, the IMF came to accept divergence from orthodox policy in order to encourage political stability. The government of Evo Morales and the IMF are mutually constrained by concern for the investment climate. This study further advocates that analysts probe beyond simple binary divisions between “neoliberalism” and “alternatives” and look more seriously for pragmatic strategies for negotiating neoliberal spaces.     

Restricting the import of ‘emission credits’ in the EU: a power struggle between states and institutions

This article examines the development of a cap on the use of so-called ‘project credits’ in the EU emissions trading scheme. It investigates how the issue of such a limit was addressed in the negotiations of the Linking Directive, and how it has been dealt with in the later implementation of this directive. The article applies two explanatory approaches: one based on intergovernmentalist theory, assuming that the cap reflected the preferences of the EU Member States; and one based on the multi-level governance model, assuming that the cap expressed the preferences of EU institutions rather than Member States. What is found is a two-stage development: during the negotiations of the Linking Directive, Member States managed to secure a no-cap solution allowing extensive use of the project credits. In the later implementation phase, however, when the emissions trading scheme was up and running and a certain legitimacy for the system had been established, the Commission managed to ‘regain control’ by bringing back a cap. Thus, the project credit cap—and by that, the very nature of the EU emissions trading scheme—has been the subject of a continuing power struggle within the EU—and different theoretical perspectives explain different stages of this process.     

Exposure to School Bullying and Psychological Health in Young Adulthood: A Prospective 10-Year Follow-Up Study

Being bullied at school is strongly related to psychological health complaints at the same time point. Studies have also found long-term associations, but few have combined a prospective design with children’s own reports on bullying, and conducted gender-specific analyses. The present study assesses health consequences in young adulthood of self-reported victimization in adolescence using data from Child-LNU in 2000 and the follow-up in 2010 (including 63% of the original sample, n = 813). At ages 10–18 a clear cross-sectional association was found for both girls and boys. Among girls, exposure to bullying also predicted psychological complaints 10 years later, at ages 20–28 (OR = 2.86). This association was not explained by socioeconomic circumstances, neither in adolescence nor in young adulthood. Instead, it can partly be understood as victimization, among adolescent girls, being associated with negative self-image and psychological health as well as with deficits in social resources more generally.     

Managing Autonomy: Analyzing Arts Management and Artistic Autonomy through the Theory of Justification

Arts management has commonly been analyzed as a microcosm of the art field, in which struggles between artistic, economic, administrative, and societal considerations are constantly being fought. Using the field theory of Bourdieu, scholars have attempted to uncover levels of functional differentiation within arts organizations, and interpreted differentiation between artistic considerations and economic and administrative considerations as a core element in defining the artistic autonomy of such organizations. In this article, I present an alternative approach to the interpretation of artistic autonomy in arts management. Through the stories of three artistic directors and the way in which they run their theatres, I aim to show the theory of justification (developed by Boltanski and Thévenot) and shed new light on the interpretation of arts management, as well as on the understanding of artistic autonomy more generally.     

Actuarial Assessment of Sex Offender Recidivism Risk: A Cross-Validation of the RRASOR and the Static-99 in Sweden

We cross-validated two actuarial risk assessment tools, the RRASOR (R. K. Hanson, 1997) and the Static-99 (R. K. Hanson & D. Thornton, 1999), in a retrospective follow-up (mean follow-up time = 3.69 years) of all sex offenders released from Swedish prisons during 1993–1997 (N = 1,400, all men, age 18 years). File-based data were collected by a researcher blind to the outcome (registered criminal recidivism), and individual risk factors as well as complete instrument characteristics were explored. Both the RRASOR and the Static-99 showed similar and moderate predictive accuracy for sexual reconvictions whereas the Static-99 exhibited a significantly higher accuracy for the prediction of any violent recidivism as compared to the RRASOR. Although particularly the Static-99 proved moderately robust as an actuarial measure of recidivism risk among sexual offenders in Sweden, both procedures may need further evaluation, for example, with sex offender subpopulations differing ethnically or with respect to offense characteristics. The usefulness of actuarial methods for the assessment of sex offender recidivism risk is discussed in the context of current practice.     

Soviet discussion on enterprise incentives and methods of planning

For some years a discussion has been in progress among economists in the Soviet Union on methods of securing the active and positive participation of individual enterprises in a centrally planned economy. The main theme of discussion has been the problem: how to arrange the system of plan indices, prices, enterprise bonuses, etc. to encourage enterprise interest in higher plan assignments, introduction of new technology, and improvement of quality of output. On the following pages some excerpts from this debate are reproduced. However, since the problems discussed are now engaging also the Soviet political authorities, let us first quote a few sections from one of the many official statements made in this connection. The one we have chosen is from the report given by the Soviet Prime Minister N. S. Khrushchev at the CPSU Central Committee Plenary Meeting of November 19, 1962 (Pravda, November 20).