Parties’ issue strategies on the drawing board: the 2017 Austrian case

Abstract

Parties may rely on different issue agendas when tailoring their electoral campaigns in an attempt to win elections. This paper compares two key party issue strategies to examine which one the victorious Austrian Peoples’ Party (ÖVP) relied on the most during the 2017 Austrian election campaign vis-à-vis its main competitors. These two key party strategies are the ‘riding-the-wave’ model, which posits that parties focus on issues that currently concern voters the most and the recent ‘issue-yield model’, which instead suggests that parties adopt strategic behaviour targeting all those issues with genuine opportunities for electoral expansion. It is found that, compared to the other main parties in the 2017 Austrian election campaign, the ÖVP was the one most clearly relying on the issue-yield approach. These results have important implications for our understanding of electoral campaigns, party’s exploitation of issue strategies, and voter representation beyond the Austrian case.     

Dealing with the fall-Out: Identifying and addressing the role that relationship strain plays in the lives of girls in the juvenile justice system

Much research has found that girls and boys process strain differently. The purpose of this article, however, is to argue that a particular form of strain—relationship strain—explains why girls commit delinquency. The concept of relationship strain comes from combining key elements of feminist theories with Agnew's (1992) conception of strain which results when there is a presentation of negative or painful stimuli, or a loss of positive valued stimuli. To test our assertion, we examined data from 27 focus groups with delinquent girls, incarcerated women that were system-involved as adolescents and juvenile justice professionals that work with girls. We were interested in knowing what the participants believed got girls into trouble and whether there would be commonalties among their answers. Additionally, we wanted to know if their responses would be related to strain. A quasi-grounded theory approach was used to analyze the data. Findings indicated a great deal of congruency among groups. Nearly everything the focus group participants identified as leading girls into trouble (e.g., abuse and neglect, boyfriends, and fighting) was related to strain and boiled down to one thing—relationships. We concluded that it is likely the attempt to cope with relationship strain that leads to delinquency.     

Voting at 16: Turnout and the quality of vote choice

Critics of giving citizens under 18 the right to vote argue that such teenagers lack the ability and motivation to participate effectively in elections. If this argument is true, lowering the voting age would have negative consequences for the quality of democracy. We test the argument using survey data from Austria, the only European country with a voting age of 16 in nation-wide elections. While the turnout levels of young people under 18 are relatively low, their failure to vote cannot be explained by a lower ability or motivation to participate. In addition, the quality of these citizens' choices is similar to that of older voters, so they do cast votes in ways that enable their interests to be represented equally well. These results are encouraging for supporters of a lower voting age.     

Dollars and democracy in Hong Kong: Understanding the logic of Chinese policy

Recent disputes between China and Great Britain over political reform and airport financing in Hong Kong have helped clarify the logic of Chinese policy toward the territory. Despite appearances to the contrary, the disputes are only partly about democracy and money. For the PRC, they are fundamentally about creating the conditions for the Chinese government to exercise sovereignty after 1997 and about the fear that Great Britain will do anything possible to complicate China’s establishment of authority over the territory. This article thus rejects as inadequate several conventional explanations for China’s Hong Kong policy. Its conclusions hold significant implications for Hong Kong’s future and for our understanding of China’s foreign policy calculations elsewhere.     

Public Procurement Law, Public Bodies, and the General Interest: Perspectives from Higher Education

Abstract This article examines the interaction of EC public procurement law with the legislative framework governing higher education in England and Wales. It focuses on the impact of this interaction on changing status of higher education institutions, organisations that are at the margins of the much‐discussed public–private divide in law. The Higher Education Act 2004 is viewed as a driver of potential change in status, and a distinction is drawn between mechanisms which appear to support the introduction of change and those that instead introduce fluctuation and lead to concerns for legal certainty at the margins of public law. The study thus also has wider relevance where public‐sector reform is premised upon organisational forms with hybrid or ambiguous status.