The Realization of Gender Quotas in Post-collapse Iceland

Gender quotas have become a way to increase women’s participation in leading positions in economic life. Iceland enacted corporate gender quotas in 2013, requiring a minimum of 40% of each gender. These quotas were legalized after the financial collapse in 2008, which many blamed on male dominance of the economy. The focus of this paper is the timeframe of the turn to quotas, and the media discourse and parliamentary debate regarding men and women in corporate management. Van Dijk’s theoretical framework of critical discourse analysis was employed to examine data from the period 2009–2015. Firstly, we studied 150 articles in three online newspapers: Morgunblaðið, Vísir, and Viðskiptablaðið, written between 2009 and 2015. Secondly, we examined 132 parliamentary documents in which gender quotas were proposed and debated in 2009 and 2010. Three themes were highlighted: gender difference and opportunities during critical times; women and capability; and changed discourse. In order to shed light on the struggle for women’s influence, we examine how the debate manifested the Wollstonecraft dilemma. The results show a tension between gender-neutral arguments versus arguments about women’s alleged special traits and qualifications. Arguments emphasizing the importance of women’s special capabilities for the well-being of society and companies’ profitability were at the heart of the quota legislation, and as such proved successful. However, the findings also demonstrate the risk that female candidates are viewed as a signal of change in times of crisis. Hence, we claim that arguments matter; although women-centred arguments have contributed to gender balance within the Icelandic economy, they may also create barriers for women because they support patriarchal relations. Furthermore, the results indicate that societal difficulties call for drastic changes, and it seems as though a tailwind is needed for women to receive opportunities within the economic sector to push gender equality forward.     

Policy Diffusion,Policy Learning and Local Politics: Macroprudential Policy in Hungary and Slovakia*

This article explains why certain Central and Eastern European states adopted macroprudential policies of local design that went beyond what European Union and International Monetary Fund authorities had recommended after the global financial crisis. We argue that macroprudential policies increase state control not only because of their inherent normative view on the inefficiency of markets, but also because governments use macroprudential policy to enhance state power. We show that macroprudential tools have often been used to satisfy local policymakers’ own agendas: financial nationalism in Hungary and protectionism in Slovakia.     

Neo-liberalism's New Gendered Market Citizens: The 'Civilizing' Dimension of Social Programmes in Chile

This article explores the reconfiguration of social citizenship, or 'market citizenship', underway in Chile, as one crucial dimension of the refashioning of state institutions along neo-liberal lines in Latin America. It focuses on the 'civilizing' dimension of social citizenship, as an instance of the state's involvement in the regulation of subordinate populations. Specifically, the article studies the case of new social policy aimed at poverty alleviation. Inspired by Michel Foucault's late work but moving beyond it, it examines institutional transformation as on-the-ground practices through which policies take effect and sees 'market citizenship' as emerging from the rearticulation of the efforts of myriad individuals located at different levels of government, 'civil society', and poor and working-class communities. In this process, state agents are translators on the one hand of official documents into instances of participatory learning and empowerment, and on the other of people's realities into instances of documentary categories of poverty. This cultural-political transformation of neo-liberal modernization in Chile and beyond is potentially radical, and we need to ask: to what extent will the new market terms of belonging in the national community, which increasingly permeate private and public actions and discourse, change the very material and cultural contexts in which people's lives and struggles are framed?     

The Welfare Agenda of the Populist Radical Right in Western Europe: Combining Welfare Chauvinism,Producerism and Populism*

Recent scholarship on the populist radical right tends to imprecisely describe the welfare agenda of this party family with reference to its key ideological characteristics of nativism, authoritarianism, and populism. We propose an alternative analytical framework that considers the multidimensionality of welfare state positions and the “deservingness criteria” that underlie ideas about welfare entitlement. Applying this framework to a sample of four European populist radical right parties, we conclude that three interrelated frames inform their welfare agenda. These parties, we argue, advocate social closure not only on the basis of the deservingness criterion of identity (welfare chauvinism), but also on criteria of control, attitude, and reciprocity (welfare producerism) and on an antagonism between the people and the establishment (welfare populism). Understanding the welfare agenda of the populist radical right requires us to move beyond welfare chauvinism and to reconsider the concept of welfare producerism and its interaction with welfare chauvinism.     

Leader Effects and Voting for the Populist Radical Right in Western Europe

Charismatic leaders are often assumed to drive the electoral success of populist radical right parties. Yet, little attention is given to how voter evaluations of leaders influence individual voting behavior. To our knowledge, no systematic and comparative tests of this empirical question exist. In this paper, we test to what extent voters’ support for populist radical right parties is fueled by leaders' appreciation. In order to examine leader effects on the populist radical right vote, we rely on an original dataset pooling 29 National Election Studies from ten established West European parliamentary democracies (1985‐2018). Our analysis finds that: (1) voters’ evaluation of party leaders is significantly associated with voting for populist radical right parties; (2) leader evaluations are more important than left‐right self‐placement when it comes to voting for the populist radical right, and (3) leader effects are more important for populist radical right voters than for other voters.     

Evaluation of the Simultaneous Analysis of Organic and Inorganic Gunshot Residues Within a Large Population Data Set Using Electrochemical Sensors*,†

The increasing demand for rapid methods to identify both inorganic and organic gunshot residues (IGSR and OGSR) makes electrochemical methods, an attractive screening tool to modernize current practice. Our research group has previously demonstrated that electrochemical screening of GSR samples delivers a simple, inexpensive, and sensitive analytical solution that is capable of detecting IGSR and OGSR in less than 10 min per sample. In this study, we expand our previous work by increasing the number of GSR markers and applying machine learning classifiers to the interpretation of a larger population data set. Utilizing bare screen-printed carbon electrodes, the detection and resolution of seven markers (IGSR; lead, antimony, and copper, and OGSR; nitroglycerin, 2,4-dinitrotoluene, diphenylamine, and ethyl centralite) was achieved with limits of detection (LODs) below 1 µg/mL. A large population data set was obtained from 395 authentic shooter samples and 350 background samples. Various statistical methods and machine learning algorithms, including critical thresholds (CT), naïve Bayes (NB), logistic regression (LR), and neural networks (NN), were utilized to calculate the performance and error rates. Neural networks proved to be the best predictor when assessing the dichotomous question of detection of GSR on the hands of shooter versus nonshooter groups. Accuracies for the studied population were 81.8 % (CT), 88.1% (NB), 94.7% (LR), and 95.4% (NN), respectively. The ability to detect both IGSR and OGSR simultaneously provides a selective testing platform for gunshot residues that can provide a powerful field-testing technique and assist with decisions in case management.     

Jurilinguistics: Ways Forward Beyond Law,Translation, and Discourse

International Journal for the Semiotics of Law - Revue internationale de Sémiotique juridique - This is the guest editors’ introductory paper to the special issue “Situating...     

Transnationalization,Social Integration,and Capitalist Diversity in the East and the South

This article analyzes the deep and shallow modes of international integration, semicore, semiperipheral, and peripheral profiles of global insertion, and the presence and absence of transformative state capacity and social cohesion, as interacting dimensions of capitalist diversity in post-socialist Eastern Europe and Latin America. On these grounds, it is argued that Cardoso and Faletto’s dependent development paradigm maintains validity. When adapted to the new conditions, their approach is able to capture the overlapping and divergent aspects of capitalist development in both regions. Recent patterns of development demonstrate that although dependency, stemming from the unequal distribution of resources, roles, and opportunities, continues to be an important aspect of the international division of labor, it ceases to contradict even complex forms of industrialization. Similarly, notwithstanding the asymmetrical power relationships characterizing them, the new transnational integration regimes allow and sometimes help formation of new nation states with improved regulatory capacities. Finally, dependency does not necessarily undermine domestic social inclusion. Rather, it is up to the democratic competition to strike a balance between the requirements of promising international and socially acceptable domestic integration.     

Optimal central banker contracts and common agency: a comment

We explore a setting where the central bank is offered an incentive scheme by an interest group, in addition to the contract designed by the government. We prove that the inflation bias can be eliminated when principals do not cooperate and have different output or inflation objectives. These conclusions contrast with those of Chortareas and Miller (Public Choice 121:131–155, 2004). The reason is that our analysis takes into account the participation constraints of the central bank. We also show that, if principals cooperate, the inflation bias is eliminated when their output target is different but not when they disagree over the inflation objective.