Nazism and Religion: The Problem of “Positive Christianity”

Current debates on Nazism and religion are focused around the notion that the Nazis sought to promote a kind of Christian faith called “positive Christianity”. This article challenges such perspectives. It establishes that “positive Christianity” had an existing meaning in German society before the Nazi Party was formed — dogmatic Christian faith — and demonstrates that this was the same interpretation of religious faith that Hitler appeared to advocate in Mein Kampf. By contrast to recent revisionist accounts, the paper argues that “positive Christianity” had such a wide variety of interpretations that it cannot be considered as a cohesive construct.     

The Impact of Microcredit on Child Education: Quasi-experimental Evidence from Rural China

Abstract

This article assesses causal effects of formal microcredit on children’s educational outcomes by using household panel data (2000 and 2004) in north-west rural China. The unobservables between borrowers and non-borrowers are controlled in static and dynamic regression-discontinuity designs. The static analysis reveals significant positive impact of microcredit on schooling years in 2000 only, and no influence on academic performance for either wave. The dynamic analysis shows progressive treatment effects on both longer schooling years and higher average scores. Formal microcredit improves education in the longer term compared to the short term, and hence may help relaxing the grip of educational poverty traps.     

Central banks under stress: Reputation,accountability and regulatory coherence

This symposium homes in on an area of public administration that has been through a period of significant change in the last ten years. Since the global financial crisis, central banks have expanded their operations in financial markets, buying up vast quantities of assets as part of expansive monetary policy strategies. They have also played a leading role in the reform of financial regulation and have been entrusted with enhanced authority to supervise financial institutions. This activity has taken place amid heightened political contestation, with central banks increasingly viewed as the quintessence of a technocratic mode of governance that eschews traditional democratic control. The purpose of this symposium is to consider how central banks’ reputation, accountability and regulatory roles have changed since the financial crisis, and what those changes tell us about the balance of power between independent regulatory agencies and elected policy‐makers.     

Assimilation and contrast effects in voter projections of party locations: Evidence from Norway,France, and the USA

Abstract. In the standard Downsian model, voters are assumed to choose parties based on the extent of ideological proximity between the voter's own position and that of the party. Yet it is also well known that there are rationalization and projection effects such that voters tend to misestimate the policy platforms of candidates or parties to which they are sympathetic by overstating the correspondence between those positions and the voter's own preferences (see, e.g., Markus & Converse 1979; Granberg & Brent 1980; Granberg & Holmberg 1988; Merrill & Grofman 1999). Here we follow insights in the psychological literature on persuasion (Sherif & Hovland 1961; Parducci & Marshall 1962) by distinguishing between assimilation and contrast effects. Assimilation refers to shortening the perceived ideological distance between oneself and parties one favors; contrast refers to exaggerating the distance to parties for which one does not intend to vote. Using survey data on voter self–placements and party placements on ideological scales for the seven major Norwegian parties, five major French parties, and two major American parties we show that both assimilation and contrast effects are present in each country to a considerable degree.We also investigate the possible effects of randomness in party placement and scale interpretation – effects that can easily be confounded with assimilation but not so easily with contrast.     

A Randomized Clinical Trial Exploring Gambling Attitudes,Barriers to Treatment,and Efficacy of a Brief Motivational Intervention Among Ex-Offenders with Disordered Gambling

Correctional populations are disproportionately burdened by disordered gambling; yet, problem awareness is minimal among both offenders and professionals within the criminal justice system. The aims of the current study were twofold: (i) to examine gambling attitudes and problem awareness among ex-offenders, and (ii) to determine the efficacy of a brief online gambling intervention for ex-offenders. Participants (N = 126) were ex-offenders on probation and parole. Gambling attitudes, attitudes toward treatment, and disorder gambling status were assessed. Disordered gamblers (n = 102) were randomly assigned to (i) a brief intervention plus referral to treatment or (ii) referral to treatment only, and these individuals were re-assessed at a 30-day follow-up. Lifetime disordered gambling was highly prevalent (86%) in the ex-offender sample, and providing information regarding disordered gambler status and referral to treatment was effective in decreasing gambling attitudes, as well as gambling severity and frequency. The current study has direct implications for treatment and intervention efforts among ex-offenders with disordered gambling and yields a greater understanding of attitudes toward gambling among ex-offenders.     

Judicial Self-Governance Index: Towards better understanding of the role of judges in governing the judiciary

The aim of this article is to introduce a novel view on how to evaluate the share of power held by judges in judicial governance. Its contribution to court administration and the regulation of judges is three-fold. First, it provides a novel empirically tested conceptualization of judicial governance that includes 60 competences grouped into eight dimensions (ranging from selection and education of judges to case allocation and publication of judicial decisions). Second, it proposes a new Judicial Self-Governance (JSG) Index that measures how much power domestic judges hold in these eight dimensions of judicial governance. Third, by applying the JSG Index to the longitudinal data for Germany, Italy, Czechia, and Slovakia this article demonstrates that the Judicial Council model is not the only institutional model of judicial governance leading to the empowerment of judges. This means that judges can hold many powers without the existence of judicial councils and even in the Ministry of Justice model.     

Does Enhanced Veto Authority Centralize Government?

Previous theoretical and empirical research findsenhanced veto authority has little systematic effecton level of spending. This paper takes a new tact,examining the effect of veto power on thecentralization of governmental services. It proposesand tests a model of federalism in which differenttypes of veto authority lead to differing degrees ofcentralization when the executive and legislature havedisparate preferences over the level of governmentthat should provide services. Empirical resultsindicate governors in the United States use enhancedveto authority to centralize state and localgovernment spending.     

A road map for universal coverage: finding a pass through the financial mountains

Government already pays for more than half of U.S. health care costs, and nearly all universal health insurance proposals assume continued government involvement through tax subsidies and other means. The question of what specific taxes could be used to finance universal coverage is, however, seldom carefully examined, in part due to efforts by health care reform proponents to downplay tax issues. In this article we undertake such an examination. We argue that the challenges of relying on taxes for universal coverage are even greater than is generally appreciated, but that they can nevertheless be met. A proposal to fund a universal health insurance voucher system with a value-added tax illustrates issues that would arise for tax-financed plans in general and provides a broad framework for a bipartisan approach to universal coverage. We discuss significant problems that such an approach would face and suggest solutions. We outline a long-term political and legislative strategy for enacting universal coverage that draws upon precedents set by comparable legislative initiatives, including tax reform and Medicare. The results are an improved understanding of the relationship between systemic health care finance reform and taxation and a politically realistic plan for universal coverage that employs undisguised taxes.     

Legal Aid in Mental Hospitals

This report on the experience of five in-hospital legal aid projects and one community-based project for the deinstitutionalized examines the workloads of the lawyers and paralegals who labor in this setting and the various approaches and predispositions they bring to the job or learn while they are at it. The caseloads as well as interviews and observations reveal enormous differences in approach from project to project. The work of some lawyers and their aides confirms the utility and importance of making legal aid directly available to patients on the hospital grounds. But the experience of a couple of other projects warns that certain styles of lawyering can be counterproductive and damaging. In general, lawyers in the mental hospital setting must avoid the legalistic and overly adversarial approach to the problems that are brought to them—many of which are of uncertain legal content, credibility, or psychological makeup. Lawyers must also be careful not to have their own legal priorities get in the way of the best interests of their patient-clients or even those of the hospital as a total institution. The best approach to lawyering in the institutional setting is one that softens the "traditional" legal and adversarial aspects in favor of a more mediatory stance in which fact finding, counseling, and the resolution of issues by compromise are dominant functions. And significant legal attention should be devoted to each of the major categories of problems faced by patients—commitment-discharge, institutional, and civil—if the institutional lawyer's credibility and effectiveness are to be maintained both with the patients and the staffs in charge of their treatment and custody.     

URLTA in Operation: An Introduction

The following articles examine the impact of legislation modeled after the Uniform Residential Landlord and Tenant Act (URLTA) in Portland, Oregon, and Cleveland, Ohio. Their conclusion is that the legislation has been only marginally effective, benefiting primarily middle-income tenants in the suburbs or in the cities' better neighborhoods, while largely failing in the aim of helping the inner-city poor and upgrading the quality of slum housing. The general lesson is an old one: law reform attempts at rearranging basic social-legal relationships often fail to achieve their intended effects, particularly when their effectuation is left to the initiative or ingenuity of those individual private parties who are least likely to possess or display these traits.