Experimentalism in the EU: Common ground and persistent differences

Our central claim in this rejoinder is that experimentalist forms of organization in making regulatory rules, organizing social services, and articulating constitutional norms arise and diffuse as the problem that the actors and the state face shifts from ignorance to uncertainty. We argue that this has consequences for forms of accountability and for the conception and organization of democracy and constitutionalism. The EU, founded by diverse states in a period of continuing uncertainty, intensified by growing interdependence, proves to be a natural laboratory for observing urgent efforts to adjust to this new situation, and the symposium focuses on developments there. The symposium has brought us to see that there is more common ground in these debates than prior exchanges may have suggested. We therefore emphasize convergence on large points, while underscoring and, we hope, clarifying persistent differences, with the aim of encouraging the joint exploration of them already underway, in part explicitly, in part implicitly.     

A Long Way to Go: The Final Report of the Speaker's Conference on Parliamentary Representation

The Speaker's Conference on Parliamentary Representation reported in January 2010. The report calls for a host of measures to improve the representativeness of the House of Commons and to revitalise political parties, as well as to enhance citizenship education, develop youth and community citizenship engagement programmes, and more generally to revitalise British democracy. Early responses indicate that the government and political parties will take the report seriously. The report is thoughtful, thorough and extensive, a treasure trove for policy makers, advocates and researchers. If it has a weakness, it is that it shows a better understanding of parliamentary reform than of party reform.     

Gender quotas,candidate background and the election of women: A paradox of gender quotas in open-list proportional representation systems

We study the effects of mandatory (legislated) gender quotas in Poland, a country utilising an open-list proportional representation electoral system. We use a unique data set comprising multiple characteristics of all candidates running in two consecutive elections to the lower chamber of the Polish parliament (the Sejm). The first of them (held in 2007) was the last pre-quota election and the second (held in 2011) the first post-quota one. We show that quotas have an inherently paradoxical nature: they cause a substantial increase in the number of female candidates but the increase is accompanied by a sharp decline in women's electoral performance. This regularity holds even if we account for multiple indicators of candidate background, including previous political experience.     

On the Complexity and Accuracy of Geographic Profiling Strategies

Geographic profilers have access to a repertoire of strategies for predicting a serial offenders home location. These strategies range in complexity—some involve more calculations to implement than others—and the assumption often made is that more complex strategies will outperform simpler strategies. In the present study, we tested the relationship between the complexity and accuracy of 11 strategies. Data were crime site and home locations of 16 UK residential burglars who had committed 10 or more crimes each. The results indicated that strategy complexity was not positively related to accuracy. This was also found to be the case across tasks that ranged in complexity (where complexity was determined by the number of crimes used to make a prediction). Implications for police policies and procedures, as well as our understanding of human decision-making, are discussed.To whom correspondence should be addressed. Phone: +1-709-737-3101; E-mail: bsnook@play.psych.mun.ca     

The Death of Freddie Gray and Its Impact on Homicides in Baltimore and Maryland

This study evaluated the impact that Freddie Gray’s death on April, 19, 2015, had on homicides within Baltimore, Prince George’s County, and the rest of Maryland. The numbers of these deaths were compared in the 2 years prior and after his death. The average number of homicide per month in Baltimore and Prince George’s County, but not the rest of Maryland, showed a statistically significant increase in the 2 years after his death, with a sudden spike in homicides in Baltimore immediately following his death. Spatial density (“heat”) maps of homicides showed an increase in clustering of deaths after Freddie Gray’s demise in portions of Baltimore, particularly near his arrest site. Hot spot maps showed a massive expansion of statistically significant clusters of homicides in areas of West and East Baltimore after his death. An emerging hot spot analysis revealed consecutive hot spots in large areas of West Baltimore with new hot spots prominent along the southern edge of this area. A review of the history of Baltimore, as well as discussions with Baltimore homicide detectives, revealed that prior socioeconomic and political trends likely primed Baltimore for the protests and violence that occurred after Freddie Gray’s death. It is probable that a perceived “overcharging” of officers involved in his death by the State’s Attorney resulted in a “pullback” from policing that directly led to increased homicides in Baltimore.     

Politics of Constituency Representation and Legislative Ambition under the Glare of Camera Lights

The introduction of legislative television as a transparency initiative has been welcomed in an increasing number of democracies. The impact of television cameras on parliamentary behavior, however, has received scant attention in systems where personal vote-earning attributes are thought to be of little importance (e.g., closed-list proportional representation). Additionally, studies examining this relationship relied exclusively on over-time variation in legislative behavior (i.e., before and after the introduction of television into parliament), which arguably has important deficiencies in demonstrating the true effect of legislative television. Capitalizing on a unique quasi-experimental setting, the present study aims to close these gaps in the literature by analyzing parliamentary activities in Turkey, where the legislative television was restricted to 3 days per week (Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday) in 2011 after almost two decades of continuous 7-day operation. Results based on original data sets of parliamentary activities from the pre- and postreform periods (2009–11 and 2011–13) indicate that the varying presence of television cameras exacerbated the effect of electoral and reputation-building motivations on parliamentary behavior, encouraging electorally unsafe and junior MPs to shift their constituency focus to the televised proceedings. The results offer important implications for the study of legislative transparency and constituency representation in party-list proportional representation systems.     

Ideological mavericks or party herd? The effect of candidates’ ideological positions on intra-party success

Political candidates' ideological positions have been used to explain success in inter-party competition, but little is known about how they impact success in intra-party competition. Here, candidates' positions on the Left–Right and GAL–TAN dimensions are analysed in three Finnish parliamentary elections (2011, 2015, 2019). Candidates' ideological positions are measured in terms of their ideological distance from their own party's median candidate. Absolute ideological distances between candidates and their party's median candidate decrease candidates' preference votes. Furthermore, the effects are contingent on the general ideological position of the candidate's party. However, these interactions do not follow any clear pattern, as more rightist candidates in right-wing parties and more green-alternative-libertarian candidates in traditional-authoritarian-nationalist parties all experience a decrease in their preference votes. This effect is large enough to be a decisive factor in intra-party competition between the last candidate that was elected and the first one that was not.     

Australian news media’s representation of Cate McGregor,the highest ranking Australian transgender military officer

To date, no academic analysis has investigated the representation of transgender individuals by Australia’s news media (ANM). This paper conducts a discourse analysis of ANM’s representation of Cate McGregor, the highest ranking Australian transgender military officer. The author offers this analysis as a case study in which 28 articles were selected from a three-year period, beginning November 2012, when McGregor ‘came out’. By employing a feminist and transgender theory framework the author concludes that, on the one hand, ANM reproduces traditional transgender tropes (e.g. publishing ‘before/after’ photographs). On the other hand, ANM gives voice to McGregor’s views pertaining to living as a woman and a transgender woman, which are aligned with transgender theory. Thus, this author argues that ANM engages in a remediation of transgender theory. McGregor acknowledges that she has enjoyed the privilege of being socialized as a man and therefore her life as a woman, a transgender woman is different to other women. Moreover, as an ‘out’ transgender woman she is refusing to ‘pass’ and hide her sex/gender history. Subsequently, McGregor views on what it means to be a man, a woman, and a transgender woman, are disruptive to sex/gender normativities and she thereby embodies a ‘gender fuck’.     

Women's parliamentary representation: are women more highly represented in (consolidated) democracies than in non-democracies?

Although there have been many studies that address the representation of women in parliament, there are few analyses that compare the current state of gender representation between democracies and non-democracies. Focusing on Africa, Central and South America, as well as Asia and the Pacific region, this paper evaluates whether democracies have more female deputies or whether female representation increases with the maturity of democracy. While controlling for the type of electoral system, quotas, women's participation in the workforce, a state's GDP, as well as its degree of corruption and Communist regime type, this cross-national analysis reveals that the variable democracy does not affect the representation of the genders in parliament. Women's parliamentary representation also does not increase with the maturity of democracy.