From the Inside Out: Efforts by Homeless Women to Disrupt Cycles of Crime and Violence

The premise that childhood victimization is a risk factor for crime and violence in adulthood finds general support, though few agree that there is a direct causal relationship. Mediating factors and intervening variables are often studied. Rarely investigated, however, are the complex and difficult dynamics experienced by those enmeshed in these “cycles of violence.” In this study we explore the struggles of homeless women to disrupt patterns of violence in their lives. Using in-depth qualitative interviews, we illustrate how these women learn and understand that they are caught up in cycles of crime and violence and, to varying degrees, have made active efforts to disrupt them. However, we find that they have very few tools or resources with which this could be accomplished, which ultimately thwarts potentially successful efforts for lasting change while foregrounding deficiencies in systemic support.     

Electoral-system change in Latvia and the elections of 2010

Latvia’s highly distinctive proportional electoral system owes its origins to Latvia’s 1922 Constitution and the new democracy’s electoral legislation of 1919 and 1922. Latvia’s unique feature lies in its preference system, offering the voters the opportunity to judge each candidate on their party’s list. Although the system appears to maximise responsiveness to voters’ preferences, in practice this promise remained unfulfilled and the representative quality of parliament was questionable. This was in large measure because of the capacity of candidates to stand in multiple constituencies. In 2009 amendments to the electoral law altered this key provision. This change clearly made a difference, but it could not resolve fundamental problems of Latvia’s political process in general and its political parties in particular.     

生命周期视角下非营利组织的董事会治理实践研究——以Q社工机构为个案

文章通过对2003年成立的Q机构的历时研究,从组织生命周期视角描述分析Q机构董事会的治理实践与变化,发现机构董事会的功能以及权力格局都随着组织发展而变动。董事会在早期阶段主要起到非正式督导的作用,在重要决策上受到个别董事及外部官员影响,董事会运作呈现以人际沟通为主的非正式性;在发展中期阶段,董事会成员对组织发展的方向产生分歧,董事会干预机构的日常运营与具体管理人员任免,董事与执行层产生矛盾;在组织发展转型阶段,董事会规模变大,结构日益多元化,董事会运作也日益正式化与程序化。早期起到重要影响的董事被边缘化,影响力被削弱,导致新的权力格局形成。董事会理念发生重大变化,从之前强调服务的专业化转向强调服务的经济效益取向。该研究发现,董事会在实践中很难做到理性治理,决策往往存在妥协,尤其会受个别积极董事的理念影响。董事会在整个生命周期内呈现出均衡－冲突－均衡的发展历程。     

Partisan in-group bias before and after elections

Partisan attachment is a major source of group identity in democracies, accounting for a strong in-group bias when citizens make judgments on trust, cooperation, and resource sharing. Yet what factors condition behavioural expressions of partisan in-group bias are not well-understood. Here, I explore the impact of one theoretically-critical factor - election cycles - in fueling partisan-based discrimination and favouritism. Using an experiment embedded in a panel study fielded immediately before and after the 2015 Canadian federal election, I find that pre-election in-group bias levels were cut by a full third within two days of election day. The bulk of the decline is explained by a decrease in willingness to discriminate against out-partisans, while co-partisan favouritism levels remain stable. Further, in-group bias substantially decreases post-election among supporters of gaining parties and among strategic voters, while losing party supporters and sincere voters continued to express it strongly. I discuss theoretical implications on our current, static understanding of partisan-based discriminatory behaviour.     

An end to “Civil War politics”? The radically reshaped political landscape of post-crash Ireland

The European debt crisis has impacted on electoral politics in most European states, but particularly in the Republic of Ireland. The severe nature of the economic crash and the subsequent application of austerity policies have brought large fluctuations in political support levels, with the three parties that have dominated the state since its foundation – Fianna Fail, Fine Gael and Labour – all being adversely effected. The extent of these changes is highly controlled both by geography and by class, with political allegiances proving to be highly fluid in certain parts of the state. Growing support levels for left wing parties and groupings, but most notably Sinn Fein, appear to be moving Irish politics away from the old “Civil War” style of politics and bringing it more into line with the traditional class cleavage politics of continental Europe.     

“Voluntary PR Voting” in the Election of Swiss Regional Governments

This paper analyses citizens' voting behaviour in the April 2011 elections of the regional governments in the cantons of Zurich and Lucerne. These elections were conducted with a majoritarian electoral system in a multi‐member district. In both cantons, the number of candidates in competition is relatively limited due to “voluntary PR”, that is, a coordination effort among parties that aims to achieve a proportional distribution of government seats. If citizens cast all of their votes, they must support candidates from various ideological camps. Alternatively, they can limit the number of votes used to cast a more concentrated vote. This paper examines what factors lead citizens to cast an ideologically concentrated or dispersed vote. The results show that the degree of ideological concentration of citizens' votes is related to partisan preferences, strategic considerations, political knowledge, and the level of satisfaction with the government performance.     

神经肽Y Y_1受体在发情周期大鼠子宫中的分布

选择健康、未产、体重220～250g的成年雌性SD大鼠,采用阴道涂片方法鉴定其发情周期,并采用免疫组织化学SP法研究了神经肽YY1受体在大鼠发情周期子宫内分布的变化规律。结果显示,各期子宫内膜的神经肽YY1受体免疫阳性产物主要位于基质细胞核膜、子宫内膜上皮细胞质以及子宫腺细胞质和核膜中,并且着色深浅有一定差别,发情间期着色最深,发情后期、发情前期、发情期依次减弱;在肌层和外膜中,发情各期的神经肽YY1受体免疫阳性产物主要位于肌细胞核中,还有一小部分位于结缔组织细胞中,并且在发情间期着色最深,发情前期中等强度着色,发情期和发情后期着色最浅。表明,神经肽Y可能通过神经肽YY1受体参与子宫生理功能的调节。     

Homicide and economic conditions: A replication and critique of M. Harvey Brenner's new report to the U.S. Congress

M. Harvey Brenner has produced two influential studies of the social costs of unemployment, economic inequality, and economic growth, both sponsored by the Joint Economic Committee of the U.S. Congress. This paper reports the results of an effort to reproduce Brenner's findings for homicide from his more recent (1984) study. Our conclusions are as follows. (1) Although not obvious from his write-up, Brenner's 1984 results differ substantively from his earlier results. (2) We are unable to reproduce his reported findings. (3) There are serious methodological problems with his procedure for choosing a regression specification.     

Electoral Reform as an Engine of Party System Change in Italy

Abstract

After more than forty years of proportional representation, in 1991 Italy embarked on a period of electoral law revision. The ongoing debate about how to engineer an electoral system capable of producing the preferred political outcomes stands out against the stasis in constitutional reform, most recently demonstrated in the rejection by popular referendum of Matteo Renzi’s package of reforms. The extent to which the different electoral reforms have had an impact on Italian politics, especially following the 2005 electoral legislation, can be evaluated by analysing the changing Italian party system over the past decade and beyond in terms of its morphology, dynamics, and party/parliamentary group switching. The 2005 electoral reform has had a clear effect on Italian politics and on the party system, but that effect is unlikely to endure given the highly controversial new electoral law that came into force in 2017.     

Electoral rules and manufacturing legislative supermajority: evidence from Singapore

Electoral authoritarian regimes usually preserve the dominance of the ruling party through electoral fraud, violence and intimidation. This paper focuses on the subtler forms of manipulation that undermine the electoral integrity and democratic outcomes. Specifically, we examine how an unusual electoral rule, involving multimember districts elected through plurality bloc voting for party slates, exaggerates the legislative seat shares of the People’s Action Party (PAP) in Singapore. This rule, used also by other electoral authoritarian regimes, facilitates the manipulation of district magnitude and gerrymandering, especially the ‘stacking’ form, to produce a large disproportionality which distorts the seats–votes linkage. It operates in an undemocratic fashion by precluding the opposition from gaining anything but token seats as long as the PAP remains the plurality-winning party. The importance of this electoral rule and its manipulation has been overlooked in current work that emphasises redistributive strategies or coercion to repress electoral competition.