When governments ignore public opinion in foreign policy: Poland and the Iraq invasion

This article asks why the Government of Poland participated in the invasion of Iraq in March 2003 when a large majority of the Polish public was opposed to national involvement in Iraq. The aim is to further an understanding of the circumstances under which democratic governments ignore public opinion in their foreign policy decision-making. The article argues that a combination of three circumstances increased the willingness of the government to ignore the public. First, the Iraq issue had relatively low salience among the Polish voters, which decreased the domestic political risks of pursuing the policy. Second, the government's Iraq policy was supported by a considerable consensus among the political elite. Third, the political elites were unified in their perceptions that participating in the invasion would yield essential international gains for Poland.     

A typology of communication functions in ballot issue campaigns

The increased importance of ballot issue campaigns creates a need for communication and political science scholars to study the rhetorical strategies employed in such campaigns. This essay presents a typology of four communication functions employed in successful ballot issue campaigns: education, trust development, development of a positive message, and neutralization of the opposition. The typology is applied to an analysis of the 1986 campaign for liquor‐by‐the‐drink in Kansas.     

指定居所监视居住的适用研究——以新刑诉法的修订实施为背景

从立法沿革来看,指定居所监视居住并不是一种新的强制措施,只是新刑诉法及刑诉规则对其适用做了细化和完善。在司法实践中,如何实现指定居所监视居住的法定功能,怎样防止将其异化为羁押措施?当务之急就是要以新刑诉法修订实施为背景,对指定居所监视居住的适用条件、执行场所和执行方法、人民检察院对指定居所监视居住的监督、保障被指定居所监视居住的犯罪嫌疑人、被告人的合法权益等问题进行深入研究。     

党的第四代领导集体处理民族问题的理论创新与实践

党的第四代领导集体,围绕“什么是社会主义民族问题、怎样正确处理社会主义民族问题”的主线,自觉地进行理论创新和实践落实。在理论创新方面,丰富发展了中国特色社会主义民族理论体系。在实践落实方面,围绕促进民族地区科学发展、谋求民族地区社会和谐两大任务,开创了民族工作新局面。     

Border battle line

ABSTRACT

The demarcation of a North–South boundary in the Sudan opens up the possibility of the creation of a new international border in Africa, following the outcome of the Southern Sudanese and Abyei Area referenda in 2011. The line of the proposed boundary runs through the grazing areas of numerous pastoralist peoples, and it is these peoples who will be most directly affected if the new border becomes the frontline between two states. In fact, pastoralists were mobilised to fight on either side of the boundary during both of Sudan's civil wars. This article looks at select areas of the North–South borderlands, particularly areas of shared rights, to analyse the potential impact of the new boundary. It looks at how overlapping rights claims were managed in the past, and goes on to analyse various peace-making efforts between border pastoralist peoples from the Condominium period until today. The article looks at the way the border issue has been dealt with in the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, including the Abyei arbitration process, as an indicator of whether this border region will become the focus of continued conflict, whatever the 2011 referendum result.     

Measuring the Media Agenda

Measuring media attention to politically relevant topics is of interest to a broad array of political science and communications scholars. We provide a practical guide for the construction, validation, and evaluation of time series measures of media attention. We review the extant literature on the coherence of the media agenda, which provides evidence in support of and evidence against the emergence of a single, national news agenda. Drawing expectations from this literature, we show the conditions under which a single national news agenda is likely to be present and where it is likely to be absent. We create 90 different keyword searches covering a wide range of topics and gather counts of stories per month from 12 national and regional media sources with data going back to 1980 where possible. We show using factor analysis wide variance in the strength of the first factor. We then estimate a regression model to predict this value. The results show the conditions under which any national source will produce time series results consistent with any other. Key independent variables are the average number of stories, the variance in stories per month, and the presence of any “spike” in the data series. Our large-scale empirical assessment should provide guidance to scholars assessing the quality of time series data on media coverage of issues.     

Recommendations for Correctional Leaders to Reduce Boundary Violations: Female Correctional Employees and Male Inmates

The correctional profession continues to report boundary-violating behavior by correctional employees with inmates, such as aiding an inmate in an escape and engaging in sexual contact with an inmate. These criminal behaviors obviously threaten the safety within the institutions and the community; however, these types of actions are normally preceded by minor boundary crossings within the institution. Therefore, all types of boundary violations and crossings between an inmate and an employee must be examined and eliminated. This article offers correctional leaders recommendations for organizational change that may reduce the number of boundary violations and crossings between female employees and male inmates. These recommendations are built on a larger qualitative study that used portraiture methodology, by interviewing 4 former female correctional employees who developed relationships with male inmates.     

Going green: Explaining issue competition on the environment

This study addresses the dynamics of the issue space in multiparty systems by examining to what extent, and under what conditions, parties respond to the issue ownership of other parties on the green issue. To understand why some issues become part and parcel of the political agenda in multiparty systems, it is crucial not only to examine the strategies of issue entrepreneurs, but also the responses of other parties. It is argued that the extent to which other parties respond to, rather than ignore, the issue mobilisation of green parties depends on two factors: how much of an electoral threat the green party poses to a specific party; and the extent to which the political and economic context makes the green issue a potential vote winner. To analyse the evolution of the green issue, a time‐series cross‐section analysis is conducted using data from the Comparative Manifestos Project for 19 West European countries from 1980–2010. The findings have important implications for understanding issue evolution in multiparty systems and how and why the dynamics of party competition on the green issue vary across time and space.     

反思与探究:“孙大午案”的剖析及司法理念的重塑

"孙大午案"折射出司法者对非法吸收公众存款罪持宽泛理解的态度,通过本案可看出法体系整体性思考的重要性,以及前置法——刑法阶层性思维的必要性。非法吸收公众存款罪中的"存款"应仅限于"银行信用"范畴,通过引入"既存的实质性联系"标准对"不特定"的内涵进行限定,从而实现前置法与刑法之间的衔接。进一步,刑法具有二次性违法的特征,司法过程切忌价值先行。