Mismeasuring Militias: Limitations of Advocacy Group Data and of State‐Level Studies of Paramilitary Groups

The errors associated with measuring the number of militia and patriot groups may cast doubt on conclusions drawn from prior studies of the spatial variation of these movements. Most studies of militias have been qualitative investigations of a single group, state, or region. A growing number of studies, however, have used quantitative techniques to assess the hypothesis that the number of militia groups by state covaries with structural and cultural forces. We outline a number of concerns with the validity of the counts, conducted by the Anti‐Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center, used by these studies. We re‐estimate models from previous studies using the four alternative measures of these groups employed in prior studies. We find that many inferences drawn for identical theoretical models differ based upon the measure used. These discrepancies apply not simply to tangential control variables but to indicators of key theoretical constructs. In other words, the decision as to whether or not a particular theoretical framework receives empirical support often depends upon which measure of the dependent variable is used. This suggests that the inconsistent findings in prior research may be due to measurement error and makes it difficult to assess the validity of the conclusions drawn from these studies. It is important to be aware of these weaknesses since scholars studying political crimes and related phenomena often use information from similar sources, making this specific example relevant to a more general area of research.     

深化干部人事制度改革必须厘清的几个关键问题

干部人事制度改革是政治体制改革的核心内容之一,目前已经进入深水区。而理论和实践认识上的一些偏差和误区,是当前改革深入推进的重大障碍。为此,必须厘清党管干部原则与坚持和尊重群众、党员主体地位的关系,科学执政与民主执政、依法执政的关系,"一把手"负责制与集体领导的关系,群众公认与不唯票数的关系,信任关心与监督批评的关系。处理好这五个关系是深化干部人事制度改革的关键和重要前提。     

一起卫生行政处罚案件引发的思考

恶意举报在群众举报中占有一定的比例。本文在分析探讨了恶意举报类别、危害性、存在的原因基础上,建议完善法律责任制度,给举报者设定责任义务,建立奖惩激励制度,加大宣传力度,改善执法方式,从而减少恶意举报的发生。     

From issues to goals: a novel conceptualisation,measurement and research design for comprehensive analysis of electoral competition

Abstract

The analysis of issue politics has long suffered from a fragmentation between valence and positional conceptualisations, preventing the effective development of a general model of issue-based party competition. Building on an overview of the evolution of party competition in the Western world in recent decades, this article offers a theoretical development that builds on ‘issue yield’ theory to provide a conceptualisation of political goals that generalises across positional and valence issues. This in turn allows a common measurement strategy, offering the possibility to comparatively assess various characteristics (including the electoral potential) of both positional and valence issues. Finally, it describes the specific research design derived from this framework and its implementation in comparative perspective in six West European countries during 2017–2018.     

The spatial determinants of the prevalence of anti-elite rhetoric across parties

Abstract

The article investigates whether there are specific spatial conditions that make a party more likely to pay closer attention to anti-elite rhetoric than to alternative issues in its political confrontation with other parties. The article first treats anti-elitism as a non-policy vote-winning strategy that could be valued positively by a broad class of voters across ideological lines (its ‘quasi-valence’ attribute). It is then shown that the incentive of a party to embrace such a strategy grows as the ideological space separating that party from the other(s) shrinks. This hypothesis receives empirical support from the 2014 Chapel Hill Expert Survey Data.     

Managing children's and adolescents' medical complaints amid parent conflict: Strategies and tools for professionals

Children and adolescents who are having difficulty coping with stress often present with complaints of physical discomfort. Effective treatment approaches exist for many of these issues. Among high-conflict parents, however, children's medical issues can become another canvas for conflict, with parents focused more on blaming one another for the child's distress than on options for assisting the child. Professionals can be drawn into the conflict to such a degree that they overlook essential steps for addressing and managing these issues. The authors present a research-informed model for managing medical and psychophysiological issues amid parental conflict.     

Party debate over Europe in national election campaigns: Electoral disunity and party cohesion

Few political parties are willing to lead the public debate on how the European Union should develop and parties rarely publicly discuss issues on the EU agenda. This is probably one of the most important democratic problems in the contemporary EU. When and why parties are willing (or not willing) to discuss European cooperation is therefore an essential issue in which political science should engage. Previous research has shown that parties that are internally divided on EU issues downplay these issues in order to avoid internal disputes. At the same time, parties that have severe intraparty conflicts over the issue are unable to contain the debate. Thus, parties that are unified in their position on EU issues and parties that are heavily split speak about the EU, but others do not. Also, earlier research has shown that political parties downplay issues in response to internal divisions among their supporters. It is argued in this article that the focus should not be solely on intraparty conflict or whether or not a party's voters are hesitant or disunited, but rather on how these factors interact in order to better understand how parties act strategically regarding EU issues. Using a new dataset that relies on quantitative content analysis of quality newspapers during the national election campaigns in the period 1983–2010 in France, Germany, the United Kingdom and Sweden, it is found that parties that have a high degree of internal dissent on European issues, while at the same time having an equally divided electorate, are the parties that are most present in the public debate. Hence, it is the interaction between these two important factors that explains much of the variation in the amount of attention paid to European issues in national election campaigns.     

Trade Interdependence and the Use of Force: Do Issues Matter?

In this project, we investigate the relationship between the use of military force and trade interdependence, suggesting that the influence of trade on militarized conflict varies based on the issue under dispute. For some issues, trade is likely to attenuate the chances that states escalate a dispute to the use of military force, while for others trade can intensify disputes so that military conflict is more likely. Specifically, we hypothesize that greater trade interdependence decreases the probability of military conflict over realpolitik issues like territory. On the other hand, greater trade interdependence increases the probability that states use military force when the issue under dispute concerns the regime, policies, and conditions in the target. To test our hypotheses, we employ new data on dyadic uses of force from the International Military Intervention data set that records the initiator’s reason(s) for using force against the target. The statistical tests support our hypotheses; trade decreases the use of force against a target for territorial and military/diplomatic reasons, which is consistent with arguments from the liberal paradigm. However, trade interdependence increases the use of force for humanitarian and economic reasons as well as to affect the regime or policy of the target. Thus, our study improves upon current research about the relationship between economic interdependence and foreign policy by specifying a conditional relationship based on the issues under contention.     

Vicarious Trauma in Child Welfare Workers: A Study of Organizational Responses

Child welfare is provided within an organizational context that both supports and thwarts the efforts of workers and administrators to meet the myriad of goals established by federal, state, and local regulation and professional bodies. As the field moves toward trauma-informed services for children and families (Ko et al., 2008 Ko, S. J., Ford, J. D., Kassam-Adams, N., Berkowitz, S. J., Wilson, C., Wong, M., Brymer, M. J., &; Layne, C. M. (2008). Creating trauma-informed systems: Child welfare, education, first responders, healthcare, juvenile justice. Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, 39(4), 396–404.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]), the effect of trauma on workers has received less agency attention (Middleton &; Potter, 2015 Middleton, J. S., &; Potter, C. C. (2015). Relationship between vicarious traumatization and turnover among child welfare professionals. Journal of Public Child Welfare, 9(2), 195–216.[Taylor &; Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). This exploratory, qualitative study examines the level of knowledge administrators have regarding vicarious trauma and probes the organizational responses of public child welfare agencies to the vicarious trauma experienced by workers.     

Public affairs,issues management,and political strategy: opportunities,obstacles, and caveats

This paper evaluates research in corporate public affairs, social issues management and political strategy, and theoretical integration of the three areas and also cross‐disciplinary and cross‐institutional collaboration, especially with business or government officials. Copyright © 2001 Henry Stewart Publications