The Cultural Defense as Courtroom Drama: The Enactment of Identity, Sameness, and Difference in Criminal Trial Discourse

This article traces cultural defense as a discursive realization-in-context, rather than as a legal-doctrinal figure, in a Belgian real-life criminal trial. In examining the defense plea for a Turkish man accused of battery, three discursive techniques are identified for making Cultural Otherness visible: de-individualization, reporting preparatory meetings with the client, and supplying ethnographic "expert" knowledge that transforms the client into the "object" of discourse. Apart from providing information about the defendant's background, cultural defenses also involve particular modes of behaviorally orienting toward the defendant in the courtroom. Otherness must be enacted in court, and to this end attorneys often actively disaffiliate themselves from their clients, marking them as impenetrable, mute, and unemancipated. In doing so, they draw extensively upon the indexical and iconic modalities of talk, which is convenient because the matrix of sameness and difference on which the cultural defense is founded escapes formal legal definition.     

Evidence About Harm: Dual Status Victim Participant Testimony at the International Criminal Court and the Straitjacketing of Narratives About Suffering

Criminal Law Forum - Although victims at the International Criminal Court (ICC) are not parties, they can apply to become “victim participants” and may be authorized by an ICC Chamber...     

The Role of Think Tanks in the Swedish Political Landscape

The term ‘think tank’ represents a heterogeneous concept and is used to characterise a diverse group of organisations. This diversity also characterises the Swedish organisations and institutions that currently fall under the think tank umbrella. In the Swedish political context, most organisations known by the public and news media as think tanks are advocacy organisations with an unambiguous ideological and political profile. Further, during the last decade, we have seen a proliferation of independent, self-declared think tanks with more specific policy agendas, such as the environment and health care. However, according to the broader understanding used in global rankings, the Swedish think tank landscape includes a range of research institutions in different policy areas. Some receive funding from the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise, corporations and private donors; others are government-funded, with Stockholm's International Peace Research Institute as a prominent example. The aim of this article is to map the Swedish think tank landscape and its borders and analyse the roles of different types of think tanks in consensual or confrontational policymaking. Strategic differences among these types are related to historical background and funding. While government-funded and some policy-sector think tanks typically represent a tradition of consensual policymaking, those funded by the Corporation of Swedish Enterprise and other business interests represent a post-corporatist development advocating neoliberal ideas and assuming a confrontational role in the expansion of private ownership and market solutions.     

The impact of party organisational changes on democracy

This article explores post-World War II developments in the organisation of political parties and the impact this has had on democracy in Western Europe. Adopting three models of democracy as analytical tools we discuss the consequences of, for example, declining membership figures and power on parties' ability to sustain competitive, participatory and deliberative aspects of representative democracy. We find that while there is evidence of a trend towards the competitive model, it is not uniform and the relationship is less clear-cut than previously suggested. The article shows that by making normative assumptions explicit, analyses of party change become more accurate, fruitful and, paradoxically, less biased. Because our conclusions are contingent at times on questionable assumptions about empirical relationships, we urge further research on a number of party organisational matters.     

The Contemporary Relationship of ‘New Left’ and ‘New Right’ Parties with Interest Groups: Exceptional or Mainstream? The Case of Norway's Socialist Left and Progress Party

Allegedly, the new green and left parties that were established in Western Europe during or after the 1960s tend to be characterized by informal but significant links with social movement organizations. In contrast, weak links or virtual lack of such connections is often seen as one of the enduring characteristics of the new populist (radical) right parties. However, there are both empirical and theoretical reasons for examining these conventional wisdom(s) more closely. To date, only limited evidence is available on this aspect of new European parties in general. Examining Norway's successful new left and populist right party, and based on rich original data, this case study adds to our knowledge in several ways. The analysis reveals that the socialist left has even closer and more wide‐ranging relationships with interest groups than traditionally suggested and that the Progress Party enjoys organized contact with various interest groups. Since these parties are only two, and not necessarily quintessential examples of the party families in question, the results cannot overturn the conventional wisdom, but they nonetheless question and supplement it by throwing light on the conditions favouring the development of stronger, and more varied, links to interest groups. Together with other presumably ‘atypical’ party examples mentioned in scholarly literature, the case of Norway calls for further empirical investigation. Finally, with an eye to future comparative research, the possible explanations for these findings are briefly discussed.     

Hardiness as a Moderator and Motivation for Operational Duties as Mediator: the Relation Between Operational Self-Efficacy,Performance Satisfaction,and Perceived Strain in a Simulated Police Training Scenario

Training of police officers is important in order to maintain an effective law enforcement community. The present study investigates the mediating effect of motivation for operational duties on the relation between operational self-efficacy and performance satisfaction as well as perceived strain during a simulated operational scenario. Moderating effects of personality hardiness on the same relations were also investigated. Personality hardiness as a moderator was found only for the relation between operational self-efficacy and performance satisfaction. A positive effect was found for high hardy subjects, and a negative effect was found for low hardy subjects. The results also showed a mediating effect of motivation for operational duties on both performance satisfaction and perceived strain. This could have implication for selection and training in the police force.