Victorian Voting: The Origins of Party Orientation and Class Alignment

Much of what we know about the alignment of voters with parties comes from mass surveys of the electorate in the postwar period or from aggregate electoral data. Using individual elector-level panel data from nineteenth-century United Kingdom poll books, we reassess the development of a party centered electorate. We show that (a) the electorate was party-centered by the time of the extension of the franchise in 1867, (b) a decline in candidate-centered voting is largely attributable to changes in the behavior of the working class, and (c) the enfranchised working class aligned with the Liberal left. This early alignment of the working class with the left cannot entirely be explained by a decrease in vote buying. The evidence suggests instead that the alignment was based on the programmatic appeal of the Liberals. We argue that these facts can plausibly explain the subsequent development of the party system.     

Human Rights,Public Budgets,and Epistemic Challenges

Ideally, governing institutions would be designed so that they would produce and implement with certainty ‘human rights-compatible budgets’, i.e. budgets that adequately reflect the obligations enshrined in human rights. However, there are various reasons why a government may ultimately fail to produce such budgets. This article focuses on under-examined challenges for budgeting for human rights: epistemically oriented challenges. More specifically, the article engages in ‘horizon scanning’, and it maps key underlying factors that can be conducive to epistemically oriented challenges to produce and implement human rights-compatible budgets. In addition, the article considers the road ahead from the perspective of institutional design.     

From Semi-presidentialism to Parliamentary Government: Political and Constitutional Developments in Finland

Within the framework of a 'mixed constitution', the Finnish political system wavered during a period of 80 years between genuine parliamentarism and effective semi-presidential rule. The new constitution, adopted in the parliament almost unanimously and carried into effect on 1 March 2000, aimed to reduce the powers of the president and to bind the exercise of the president's remaining powers more tightly to the cooperation of the parliamentary government. The constitution will act as a buffer, preventing any recurrence of the presidential activism of the 1960s and 1970s, and the political climate is in fact amenable to the further development of parliamentary modes of operation. It is clearly to be expected that the strengthening of the parliament–government axis and the reduction of the president's powers will distance the head of state from the everyday policy making and emphasize his or her role as a support of the government of the time, a moderator in conflicts and a mirror of popular opinion. In the future, the functioning of the political system will not be directed so much by reference to the political capital and personal activities of the president, but rather by reference to the parliamentary constellation, party interrelations and the ebb and flow of governing coalitions.     

Pubertal Development Moderates the Importance of Environmental Influences on Depressive Symptoms in Adolescent Girls and Boys

Prevalence differences in depressive symptoms between the sexes typically emerge in adolescence, with symptoms more prevalent among girls. Some evidence suggests that variation in onset and progression of puberty might contribute to these differences. This study used a genetically informative, longitudinal (assessed at ages 12, 14, and 17) sample of Finnish adolescent twins (N = 1214, 51.6% female) to test whether etiological influences on depressive symptoms differ as a function of pubertal status. These tests were conducted separately by sex, and explored longitudinal relationships. Results indicated that pubertal development moderates environmental influences on depressive symptoms. These factors are more important on age 14 depressive symptoms among more developed girls relative to their less developed peers, but decrease in influence on age 17 depressive symptoms. The same effects are observed in boys, but are delayed, paralleling the delay in pubertal development in boys compared to girls. Thus, the importance of environmental influences on depressive symptoms during adolescence changes as a function of pubertal development, and the timing of this effect differs across the sexes.     

The logic of regulatory impact assessment: From evidence to evidential reasoning

Agencies involved in generating regulatory policies promote evidence-based regulatory impact assessments (RIAs) to improve the predictability of regulation and develop informed policy. Here, we analyze the epistemic foundations of RIAs. We frame RIA as reasoning that connects various types of knowledge to inferences about the future. Drawing on Stephen Toulmin's model of argumentation, we situate deductive and inductive reasoning steps within a schema we call the impact argument. This approach helps us identify inherent uncertainties in RIAs, and their location in different types of reasoning. We illustrate the theoretical section with impact assessments of two recent legislative proposals produced by the European Commission. We argue that the concept of “evidence-based regulatory impact assessment” is misleading and should be based on the notion of “regulatory impact assessment as evidential reasoning,” which better recognizes its processual and argumentative nature.     

Comparative law in legal education – building a legal mind for a transnational world

This paper considers the role of comparative law in contemporary legal education. The discussion builds on an idea according to which it is helpful to make a distinction between educating lawyers and doing comparative research. It is suggested that we should pay more attention to comparative law pedagogics in today’s world, where law graduates must be prepared for working in a global context. Whereas in academic comparative research the goal is to reach a deep cultural understanding of foreign law, in legal education the goal is to learn to “think like a lawyer”. It is argued that by means of teaching foreign law, it is possible to transfer the focus of legal learning away from detailed rules and instead concentrate on general principles. Comparative law-based material and teaching ought to be regarded as a stimulus that sets the learning process into motion. Moreover, it is claimed that more significance ought to be given to the transnational dimensions of law as part of legal education within all branches of law.     

Measuring Puberty and Understanding Its Impact: A Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Twins

Pubertal development is an important focus of current biopsychosocial research. The Pubertal Development Scale or PDS (Petersen, Crockett, Richards, and Boxer, J. Youth Adolesc. (1988) 17: 117–133) has become a widely used measure in school-based and longitudinal research, because it incorporates several indices of pubertal development. This study reports normative data on the PDS for two population-based birth cohorts of Finnish twin boys and girls, assessed at ages 11–12 and 14. Additionally, we report longitudinal analyses of the associations between pubertal development and substance use, suggesting that the impact of pubertal timing is more complex than previously reported; associations commonly assumed between pubertal development and substance use held only for those whose developmental level, relative to peers, remained stable across follow-up. Finally, we report twin correlations for the PDS which suggest that sibling similarity for pubertal development arises from both shared genes and shared environments and that the patterns of these influences vary between sexes and across time.     

Dialogical Views on Partner Abuser Treatment: Balancing Confrontation and Support

Treatment programs for intimately abusive men seek to stop and prevent partner and family violence by applying a variety of methods based on different disciplinary premises. For professionals working with this particular group of clients, the challenge is to combine therapeutic understanding and support with adequate efforts to make clients stop and reconsider their behavior. This qualitative study investigated conversations within a Finnish abuser treatment program in which an integrative treatment approach was applied. A detailed study of videotaped conversations within a 15-week therapy program was conducted through Dialogical Investigations, a method specifically designed for studying interactions in multiple-actor settings. The findings demonstrate how dialogical investigations can assist in evaluations of the efficacy of abuser treatment programs. Consideration is also given to facilitators’ working style, and some examples of how the two dominant approaches in abuser treatment can be successfully combined are provided.