Your World of Legal Intelligence
 United Kingdom | +44 (0) 20 7284 8080

Books and Journals

Category

Publisher

Latest documents

  • Healthy citizens, healthy democracies? A review of the literature

    A growing literature over the past 10 years on health and political behavior has established health status as an important source of political inequality. Poor health reduces psychological engagement with politics and discourages political activity. This lowers incentives for governments to respond to the needs of those experiencing ill health and thereby perpetuates health disparities. In this review article, we provide a critical synthesis of the state of knowledge on the links between different aspects of health and political behavior. We also discuss the challenges confronting this research agenda, particularly with respect to measurement, theory, and establishing causality, along with suggestions for advancing the field. With the COVID-19 pandemic casting health disparities into sharp focus, understanding the sources of health biases in the political process, as well as their implications, is an important task that can bring us closer to the ideals of inclusive democracy.

  • Mapping the research trends on political communication in Asia: A bibliometric analysis using R package and VOS

    Political communication refers to developing and exchanging political ideas and opinions among the general public, elected officials, political parties and affiliated organisations like the media. Recent years have seen an enormous amount of literature in the area of political communication owing to the growing interest of academics in the subject. Using the R package bibliometrix and the Visualisation of Similarities viewer programme, this study aims to enhance graphical mapping of the bibliographic data for political communication publications in select countries of Asia. The results show that, especially since 2016, scholars have been paying more and more attention to the study of political communication in the age of fake news, hyperpolarization, etc. They also show that research publications on the topics of communication, China, Taiwan, India, the USA, social media, articles, politics, the internet, decision-making, democracy, governance and elections are gaining momentum in recent years. Additionally, the findings show that the top three nations for publishing articles on political communication are the USA, China and Russia. The findings also reveal that even scholars from non-democratic or less democratic countries have made substantial attempts to improve political communication studies, despite the fact that political communication is one of the most crucial components in democratic countries.

  • Integrating standard and network psychometrics to assess the quality of prison life in Serbia

    In the present research, we analysed the properties of the Measuring the Quality of Prison Life (MQPL) survey in Serbia; it assesses five dimensions of prisoners’ well-being (harmony, professionalism, security, conditions and family contact, and well-being and development) composed of 21 narrow scales. The participants were 650 prisoners serving sentences in five prisons. Reliabilities (measured by both Cronbach's alphas and test–retest correlations) were high for most narrow scales and excellent for global scales. Confirmatory factor analysis showed a satisfactory fit of the model although the MQPL dimensions showed high intercorrelations (indicating elevated informational redundancy). The validity of the scales was established by detecting positive correlations with the WHOQOL-BREF quality of life scale and by capturing the differences between the five prisons in which the data were collected. We used network analysis to detect the most central nodes in MQPL: analysis on the dimension level revealed that harmony, professionalism, and well-being and development had high centrality. Estimating the network on the level of narrow scales demonstrated that prisoners’ well-being, organisation and consistency in prison activities, and help and assistance from prison staff were central aspects of their quality of life. Therefore, the present findings show that MQPL scales have high reliability and validity, the model fits the empirical data, and the central aspects of prisoners’ quality of life are identified; at the same time, we also analysed the limitations of MQPL. In general, the results suggest that MQPL is a valuable tool for assessing the quality of life and social climate in prisons.

  • The afterlives of state failure: echoes and aftermaths of colonialism

    This article offers a new perspective on the failed states agenda, and the reconfiguration of colonial discourse buttressing it, by theorising its afterlives. The concept of afterlives has mostly been discussed as a metaphor or in passing in the IR literature. Drawing from the post- and decolonial literature, we propose to define the concept simultaneously as echoes and aftermaths of the past. This conceptualisation of afterlives aims to contribute to the study of the persistence of colonial forms beyond notions of continuity and rupture. We develop the concept of afterlives through a discussion of the failed states agenda and its iterations. We discuss four specific iterations of the agenda: the genesis of the agenda in the decolonisation period; the consolidation of the agenda during the early 1990s; the crisis of the agenda and the rise of the resilience discussion; and finally the rise of the fragile city agenda as one of the afterlives of the failed states agenda. To illustrate our argument, we discuss two specific ‘fragments’ through which we can effectively grasp the echoes and aftermaths of coloniality: the pathologisation of fragile states and cities, operated through various twin figures (civilised/barbaric; strong/dysfunctional; resilient/vulnerable) and their practical repercussions; and the visualisation, mapping and colour-coding of fragile states and cities, exemplifying the durability and contradictions of the failed states agenda.

  • Book Review: Evaluation management: How to commission and conduct evaluations that matter
  • Police body-worn cameras and privacy: Views and concerns of officers and citizens

    Police body-worn cameras (BWC) have been lauded for their potential to increase transparency and accountability by documenting officers’ actions and interactions with citizens. However, despite their widespread use in recent years, several law enforcement agencies have been hesitant to adopt this technology because of privacy concerns. This article explores the views of police officers and citizens from the Canadian province of Quebec towards the use of BWCs. Specifically, it seeks to: (a) understand how officers feel about being monitored by BWCs and (b) assess citizens’ privacy concerns towards police BWCs. A mixed-method research design was used, including interviews and focus groups with 78 police officers, including 46 officers from four pilot sites, and a telephone survey of 1609 residents from the same sites. The results show that officers are concerned about the potential effects of BWCs on their privacy and the privacy of the public. One major area of concern is the impact it may have on their work performance and the use of adaptative measures that support them in carrying out challenging duties. By contrast, most citizens have no reservations about being recorded by a BWC. Certain individual characteristics—such as age and perceptions of the police—however, were associated with heightened privacy concerns. Without neglecting citizens’ privacy, this study provides insights into the development of BWC policies that preserve officers’ right to privacy and ability to fulfill their duty.

  • Documenting the Document: The Forensic Hospital Report and Its Knowledge Moves

    Drawing on case files from a Canadian provincial review board tasked with determining the disposition of persons found ‘not criminally responsible on account of mental disorder’, we explore the role of the forensic hospital report in the production of medico-legal risk knowledges. Through a detailed case study, we show how the report's content and particular material form allow the Board to produce the ‘significantly threatening individual’ – the very thing the Board (and report) are meant to presuppose. We therefore call on scholars to document their documents, and, in the spirit of actor-network theory (ANT), to analytically treat socio-legal objects as active participants in knowledge's creation. By accounting for the ‘knowledge moves’ the hospital report might allow, encourage, or prohibit human actors to make, we hope even ANT sceptics can use these tools to better understand various legal decision-making processes and their effects.

  • List of Periodicals / Liste des Périodiques
  • “Money is not an issue!”: Hospital CFOs’ narratives about handling a sudden shift in managerial focus

    The sustained political and managerial focus on cost containment and efficiency in hospitals has been altered by COVID-19-related concerns about public health. Through a novel qualitative study in Denmark, we explore CFOs’ narratives of their experiences during a sudden shift in managerial logic. All of the CFOs describe engagement in key operational procedures and change management that was fostered by the constant search for stability that strongly depended on bottom-up decision-making and flexibility. During this process, the existing competing logics of managerialism and medical professionalism vanished. The CFOs describe new forms of dynamic and collaborative approaches. The possibility of adhering to the core logic of administrative accounting techniques combined with urgency and emotional encounters appears to enable this approach. Thus, we document a moment when well-known opposing logics were suspended by exogenous urgency. This finding suggests possibilities for moving beyond deep-rooted views on established public administration structures and logics. Points for practitioners Financial managers show administrative skills that are useful for public administration changes in both administration and daily operations. These managers appear to have a strong core identity and willingness to dynamically engage with and facilitate acute frontline operational issues. In an emergency situation such as COVID-19, we find co-dependency across subject fields (administration and medical professions) which enables collaborations.

  • Mental pictures, structural constraints: Kenneth N. Waltz’s approach to theory

    The aim of this article is to develop Kenneth N. Waltz’s conceptualization of system structures based on the distribution of capabilities to those described by two traits at system-level: the distribution of capabilities across states and states’ geographic positions with respect to each other, that is, the contiguity configuration. The development generates taxonomies of structures evaluated as mental pictures that guide, organize, and channel thoughts by identifying the ways system structures constrain international interactions. Mental pictures are argued to derive from a multiplicity of interrelated neurophysiological processes of the brain according to functionalism which is a monist doctrine of the philosophy of mind. Mental pictures establish structural constraints as products of an algorithm based on realism and system theory depicting a neo-Kantian view of how our minds impose order on sensory data.

VLEX uses login cookies to provide you with a better browsing experience. If you click on 'Accept' or continue browsing this site we consider that you accept our cookie policy. ACCEPT