The Swiss Parliament is distinguished in historical international comparison by its tradition of non-professional public service. Although existing literature on interest groups (IGs) mainly treats the influence and pressure they have placed upon members of parliament (MPs), for Switzerland – particularly in light of this non-professional public service tradition – it also appears warranted to study ties between IGs and MPs. These ties, however, whether in the form of MPs being full-time employees or leading members (but not employees) of interest groups, have so far not been studied systematically. This analysis investigates the evolution of these ties from 1970 to 2010. Taking as a point of departure the increased professionalization of the Swiss Parliament, especially due to the intro- duction of permanent and specialized committees and increased compensation for parliamentary work since the beginning of the 1990s, we find that the number of MPs who are also full-time employees of IGs has steadily decreased since the 1990s. The number of MPs serving as outside or “honorary” board members of IGs has, however, actually increased since the beginning of the 1990s. This also reflects the increased importance of the Parliament in the Swiss political system, which gives interest groups with an increased incentive to develop ties to MPs. At the same time, our results show that public IGs now have more MPs as board members than do traditionally corporatist IGs.
Racial discrimination uses race as grounds to discriminate in the treatment owed to others; sexual discrimination uses people’s sexual features as grounds for determining how they should be treated compared to others. Analogously, statistical discrimination treats statistical inferences about the groups to which individuals belong as grounds for discriminating amongst them in thought, word and deed. Examples of statistical discrimination include the employer who won’t hire women of childbearing age, because they are likely to take maternity leave at some point in their careers; or insurers who wish to charge more to young drivers than to more experienced ones, because they are more likely to have accidents than the latter – or to favour women over men in the cost of premiums for similar reasons. Finally, a famous – infamous – example of statistical discrimination is racial profiling for police purposes, where statistical evidence of differential propensities to crime are used to justify preventive police measures, such as ‘stop and search’, which mainly target young black men, and other racialized minorities. So, what should we make of statistical discrimination?
ABSTRACT Does it matter that almost all juries in England and Wales are all-White? Does it matter, even if this result is the unintended and undesired result of otherwise acceptable ways of choosing juries? Finally, does it matter that almost all juries are all-White if this has no adverse effect on the treatment of non-White defendants and victims of crime? According to Cheryl Thomas, there is no injustice in a system of jury selection, which predictably results in juries with no minority members, so long as this result is not deliberate and does not adversely affect the treatment of minority defendants and victims of crime. My view is different. In and of itself, I believe, something is wrong with a system of jury selection that predictably results in all-White juries in a diverse society, such as our own. Absent reason to believe that we lack a better alternative to current modes of jury selection, a commitment to democratic government and to the equality of citizens – or so I will argue – condemns existing arrangements as unjust, whether or not they have adverse effects on jury decisions, or on the ways in which our society approaches issues of race and crime.
Social movements have attracted much attention in recent years, both from scholars and among the wider public. This book examines the consequences of social movements, covering such issues as the impact of social movements on the life course of participants and the population in general, on political elites and markets, and on political parties and processes of social movement institutionalization. The volume makes a significant contribution to research on social movement outcomes in three ways: theoretically, by showing the importance of hitherto undervalued topics in the study of social movements outcomes; methodologically, by expanding the scientific boundaries of this research field through an interdisciplinary approach and new methods of analysis; and empirically, by providing new evidence about social movement outcomes from Europe and the United States.
The origin of peace movements can be traced back to the early nineteenth century, with the foundation of the first peace societies in the Anglo-Saxon world. Issues addressed by the movements include the general fight against war and promotion of peace (including internationalism), antiwar mobilization, nuclear disarmament (including nuclear test ban), mobilization against military infrastructures, and for civil service. Different phases can be discerned in the Western context: the rise of pacifism as a collective and public issue during the nineteenth and early twentieth century; the Cold War era; peace movements as part of the new social movements from the late 1960s to the late 1980s; and the post-Cold War era. The strength and specific features of peace movements vary both across time and across space depending on the specific features of each national context. Today, peace movements are seen as part of the broader family of the new social movements. Scholarly works have characterized the profile of participants in these movements as being rooted in the new middle class, displaying left-libertarian values, and sharing a common concern over social issues, but have also stressed important difference across countries in their social bases. Peace movements find their most important effects at the societal and cultural level rather than at the political level.
This article examines the role of social class for individual participation in social movements, more specifically in street demonstrations. The authors use protest survey data in order to avoid the limitations of previous research by contextualizing the effect of social class on participation in protest. The analysis focuses on demonstrations addressing redistributive and cultural issues, reflecting a well-known distinction between old and new social movements. The authors show that participants in these two types of demonstrations, as well as in a third, mixed category, present a similar class structure, which casts some doubts on this distinction, although slight differences remain. Furthermore, a comparison of three countries that differ in terms of the strength of the class cleavage (Belgium, Sweden, and Switzerland) suggests that this cleavage acts as a moderator of the relationship between social class and participation in street demonstrations.
