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This survey was funded from the European Commission's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme, Grant Agreement no. 693221 as part of the PROMISE project and was administered by the University of Tartu, Estonia.
It covers various areas of societal and political participation, conflict/support experiences, efficacy, and selected values of young and adult people in ten European countries, with a short standardized questionnaire being used to collect reports on perceptions, attitudes and behaviours.
The survey was administered using a central survey server at the Universtity of Tartu and used samples recruited from various standing online panels in the participating countries, i.e. effectively a quota sampling design was employed. Young persons in the age bracket 15-29 years were oversampled to achieve a realized case count of at least 600 such persons in each country.
More information on http://www.promise.manchester.ac.uk/en/home-page/

An ideal-typical federation is based on an agreement between its member states, has a federal constitution, a separate federal parliament, two tiers of government and an independent institution to solve conflicts between these two levels. How far from such an ideal type is the unity of the Realm, and is it possible to create a full federation consisting of Denmark, Greenland and the Faroes? The analysis shows that the Realm has several federal features and could be conceptualised as a semi-federation. There are possibilities for further federalisation, but the demographic differences between its parts prevent a full federation. The federal perspective is relevant in the 21st century's Arctic development since it can capture and conceptualize some of the most pertinent political and social dynamics within the Realm and the challenges it faces.

Artikkelen tar utgangspunkt i EØS-avtalens relative anonymitet i samfunnet fra dag til dag. Avtalens fundamentale innvirkning på regeldannelsen er lite synlig. Forfatterne trekker paralleller til integrasjonen av romerretten i europeisk rett på 1100-tallet og til dagens moderne, digitaliserte samfunn der løpende oppdatering av programvare er mer er en nødvendighet enn et reelt valg.
Abstract in English:The EEA Agreement's Significance for Norwegian Lawmaking – Passive Reception of Foreign Law or Pro-active European Policy?The article's starting point is the relative anonymity of the EEA Agreement in day to day society. This renders its fundamental impact on the legislation partially occluded. The authors draw on parallels both to the reception of Roman law into European law in the 12th century and to the digitalisation of modern society, where the decision to update software is a virtual rather than a real choice.

This paper proposes a pretreatment of a real dairy effluent by coagulation and decantation using two types of coagulants, aluminum sulfate (Al2(SO4)3) and ferric chloride (FeCl3). In order to optimize the best coagulation conditions leading to maximums of COD and turbidity removals, response surface method (RSM) was employed. The analysis of variance showed that the values of the correlation coefficients (R2) for the reduction of turbidity and COD were found equal respectively to 0.959 and 0.840, which gives an idea about the validity of the quadratic developed models and their predictive qualities. The results predicted by the models were 98.18 and 77.06% of turbidity and COD removals, at Al2(SO4)3 concentration of 1200mg/L and time of treatment of 38.57min. These results are in agreement with those obtained experimentally.

AbstractBalance theory has advanced with interdisciplinary contributions from social science, physical science, engineering, and mathematics. The common focus of attention is social networks in which every individual has either a positive or negative, cognitive or emotional, appraisal of every other individual. The current frontier of work on balance theory is a hunt for a dynamical model that predicts the temporal evolution of any such appraisal network to a particular structure in the complete set of balanced networks allowed by the theory. Finding such a model has proved to be a difficult problem. In this article, we contribute a parsimonious solution of the problem that explicates the conditions under which a network will evolve either to a set of mutually antagonistic cliques or to an asymmetric structure that allows agreement, cooperation, and compromise among cliques.

Although online political incivility has increasingly become an object of scholarly inquiry, there exists little agreement on the construct's precise definition. The goal of this work was therefore to explore the relational dynamics among previously identified dimensions of online political incivility. The results of a regularized partial correlation network indicated that a communicator's desire to exclude attitude-discrepant others from discussion played an especially influential role in the variable network. The data also suggested that certain facets of incivility may be likely to be deployed together. Specifically, the data suggested the existence of two identifiable groupings of incivility factors: (1) variables pertaining to violation of speech-based norms and (2) variables pertaining to the violation of the inclusion-based norms that underlie democratic communication processes. These results are discussed in the context of political discussion and deliberation.

The article examines the relationship between the rules on State aid and the fundamental freedoms when ruling on the compatibility with EU law of domestic transfer pricing provisions, based on the arm's length principle. It shows that the Commission's recent practice concerning State aid on advance pricing agreements is difficult to reconcile with the ECJ's case law when ruling on the arm's length principle under the fundamental freedoms. On the one hand, the Member States should not be too restrictive when applying their transfer pricing rules, as stemming from the proportionality requirement under the fundamental freedoms,while on the other hand they must not be too lenient either, otherwise they risk a State aid investigation. Pressed at both ends by these opposing forces, the margin for error becomes narrow or, sometimes, non-existent.

AbstractOpen adoptions have increased over the past few decades, and although guidance for considering and creating open adoption agreements exist, one area of needed post‐adoption support is helping adoptive birth/first families navigate open‐adoption relationships after finalization. Adoption agencies have a responsibility to assist adoptive parents, who may have fears and concerns about openness, see the potential benefits rather than only the challenges. This article describes a practice model designed by one agency to help families navigate post‐adoption openness. The Inclusive Family Support model is conceptualized through the theoretical perspectives of family systems theory, ambiguous loss and disenfranchised grief, and the transtheoretical model of change. We highlight the major dimensions of the model, how it will be implemented and evaluated at one agency, and discuss implications for practice and policy.

AbstractParenting programmes are recommended as an effective means to support parents in promoting positive relationships with, and managing the behaviour of, their children. One barrier that impedes their successful implementation is that partners, especially fathers, are less frequently recruited by child welfare services. This article reports on a study that investigated how both parents were engaged with parenting services. Direct recordings were made of initial telephone conversations between six practitioners and 28 parents referred to those services and investigated for evidence of how the other parent was recruited. Conversation analysis was used to identify how participants introduced the possibility of both parents being included in the service, how these possibilities were negotiated, and what eventual agreements were made for both parents to be included in future arrangements. Implications for practice, training, and future research are considered.

Abstract
In a recent article, Gibler, Miller, and Little (2016) (GML) conduct an extensive review of the Militarized Interstate Dispute (MID) data between the years 1816 and 2001, highlighting possible inaccuracies and recommending a substantial number of changes to the data. They contend that, in several instances, analyses with their revised data lead to substantively different inferences. Here, we review GML's MID drop and merge recommendations and reevaluate the substantive impact of their changes. We are in agreement with about 76 percent of the recommended drops and merges. However, we find that some of the purported overturned findings in GML's replications are not due to their data, but rather to the strategies they employ for replication. We reexamine these findings and conclude that the remaining differences in inference stemming from the variations in the MID data are rare and modest in scope.

Conspiracy theories are central to political discourse in Venezuela and are widely supported. In the Americas Barometer Venezuela survey from 2016 to 2017, 54 percent of respondents expressed agreement for at least one of three political conspiracy narratives unsupported by evidence. Political loyalties to Chavismo or to the anti-Chavista opposition drive much conspiracy theory belief, but not all. Politically motivated reasoning pushes some citizens toward a given conspiracy narrative but others away. Other factors that are distinct from political loyalties, including low education levels, predispositions toward Manichaeanism and fatalism, and belief in the supernatural are associated with conspiracism. This article presents new data on conspiracy theory beliefs in Venezuela as well as analysis of its individual-level correlates, then discusses how the current Venezuelan political environment fosters conspiracy and what changes might mitigate this phenomenon.

Climate-related foreign aid is on the rise, with signatories to the Paris Climate agreement pledging $100 billion annually to promote mitigation and adaptation in recipient countries. While this seems like a welcome development, we have little evidence that climate aid actually encourages recipients to adopt climate legislation. In this article, we examine the relationship between climate aid and recipient climate policy. Using multiple measures of each, we find no evidence that the former is systematically related to the latter. Although this suggests that climate aid is ineffective, this conclusion must be qualified due to the poor quality of both climate aid and climate policy data. More definitive conclusions will require more accurate coding of climate aid as well as better climate policy measures that distinguish truly consequential policies from less consequential ones.

This scholarly work examines the environmental protection legislation of Ukraine and its application in practice, aiming to identify the main challenges it faces in the context of the required harmonization of Ukrainian environmental legislation with EU law according to the Association Agreement, while also making suggestions on how to better respond to these issues. This paper also refers to the experience of EU member states in the field of environmental liability. Legal nature, content and meaning of the criminal liability of legal persons in the environmental sphere according to the law of EU member states were studied in order to determine the appropriateness and mechanism of implementation of such responsibility in Ukraine. Arguments for establishment of criminal liability of legal persons were presented. Keywords: Environmental policy, environmental crime, environmental responsibility, adaptation of Ukrainian environmental legislation to EU standards.

This article explores the case of informal car parkers in Mexico City, to whom drivers regularly entrust the keys to their vehicles. In contrast to literature on social trust that expects institutional trust and interpersonal trust to support one another, the article shows that interpersonal trust improbably arises in the context of corrupt and inefficient institutions. Coercive and market dynamics undergird the interactions among car parkers, police officers, and drivers, making possible the emergence of an informal market and noncontractual agreements. The exchange between car parkers and drivers depends on the performance of class—a performance that becomes legible and formulaic enough to appear safe, precisely because it coalesces classist tropes that are clearly distinct and recognizable. Interpersonal trust becomes possible not only despite class cleavages and institutional shortcomings but, paradoxically, because of them.

In this paper, the earlier results, which were obtained with the climate model developed at the A.M. Obu khov Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Russian Academy of Sciences (IAP RAS CM) and related to the impact of the atmospheric sulphur dioxide on terrestrial carbon cycle, are elucidated. Because of the unavailability of the global data for near surface SO2 concentration, it was reconstructed by using statistical model which was fitted employing the output of the atmospheric chemistry-transport model RAMS-CMAQ. The obtained results are in general agreement with those reported earlier. In particular, the most significant SO2 impact on terrestrial carbon cycle is simulated for south-east North America and for Europe. However, such impact for south-east Asia is markedly weaker in comparison to that reported earlier, which is related to excessive moisture content in the atmosphere of this region.