Non–traditional parties have had newfound success across European democracies contributing to increasing electoral volatility. Drawing from the literature on social movements, voting for an unconventional party can be a form of contentious politics. Support for non– mainstream parties is the institutional manifestation of the factors that contribute to social movements. Perceptions of political...

We study the phase transition of the coalitional manipulation problem for generalized scoring rules. Previously it has been shown that, under some conditions on the distribution of votes, if the number of manipulators is o ( √ n), where n is the number of voters, then the probability that a random profile is manipulable by the coalition goes to zero as the number of voters goes to infinity, whe...

OBJECTIVES Based on health care professionals' (HPs) and patients' interviews about work demands and quality of care in hospitals, the study explores the way that patients and HPs constructed their identities to describe and construct the health care system in Greece. DESIGN This is a qualitative study using a focus group (FG) design. METHODS Seven FGs discussions were conducted: three FGs ...

One of the variables that can be effective in reducing social problems, including alienation, is social capital. Because each of its components, such as trust, participation and group bounds, can lead to greater integration and, consequently, social order. Hence, due to the importance of the subject, the sociological explanation of the impact of social capital on forms of alienation has been di...

Perceived control has convincingly been suggested to be a key concept in explaining socioeconomic differences in health. Some empirical evidence exists of a higher prevalence of low control beliefs (such as powerlessness or fatalism) in lower socioeconomic groups and that this is relevant to socioeconomic inequalities in general health. However, a systematic examination of the extent to which p...

Fatalism has been shown to predict several health behaviors, but researchers often find inconsistent results for the same behaviors across studies. This may be partially attributable to the diversity of fatalism measures that have been used in previous studies. A review of the literature revealed 51 different scales, all purported to measure fatalism, but often with heterogeneous content (Espar...

Violence against women and children, particularly child sexual abuse (CSA) remains a critical public health, human rights, humanitarian-related issue in South Africa. The research base is largely under-developed Africa, given the intense stigmatisation of CSA, low-disclosure rates inherent barriers to accessing perpetrators for purposes. An in-depth qualitative study was conducted with twelve m...

This paper presents findings from the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) prison study - an experimental case study that examined the consequences of randomly dividing men into groups of prisoners and guards within a specially constructed institution over a period of 8 days. Unlike the prisoners, the guards failed to identify with their role. This made the guards reluctant to impose their au...