This is a book about elections to the European Parliament, their failure to legitimate and control the exercise of power in the European Union, and the consequences of this failure for domestic politics in EU member states. It also sheds new light on why voters behave the way they do. The authors examine the 1989 Europe-wide elections with the aid of large-scale surveys fielded in all twelve member countries of the (then) European Community--placing European citizens within their institutional, political, economic, and social contexts. In particular, because three countries held national elections concurrently with the 1989 European elections, the study controls for the presence or absence of a national election context--permitting the authors to investigate electoral behavior in general, not just at European elections. Looking at such behavior while taking account of the strategic contexts within which elections are held has yielded new insights about turnout and party choice, while clarifying the crisis of legitimacy that faces the European Union. The more recent Europe-wide elections of 1994 are used to validate the findings. This book will be of interest to political scientists interested in elections, the European Union, comparative politics, and political development.
Background Objective measurements estimated that 1.57 billion people globally had hearing loss in 2019. However, where audiologists are sparse, self-reported measures have been suggested as alternatives to assess burden. Moreover, research suggests this number varies by gender, due to biological and social mechanisms. Further refining our knowledge of the global prevalence of hearing loss will provide better understanding of which groups are most affected and how to best allocate resources.Methods Using Gateway to Global Ageing data and the South African National Income Dynamics Study, we estimated the prevalence and men:women ratio of self-reported hearing loss and hearing aid use for 28 countries. Hearing loss was measured as having fair/poor hearing or reporting hearing aid use. We included 664 580 observations of individuals aged 50+ years.Results We found that the four countries with the highest levels of hearing loss (China 65%, South Korea 39%, Mexico 33%, Brazil 31%) also had the lowest reported hearing aid use (as low as 1% in China). Though men were more likely than women to report hearing loss in nearly all countries, especially in regions with higher hearing aid use (USA, Northern/Western Europe), China, South Korea and South Africa reported no gender difference. As the prevalence of hearing loss and hearing aid use increased with age, gender differences generally decreased.Conclusion International variation underscores the importance of country context in shaping perceived hearing and hearing aid use. Regions with high levels of hearing loss and low hearing aid use may be especially amenable to interventions.
Medicine (General), Infectious and parasitic diseases
Businesses are influenced by the cyclical nature of economic development and distinct stages in the corporate life cycle. Accurate early-warning mechanisms are crucial to mitigating bankruptcy risk, enabling timely rescue measures. This article analyses the reliability of various bankruptcy prediction models, including those by Kliestik et al., Poznanski, the modified Zmijewski, Jakubik–Teply, and Virag–Hajdu, across corporate life cycle stages. Reliability was assessed using five metrics: accuracy, balanced accuracy, <i>F1</i> and <i>F2</i> scores, and the Matthews correlation coefficient (<i>MCC</i>). The sample included over 5000 SMEs from Central Europe, with financial data from 2022. The findings reveal a U-shaped trend in financial distress risk, with start-ups and declining enterprises facing the highest risks. The results indicate that the Kliestik et al. model shows consistent reliability across all life cycle stages, while the Poznanski model shows more variability. Conversely, the Virag–Hajdu model exhibits significant variability in reliability, with its best performance observed during the Decline stage. The modified Zmijewski and Jakubik–Teply models show lower <i>MCC</i> values overall, with the modified Zmijewski model performing better at predicting the financial distress of mature shake-out firms compared to other stages.
Political institutions and public administration (General)
Resumen El artículo analiza la vida, el exilio y la obra artística del pintor republicano José Luis Fernández Martínez (pintor Sarralde-“Pasajes”) bajo el gobierno republicano y el sucesivo régimen franquista. Alistado como voluntario en el ejército de la República, fue afectado en la Sección de Cultura del Comisariado General de Guerra trabajando codo a codo con otros artistas; sobrevivió a los vencedores enmascarando su pasado durante la posguerra y haciendo frente a los estragos de una España ennegrecida durante la etapa del primer franquismo. Tuvo la suerte de viajar a América muy pronto, en 1945, y la osadía, de cara al gobierno franquista, de entablar amistad con exiliados republicanos en México, en donde se casó y formó familia. Desde entonces y durante largos años residió entre las dos orillas. Su pincel retrató a ilustres personajes del ámbito de la cultura y política durante el gobierno republicano, el régimen franquista y la república de México; pero también aquellos otros exiliados republicanos o personajes afines a la causa en América. Fue único en conectar uno y otro mundo, tan distintos, gracias a su arte.
This article offers a new perspective on children and youth’s coerced displacement in the context of the Ottoman Middle East and highlights their potential as a social group to inform studies of children, kinship, and family vis-a-vis the state. Using iltizām contracts, I argue that the Ottoman state prioritized its stability and economic interests and turned a blind eye to promises it made to ensure the “well-being” of young Ottoman subjects. The contracts recorded around the mid-eighteenth century document an institutionalized practice by the state to remove and incarcerate young and minor males associated with the families of multazims, or tax farmers, who generally hailed from the class of provincial notables, or a‘yān, to persuade the latter to render payment of taxes. Although multazims appeared to be indifferent to the fate of their castaway children, evidence suggests that multazims took advantage of geopolitical changes toward the last quarter of the eighteenth century to avoid the incarceration of their children, as the practice completely disappeared at that time. This article also attempts to approach the question of whether this forced displacement of children represents a form of mobility, in comparison to other forms of children’s mobility, like the devširme, and explores what this meant for the expansion, or retraction, of the state power and its governing policies.
To date, projections of European crop yields under climate change have been based almost entirely on the outputs of crop‐growth models. While this strategy can provide good estimates of the effects of climatic factors, soil conditions and management on crop yield, these models usually do not capture all of the important aspects related to crop management, or the relevant environmental factors. Moreover, crop‐simulation studies often have severe limitations with respect to the number of crops covered or the spatial extent. The present study, based on agroclimatic indices, provides a general picture of agroclimatic conditions in western and central Europe (study area lays between 8.5°W–27°E and 37–63.5°N), which allows for a more general assessment of climate‐change impacts. The results obtained from the analysis of data from 86 different sites were clustered according to an environmental stratification of Europe. The analysis was carried for the baseline (1971–2000) and future climate conditions (time horizons of 2030, 2050 and with a global temperature increase of 5 °C) based on outputs of three global circulation models. For many environmental zones, there were clear signs of deteriorating agroclimatic condition in terms of increased drought stress and shortening of the active growing season, which in some regions become increasingly squeezed between a cold winter and a hot summer. For most zones the projections show a marked need for adaptive measures to either increase soil water availability or drought resistance of crops. This study concludes that rainfed agriculture is likely to face more climate‐related risks, although the analyzed agroclimatic indicators will probably remain at a level that should permit rainfed production. However, results suggests that there is a risk of increasing number of extremely unfavorable years in many climate zones, which might result in higher interannual yield variability and constitute a challenge for proper crop management.