Members of parliament have more effective incentives to cater for the majority’s preferences when they are elected in districts with few seats in parliament rather than in districts with many seats. We empirically investigate this hypothesis by matching voting behavior on legislative proposals of Swiss members of parliament with real referenda outcomes on the same issues for the years 1996 to 2...

In reply to a question on July 11th, the Minister of Health stated that the Government welcomed the imaginative concept of World Mental Health Year; and that his Ministry had been cooperating with those responsible for the arrangements for observing the Year in this country, including Mental Health Week. On August 5th, Miss Edith Pitt, Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Health announced...

Discharges from Broadmoor On August 3rd, Mr. Kenneth Robinson asked the Home Secretary what decisions he had made about patients in Broadmoor Hospital whose discharge had been recommended by the Mental Health Review Tribunal to whom applications had been referred by him. Mr. Butler said that in four out of the 88 cases which had so far been reviewed, the Tribunal had advised discharge; in two o...

"In the course of our enquiry we received much evidence, both oral and written, to which we have not referred in this report. We have, however, investigated with care all the available evidence on all the incidents in Sowle's life which could possibly give rise to the view that he was in April 1961 a potential danger to the public. We have summarised that evidence in the course of this report. ...

Spain is a parliamentary monarchy. The 1978 Constitution followed a long period of dictatorship, after which the country underwent a major transformation of the State and its political structure. Territorially, the political organization of the Spanish State is made up of a central state and 17 highly decentralized regions (Comunidades Autónomas, autonomous communities) with their respective go...