Various research have been directed towards investigating the behaviour of political parties engaging in attacks. However, this topic has predominantly been studied in campaigning venues while focusing only on the attacker (parties that are attacking). This study contributes to the existing literature by (i) studying attack behaviour in the parliamentary venue, and (ii) analysing the interactions between both the attacker and the target. To this end, this paper uses longitudinal data on attacks during question time sessions in the parliaments (2010 to 2020) of Belgium, Croatia and the United Kingdom. More specifically, I investigate the conditions that make parties engage in mutual attacks. These conditions can be characterised along three dimensions: time (proximity to elections), status (government vs. opposition), and ideology (close vs. distant). The results confirm the overarching argument that: (i) more attacks in parliaments happen closer to election day; (ii) opposing parties are more likely to attack the government rather than vice‐versa; (iii) governing parties equally attack the opposition and themselves; and finally, (iv) the larger the ideological distance between parties, the more likely attacks happen (with mainstream parties engaging equally in attack behaviour compared to radical parties). As such, these findings contribute to our understanding of attack strategies between parties in regular day‐to‐day politics.

The author analyses the transport policy of the rail sector in Croatia and tries to give answers regarding the policy stability and change based on the actors in the rail transport. The aim of the paper is to give an overview of the development of the rail sector in modern Croatia and to explore, in a larger period, the relations and beliefs of all types of actors in this area at the national level. As a theoretical background, the author uses an advocacy coalition framework, which states that policy actors are grouped into coalitions within a policy subsystem in which they advocate their beliefs in order to transfer them into government programs, thus provoking change and stability in the system. The author methodologically uses qualitative content analysis in the form of coding of the collected material based on transcripts of interviews with actors, official documents, and transcript of one parliamentary debate. Following is a review of the historical development of the rail sector in Croatia, with an emphasis on the post-independence Croatia period, which provides a basis for concrete research findings. The results are presented in two units: (1) identified actors and their relations, and (2) beliefs of actors. The follow-up discussion points to the existence of similar patterns of beliefs among the actors at the national level. However, the empirical material collected does not establish clear relationships that could be classified as an advocacy coalition. In conclusion, the author argues that the coded material does not give away any importance of the coalitions of actors at the national level for policy stability and change of rail sector leading to recommendations for further research in this area, where other transport sectors should be included as well as international actors.

It has been well established that politicians attack their competitors to reach their political goals. As such, there is a considerable amount of literature on their attack behaviour. However, this literature almost exclusively investigates attack behaviour during campaigns, and so far, few studies have addressed the nature of attacks during more routine times in parliaments. This article aims to fill this gap by examining in-parliament attack behaviour and, more specifically, the gender characteristics of attacks. It is theorised that women are less likely to attack and be attacked than men due to the stereotypical gender roles. However, it is anticipated that this compliance to stereotypes diminishes as proximity to elections increases, resulting in women engaging in attacks as much as men. To limit the cost of their divergence, attacks employed by and toward women are expected to be more civil. Lastly, this study argues that adherence to gender stereotypes is stronger in countries with candidate-centred parliamentary systems than party-centred ones. This study finds support for the theoretical framework using longitudinal data on individual attacks in the parliaments of Belgium, Croatia, and the UK. Results confirm that politicians adhere to gender stereotypical roles in parliaments, with women attacking and being targeted less than men, and when women do attack or are targeted, less incivility is employed. Proximity to elections makes both women and men more hostile, but women lower the cost of their increasing attack behaviour by using less incivility, unlike men who increasingly opt for uncivil attacks closer to elections. Additionally, these findings strongly apply in the candidate-centred system of the UK, whereas in the party-centred system of Belgium and Croatia, hardly any support for the theory can be found.

Experimentally and clinically, we observed that the parasympathicomimetic reaction of the nasal mucosa was congruent with higher sensitivity of the nasal mucosa. The opposite is true of the sympathicomimetic reaction. The reason for this difference in reaction is connected with the transmitting agent of the vegetative system. This is shown in the provocation of intradermal reaction of different allergens by these transmitting agents. Acta Otolaryngol 79Acta Otolaryngol Downloaded from informahealthcare.com by Imperial College London on 08/09/15For personal use only.

Despite the contemporary notion that government and opposition parties’ agendas in the long run positively influence each other, there are reasons to argue that different dynamics are at play as well. More specifically, previous studies neglected to address the short-term, transient interplay between parties’ agendas (within a year) while dominantly focussing on what governing parties talk about (and not on what they actually decide). Therefore, this article focuses on this short-term dynamic by hypothesising that governing parties (in cabinet meetings) and opposing parties (in parliamentary questions) feature issues that are undisclosed by the other side in the recent past, and as such create a negative issue attention influence. In other words, if the government places a certain issue high on its cabinet agenda, it will cause the opposition to avoid that issue in their parliamentary questions in the following months and vice versa. By analysing issue-coded data from the government’s cabinet meetings and opposition questions in Croatia (1992–2017) across multiple issues, I can provide evidence that supports these hypotheses. As such, this study contributes to the current knowledge on the relationship between government and opposition issue attention by offering another take on their interaction from a negative influence perspective.