Using Frons Width to Differentiate Blow Fly Species (Diptera: Calliphoridae) Phormia regina (Meigen) and Protophormia terraenovae (Robineau‐Desvoidy)

Protophormia terraenovae (Robineau‐Desvoidy) (Diptera: Calliphoridae) and Phormia regina (Meigen) (Diptera: Calliphoridae) are morphologically similar blow fly species commonly used for estimating postmortem intervals. Field collection and storage of adults can result in color changes, in particular on calypters and palps; often collected specimens show damage such as wing fray or fungal growth. We measured the frons width: total head width ratio using photographs (ImageJ version 1.49) to differentiate these two species. Both sexes were distinguishable to species, with the greatest difference between males: 12.34% P. terraenovae versus 1.62% P. regina, less so for females: 40.25% P. terraenovae, versus 33.65% P. regina. Incorporating this feature into future blow fly keys would help with distinguishing field‐caught specimens when other features are obstructed.     

Party politics and the survival of central bank governors

Legally independent central banks leave elected politicians with little direct control over monetary policy. The most important indirect channel of influence for governments thus consists in appointing ‘responsive’ central bank officials and removing ‘hostile’ ones. This premise is tested by examining the effect of partisan ties between central bank governors and governments or presidents in 30 European democracies between 1945 and 2012. Drawing on an original dataset containing information on the party affiliations of 195 governors, event history models are employed to show that affiliation with a party represented in the executive (the government or the presidency) has a large and significant positive effect on governor survival. However, affiliation with an opposition party only increases governors' hazards during the first four years of their term, suggesting that the impact of the party label may be overridden as more reliable information about a governor becomes available.     

The Life Cycle of Party Manifestos: The Austrian Case

Election manifestos are one of the most prominent sources of data for the study of party politics and government. Yet the processes of manifesto production, enactment, and public reception are not very well understood. This article attempts to narrow this knowledge gap by conducting a first investigation into the ‘life cycle’ of election manifestos from the drafting stage to their use in the campaign and post-election periods. Specifically, it investigates the Austrian case between 1945 and 2008 (with special emphasis on the 1990s and 2000s), employing a wealth of qualitative and quantitative data. While the research is thus mostly exploratory, it develops systematic expectations about variation between parties according to their ideology, organisation, government status, and characteristics of their electorates across the stages of the manifesto life cycle. Of those factors, organisational characteristics and status as government or opposition parties were found to be relevant.     

The Fulfillment of Parties’ Election Pledges: A Comparative Study on the Impact of Power Sharing

Why are some parties more likely than others to keep the promises they made during previous election campaigns? This study provides the first large‐scale comparative analysis of pledge fulfillment with common definitions. We study the fulfillment of over 20,000 pledges made in 57 election campaigns in 12 countries, and our findings challenge the common view of parties as promise breakers. Many parties that enter government executives are highly likely to fulfill their pledges, and significantly more so than parties that do not enter government executives. We explain variation in the fulfillment of governing parties’ pledges by the extent to which parties share power in government. Parties in single‐party executives, both with and without legislative majorities, have the highest fulfillment rates. Within coalition governments, the likelihood of pledge fulfillment is highest when the party receives the chief executive post and when another governing party made a similar pledge.     

Cleavage of synthetic pentazocine glucuronide with hydrochloric acid

It has been reported before that pentazocine (I) and pentazocine-glucuronide (II) form an artifact (III) by the addition of water to the double bond in the presence of HCl. This reaction leads to different results concerning the investigation of the rate of hydrolysis of II and the recovery of I. The glucuronide was quantitatively hydrolyzed by 20% HCl, but yielded only 15% of I (about 64% was detected as III). With 5% HCl the rate of hydrolysis only amounted to 40%-43%, whereas I yielded 31% (only 9% was recovered as III). The best III yield was obtained with a HCl concentration of 17.5%.     

Do parties matter in delegation? Partisan preferences and the creation of regulatory agencies in Europe

The ideological orientation of parties in government has not been prominently featured in explaining the rise of regulatory agencies. This paper argues that theories based on political uncertainty and credible commitment can yield meaningful predictions regarding the relationship between government preferences and the establishment of regulatory agencies, when ideological orientation is linked with notions of party competence and issue ownership. The empirical section tests three such hypotheses with data on the establishment of 110 regulatory agencies in 20 European democracies between 1980 and 2009, thus providing one of the most comprehensive cross‐national analyses of agency creation to date. The results show that ideologically extreme cabinets are more likely to establish regulatory agencies and that right‐wing governments create more agencies in the economic than in the social domain. These findings partly qualify the view on the scarce relevance of government preferences in explaining the rise of the agency model in regulation and that the emulation mechanism of the diffusion process is the dominant force behind agencification.     

Political Control and Managerial Survival in State‐Owned Enterprises

This article explores the impact of political determinants on the survival of managers in state‐owned enterprises (SOEs). Drawing on theories of bureaucratic delegation, it is argued that preference divergence between principals and agents as well as among principals is a major driver of managerial turnover. More specifically, the partisan affiliation of SOE‐managers with the government, the opposition, or individual ministers can serve to explain the length of their tenure. The analysis employs Cox proportional hazard regressions to test these hypotheses on an original data set of 1,671 managers serving in 87 public corporations in Austria between 1995 and 2010, thus presenting one of the first large‐n analyses of political appointments in a parliamentary system. The results strongly support the proposition that partisan affiliation drives managerial survival.