The Compound Machinery of Government: The Case of Seconded Officials in the European Commission

This article explores the compound machinery of government. Attention is directed toward decision making within the core executive of the European Union—the European Commission. The article studies seconded national civil servants (SNEs) hired on short‐term contracts. The analysis benefits from an original and rich body of surveys and interview data derived from current and former SNEs. The decision‐making dynamics of SNEs are shown to contain a compound mix of departmental, epistemic, and supranational dynamics. This study clearly demonstrates that the socializing power of the Commission is conditional and only partly sustained when SNEs exit the Commission. Any long‐lasting effect of socialization within European Union's executive machinery of government is largely absent. The compound decision‐making dynamics of SNEs are explained by (1) the organizational affiliations of SNEs, (2) the formal organization of the Commission apparatus, and (3) only partly by processes of resocialization of SNEs within the Commission.     

FRIENDS WITH MY FUTURE SELF: LONGITUDINAL VIVIDNESS INTERVENTION REDUCES DELINQUENCY

In a field experiment, we use a novel method to test whether instilling a greater sense of vividness of the future self motivates people to act in a more future‐oriented way and reduces their delinquent involvement. We manipulate vividness of the future self by having participants, a sample of high‐school youth (N = 133), “befriend” an avatar representing their future self on a social network website. For 7 days, they reply to short messages from their future self designed to trigger thinking about that distant self. Using repeated‐measures analysis of variance (ANOVA), we find that participants who had been linked to their future self report less delinquent involvement, whereas controls did not. Furthermore, the results of a nonparametric bootstrapping procedure show that this effect is mediated by changes in vividness of the future self, such that increases in vividness lead to lower self‐reported delinquency. We conclude that vividness of the future self holds promise not only as a cognitive explanation for the failure to make informed cost–benefit trade‐offs but also for interventions aiming to reduce delinquency.     

WHAT’S VALUED MOST? SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE ORGANIZATIONAL VALUES OF THE PUBLIC AND PRIVATE SECTOR

In recent administrative and organizational literature much attention has been paid to values that guide organizational and managerial behaviour in the public and private domain. Comparative empirical research efforts, however, are sparse. This article reports the results of a comparative empirical survey of 382 managers from a variety of public and private sector organizations in The Netherlands. Contrary to much recent literature that presupposes the intermixing or convergence of value systems guiding governance in different kinds of organizations, the results of this study show two distinct and relatively classical value systems for government and business as well as a ‘common core’ of important organizational qualities. These are accountability, expertise, reliability, efficiency and effectiveness, all of which are considered crucial in both public and private sector organizations. Additional analysis shows that value preferences are primarily attached to sector rather than to age, gender, working experience, or previous employment in the other sector.     

Obama Should Be a Second Carter in the Middle East

President Barack Obama has extended the hand of engagement to the Muslim and Arab world, while warning Israel against new settlements in occupied Palestine and hedging his bets with remote drone strikes against Al-Qaida and the Taliban in Pakistan. The new CIA director, a military historian and the Somali-born feminist Ayaan Hirsi Ali assess his strategy.     

Regulatory Disclosure of Offending Companies in the Dutch Financial Market: Consumer Protection or Enforcement Publicity?

Regulatory disclosure of names of offending companies is increasingly popular as an alternative to traditional command and control regulation. The goals and intended effects of disclosure are not always clear, however. Do regulators wish to increase their transparency, or do they intend to name and shame? This article aims to contribute to a better understanding of the underlying working mechanism of regulatory disclosure of offenders' names through a case study of the Dutch Authority for Financial Markets' disclosure policy. It distinguishes two types of disclosure strategies: consumer oriented and firm oriented. The case study shows that although informing consumers was the primary purpose of disclosure as intended by the Dutch legislature, the purpose in practice has shifted to informing companies about the regulators' enforcement policy. The nature of the disclosed information makes it unlikely that disclosure adequately prevents financial risk taking by consumers. Instead of empowering consumers, disclosure has been incorporated in a traditional deterrence logic, turning out not to be an example of new governance but instead a modern version of command and control enforcement publicity.     

Fragile Convergence: Understanding Variation in the Enforcement of China's Industrial Pollution Law

Official statistics and independent survey data show that in the last decade China has witnessed a remarkable change in its enforcement of environmental pollution violations, moving toward more formalistic and coercive law enforcement with more enforcement cases as well as higher fines. The data also show that there is considerable regional variation with coastal areas having more and higher punishments than those inland. This article explores these findings, seeking to understand the explanation and meaning of these temporal and regional variation patterns. The study shows how enforcement varies when there is a convergence of governmental, social, and economic institutional forces. The article argues that the basis for such convergence has been fragile, as national pressures have lacked consistency and local community and government support evaporates when dominant sources of income are at stake.