Political Corruption and Institutional Stability

This article is the first to statistically examine the reciprocal relationship between formal political institutions and political corruption. We argue that political corruption is an informal institution that allows nondemocratic leaders to build political support, act as a substitute for liberalizing concessions in the formal institutions of the state, and thereby extends the longevity of non-democratic regimes. Yet, whereas high corruption level will prevail in nondemocratic regimes, we expect the electoral constituency in democratic regimes to have the formal power to curb political corruption. We demonstrate that these expectations hold by estimating a dynamic multinomial regression model on data for 133 countries for the 1985–2008 period. Our model shows that high-corruption autocracies and hybrid regimes are more stable than their low-corruption counterparts, but that low-corruption democracies are more stable than high-corruption ones. For autocratic and hybrid regimes, the stability is due both to corruption making the formal institutions more resistant to democratization and that the formal institutions prevent reductions in corruption. Consistent democracies, on the other hand, are able to reduce corruption and become more stable as a result.     

Public Organizations, Multiple Constituencies, And Governance

Public organizations vary considerably. Yet little attention has been paid to the systematic analysis of this diversity. Drawing on case studies of four public organizations and a survey on all central government organizations in Denmark, variations in tasks, environments, constituencies, and central governance are conceptualized. Public organization tasks can be analysed at three levels ranging from user-oriented outputs, general outputs which can further be divided into policy goals, scope of profile, standard setting and capital accumulation, to the normative base of the public sector. Public organizations vary with regard to the emphasis put on level of output and on how the different aspects of the tasks are interrelated. Variations in constituencies and exchange cycles with the environment are further related to different task profiles. Finally it is shown that central oversight organizations compete with other actors in the public organizations' environment in the governance of public organizations. From an organizational point of view 'the state' appears to have a humble and remote position.     

Cooperation and conflict: A case study of a women's research network in Norway

During four years (1978–82), 25–30 Norweigian women social scientists formed a research network of small local groups, studying ‘Women's mutual relations’ in various settings. Women's friendships, their cooperation in factories and local communities and in women's organizations were the focus of our research. This article, however, is not about the results of our research—although some of them are reported in the notes—but we describe the organization of our association, its purposes, structure and positive results, as well as our tendencies to build up conflict, fractionalism and withdrawal. The research network was established in opposition to male social science, both with respect to the choice of its main themes and its organizational form. A supportive work style, a ‘horizontal’ structure and a playing down of conflicts was more or less deliberately chosen by the network members. We discuss here some of the types of conflict that developed in the network, and the ways we dealt with them. Most conflicts were either solved ‘talking through’ or handled by avoidance. We ask the question if deliberate conflict avoidance is functional for a feminist network of organization. The case is made for a ‘horizontal network organization as a positive and fruitful supplement to usual academic organization structure.     

Issue saliency,policy distances and coalition bargaining

This article addresses the problem of policy as a constraint for coalition bargaining. Two questions are posed: How fruitful are uni‐dimensional models for the analysis of coalition bargaining in multiparty systems? And how much do we gain by using a multidimensional approach? The questions are examined empirically by applying various sets of ten‐point issue scales. The Norwegian system is used as a case. The analysis indicates that a uni‐dimensional approach contributes notably to the understanding of coalition bargaining in the system. However, as the parties are divided along several traditional cleavages, considerable sophistication can be gained by adding more dimensions to the model.     

Introduction: Unfolding transrational potential

ABSTRACT

This article presents peace education as a process of unfolding potential for peace and conflict transformation. It discusses how the different contributions to this special issue respond to challenges posed by a transrational understanding of peace education that engages with productive tensions present in research and practice. In this sense, the article asks how transrational perspectives can contribute to further understand and engage with these tensions through embracing complexity, contradictions and paradoxes as a field of transformative potentials. Finally, the article presents the objective of this special issue as exploring diverse ways in which transrational perspectives inform peace education - and are informed by it - in the challenging endeavor to facilitate the unfolding of both personal and collective potentials available for peace and conflict transformation.     

Performance of the SNPforID 52 SNP-plex assay in paternity testing

The performance of a multiplex assay with 52 autosomal single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) developed for human identification was tested on 124 mother–child–father trios. The typical paternity indices (PIs) were 10⁵–10⁶ for the trios and 10³–10⁴ for the child–father duos. Using the SNP profiles from the randomly selected trios and 700 previously typed individuals, a total of 83,096 comparisons between mother, child and an unrelated man were performed. On average, 9–10 mismatches per comparison were detected. Four mismatches were genetic inconsistencies and 5–6 mismatches were opposite homozygosities. In only two of the 83,096 comparisons did an unrelated man match perfectly to a mother–child duo, and in both cases the PI of the true father was much higher than the PI of the unrelated man. The trios were also typed for 15 short tandem repeats (STRs) and seven variable number of tandem repeats (VNTRs). The typical PIs based on 15 STRs or seven VNTRs were 5–50 times higher than the typical PIs based on 52 SNPs. Six mutations in tandem repeats were detected among the randomly selected trios. In contrast, there was not found any mutations in the SNP loci. The results showed that the 52 SNP-plex assay is a very useful alternative to currently used methods in relationship testing. The usefulness of SNP markers with low mutation rates in paternity and immigration casework is discussed.     

Evaluation in and of Public-sector Reform: The Case of Denmark in a Nordic Perspective

The purpose of this article is to shed light on the twinned development of public-sector reforms and evaluation in Denmark. While there is a substantial literature on both public-sector reforms and on evaluation, focus has only recently been put on the relations between these phenomena. The case of Denmark has, however, not been included in the international comparison. This article therefore discusses the case of Denmark, comparing it briefly to Finland, Norway and Sweden. The article analyses both 'evaluation in' and 'evaluation of' public-sector reform. 'Evaluation in' refers to the question to what extent evaluation (in line with other elements such as, e.g. privatization and performance management) has been part of the content of reforms. 'Evaluation of' refers to the questions of whether and how reforms themselves have been evaluated. The analysis shows that although the rhetoric of reforms have been similar in the Nordic countries, reform actions and especially the twinned development of reforms and evaluation have differed between the countries.     

Are Party Activists the Party Extremists? The Structure of Opinion in Political Parties

In re-examining May's law of curvilinear disparity, this article analyzes the structure of opinion of political parties. May suggests that voters, party leaders and party activists have different incentives to participate in politics, and therefore voters and leaders have more moderate positions on issues than party activists. This article is based on the extensions of May's law made by Kitschelt, who argues that curvilinear disparities, although not general phenomena, are bound to occur in specific circumstances. We have focused on the level of cleavage conflict in the system, the variable that Kitschelt himself found to be critical for explaining party radicalism among sub-leaders. Using the Norwegian multiparty system as a test case, we propose that radicalism among party activists is conditioned by the relative saliency of different policy dimensions. The empirical analysis, which is based on surveys of MPs, party members and voters in connection with the general election of 1993, gives very little support to our proposition.