Suicide and the media. Part II: Portrayal in fictional media

The association between the portrayal of suicide in fictional media and actual suicide has been debated since 1774, when it was asserted that Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther had led people to take their own lives. Since that time, a plethora of studies considering the association has been conducted. This review considered 34 studies examining the impact of fictional portrayal of suicide (in film and television, music, and plays) on actual suicidal behavior. It asked the question: "Is there any association, and if so, can it be considered causal?" Using strict criteria to establish causality, we found that the evidence was more equivocal than was the case for nonfictional reporting.     

Aid and state-building,Part II: Afghanistan and Iraq

Part I of this article found that, in South Korea and Taiwan, institutional legacy and continuity as well as the politics of aid did matter for post-war state-building. The inheritance and continuity of Weberian states and the receipt of aid either as budget support or increasingly aligned with local priorities helped to foster state-building. Part II of the study in this article explores a different dynamic of post-war aid to Afghanistan and Iraq which had a legacy of neopatrimonial and weak states. It argues that under more adverse initial conditions – for a neopatrimonial state – the role of aid regime and state-building strategies become even more important. Under these conditions, aid and state-building strategies may undermine state-building if they induce discontinuity in the existing state capacity and create parallel institutions to those of the state. Depending on the policies, state weakness may be reinforced if leaders are preoccupied with the politics of patronage.     

Interview With a Terrorist by Vocation: A Day Among the Diehard Terrorists,Part II

The interview that follows was conducted somewhere in Italy with a militant of the Red Brigades recently freed after spending 32 years and 6 months in prison. Taking up the sociological perspective of Max Weber, the author draws a distinction between “professional terrorist” and “vocational terrorist”. The terrorist by vocation differs from the professional terrorist in his profound faith in the mission he feels he must accomplish. He does not try to improve his social status and is not interested in the selfish pursuit of personal well-being. He gives up love, family, children and friendship. When he decides to join a terrorist group, he voluntarily severs any contact with his former life. He is a high school or university graduate and might choose a secure life and a good job but prefers to kill, accepting the risk of dying. The vocational terrorist is the terrorist in his incandescent state.     

Joined-up government and privacy in the United Kingdom: managing tensions between data protection and social policy. Part II

The tension between the goals of integrated, seamless public services, requiring more extensive data sharing, and of privacy protection, now represents a major challenge for UK policy‐makers, regulators and service managers. In Part I of this article (see Public Administration volume 83, number 1, pp. 111–33), we showed that attempts to manage this tension are being made at two levels. First, a settlement is being attempted at the level of general data protection law and the rules that govern data‐sharing practices across the public sector. We refer to this as the horizontal dimension of the governance of data sharing and privacy. Secondly, settlements are also being attempted within particular fields of public policy and service delivery; this we refer to as the vertical dimension. In this second part, we enquire whether risks to privacy are greater in some policy sectors than others. We do this, first by showing how the Labour Government's policy agenda is producing stronger imperatives towards data sharing than was the case under previous administrations in three fields of public policy and services, and by examining the safeguards introduced in these fields. We then compare the settlements emerging from differing practices within each of these policy sectors, before briefly assessing which, if any, principles of data protection seem to be most at risk and in which policy contexts. Four strategies for the governance of data sharing and privacy are recapitulated – namely, seeking to make the two commitments consistent or even mutually reinforcing; mitigating the tensions with safeguards such as detailed guidelines; allowing privacy to take precedence over integration; and allowing data sharing to take precedence over privacy. We argue that the UK government has increasingly sought to pursue the second strategy and that the vertical dimension is, in practice, much more important in defining the settlement between data sharing and privacy than is the horizontal dimension. This strategy is, however, potentially unstable and may not be sustainable. The conclusion proposes a radical recasting of the way in which the idea of a ‘balance’ between privacy and data‐sharing imperatives is conceived.