Pragmatic solidarity and asylum expert witnessing

The demand for expert witness testimony has increased in recent years as the numbers of applicants for refugee status/asylum continue to rise and legal restrictions tighten. While the contribution of expert testimony improves outcomes for refugee and asylum claimants and has generated new critical scholarship, participation as an expert witness is not without political, legal, and ethical concerns. Framed in terms of “pragmatic solidarity,” or the application of specialized knowledge to social justice goals, this article situates expert testimony in refugee and asylum procedures within wider considerations of power to explore how it is both beneficial and problematic, and how it may shape, and be shaped by, a researcher’s own situated questions, methods, and orientation.     

State Attorneys General As Interpreters of State Constitutions

The traditional duties of state attorneys general are to providelegal advice and representation for state officials. The exerciseof those duties afford attorneys general numerous opportunitiesto interpret state constitutions. Opinion writing is the mostvisible way in which attorneys general interpret state constitutionsand implement state appellate court decisions on constitutionalissues. While opinions are not binding on state courts, theyare regularly sought and almost always followed by state officials.Requests for opinions on state constitutional issues are mostlikely to pertain to the internal workings of state government.Not as visible, but just as important is the role attorneysgeneral play in litigating constitutional questions. In carryingout their traditional responsibilities to represent state officialsand their more recently articulated duty to defend the publicinterest, attorneys general are the most prolific litigatorsin state appellate courts.     

The limited effects of testimony on political persuasion

The procedure of witness testimony and cross-examination under oath, which is institutionalized in the court system and in Congress, may increase the credibility of political messages by strengthening perceived incentives for truth-telling. In this paper, I test the hypothesis that testimony can increase the persuasiveness of empirical claims in realistic political settings. However, results from a large number of experiments, including numerous national survey experiments, indicate that describing statements as being made in congressional or court testimony rarely generates significant change in respondents?? beliefs or attitudes??a result that is robust to numerous experimental design variations.     

Testifying in an International War Crimes Tribunal: The Experience of Witnesses in the Special Court for Sierra Leone

The research described in this article investigates the extentto which witnesses who testified in the Special Court for SierraLeone (SCSL) report the experience as positive or negative.It also seeks to identify the factors that contribute to theseevaluations. It reports the results of structured interviewsconducted with 171 witnesses who testified in the SCSL. Thefinding that emerges most strongly is that the experience oftestifying was positive for the majority of witnesses. The courtroomenvironment was experienced as supportive, and witnesses ratedthe experiences of both examination-in-chief and cross-examinationas being more positive than negative, with examination-in-chiefbeing the more positive of the two. The findings suggest thata positive testimony experience can be predicted when a witnessdoes not feel worried at the prospect of testifying, feels respectedby court staff and, to a lesser extent, has a positive experienceof cross-examination.     

Measuring government duration and stability in Central Eastern European democracies

Existing studies of government duration in parliamentary democracies typically measure the length of a government's tenure in office without accounting for delays in the government formation process. By assuming that a cabinet leaves office on the day prior to the new cabinet taking office, these measures ignore periods during which a government has lost its mandate but is still legally in power as a caretaker government. A consequence is that governments that are actually stable and governments that only appear stable because replacement governments take a long time to form are observationally equivalent. This suggests that some existing studies of government stability are potentially flawed. It also means that a number of interesting research questions cannot be answered with existing data. Many of these questions address the various consequences of caretaker governments. The answers to these questions are relevant for scholars interested in representation and accountability. This article presents a new dataset collected on government duration in eleven Central Eastern European democracies from 1990 to 2008 that specifically takes account of caretaker periods and delays in the government formation process. These data will provide scholars with more flexibility to choose the measure that best reflects their underlying conception of government stability.     

PARLIAMENTARY COMMITTEES,PUBLIC SERVANTS AND DUE PROCESS

Abstract: The parliamentary system of government in its Australian form has a number of unresolved problems, notwithstanding its many virtues. One such problem is that of the role of public servants when called before parliamentary committees as witnesses. The current guidelines are mainly advice to public servants as to how they should avoid or defer questions which neither the minister nor the departmental secretary has authorised them to answer. Of course, this is useful and proper within its limits. However, it fails to address many of the dilemmas and career-threatening choices which can face public servants who find themselves being questioned in an aggressive, hostile manner by members of a parliamentary committee. Unfair treatment of witnesses is not a trivial matter and there are more than isolated instances. This article deals with an episode involving the Joint Parliamentary Committee of Public Accounts in 1982. The case is now some years in the past, but it is still worth examining for what it teaches about gaps in our constitutional conventions. At the end of the article we suggest action in four areas. Intensive training and retraining is needed, first in the upper ranks of the public service, and secondly for chairpersons and members of parliamentary committees. Thirdly there is a need for MAB-MIAC to revisit yet again their guidelines on accountability and to instigate a review of the government's guidelines for public servants appearing as witnesses. Both sets of guidelines are anachronisms. Finally, we suggest that, in any future review of government policy in this area, consideration be given to the amendment of relevant legislation to bring due process and the protection of witnesses more closely into line with the rights available to persons appearing before a court.     

Parliamentary questions as a control mechanism in coalition governments

This article argues that government parties can use parliamentary questions to monitor coalition partners in order to reduce agency loss through ministerial drift. According to this control logic, government parties have particular incentives to question ministers whose jurisdictions display high policy conflict and high electoral salience and thus hold the prospect of electorally damaging ministerial drift. Multivariate regression analysis of all parliamentary questions in the German Bundestag between 1980 and 2017 supports this hypothesis, showing that cabinet parties address substantially and significantly more questions to ministries held by coalition partners on salient and ideologically divisive issues. This interactive effect does not occur for opposition parties or questions posed to own-party ministers. These findings, as well as the temporal patterns of questioning over the electoral cycle, indicate that control within coalitions is a distinct motivation for questioning ministers that cannot be reduced to existing explanations such as electorally motivated issue competition.     

Q&A in legislative oversight: A framework for analysis

Parliamentary questions are an essential tool of legislative oversight. However, the extent to which they are effective in controlling the executive remains underspecified both theoretically and methodologically. This article advances a systematic framework for evaluating the effectiveness of parliamentary questions drawing on principal–agent theory, the public administration literature on accountability and communication research. The framework is called the ‘Q&A approach to legislative oversight’ based on the premise that the study of parliamentary questions (Q) needs to be linked to their respective answers (A) and examined together (Q&A) at the micro-level as an exchange of claims between legislative and executive actors. Methodologically, the Q&A approach to legislative oversight offers a step-by-step guide for qualitative content analysis of Q&A that can be applied to different legislative oversight contexts at different levels of governance. It is argued that the effectiveness of Q&A depends on the strength of the questions asked and the responsiveness of answers provided, which are correspondingly operationalised. To illustrate the merits of the approach, the article includes a systematic case study on the relationship between the European Parliament and the European Central Bank in banking supervision (2013–2018), showing the connection between specific institutional settings and the effectiveness of parliamentary questions.     

Witness testimony from the Church Committee hearings on covert action, 1975

One of the most controversial uses of intelligence by the United States is covert action – secret efforts to change the course of history by intervening secretly into the affairs of other nations or factions. In 1975, the Church Committee held hearings on this subject – a rarity – and four expert witnesses laid out for the panel their recommendations for changes in the conduct of covert action. This dip into the intelligence archives by Intelligence and National Security reveals that much has changed in the world of covert action since 1975, with some of the witness recommendations coming to fruition and others widely ignored.     

‘Extremely valuable work’: British intelligence and the interrogation of refugees in London, 1941–45

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on the compulsory questioning of over 30,000 refugees who escaped to Britain during the Second World War and who were detained in London’s Royal (Victoria) Patriotic School. It answers three questions: how did intelligence come to see non-British civilians as sources; what characteristics did refugees possess and how did these influence the information they shared; and who was interested in their accounts? It argues that, while this site was set up as an MI5 vetting camp for the identification of Axis agents, it quickly evolved into an intelligence-gathering centre, serving the interests of multiple departments and organisations.     

Multiple Institutional Embeddedness in Europe: The Case of Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish Government Officials

The questions posed in the current study are (1) whether, and (2) how, participation within Commission expert committees and Council working parties of the European Union (EU) affects the coordination behaviour of the participants. Based on organizational theory arguments, the coordination role of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is arguably weakened by institutional dynamics existing within Commission expert committees. The opposite is argued to be the case within Council working parties. Empirically, this study is based on 160 questionnaires and 47 face-to-face interviews with Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish domestic government officials attending EU committees. Secondly, this study also includes answers from 49 officials at the permanent representation to the EU of these three Scandinavian countries. Being excluded from attending Council working parties, Norwegian civil servants participating within Commission expert committees are shown to coordinate considerably less with the foreign ministry than their Danish and Swedish counterparts. Notwithstanding these observations, this study also reveals how the coordination behaviour evoked by national civil servants reflects their domestic institutional affiliations. In addition to showing how EU committees affect coordination behaviour among the participants, the current analysis also shows how responses to integration requirements are filtered – and even conditioned – by a prior state of affairs at the domestic level of governance.     

The Big Questions of Public Administration Education

Following Behn's observation that scientists in other fields understand the big questions of their disciplines and focus attention and their discussions on those questions, public administration scholars have attempted to identify the “big questions” in public management and public administration. In this article, I suggest that scholars in public administration should also be attentive to the big questions of public administration education, those timeless and enduring concerns that speak to the basic perspectives that we bring to the educational process. Specifically, I identify four big questions: Do we seek to educate our students with respect to theory or to practice? Do we prepare students for their first jobs or for those to which they might aspire later? What are the appropriate delivery mechanisms for MPA courses and curricula? What personal commitments do we make as public administration educators? I argue that these big questions in public administration education are far more connected than we usually think, and by posing these questions in terms of processes of human development we can at least provide a framework through which we might develop more coherent answers to these big questions, answers that recognize and build on the diversity of our students and our faculty.     

Raising the Bar: Maximizing Engaged Student Learning Using the American Mock Trial Association Case State of Midlands v. Dylan Hendricks

Abstract

This short review demonstrates how the use of American Mock Trial Association (AMTA) case materials, both throughout intercollegiate competitions and in academic courses, can engage and invigorate students while teaching them crucial skills in a way that few other programs or activities can do. The AMTA case provided for the 2017–2018 academic year, State of Midlands v. Dylan Hendricks, offers a comprehensive introduction to the rules of evidence and crucial criminal law concepts while teaching students the importance of thorough preparation in a way that is difficult to do in a classroom setting. This case requires student attorneys to make difficult choices while preparing their case, witnesses, and evidence for trial. Arriving at an optimum strategy (or strategies) can only occur after critical and reasoned examination of each side of an often complex problem, thereby providing an excellent opportunity for students to use critical thinking skills and to analyze all sides of an issue and all potential outcomes of a strategy. Students must thoroughly study and understand the rules of evidence, rules of criminal procedure, and relevant statutory and case law, and be prepared to use all of these as part of a reasoned, logical argument at a moment’s notice. Overall, this is an exceptional case for skill-building and engaged learning, and can be a valuable tool for faculty and students alike.     

Witness to Rape: The Limits and Potential of International War Crimes Trials for Victims of Wartime Sexual Violence

¹Despite the proliferation of trauma and memory research inrecent years, we know very little about the contribution oftransitional justice mechanisms to psychological healing andsocietal reconciliation in the aftermath of genocide, armedconflict and politicized violence. Many scholars in this areahave argued that the disclosure of traumatic experiences isbeneficial to the psychological recovery process for survivorsof gross human rights violations. This article critically examinesthis therapeutic assumption within a transitional justice paradigm.The article explores the potentials and limitations of internationalwar crimes trials for victims of wartime sexual violence, focusingspecifically on the International Criminal Tribunal for theformer Yugoslavia (ICTY). The article provides a theoreticalframework for analyzing the significance of testimony at internationalwar crimes trials and raises some critical questions relatedto the psychological impact of trials. It is argued that dueto the sheer diversity and heterogeneity of wartime rape victims,the experience of giving testimony is likely to be mixed: whilesome victims may suffer under the constraints of legal process,under the right circumstances, war crimes trials may help othersto make sense of their suffering.     

How to estimate the policy preferences of party supporters: Disaggregating data from voting advice applications versus modeling survey responses

Valid and reliable estimates of the policy preferences of political parties' supporters are essential for the study of political representation. However, such estimates are not directly available from standard surveys of public opinion, which are typically representative by design only at the national level and rarely ask questions about public support for specific policies. In this article, we explore the possibility to use data from voting advice applications (VAA) to estimate the policy preferences of party supporters. To do that, first, we identify 10 questions on preferences towards issues of public policy that were asked around the same time and with similar wording in traditional surveys of public opinion and in VAAs fielded in Germany and in the Netherlands. Then we compare the VAA data disaggregated by political affiliation of the respondents to the survey data adjusted via multilevel regression modeling with poststratification (MRP). We find strong positive correlations between the estimates derived from both methods, especially after weighting the VAA data. Yet, point estimates are not always very close, and the match is sensitive to the treatment of neutral and ‘don't know’ answers. Overall, our results bode well for the validity of using VAA data in empirical research on political representation.     

Do Anti‐immigration Parties Matter? The Case of the Sweden Democrats and Local Refugee Policy

With the increased electoral success of anti‐immigration parties, questions regarding what impact the parties actually have naturally follow. Previous research has rarely explored this question. Furthermore, within this body of research, one is given different answers. While some argue that anti‐immigration parties have made an impact on public policy, others find no such evidence. This article shows that some of this inconsistency is a consequence of the methodological strategies that have been employed. Previous studies are either single case studies or comparisons of a small number of countries. Consequently, different parties in different institutional settings are compared, making it difficult to estimate the actual impact of the party of interest. In order to circumvent such methodological problems, this article explores the question of anti‐immigration party impact on a local level and asks if the Sweden Democrats (SD) have managed to influence decisions on refugee reception in Swedish municipalities. The analysis shows mixed results. First, while unable to find an independent effect of the size of the representation of the SD, it appears that the party's impact is conditioned by them holding the balance of power. Second, the SD's impact is not dependent upon whether there is right‐wing or left‐wing rule, although local migration policy is stricter when the main right‐wing party has strong support.     

Congressional response to public crisis: how corporations can prepare

Public policy is at the heart of US congressional investigations, where private corporations can confront a unique set of rules and mores—in a very public forum, often covered in the news and televised. This article traces the historical precedents to congressional inquiries, highlighting cases such as the ‘Teapot Dome’ scandal and the ensuing US Supreme Court case, McGrain v. Daugherty, confirming the Legislative Branch's independent investigative authority to compel a witness to testify and produce documents. The article explains the two types of congressional investigations, oversight and legislative, and how their differences could impact the corporations involved. It reviews recent examples of investigations, illuminating how a corporation's public relations and legal rights can both overlap and point to differing interests. Based upon first‐hand experience, the author provides a legal perspective in explaining the investigation procedures, the legal limits to congressional authority, and the steps taken to prepare a witness for testimony. Finally, the author explains how readiness for congressional inquiries is an integral aspect of prudent risk management for any major corporation. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Stereotype Threat and Race of Interviewer Effects in a Survey on Political Knowledge

Social desirability is generally thought to underlie the propensity for survey respondents to tailor their answers to what they think would satisfy or please the interviewer. While this may in fact be the underlying motivation, especially on attitudinal and opinion questions, social desirability does not seem to be an adequate explanation for interviewer effects on factual questions. Borrowing from the social psychology literature on stereotype threat, we test an alternative account of the race-of-interviewer effects. Stereotype threat maintains that the pressure to disconfirm and to avoid being judged by negative and potentially degrading stereotypes interferes with the processing of information. We argue that the survey context contains many parallels to a testing environment in which stereotype threat might alter responses to factual questions. Through a series of framing experiments in a public opinion survey and the reliance on the sensitivity to the race of the interviewer, our results are consistent with expectations based on a theory of "stereotype threat." African American respondents to a battery of questions about political knowledge get fewer answers right when interviewed by a white interviewer than when interviewed by an African American interviewer. The observed differences in performance on the political knowledge questions cannot be accounted for by differences in the educational background or gender of the respondents.     

Collective and Individual Consciousness in Testimonies of Navy Divers

Sick Israeli Navy divers, who were exposed to chemical sewage during their army service, suspected that this exposure was the cause of their cancer. The divers appealed to the courts and demanded the establishment of an independent committee for the investigation of this issue. This step created strong emotional tension between the sick divers and their former brothers-in-arms from the navy. The aim of this paper is to describe the process by which the tension between the divers' individual and collective consciousness is discursively elaborated in their testimony to the committee. This testimony is described by means of a Bakhtinian/Volosinovian semiotic analysis.