Codecision procedure biais: the European legislation game

The European Union’s codecision procedure is analyzed as a bargaining game between the Council and the European Parliament. The model shows that the policy outcome is biased towards the ideal point of the institution that is closest to the status quo, when the negotiation leads to an agreement. If the Council’s ideal policy is closer to the status quo, as is the case for example concerning the duration of maternity leave, the resulting policy will remain closer to the Council’s than to the European Parliament’s position. Furthermore, the result of the codecision procedure is Kaldor–Hicks inefficient. The developments of common policies concerning asylum, fishery and maternity leave illustrate both the possibility of the failure of negotiations and the influence of the Council on the outcome.     

What drives the diffusion of inclusionary zoning?

Social scientists offer competing theories on what explains the policymaking process. These typically include economic rationalism, political competition or power struggles, and policy imitation of the kind that diffuses across spatially proximate neighbors. In this paper, we examine the factors that have influenced a recent local policy trend in California: inclusionary zoning (IZ). IZ programs require developers to make a certain percentage of the units within their market‐rate residential developments affordable to low‐ or moderate‐income households. By 2007, 68 percent of jurisdictions in the San Francisco Bay Area had adopted some type of IZ policy. We test the relative importance of economic, political, and spatial factors in explaining the rapid diffusion of IZ, across 100 cities and towns in the Bay Area. Consistent with an economic efficiency argument, results of hazard models provide some evidence that IZ is adopted in places with less affordable housing. However, political factors, such as partisan affiliation and the strength of affordable housing nonprofits, are even more robust predictors of whether or not a local government adopts IZ. There is no evidence of spatial diffusion in the case of IZ adoption; jurisdictions are not, on average, responding to the behavior of their neighbors. © 2010 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

“Success” in policy piloting: Process,programs, and politics

Research has demonstrated that pilots contain multiple shifting purposes, not all of which relate to simple policy testing or refinement. Judging the success of policy pilots is therefore complex, requiring more than a simple judgment against declared goals. Marsh and McConnell provide a framework against which policy success can be judged, distinguishing program success from process and political success. We adapt Boven's modification of this framework and apply it to policy pilots, arguing that pilot process, outcomes and longer-term effects can all be judged in both program and political terms. We test this new framework in a pilot program in the English National Health Service, the Vanguard program, showing how consideration of these different aspects of success sheds light on the program and its aftermath. We consider the implications of the framework for the comprehensive and multifaceted evaluation of policy pilots.     

Cardiac Ventricular Laceration Due to Child Abuse: Abusive Ventricular Laceration

Traumatic cardiac ventricular ruptures in children are rare. Only a single case of left ventricular rupture due to child abuse has been reported. We report a child who sustained a fatal left ventricular apical rupture. It appeared to have resulted from hydrostatic forces resulting from abusive blunt thoracic injury. That he was being abused was previously missed when he was presented to the emergency department with facial pyoderma. It was not noted that he also had lip and oral mucosal injury, sites not affected by staph toxins. As a result, his underlying, abusive and secondarily infected, facial flow type scald burn was not appreciated. Within a week thereafter his fatal injury occurred, accompanied by extensive and obvious associated abusive injuries. Postmortem high‐detail whole body computed tomography scanning aided the autopsy. Although rare, ventricular rupture from abusive blunt thoracic injury can occur.     

Embedding employability skills for the legal professionals of the future

This article provides a case study on embedding employability skills into law courses at one higher education institution. The aim of the project was to further embed employability skills within curriculum delivery as part of a holistic student skills development strategy. The authors used the four-stage process, suggested by the Higher Education Academy’s Framework on Embedding Employability in Higher Education to design the project: defining employability, reviewing and mapping current employability skills, prioritising actions and measuring impact. The authors draw out three ways in which the project has wider potential relevance. From an educational theory perspective, the project represents a way to embed employability skills in a Framework for Higher Education Qualifications level appropriate way, through reference to Biggs’ taxonomy of learning. For higher education institutions, the project is particularly topical in light of the rapidly changing regulatory landscape that is becoming increasingly skills focused in nature. It is suggested that embedding employability in law courses now will assist future institutional engagement with the potentially new route to qualifying as a solicitor through the Solicitors Qualifying Examination. Individual law teachers also reported benefits to embedding employability skills in tutorial sessions from a classroom management perspective.     

Assessing the relevance of self-reported ADHD symptoms and cognitive functioning for psychopathy using the PCL-R and the TriPM

Psychopathy and ADHD are highly comorbid disorders, possibly linked to the underlying trait of impulsivity. It is therefore likely that ADHD symptoms are also of importance when studying cognitive functioning linked to psychopathy. Few studies of psychopathy and cognitive functioning have taken ADHD symptoms into account. In this cross-sectional study, male offenders (n = 201 of whom 105 were neuropsychologically tested) were recruited from all high security correctional facilities in Sweden. The aim of the study was to investigate if self-reported ADHD symptoms and cognitive functioning could predict specific subcomponents of psychopathy in offenders. Results showed that self-rated ADHD symptoms (ASRS) and psychopathy were highly correlated. Furthermore, the associations of ASRS and PCL-R Facet 3, as well as TriPM Disinhibition, were remarkably high. As expected, ASRS was not related to either Facet 1 or 2 of the PCL-R, or to TriPM Boldness. Cognitive functioning did not contribute in predicting psychopathy beyond the effect of ASRS. The high overlap in reported symptoms highlights the importance of thorough clinical assessments to be able to distinguish psychopathic personality traits from ADHD and lessen the risk of misdiagnosis. Further, it points to the need of finding discriminative measures possibly linked to etiological underpinnings.     

The public health implications of United Kingdom offender healthcare policy: a holistic approach to achieve individual and societal gains

In 2009, two seminal documents were published by the United Kingdom (UK) government concerning healthcare services for offenders. The Bradley review into diversion for people with mental health problems and learning disabilities emphasised a need to improve offender health, not least because of the high economic costs to society as a whole resulting from unresolved mental illness, physical ill-health and substance abuse problems commonly experienced by offenders. The Bradley review made wide-reaching recommendations for change, requiring strong partnership between health and justice agencies at both central government and local levels. A framework for the delivery of Bradley's recommendations has been set out in Improving health, supporting justice, the Department of Health's offender health strategy which sets out the direction of travel for the next 10 years.This paper discusses the reality of working toward improving health services for this marginalised group in the context of the influence of the current straitened financial climate on the allocation of resources to publically funded healthcare in the UK; it examines the historically based, and widely held, belief in the principle of “less eligibility” within our society, whereby there is much public and media resistance to allocating resources to improving care for offenders when other, more “deserving”, groups are perceived to be in continuing need.