Missing the Point on Hard and Soft Power?

This article is a critique of two reports of parliamentary inquiries, into intervention and soft power, respectively. Neither report includes any discussion of Britain's involvement in and culpability for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Despite a more radical approach taken by the report on soft power, the article argues that the failure to address recent wars is symptomatic of a deeper and more dangerous inability to face up to profound and dangerous changes taking place in the world.     

CONSUMER COMPLAINTS IN PUBLIC SECTOR SERVICES

This article summarizes the findings of a recent research project investigating complaints handling in local government. It discusses the results of a survey of half the local authorities in England, to discover their complaints handling practices. The article also summarizes the results of a more limited survey of local authority consumers; this aimed to discover their attitude to and experience of complaining, and the level of awareness of their local authority's procedure. Finally there is a discussion about the desirability of formalized complaints procedures and the form they might take.     

IMPLEMENTING PERFORMANCE-BASED MANAGEMENT IN THE TRADITIONAL BUREAUCRACY OF PORTUGAL

The influence of the New Public Management (NPM) movement in Portuguese administrative reform has been one of the country's noticeable trends in recent decades ( Araújo 2001, 2002a ; Rocha 2001 ). Many governments have aimed to introduce a new managerial rationality in public services. The literature about administrative reform shows that institutional bureaucracies resist change, particularly when it challenges prevailing practices and procedures ( Bjur and Caiden 1978 ; Olsen 1991 ). Thus, the influence of NPM in administrative reform has found different expressions and, in several countries, the introduction of NPM ideas is a limited and superficial phenomenon ( Pollitt 2000 ). This paper contributes to these debates. It examines the influence of New Public Management ideas in Portuguese administrative reform and discusses improvements in the way public services are implementing change using new managerial tools in Portugal: the Activity Plan (AP) and the Activity Report (AR). The data collected from official reports and a questionnaire show that the juridical-administrative model persists and transforms both Activity Plan and Activity Report into little more than a formality, another routine to be followed.     

DOES VIOLENCE INVOLVING WOMEN AND INTIMATE PARTNERS HAVE A SPECIAL ETIOLOGY?*

We used data from a survey of inmates who have committed homicide or assault to examine whether men and women who have killed or assaulted their intimate partners are different from other violent offenders. A “gender perspective” implies that intimate partner violence and violence between the sexes have different etiologies than other types of violence, whereas a “violence perspective” implies that they have similar etiologies. Our evidence supports a violence perspective. In general, offenders who attack their partners are similar to other offenders in terms of their prior records, alcohol and drug use, and experiences of abuse. We observed some differences between men who attack women (including their female partners) and other male offenders, but the differences were opposite those predicted by a gender perspective. For example, men who attacked their partners were particularly likely to have been abused by their partners. In addition, men who attacked women were particularly likely to have experienced sexual abuse during childhood and to have been intoxicated at the time of the incident. These results suggest that some well-known predictors of violence are particularly strong predictors of male violence against women and female partners.