Toward a definition and taxonomy of public sector ombudsmen

The world‐wide diffusion of the ombudsman concept and the accompanying academic literature have failed to produce a universal definition of “ombudsman.” As a result, liberal interpretations of the concept have flourished, and the invention of technical terms has gone unchecked. This article examines the two most commonly cited definitions of an ombudsman and the wealth of technical terms for their conformity to the original concept. A definition for public sector ombudsmen congruent with primordial functions and recent conceptual extensions is proposed. The article concludes with a taxonomy of the different kinds of ombudsmen in place today.     

Les groupes d'intérêt économiques face à un changement de paradigme: le cas de l'énergie nucléaire en Allemagne

Cet article s'interroge sur les conséquences de la décision allemande de 1998, qui prévoit l'arrêt de la production d'énergie nucléaire, sur les relations entre les groupes d'intérêt économiques et les acteurs gouvernementaux. L'hypothèse est que ce changement de paradigme énergétique entraîne un changement des relations entre ces acteurs. A partir de l'étude des cadres cognitifs et des stratégies des acteurs, l'article étudie les différentes phases de transformation de la politique énergétique allemande. Si les changements graduels des années 1980 et 1990 ont mené à des adaptations à la marge, la décision de 1998, entraînant la mise à l'écart des groupes d'intérêt économiques, contraint ces derniers à élaborer de nouvelles stratégies: ils cherchent à compenser leur perte d'influence au niveau national par de nouvelles collaborations à l'échelle européenne et au niveau international. Ces stratégies restent néanmoins influencées par les structures nationales.     

Relationships Between Cognitive Strategies of Adolescents and Depressive Symptomatology Across Different Types of Life Event

The objective of the present study was to examine relationships between cognitive emotion regulation strategies and depressive symptomatology across different types of life event. A sample of 138 secondary school students filled out a questionnaire. They were asked to indicate their most negative life event ever. On the basis of their answers, 3 types of negative life event were distinguished: loss, health threat, and relational stress experience. No relationship was found between type of negative life event and depressive symptomatology. Significant relationships were found between type of negative life event and the cognitive strategies self-blame and other-blame. Adolescents with a health threat experience scored higher on self-blame, while adolescents with a relational stress event scored higher on other-blame than the other groups. Significant relationships were also found between depressive symptomatology and the cognitive strategies self-blame, rumination, positive reappraisal, putting into perspective, and catastrophizing. No interaction effects were found between type of negative life event and cognitive strategies, suggesting that relationships between cognitive emotion regulation strategies and depressive symptomatology are consistent across different types of life event.     

A historical institutionalist view on merging LULUCF and REDD+ in a post-2020 climate agreement

In the context of the UNFCCC negotiation process on a global climate agreement, policy makers are looking for approaches on how to significantly raise the mitigation ambition of all relevant sectors, including the land use sector. Aside of the formal negotiations some Parties to the UNFCCC have started an informal dialogue and discuss how to merge the fragmented accounting rules for mitigation relevant land use activities, in particular those concerning forest-sector emissions. Stressing that ‘history matters’, we use a historical institutionalist perspective to assess the institutional pathways of the different accounting rules for developed and developing countries, their mutual relationship, and in how far they are supportive or counterproductive for this endeavour. Our empirical analysis shows that Parties tend to use any modification phase in the negotiation process to water down already achieved agreements, and that negotiating modalities after targets have been agreed is not conducive either. In the efforts of specifying the Paris agreement, merging existing rules into a common accounting framework is likely to further compromise the exisiting weak rules and modalities, and potentially what negotiators consider as ‘environmental integrity’. With this, a formal negotiation of common rules for the accounting of the land use sector may yield an outcome below what has been achieved since the negotiations on a post-2020 agreement started in 2005. We conclude that politically acceptable approaches for the land use sector that also contribute to the overall objective of raising ambition should avoid reopening already agreed decisions on rules and modalities.     

DNA Databases as Alternative Data Sources for Criminological Research

DNA traces found at crime scenes and DNA records held in databases have already helped the police to solve numerous investigations into specific crimes. The police clearly benefit from the use of forensic science at an operational (i.e. case) level. This paper focuses on the use of forensic DNA at a strategic level: its use in the study of patterns of criminal behaviour. The usual sources of information for this type of research are recorded crime data, self-report studies and victimization surveys. However, as our review will show, these data sources cannot provide a complete picture of crime. We therefore propose an alternative approach to criminological research that takes into account DNA databases and has the potential to augment current methods and extend the existing knowledge beyond known offenders. The use of DNA databases has an important advantage for criminological research: it is possible to link offences committed by the same individual, whether the offender’s identity is known or not. By making a one-on-one comparison of police data with the corresponding DNA data, not only can co-offenders be studied, but a larger network of offenders connected to each other can also be analysed, even if their identity is unknown to the police.     

Priming Issues,Party Visibility,and Party Evaluations: The Impact on Vote Switching

Voter volatility has become a hallmark of Western democracies in the past three decades. At the same time short-term factors—such as the media’s coverage of issues, parties, and candidates during an election campaign—have become more important for voters’ decisions. While previous research did look at how campaign news in general affects electoral volatility in general, it has omitted to explicitly test the mechanisms underlying these effects. Building on theories of agenda setting, (affective) priming, and issue ownership, the current study aims to explain why certain news aspects lead voters to switch their vote choice. We theorize it is the visibility of a party, the evaluation of a party, and the attention for issues owned by a party that primes voters to switch to a certain party. We use national panel survey data (N = 765) and link this to an extensive content analysis of campaign news on television and in newspapers in the run up to the 2012 Dutch national elections. The results show that issue news leads to vote change in the direction of the party that owns the issue. Even stronger is the effect of party visibility on vote switching. Our results, however, find the strongest support for the effect of party evaluations on vote change: More favorable news about a party increases switching to that party.     

Evaluating Administrative Modernization in German Local Governments: Success or Failure of the “New Steering Model”?

This article evaluates the results and impacts of administrative modernization in Germany after more than 10 years of New Public Management experience, concentrating on the most advanced level of public sector reform: local authorities. Drawing on a broad empirical basis, the authors pursue the following questions: Do “Weber‐ ian” administrative structures and processes continue to characterize the German public sector, or have the reforms left behind lasting traces of a managerial administration? Are local authorities performing better today, and if so, can this be attributed to the New Public Management modernization? The presented results show that no paradigm shift from the “Weberian” bureaucracy to New Public Management has occurred so far. Performance improvements notwithstanding, the new mix of steering instruments causes numerous unintended consequences, causing “Weberian” administration to reemerge.     

Participation quorums in costly meetings

Meetings of shareholders, societies, and clubs often require a minimal participation quorum. In the absence of a quorum, no valid decisions can be made; thus, decisions are postponed to a later meeting. This paper examines the effect of such quorum constraints on both individual behavior and collective outcomes in a model of costly meetings. We show that when a binding quorum constraint delivers an immediate decision, it also induces a welfare loss with respect to the outcome that prevails when no quorum applies, potentially including policy distortions. When the quorum requirement is high and causes the decision to be postponed, the number of participants in the (second) meeting may decrease with respect to the zero-quorum rule.