Legitimacy,citizenship and state redress

This article explores how state redress programmes work to legitimate the state. The primary thesis concerns how state redress aims to restructure citizenship identity. This restructuring enables civic identification by victims of state wrongdoing which in turn enables greater legitimacy. Consequently, redress constitutes a movement by the state from lesser to greater legitimacy. The article illustrates the legitimating thesis by examining two Canadian responses to state wrongdoing with regard to indigenous peoples, Gathering Strength (1998) and the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement (Indian Residential Schools Adjudication Secretariat). This context provides material for contrasting the legitimating thesis with a competing approach – redress as ‘therapy’.     

The Abdullah Azzam Brigades

This article looks at the growth and evolution of the The Abdullah Azzam Brigades, from the group's Egyptian origins through its most recent attack on a Japanese tanker in the Hormuz Straits. In addition to an overview of the group's main personalities and claims of responsibility, the article aims to explain the group by placing it in the context of recent jihadi theory.     

More than the sum of its parts? Itemizing impairment in civil cases

Purpose. The purpose of the present study is to determine whether making multiple damage awards influenced civil mock jurors' assessments of those damage awards. Specifically, how does making one decision for pain and suffering damage awards versus two decisions (one for mental pain and suffering and physical pain and suffering) versus four decisions (one for loss of enjoyment of life, mental anguish, disfigurement, and physical disability/impairment) influence overall non‐economic damage awards. Methods. One hundred twenty undergraduates from a psychology participant pool read a case vignette that included information regarding four types of injuries that the plaintiff endured: loss of enjoyment of life, mental anguish, disfigurement, and physical disability/impairment. Participants were randomly assigned to render either one award for pain and suffering, two awards (one for physical pain and suffering and one for mental pain and suffering), or four awards (one for each pain and suffering element). Results. Results indicated that participants who rendered four awards provided significantly higher overall non‐economic damage awards than participants who provided one overall award. The variability of damage awards also increased as the number of damage awards increased. Conclusions. Itemizing non‐economic damage awards into distinct injury categories can lead to an increase in overall non‐economic awards. Members of the legal arena should be cautioned against itemizing damages to prevent variability in non‐economic awards.     

“A Good‐Will Ship”: The Light Cruiser Köln Visits Rabaul (1933)

The concept of loyalty still holds a central space in many histories about New Guinean‐Australian relations, especially during the Second World War, and translates into demands by Australians that New Guineans recognize Australia's political system as “the best”. In this article about the visit of the first German navy cruiser to New Guinea after the First World War, I tell a story not about loyalties, but about contesting colonial claims, namely Australia's insistence on “loyalty”, and Germany's demand for a “return” of her colony. The visit of Köln in 1933 raises questions such as: How did Germans and Australians negotiate living together in the Mandated Territory of New Guinea? How were divisions, grief, tensions, and hostilities after the First World War dealt with? What separated them, what united them, and what role did New Guineans play in this complex relationship?     

How Policy-Making Affects Implementation: The Decentralization of the Danish Disablement Pension Administration*

‘Presidents are more likely to be punished for not making promises of administrative reform than for not implementing them.’ (March & Olsen 1983, 291) Policy-making and implementation have usually been treated as two distinct disciplines. In this article it is argued that implementation is affected by the prior policy-making process. Hypotheses regarding such impacts are derived from the policy-making theories resting on a) the rational decision-making model. b) the conflict-bargaining model, and c) the garbage-can model: Implementation failures are more likely 1) if goals are absent or vague and if alternatives and their consequences have not been considered; 2) if the policy-making process involves participants with conflicting interests and compromising; 3) if there are many and changing participants with limited attention and if symbols are important in the poky-making process. These hypotheses are tested and discussed in relation to a reorganization case, the decentralization of the disablement pension administration in Denmark in 1976.     

Why people want something for nothing: The role of asymmetrical illusions

Abstract. This article examines if and why mechanisms exist at the individual citizen level that may contribute to public sector growth — and whether such mechanisms can be altered through provision of information about the costs of public services.We test and find empirical support for the theory of fiscal illusion according to which citizens underestimate the costs of public services and therefore demand more public spending than if they had been fully informed. We also develop and find empirical support for a theory of asymmetrical illusions. This theory claims that producers and users of public services are more spending–minded than ordinary taxpayers — and that limited rationality contributes to this difference. However, the provision of information about the unit costs of public services can weaken these mechanisms of fiscal illusion and asymmetrical illusions. The test is based on tabular, logit, and experimental analysis of survey data from Odense, a Danish city with 175,000 inhabitants.     

Street-Level Bureaucrats as Individual Policymakers: The Relationship between Attitudes and Coping Behavior toward Vulnerable Children and Youth

Lipsky (1980) pointed out that street-level bureaucrats (SLBs) are important policymakers due to the discretion they exercise and argued from a structural perspective that these workers manifest relatively similar coping behaviors owing to their shared working conditions, characterized by chronically limited resources and non-voluntary clients. Using data from a national survey of municipal child welfare caseworkers in Denmark, we further develop Lipsky's theory from an agency perspective by focusing on variation in coping among SLBs and examining the extent to which such variation is explained by SLBs’ attitudes towards the target group, the objectives and content of their jobs, and their perceptions of the capacity of their institutions. We find that SLBs’ aversion to and tolerance of the client group, their perceptions of institutional capacity in terms of municipal resources and local political inefficacy, and their conceptual modification of job contents are all related to their use of coping.     

Not just any toilet – women’s solutions to sanitation in informal settlements in Nairobi

Evidence suggests sanitation development is more effective when women are involved. The purpose of this study was to provide women with an opportunity to share their perspectives and solutions to sanitation in informal settlements. Data were collected through 55 in-depth interviews with women in Mathare Valley informal settlement in Nairobi, Kenya. The most common solution was to build more toilets, but women had a variety of suggestions – including gender-specific solutions. Findings from this study suggest that it is imperative to start addressing women-specific burdens associated with sanitation in informal settlements.