Preparedness and crisis-driven policy change: COVID-19, digital readiness,and information technology professionals in Canadian local government

This article explores the pandemic-induced transition to electronic municipal council meetings in Ontario, Canada as an instance of crisis-driven policy change. Employing survey data of information technology (IT) professionals and a critical case study, this research probes the notion that crises, like pandemics, can not only create windows for policy change, but also draw attention to the many often overlooked operational elements of government, including the increasingly important policy role played by IT professionals.     

Dominican Party System Continuity amid Regional Transformations: Economic Policy,Clientelism, and Migration Flows

In the 1980s and 1990s, economic crisis produced ideological convergence in many Latin American party systems. Much scholarship explores how this convergence frequently provoked system change that enabled renewed ideological differentiation, but little research examines instances where convergence persisted without destabilizing the system. Through comparative historical analysis of Dominican continuity amid regional change, this study identifies factors that sustain or challenge party systems. Then, through analysis of Americas Barometer surveys, it assesses the causal mechanisms through which these factors shape support for the traditional Dominican parties. The findings demonstrate that maintaining programmatic and clientelist linkages facilitates continuity. In addition, the article argues that the threats political outsiders pose to existing party systems are constrained when people excluded from the system are divided and demobilized. In the Dominican case, Haitian immigration divides the popular sector while Dominicans abroad sustain ties to the parties, with both migration flows facilitating party system continuity.     

Multiple perpetrator sexual assault: how does it differ from assault by a single perpetrator?

Research that attempts to identify characteristic features of multiple perpetrator sexual assault (MPSA) is limited. This study compared demographic and assault related characteristics of 135 cases of MPSA with 139 cases of single perpetrator sexual assault (SPSA) reported to the Haven sexual assault referral centre, Camberwell, London, over a 4-year period, and aimed to identify any unique features of MPSA victims, perpetrators and assault type. Victims of MPSA were younger, less likely to be White, more likely to report previous self-harm and more likely to sustain injuries than victims of SPSA. Multiple perpetrators were younger, less likely to be White and more likely to be strangers to the victim than single perpetrators. The nature of the assault was different in single and multiple perpetrator cases; in MPSA, there were more completed rapes and more multiple rapes, and perpetrators were more likely to meet the victim in an outside location before carrying out the assault in a place of residence that was not the victim's. These findings add to a scant but growing evidence base.     

Personnel Discipline and Industrial Relations on the Railways of Republican China

The Chinese National Railways of Republican China (1912-37) had a personnel administration the equal of any of the major railway systems of the period. Railways require a sophisticated personnel bureaucracy to train, monitor and enforce codes of conduct which would ensure the safety of passengers, freight and the huge investment in rolling stock and fixed capital. Only the military had previously administrative structures approaching the modern railway companies, the first modern business to organise on such a scale large numbers of employees over vast geographic areas. In China the railway introduced not only a new transport technology but also played a major role in creating the new industrial working class through the regimes of work and discipline their administration created. Drawing on neglected railway personnel archives, this paper examines the work organisation and structures of discipline that governed the working day of Chinese railway employees.     

WaSH as a maternal health issue: three perspectives from rural Uganda

Inadequate water, sanitation, and hygiene (WaSH) knowledge and practices affect maternal and newborn morbidity and mortality. This article describes postpartum knowledge, resources, and practices in three rural Ugandan hospitals. A lack of WaSH resources was problematic for both staff and newly-birthed mothers who demonstrated a lack of knowledge about the appropriate use of WaSH resources and the links between WaSH and health protection. These results suggest that in addition to increasing the availability of medical interventions, basic preventative public health practices should be reflected in policy and practice integrated across the spaces inhabited by pregnant women to achieve improved maternal and newborn outcomes.