Inner cabinets and outer ministers: some lessons from Australia and Britain

Abstract. The growth in the number of ministers has led to problems in the organization of cabinet. In Britain, and in Australia under Liberal-Country Party government, a system of inner cabinets and outer ministers has been adopted. In Australia all ministers have their own departments - as dictated by the Constitution;those who are not full members of cabinet are able to attend cabinet and participate, not only when items of their own or related portfolios are discussed, but also on a range of other issues in which they have a personal interest. In Britain all departments are headed by a cabinet minister. Each cabinet member is assisted by a range of junior ministers whose access to cabinet is limited and whose broad knowledge of government activity is therefore severely limited. In making cabinet there is thus a choice between a small cabinet, representing only parts of government interests but with flexible access, and a large representative cabinet with limited access for junior ministers. Sommaire. .?augmentation du nombre des ministres présente des difficultés pour ?organisation du cabinet. La Grande-Bretagne et ?Australie, sous un gouvernement libéral-rural, ont adopté un système de cabinets restreints et de ministres ← externes →. En Australie, tous les ministres ont, de la par la Constitution, leur propre ministère; ceux qui ne sont pas membres à part entiére du cabinet peuvent assister à ses déliberations et y participer, et cela aussi bien lorsque les débats portent sur des questions relevant de leur portefeuille que lorsqu'elles présentent pour eux un intérêt particulier. En Grande-Bretagne, tous les ministères sont dirigés par un ministre du cabinet. Chaque ministre du cabinet est aidé par un groupe de ministres de deuxième rang dont ?accès au cabinet est limité et dont, par conséquent, la connaissance générate des activités gouvernementales est aussi sévèrement réduite. Pour composer le cabinet, il y a done un choix entre un cabinet restreint ne représentant que partiellement les intérêts du gouvernement mais dont ?accès est ajustable et un large cabinet représentatif avec accés limité pour les ministres de deuxième rang.     

Routine Activities Theory as a Formula for Systematic Sexual Abuse: A Content Analysis of Survivors’ Testimony Against Larry Nassar

American Journal of Criminal Justice - Larry Nassar, a once world renowned Olympic doctor, was arrested and charged with child abuse and child pornography in 2016, becoming one of the most prolific...     

Responding to Gendered Violence Among College Students: The Impact of Participant Characteristics on Direct Bystander Intervention Behavior

ABSTRACT

Bystander intervention has been an effective strategy for crime prevention and has been successful in the context of campus sexual assault. Less is known about the extent to which individual-level factors correlate with intervention behavior in situations of intimate partner violence (IPV) and sexual harassment. The present study used a sample of 377 undergraduate student surveys on a campus without a bystander intervention program to examine the impact of individual-level participant factors on direct intervention across sexual assault, IPV, and sexual harassment scenarios. Findings demonstrated statistically significant differences where positive bystander attitudes and violence prevention efficacy correlated with direct intervention for sexual assault; positive bystander attitudes, personality extroversion, and exposure to a victim increased intervention behavior in an IPV scenario, and positive bystander attitudes and violence prevention efficacy increased direct intervention and lifetime experience of IPV decreased direct intervention in a sexual harassment scenario. Research and policy implications are discussed.     

A Time-Honored and Booming Relationship

<正>China and Sri Lanka together revive their ancient glory Earlier this year,President Xi Jinping of China welcomed Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe of Sri Lanka and another 28 foreign leaders at the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation in Beijing.In the meantime,Sri Lanka is quietly becoming the"crown pearl"in the Indian Ocean of the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative,     

Desert, Justice and Capital Punishment

Our purpose in this paper is to consider a procedural objection to the death penalty. According to this objection, even if the death penalty is deemed, substantively speaking, a morally acceptable punishment for at least some murderers, since only a small proportion of those guilty of aggravated murder are sentenced to death and executed, while the majority of murderers escape capital punishment as a result of arbitrariness and discrimination, capital punishment should be abolished. Our targets in this paper are two recent attempts, by Thomas Hurka and Michael Cholbi respectively, to defend the view that ‘levelling down’ (that is, reducing the punishment imposed on a criminal from the punishment he absolutely deserves to a less severe punishment in order to achieve proportionality relative to the criminals who have escaped the punishment they absolutely deserve) is, in the context of capital punishment, morally permissible. We argue that both Hurka and Cholbi fail to show why the arbitrariness and discrimination objection impugns the death penalty.

Innocence Lost: A Problem for Punishment as Duty

Constrained instrumentalist theories of punishment – those that seek to justify punishment by its good effects, but limit its scope – are an attractive alternative to pure retributivism or utilitarianism. One way in which we may be able to limit the scope of instrumental punishment is by justifying punishment through the concept of duty. This strategy is most clearly pursued in Victor Tadros’ influential ‘Duty View’ of punishment. In this paper, I show that the Duty View as it stands cannot find any moral distinction between the permissible punishment of the guilty and the permissible punishment of the innocent in extreme circumstances, therefore undermining one the key pillars of its intuitive appeal. I canvass several ways to respond to this problem, arguing that a rights (or claims) forfeiture theory which employs the distinction between rights forfeiture and rights infringement (or claims forfeiture and infringement) is the best solution.     

Hard Bargains: The Impact of Multinational Corporations on Economic Reform in Latin America

This article promotes the idea that multinational corporations have independent agency in the process of economic reform in Latin American host countries. Through a number of pooled cross-sectional time series analyses, it shows that accumulated foreign direct investment can affect policy reform in ways unanticipated by earlier theories predicated on the obsolescence of firms' influence after initial investment. The influence of firms varies across different reform areas, and competitive pressures lead firms to press alternately for liberal and illiberal reform measures. The study also considers sectoral issues, and argues that a preponderance of natural resource–oriented FDI can alter the impact of multinational investment on policy reform. Indexes of economic reform are measured against stocks of FDI and a number of political and economic control variables. Evidence shows that the dramatic increase in FDI in the region in recent years has bolstered firms' bargaining power and concomitant policy leverage.     

The Future of Irish-UK Relations: Borders and Identities after Brexit: Introduction

It is apparent that the consociational framework established by the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement (B/GFA) is under threat, while the UK's withdrawal from the EU poses major challenges for maintaining peace, prosperity and social cohesion in Northern Ireland (NI). The contributions to this special collection examine key elements of the post-Brexit reality, with a particular focus on NI and the future of the intergovernmental bodies established by the B/GFA. The implications of the UK government's attempt unilaterally to disapply parts of the Protocol on Ireland/Northern Ireland are examined.     

Thinking alike: two pathways to leadership-candidate opinion congruence

This paper seeks to explain why party candidates and their party leadership have congruent policy positions or not. Despite its importance as a way through which parties are able to behave as a unitary actor, this congruence has never been studied as a dependent variable. We seek to fill this void in the literature. Our results suggest that leadership-candidate congruence comes about through two mechanisms: selection and learning. With selection, the party leadership aims to get those candidates elected whose policy preferences are congruent with the party line. Learning occurs through the process of socialization in which candidates assume the views of the party they work and candidate for as their own under. This happens under the pressure of cognitive dissonance. If a candidate learns about the position of the leadership and notices that they are incongruent, they may feel discomfort and change their opinion to be congruent with the party.