A Comparative Analysis of SME Friendly Public Procurement: Results from Canada,Hungary and Italy

This paper studies SMEs’ participation in public procurement in light of perceived barriers and expected benefits of accessing the public marketplace. It presents a comparative analysis of SMEs’ participation in three countries that share similar approaches to SME-friendly public procurement. A common survey protocol was developed to be administered to SMEs in the three countries. Data collected were then analysed using regression methods. Findings suggest that some issues that are typically considered critical barriers, namely administrative requirements and award based on lowest price do not hinder participation. However, findings also suggest that firms’ characteristics associated with size are still relevant hindrances, and that SMEs’ involvement are affected by a shortage of tangible (human and financial) and intangible resources (experience). These findings provide guidance to fine-tune public procurement policies directed to SMEs.     

Career moves: Reflections on the Irish gunman

Abstract

The article, based on a generation of contacts with the militant Irish republican movement in general and the Provisional IRA in particular, focuses on: who becomes a gunman and why; who is chosen as a gunman by the leadership and why; what are the characteristics of an active service volunteer; what and who make a good gunman and why—the virtues, characteristics, and craft of the contemporary Irish gunmen; and the result of a gunman's career for the movement, the opposition, and the individual.     

Terrorist Assassination and Institutional Change in Repressive Regimes

ABSTRACT

Missing from the political violence literature is an in-depth and systematic examination of the effects of terrorist assassination on state political institutions in repressive regimes. By broadening the scope and depth of empirical research into terrorist assassinations, the potential exists to enhance our understanding of the outcomes of assassination by terrorist actors as well as our overall understanding of political violence in repressive regimes. Utilizing survival analysis and data from the Global Terrorism Database, the Polity IV Project, and the Political Terror Scale, this project focuses on the post-terrorist assassination institutional outcomes in repressive regimes. While the effects are long-term, the most repressive regimes are the most likely to experience political institutional shifts in the wake of terrorist assassinations. The direction of the institutional shifts is mixed, but results indicate that the level of state repression in existence prior to a terrorist assassination matters to post-terrorist assassination outcomes.     

Contesting policy that undermines restorative justice for victims of crime☆

A policy provision in the Criminal Victim Assistance Program in British Columbia excludes the offender from participating in restorative justice approaches with the victim (and other affected parties) during counseling. A historical analysis of victim responses to crime shows that the victim experience to crime is socially constructed. In this regard, this policy act that excludes offenders from the victim healing process is consistent with a traditional approach to justice, which understands the offender to have committed a crime against the state, not the victim; however, separating the offender from the healing process is problematic within a restorative framework of justice where relationality is a central premise. Using a restorative lens, this policy act is contrary to an accompanying statute that has explicit provisions for counseling support for crime victims, as well as other statutes that provide for restorative responses to crime in Canada. The way we counsel and support victims from the harms created by crime cannot be separated from our view of justice.     

“Not a death of that hospital”: the social production of maternity statistics in Freetown

This paper explores the social practices underlying the production of clinical statistics at Princess Christian Maternity Hospital in Freetown, Sierra Leone. Combining ethnographic and historical methods, it focuses on the contexts surrounding the point at which the raw data (on which country statistics are generated) are entered into the medical record. This focus sheds light on the hidden, elided, or otherwise unseen aspects of clinical practice that global health stakeholders risk missing when privileging statistical data over direct observation. Direct observation reveals not only how specious data comes to be part of the medical record, but why.     

Police Integrity and the Czech Police Officers

The Velvet Revolution of 1989 ended the socialist period in former Czechoslovakia. Sixteen years after the transition toward democratic policing, we explore the integrity contours of the Czech police. In the summer of 2005, we surveyed more than 600 police officers from East Bohemia regarding their perceptions about the seriousness of police corruption, the appropriate punishment such misconduct deserves and would receive, and their willingness to report misconduct. The results indicate that the majority of the respondents correctly labeled behaviors described in our questionnaire as rule‐violating. Furthermore, with the exception of the least serious forms of corruption, they supported and expected the two most serious forms of discipline: a cut in salary and dismissal. Finally, the majority of the respondents said that they would not be willing to tolerate the most serious forms of corruption in silence.     

Criminal Case Outcomes, Incarceration, and Subsequent Intimate Partner Violence

Given the centrality of court interventions to the U.S. response to intimate partner violence (IPV), it is crucial to evaluate their impact on reabuse. To do so, this study examined whether female IPV victims’ experiences of abuse in the year following a criminal court case against their partner varied by case outcome or by whether the batterer had or had not been incarcerated. Consistent with prior research, we found no main effect differences in reabuse trajectories by court case outcome or by incarceration. We also examined variables that might moderate the impact of case outcome and incarceration on reabuse and found that although batterer legal history did not affect the impact of case outcome, his age, Time 1 employment status, the couple’s Time 1 living arrangement, and duration of abuse did interact with case outcome. No variables tested moderated the relationship between incarceration and reabuse over time. Findings suggest that in certain cases there may be benefits to case outcomes that leave potential consequences hanging over the offender’s head. These results also add to the growing body of evidence questioning the efficacy of one-size-fits-all approaches to IPV cases.