Political Ethics and Public Policy: Homosexuals between Moral Dilemmas and Political Considerations in Danish Parliamentary Debates

Political science has abundantly proved that politics involves power, conflict, and self-serving interests. Much less frequently does political science deal with ethics in public policymaking. This article analyses the appeal to moral principles in the political process of drafting three bills, all concerning homosexuals, in which the Danish parliamentary parties, in contrast to normal practice, allowed their members to deviate from the party line and vote in accordance with their 'conscience'. Analysis of the cases indicates that moral considerations are capable of structuring and constraining arguments and that they are decisive for some politicians' positions in some situations. The cases also raise doubts concerning the widely held view that decisions based on votes of conscience, because they are informed by 'ethical' rather than 'political' considerations, are qualitatively superior to ordinary political decisions.

MANKIND
Men, said the Devil,
Are good to their brothers:
They don't want to mend
Their own ways, but each other's.
– grook by Piet Hein

     

International Relations and Policy Planning: The Method of Perspectivist Scenario Building

Since thoughts about the future cannot help but enter into our planning of policy, the International Relations community should make it an aim to help systematize these thoughts. One way of doing this is by developing a methodology for scenario building. Much extant work on scenario planning shares a key weakness that is well known in traditional socioeconomic planning, namely a tendency to reify current trends. In order to break with this tendency, this article sets out an approach that we call perspectivist scenario building. We also try to illustrate the points made and demonstrate the value added for planners by reflecting on our own experience in participation-oriented scenario work with Norwegian bureaucrats and politicians in the framework of a broad-scoped national scenario project for the Norwegian Government in the period between 1998 and 2001, called Norway 2030.     

Only When We Agree! How Value Congruence Moderates the Impact of Goal‐Oriented Leadership on Public Service Motivation

Questions of how and when managers can motivate the workforce of public organizations are fundamental for scholars and practitioners alike. A dominant assertion is that goal‐oriented leadership strategies, such as transformational leadership, foster public service motivation (PSM). However, existing studies rely on designs that are vulnerable to endogeneity and rarely investigate the scope conditions of the leadership‐PSM relationship. Combining a field experiment with 364 managers and surveys of their 3,470 employees, the authors show that transformational leadership and transactional leadership, when induced experimentally, do not have the claimed positive effect on PSM. In fact, the results indicate that goal‐oriented leadership can have demotivating effects when employee and organizational values are incongruent. Public managers should therefore carefully assess existing levels of value (in)congruence before implementing goal‐oriented leadership strategies, and—in case of value conflicts—seek to align perceptions of the desirable among members of the organization.     

Has the gender gap in voter turnout really disappeared?

According to conventional wisdom, the traditional gender gap in voting has disappeared or even reversed in most established democracies. Drawing on the existing literature on differences between the sexes in political engagement and on pioneering voter turnout theories, this article questions the conventional assumption and hypothesises that women still participate at a lower rate in less important elections. It systematically tests this hypothesis by exploring the impact of gender on voter turnout in different electoral arenas. The empirical analyses of two cross-national datasets (Making Electoral Democracy Work and the European Election Study) demonstrate that although there is generally no gender gap in first-order elections, women tend to vote less than men in second-order contests. This reflects lower levels of interest in politics among women and their lower levels of knowledge about politics when it comes to second-order elections.     

From Bandung to Brasilia: IBSA and the political lineage of South–South cooperation

This article aims to trace South–South cooperation political lineages connecting the Non-Aligned Movement and the IBSA (India, Brazil, South Africa) Forum. In order to determine whether IBSA could be considered the ‘heir’ to Bandung's principles, we analyse the concepts of ‘Third World’ and ‘Global South’ as well as their current applicability, the interpretations provided by existing literature on the IBSA grouping, and its member countries' shared views on different issues of the international agenda. The article also considers the historical evolution of ‘Southern’ diplomatic thought and actions. IBSA's actions and history, as well as its members, are studied to grasp how they are related to the Third World movement in the Cold War.