Global uncertainty,economic governance institutions and foreign direct investment inflow in Africa

Economic Change and Restructuring - Based on the fact that Africa has not fared well in attracting foreign direct investments in the last decade compared to other regions of the world, especially...     

Public Service Motivation: A Systematic Literature Review and Outlook

Over the past two decades, research on public service motivation has seen rapid growth. Despite the relatively large number of publications to date, no systematic research overview has been created, leaving the body of literature somewhat unstructured and possibly hampering future research. This article fills this void by providing a systematic literature review of 323 publications that examines six key aspects of the literature on public service motivation: the growth of research on the concept, the most prominent studies based on a referencing network analysis, the most frequent publication outlets, research designs and methods, lines of inquiry and patterns of empirical findings, and implications for practice drawn from the publications in the study sample. Strengths and weaknesses of the existing literature are identified, and future research directions are proposed.     

Regulation Inside Government: Public Interest Justifications and Regulatory Failures

Regulation is normally thought of as government regulation of the private sector, particularly business. However, there is a developing literature on regulation inside government, exploring the ways in which government regulates itself through a range of bodies which set standards for public sector organizations, monitor them and seek to bring about compliance with those standards. Reading across economic theories of business regulation to regulation inside government, this article suggests that the current wave of reform inside the UK public sector implicitly reflects a public interest view of regulation. However, the analogous public interest justification for the regulation of business has been heavily criticized and regulatory failures have been suggested including regulation in the interest of regulated bodies, regulation in the interest of regulators and the high costs of operating regulatory systems.     

Business Models and the Transfer of Businesslike CentralGovernment Agencies

At the same time as many researchers in public administration are suggesting the emergence of similar New Public Management (NPM) forms in Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries, a substantial number of those working in comparative political economy are rediscovering differences between countries. This paper explores a key component of NPM—business-like central government agencies—in four countries: the UK, the U.S., Germany, and Japan. So far, the private sector side of the NPM story has largely been neglected. However, the business-like agency model as developed in the UK was influenced by the Anglo-American system of corporate governance. In comparative political economy, the Anglo-American system is seen as different from that in Germany or Japan. These differences are important for understanding transfer through emulation of the UK agency model by policy-makers in other countries. An apparent inconsistency may be developing, with governments using an NPM form based on an Anglo-American model of business that is far from universal in business itself.     

Effect of History and Context on Forensic Pathologist Interpretation of Photographs of Patterned Injury of the Skin

In a previous study, a survey‐based analysis of pathologist diagnoses of patterned injury was performed. Subjects were provided with photographs of “classic” injuries and asked to diagnose the lesion in the absence of history or context. There was a relatively low diagnostic consensus among respondents. A second survey suggested that the disparate answers were not due to a strong belief in different diagnoses, but instead reflected how the respondents dealt with ambiguity. A third survey was created that asked participants to evaluate patterned injuries of the skin, but provided history and contextual information. The addition of history and contextual information increased consensus from a median of 80% to 98% on a per‐question basis. Confidence increased from a median of 56%–92%. These results demonstrate the importance of history and context in medical diagnosis of patterned injuries of the skin.     

The emerging EU peacebuilding framework: confirming or transcending liberal peacebuilding?

The European Union (EU) is now emerging as a major actor in regional and global peacebuilding. Yet its peacebuilding approach and practices are subject to some significant and familiar contradictions. In this article, we identify the basis for what may become an ‘EU peacebuilding framework’ (EUPF), and argue that, while it aspires to a ‘just and durable peace’ including practical tools and a normative framework, these need to be set in critical relief. The EU's nascent approach to building peace is compared and contrasted with the evolving liberal peacebuilding consensus and the much criticized statebuilding project which has recently emerged. This is evaluated against recent research focusing on developing a more sophisticated form of contextually relevant peacebuilding. Finally, we assess how the embryonic EUPF might contribute to the development of a just and durable peace, and ask what sorts of issues and dimensions this raises.     

Expert evidence and medical manslaughter: vagueness in action

This article examines the reliance placed on expert evidence in prosecutions of health professionals for gross negligence manslaughter, where juries must decide whether conduct goes beyond civil negligence and constitutes the crime of involuntary manslaughter. It argues that the test for liability is vague and examines some of the consequences of this. Given the vagueness of the offence, jurors are likely to place great reliance on expert medical evidence. Little is known about how experts negotiate the legal process, empirically speaking: how they approach their task, how they view their role as expert witnesses, and the attitudes, biases, and beliefs that may underpin their testimony. Drawing on the experiences and perceptions often medical experts, this article explores how experts manage the vagueness inherent in the task of interpreting and applying gross negligence. Experts appear to go beyond offering purely medical opinion and enjoy engaging with law and the legal process.     

Quantitative assessment of evidential weight for a fingerprint comparison I. Generalisation to the comparison of a mark with set of ten prints from a suspect

The authors have published elsewhere a quantitative method for assessing weight of evidence in the case where a finger mark from a crime scene is compared with a control print taken from a single finger of a suspect. The approach is based on the notion of calculating a likelihood ratio (LR) that addresses a pair of propositions relating to the single finger that was the origin of the crime mark. In practice, things are rather different because the crime mark will not just be compared with a single finger from a suspect but with a set of prints from all of his/her fingers; likewise, when the mark is compared with a database, this will consist of ten print records from random individuals. It is clear that "finger propositions" are not realistic in this situation and we show how our approach may be generalised to address a pair of propositions that relate to the person that made the crime mark. It often is the case that information is present at the crime scene that enables some inference to be drawn relating to which of the offender's ten fingers left a particular mark of interest. This kind of inference may profitably be drawn into the formal analysis. We illustrate our approach with an example.