A New Tool for Coding and Interpreting Injuries in Fatal Airplane Crashes: The Crash Injury Pattern Assessment Tool Application to the Air France Flight AF447 Disaster (Rio de Janeiro–Paris), 1st of June 2009

For investigation of air disasters, crash reconstruction is obtained using data from flight recorders, physical evidence from the site, and injuries patterns of the victims. This article describes a new software, Crash Injury Pattern Assessment Tool (CIPAT), to code and analyze injuries. The coding system was derived from the Abbreviated Injury Score (AIS). Scores were created corresponding to the amount of energy required causing the trauma (ER), and the software was developed to compute summary variables related to the position (assigned seat) of victims. A dataset was built from the postmortem examination of 154/228 victims of the Air France disaster (June 2009), recovered from the Atlantic Ocean after a complex and difficult task at a depth of 12790 ft. The use of CIPAT allowed to precise cause and circumstances of deaths and confirmed major dynamics parameters of the crash event established by the French Civil Aviation Safety Investigation Authority.     

Functional regulatory spaces

This article develops the concept of “Functional Regulatory Space” (FRS) in order to analyze the new forms of State action addressing (super) wicked problems. A FRS simultaneously spans several policy sectors, institutional territories and levels of government. It suggests integrating previous policy theories that focused on “boundary-spanning regime,” “territorial institutionalism” or multi-level governance. The FRS concept is envisaged as a Weberian “ideal-type” of State action and is applied to the empirical study of two European cases of potential FRS: the integrated management of water basins and the regulation of the European sky through functional airspace blocks. It will be concluded that the current airspace regulation does match the ideal-type of FRS any better than the water resource regulation does. The next research step consists in analyzing the genesis and institutionalization of potential FRS addressing other (super) wicked problems such as climate change and economic, security, health and immigration issues in different institutional contexts as well as at various levels of governance.     

Brian Mulroney a-t-il politisé les sous-ministres?

Sommaire: Cette étude teste s'il est vrai, comme on l'a prétendu, que le gouvernement Mulroney a procédéà un remaniement sans précédent du personnel des sousministres lors de son premier mandat. Il s'agit d'établir si 1) le remaniement a été exceptionnellement important comparativement aux pratiques antérieures à l'arrivée des conservateurs et 2) si ce remaniement a marqué une politisation accrue des sous-ministres dans le sens que le gouvernement conservateur aurait donné la préférence aux hauts fonctionnaires qui partagent ses orientations idéologiques ou ses programmes d'action. Deux techniques d'enquête ont été mises à contribution: l'indice de mobilité des sous-ministres calculé en nombre de départs, nominations et mutations, et une série d'entretiens semi-directifs conduite auprès de hauts fonctionnaires et de responsables politiques. La conclusion est que les sous-ministres ont échappéà une politisation accrue de leur fonction même s'ils ont été soumis à un remaniement d'une ampleur exceptionnelle lors des deux premières années du mandat conservateur. Abstract: This study examines whether it is true, as some have claimed, that the Mulroney government did an unprecedented reorganization of the deputy ministers' staff during its first term. We had to determine whether the reorganization was exceptionally extensive as compared to the practices prior to the Conservatives, and whether that reorganization constituted greater politicization of the deputy ministers in the sense that the Conservative government would have given preference to senior officials who supported its ideology and action programs. Two investigative techniques were used: the mobility index of deputy ministers, based on the number of departures, appointments and transfers, and a series of semi-focused interviews with senior officials and politicians. The conclusion is that the deputy ministers escaped increased politicization of their role even though they underwent an exceptionally deep reorganization during the first two years of the Conservative mandate.     

Foreign Direct Investment in China: Determinants and Effects

This paper attempts to assess the determinants of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in China and its effects on the whole economy. After presenting the main theoretical contributions and the previous works done about China’s inward-FDI, an empirical study has been implemented extending the previous ones with a different data set (more recent) and with different methodologies. The traditional determinants of FDI seem to be relevant for China: domestic market size, cost advantages and openness to the rest of the world. Concerning the consequences of FDI on the Chinese economy, our empirical evidence supports the view that FDI affects China’s growth through the diffusion of ideas. Through the introduction of new ideas, multinational firms develop technical progress and hence long-run economic growth. The transmission of ideas seems to have had a positive effect on the Chinese growth.