Motor Vehicle Collisions and Their Consequences—Part II: Predictors of Impairment and Disability

A significant number of persons involved in motor vehicle collisions (MVCs) evidence persistent changes in physical, psychosocial, and cognitive functioning consequent to physical injury. While post-injury impairment and disability can sometimes be predicted with knowledge of injury type and injury severity, post-injury experiences of pain, psychological distress, cognitive dysfunction, and role disruption have been determined to contribute to injury-related impairment and disability. This article represents the second part of a two-part review of MVCs and their consequences. In part I of the review, research findings related to physical, psychosocial, and cognitive changes that occur consequent to injury-causing MVCs are described. In this article, measures used to document the severity of physical injuries are reviewed, along with the most widely accepted definitions of impairment and disability. Models that have been proposed to explain the progression from injury to impairment and disability are reviewed, including a more recently proposed model created specifically to guide the assessment and management of MVC-related outcomes. The greater part of this article is devoted to the review of findings related to physical, psychological, and cognitive predictors of post-MVC impairment and disability. The relation of these predictors to post-MVC impairment and disability is described across three specific injury contexts: (1) whiplash-associated disorders, (2) traumatic brain injury, and (3) polytrauma. In each context, findings related to recovery of function in the form of return to work are summarized, along with findings related to the contribution of compensation to injury-related symptoms and impairments. Although not characterized as a physical injury, chronic pain serves frequently as the post-injury symptom that persists beyond all injury management and rehabilitation efforts and that contributes significantly to MVC-related functional impairment, disability, and emotional distress. It is appropriate, therefore, to include in this review a discussion of those MVC studies that specifically address impairment and disability occurring in relation to chronic pain. The article ends with the identification of ongoing research challenges and future directions for both the study of MVCs and their associated sequelae and clinical practice with persons who are experiencing the consequences of MVC-related injuries.     

Motor Vehicle Collisions and Their Consequences—Part 1: Common Physical,Psychosocial, and Cognitive Outcomes

Motor vehicle collisions (MVCs) have a significant impact on injured persons and society. MVCs generally result in property damage, but more serious MVCs often result in physical injuries that have significant physical, psychosocial, and cognitive consequences, all of which may result in long-standing functional impairment and disability as well as marked changes in quality of life. This article represents the first part of a two-part review of MVCs; the complex and interactive array of physical, psychosocial, and cognitive changes that occur consequent to injury-causing MVCs; and the person and environmental factors that best predict functional impairment and disability following an MVC. The current article provides an overview of the scope and significance of MVCs and summarizes the literature related to the physical injuries and the physical, psychosocial, and cognitive impairments that are most commonly experienced consequent to MVCs. Physical injuries reviewed in the current article include fractures, whiplash-associated disorders (WADs), traumatic brain injury (TBI), multiple traumatic injuries or polytrauma, and chronic pain conditions. These injuries and conditions are reviewed because of the relative quantity and quality of existing research related to these injuries and conditions. This article also provides a review of those psychological disorders that more commonly begin, recur, or are exacerbated in the aftermath of an MVC. The following psychological disorders are reviewed: posttraumatic stress disorder, complex posttraumatic stress disorder, major depressive disorder, somatic symptom disorder, and major neurocognitive disorder and mild neurocognitive disorder. Finally, this article ends with a brief discussion of changes in quality of life that can occur in relation to the physical injuries and psychological and neurocognitive disorders that are common consequences of MVCs. The final section of this article will serve to introduce part II of this review of MVCs and their consequences, in which predictors of MVC-related impairment and disability are discussed.     

Between Renewal and Stability: Party System Change from a Multi-Level Perspective in Brazil (1998–2018)

The growth of the far right and election results in Brazil are often associated with national or large-scale events. The multi-level features of these developments, namely party competition at the sub-national level, are overlooked in the literature. This article argues that changes in the Brazilian national party system – those observed from Bolsonaro's election, mainly – are rooted in sub-national political dynamics. Through a comparative and longitudinal analysis of multi-level executive and legislative elections, we find that, although there are distinct patterns of competition between the national-sub-national and within-country levels, this difference is not evident in volatility.     

Policy Monitoring and Ministerial Survival: Evidence from Multiparty Presidentialism

Studies on policy monitoring and ministerial survival within coalition governments are usually conducted separately. In this study, we bring these topics together and argue that the strategy of coalition partners to oversee the implementation of one another's policies has surprising consequences on the duration of office-holding ministers. Our main theoretical insight suggests that the degree to which ministers behave as faithful agents of the government depends on their expectations about their partners' monitoring behavior, such that when they expect to be under high scrutiny, they moderate their drifting behavior. Using evidence from legislative information requests on the activities of individual ministers over all multiparty cabinets formed in Brazil between 1995 and 2014, we demonstrate that: (1) greater policy monitoring by coalition partners is observed under more ideologically heterogeneous cabinets, and (2) more frequent policy-monitoring efforts by coalition partners lead to a lower ministerial replacement within the government term.