The response of relatives to medicolegal investigations and forensic autopsy

Relatives of deceased persons, on whose body a forensic autopsy had been performed at the Institute of Forensic Science, Bern, Switzerland, were interrogated by a questionnaire. The aim was to investigate the attitude of relatives toward medicolegal investigation procedures in general and toward forensic autopsy in particular. A great majority of the relatives showed a positive or indifferent attitude toward a forensic autopsy. They showed a great interest in autopsy results and wished to be informed. It was concluded that information given before the autopsy is important for better understanding and can, if properly given, improve the relatives' acceptance and collaboration regarding forensic investigations. By contrast, a lack of information before the autopsy and about the autopsy results can cause further suffering on behalf of the bereaved. A forensic autopsy can be of great benefit for relatives and can help them to cope with a tragic loss.     

Ability to Face Threats of Cyberterrorism: Factors Associated with Organizational Competence

ABSTRACT

Acts of cyberterrorism represent potential, significant negative effects to property, infrastructure systems, security, and an overall way of life. These disruptions garner significant attention from government and the public. Managers concerned by threats of cyberterrorism should understand the components that enhance organizational competence so that doubt and fear do not overtake organizational members when faced with such extreme events. Although organizational competence is important in everyday organizational behaviors, the presence of confidence in organizational abilities is especially critical when operating in the midst of the ambiguity and destructive disruptions associated with cyberterrorist threats. We empirically assess three factors associated with competence for organizations facing simulated cyberterror attacks. Our results support the relationship between two of these factors—organizational identification and deference to expertise—with organizational competence. These findings contribute to research concerning the antecedents critical to organizational competence and also add to the growing research on cyberterrorism.     

Value Dynamics: Towards a Framework for Analyzing Public Value Changes

This paper presents a preliminary framework for analyzing how values in the public sector change over time. The specific dynamics are conceptualised as three types of change mechanisms: a teleological, a conflictual and a value-internal change mechanism. Choice of governance systems – hierarchy, clan, network or market - is an example of designing control systems to promote particular values. Another change mechanism is rooted in conflicts between values and the actors carrying these values leading to various organisational responses. Finally, influenced by basic properties of a value changes may follow several distinct patterns such as life cycles, pendulum dynamics, enlargement of scope, refinement and turbulence. The possible outcomes of value dynamic processes are basically changes in value configurations: crowding out, sedimentation, the core-periphery hypothesis, division of labour, and re-interpretation. The paper uses examples from a Danish context, but argues that the value dynamics identified have a more universal scope.     

Public Value Dimensions: Developing and Testing a Multi-Dimensional Classification

Further integration of the public value literature with other strands of literature within Public Administration necessitates a more specific classification of public values. This article applies a typology linked to organizational design principles, because this is useful for empirical public administration studies. Based on an existing typology of modes of governance, we develop a classification and test it empirically, using survey data from a study of the values of 501 public managers. We distinguish among seven value dimensions (the public at large, rule abidance, balancing interests, budget keeping, efficient supply, professionalism, and user focus), and we find systematic differences between organizations at different levels and with different tasks, indicating that the classification is fruitful. Our goal is to enable more precise analyses of value conflicts and improve the integration between the public value literature and other parts of the Public Administration discipline.     

Comparative Politics,Policy Analysis and Governance ‐ A European Contribution to the Study of the European Union?

Policy‐Making in the European Union. Fourth edition. Edited by Helen Wallace and William Wallace. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Pp.xxvi + 610, 32 figures, 21 boxes, 45 tables, 2 appendices, bibliography, index. £17.99 (paper) ISBN 0–19–878242‐X.

The Political System of the European Union. By Simon Hix. London: Macmillan, 1999. Pp.xx + 427, 53 tables, 28 figures, appendix, bibliography, index. £49.50 (cloth) ISBN 0–333–71653–1; £16.99 (paper) ISBN 0–333–71654‐X.

Decision‐Making in the European Union. By John Peterson and Elizabeth Bomberg. London: Macmillan, 1999. Pp.xvi + 336, 52 boxes, 16 tables, bibliography, index. £47.50 (cloth) ISBN 0–333–60491–1; £15.99 (paper) ISBN 0–333–60492‐X.

The Transformation of Governance in the European Union. Edited by Beate Kohler‐Koch and Rainer Eising. London: Routledge, 1999. Pp.xvi + 320, 7 tables, 2 figures, bibliography, index. £60 (cloth) ISBN 0–415–21548‐X.

Theories of European Integration. By Ben Rosamond. London: Macmillan, 2000. Pp.xiii + 232, 5 tables, 1 figure, bibliography, glossary, index. £42.50 (cloth) ISBN 0–333–64716–5; £13.99 (paper) ISBN 0–333–64717–3.     

Parliamentary questions as a control mechanism in coalition governments

This article argues that government parties can use parliamentary questions to monitor coalition partners in order to reduce agency loss through ministerial drift. According to this control logic, government parties have particular incentives to question ministers whose jurisdictions display high policy conflict and high electoral salience and thus hold the prospect of electorally damaging ministerial drift. Multivariate regression analysis of all parliamentary questions in the German Bundestag between 1980 and 2017 supports this hypothesis, showing that cabinet parties address substantially and significantly more questions to ministries held by coalition partners on salient and ideologically divisive issues. This interactive effect does not occur for opposition parties or questions posed to own-party ministers. These findings, as well as the temporal patterns of questioning over the electoral cycle, indicate that control within coalitions is a distinct motivation for questioning ministers that cannot be reduced to existing explanations such as electorally motivated issue competition.     

Elections in Western European parliaments

Parliaments often elect holders of important extra‐parliamentary offices such as heads of state, constitutional judges, heads of audit institutions and ombudsmen. What drives the behaviour of parliamentary actors and the outcome of such elections? This article explains actor behaviour theoretically, drawing on spatial factors, principal‐agent arguments about the importance of nonspatial candidate characteristics and signaling arguments about competitive considerations beyond the specific election. Empirically, it provides the first comparative analysis of such elections outside the United States Senate using original data on 100 elections for four external offices in 14 Western European parliaments. The findings show that spatial variables, nonspatial candidate characteristics and features of the competitive context systematically affect the election outcome. The article contributes to comparative parliamentary research in general by demonstrating how parliamentary activities, other than lawmaking, can be analysed using established theories and by showing that consensual aggregate outcomes can be explained within a competition‐based rational choice model.     

Exit,voice, and loyalty: Parent–child relations in the proto-industrial household economy (Zürich, 17th–18th centuries)

This article formulates a simple model of parent–child interest conflicts. Based on a simple model of a household economy with a production or wage income function, a labor maintenance cost function, and an externally given wage rate, it discusses potential conflicts over the appropriation of the product of family members' labor in terms of the trilogy of exit, voice, and loyalty. The model is then explored by using household lists that provide detailed information on the economic activity of individuals. Many young proto-industrial workers used the threat of exiting their parents' household to keep much of their earnings through the Rast custom (boarding allowance). The threat of leaving operated well among the middle and lower classes of proto-industrial society, but it is unclear whether it also worked for the daughters of farmers who apparently left home much earlier than their brothers. The discourse of contemporaries about the Rast custom are considered and interpreted as a counterstrategy against the exit threat in which the elders fostered a sense of loyalty among the young.