Diversity Management in World Politics. Reformist China and the Future of the (Liberal) Order

Given the widely shared belief that, following a long period of crisis, the American-led liberal world order is now in transition, the question arises: what comes next? Considering China’s ‘parallel order-shaping’ project with respect to the liberal order as a harbinger of a ‘multi-order world’, it is reasonable to expect a concert-like mode of ordering, which will draw on a new common language to reach consensus among proactive stakeholders at the global level. Those interested in maintaining the liberal character of this arrangement, such as the EU, should therefore steadily engage in the process leading to its establishment in order to gain and retain full membership while enhancing their discursive power.     

Recent Trends in Nationality Requirements in Olympic Sports

Netherlands International Law Review - Sporting events are increasingly political with special focus paid to the number of medals won by a country. To increase the number of talented athletes in...     

W. Borodziej,S. Dębski, (Eds.), Polish Documents on Foreign Policy, 24 October 1938–30 September 1939

In 1927 in the Benedictine Abbey of St Andrew in Bruges a group of postulants was admitted as novices to the Order of Saint Benedict. Among the guests were the Chinese Ambassadors to Belgium, France and Portugal, the Belgian Ambassador to Switzerland, the Chinese chargé d'affaires at The Hague and various other dignitaries. They were there to witness their former colleague and fellow countryman, Lu Zhengxiang, enter the Benedictine Order and take the name of Frater Pierre Célestin. He had had a glittering diplomatic career in the service of China and had held the highest posts, including those of Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs.     

Ingredients of institutional reputations and citizen engagement with regulators

The purpose of this study is to examine the link between the reputational components of efficacy and moral reliability of institutions, and citizens' compliance with institutional recommendations. Research on bureaucratic reputations highlights the significance of positive political reputations based on credibility and legitimacy, but the impact of these components is not systematically isolated and studied. We draw insights from political psychology to move beyond a positive‐negative valence‐based approach of reputation, and highlight the different effect of efficacy and moral reliability components of reputation on citizens' cooperation, engagement in water saving activities, and levels of complaints. We use the Cypriot Water Authority as a case study and inquire how its institutional reputation influences Cypriot citizens' behavior regarding water use. Our data was collected via a representative national survey administered to a random sample of 800 Cypriots in the spring of 2009 and show that favorable perceptions of particular components of institutional reputation shape the levels of satisfaction with specific organizational outputs.     

The Competition for Pupillages at the Bar of England and Wales (2000–2004)1

Fair entry into the legal profession promotes legal legitimacy and the inclusiveness of the administration of justice. This article asks which individual factors predict success in the competition for entry to the Bar of England and Wales. Using data from 2,178 British aspiring barristers, it finds that university attended and attainment at university and in the BVC were the strongest predictors of gaining pupillage. Ethnic minorities were initially disadvantaged in the competition for pupillages, but this became statistically insignificant when taking into account attainment and type of university. However, those aged 30 and above were still disadvantaged in securing pupillages when controlling for attainment and university. The article highlights the challenges of fair selection into a graduate‐entry legal profession. Entry is reliant on the profile of graduates emerging from the prior education system where ascribed characteristics such as ethnicity, attainment, and university type influence opportunities.     

Analyzing Multiple-Item Measures of Crime and Deviance I: Item Response Theory Scaling

Multiple-item measures of self-reported offending typically provide the principal outcome measures for individual level research on the causes of crime and deviance. This article directs attention to the substantial problems presented by the task of forming composite scores for these measures, and it presents a possible solution to those problems. We consider scaling by means of the graded response model from item response theory (IRT) as a potential means of overcoming the shortcomings of traditional summative scaling and of obtaining valuable information about the strengths and weaknesses of our measures. We illustrate this strategy through a scale analysis of a fourteen-item, self-report measure of delinquency, using three years of data from the Monitoring the Future study, an annual national survey of high school seniors. The graded response model proves to be consistent with the data, and it provides results that address important substantive questions about self-report measures. The findings are informative about the strengths and weaknesses of alternative strategies for developing self-report instruments, indicating that there is little to be gained by making fine distinctions in the frequency of individual delinquent acts.     

“Sex change” in skeletal remains: Assessing how heat-induced changes interfere with sex estimation

The true impact of heat-induced changes in human bone regarding their sex estimation has not been comprehensively documented having a potentially negative impact on forensic anthropology. The objective of this paper was to evaluate how heat exposure affects sex estimation based on both morphological and metric features. The study focused in both low-to-medium intensity burns and high intensity burns. Selected sexually dimorphic features were analysed in 51 experimentally burnt skeletons from the 21st Century Identified Skeletal Collection. Bones were burnt to maximum temperatures between 450 °C and 1050 °C achieved after 75 to 257 min. Morphological methods tested in this study comprised the recommendations for hipbone features from Buikstra and Ubelaker (1994) and from Bruzek (2002). On the other hand, metric references tested here were the ones from Wasterlain (2000), Curate et al. (2016) and Gonçalves et al. (2013) focused on the humerus, femur, calcaneus and talus. Agreement was tested with Gwet’s AC1 test and was further assessed by calculating the relative amount of perfect agreements. Results demonstrated that heat-induced changes affected not only the scoring of morphological features burnt at high temperatures but also the scoring of features burnt at lower intensities. On the other hand, metric features were only considerably affected in high intensity burns, no major changes being documented for low-to-medium intensity burns. For low-to-medium intensity burns, the Bruzek and Curate et al. methods revealed a better agreement between the pre- and post-burning scores. For high intensity burns, better agreement was obtained by using the Bruzek (2002) and Gonçalves et al. (2013) methods. As expected, heat-induced warping, fracture and metric change had a major impact on the pre- and post-observations’ agreement. Contrary to what has been systematically assumed over the years, this impact is also quite substantial in bones burnt at low-to-medium burn intensities so caution is advised during the analysis of this kind of burnt skeletal material.     

School Climate as a Predictor of Incivility and Bullying Among Public School Employees: A Multilevel Analysis

We surveyed public school educators on the workplace incivility and workplace bullying they experienced and obtained their ratings of the organizational climate of the school. We used multilevel modeling to determine the effects of individual-level and school-level predictors. Ratings of school climate were significantly related to incivility and bullying. We found inverse relationships— the better the organizational climate, the lower the incivility and bullying. Several demographic variables of educators and two school-level variables were not significant predictors. Leaders who focus on improving organizational climate may find that their efforts benefit both student achievement and relationships among educators.