Climate Change Sceptical Frames: The Case of Seven Australian Sceptics

Climate change sceptics are known for their resistance to proactive climate response policies, especially policies aimed at restricting greenhouse gas emissions. It is often assumed that scepticism about the science behind climate change would lead directly to outright rejection of all proactive climate policies aimed at mitigating emissions and adapting to climate‐induced changes already under way. This article demonstrates the variability among the climate policy views of seven well‐known Australian climate change sceptics in the period 2007–2012. Using the lens of frame‐analysis, we unpack some key sceptic rationales and narratives. The analysis shows that sceptics share a master frame that privileges individualist‐libertarian‐progress‐social order values, which are thus likely to conflict with the values implicit in conventional climate policy remedies. The analysis also shows that sceptical pre‐occupations diverge at more detailed framing levels, with various practical concerns and fears often at the centre of sceptical argumentation     

Quantitative indices for anti-human trafficking policies: based on reports of the U.S. State Department and the Council of Europe

Quantitative ratings of policies of national governments are an important tool for the monitoring of compliance with international standards in many domains. In this article we present a global index of anti-human trafficking policies developed by a research consortium using the TIP country reports of the U.S. State Department (the 3P index) and an index based on the reports of the monitoring body of the Council of Europe Convention against Human Trafficking (GRETA). Although the global 3P index gives more favorable ratings to most European countries than the GRETA-based index, a moderately strong correlation was found between the two indices. This is an encouraging result lending support to the validity of the assessments of both monitoring mechanisms as well as to their transformation into quantitative scores. We also demonstrate that the detailed GRETA-based index can be used to identify best practices in anti-trafficking policies and specific areas where these policies are most in need of improvement, e.g. legal aid and compensation for victims. Our analyses of the relationships between the various items of the index revealed positive correlations between the existence of units of specialized prosecutors and the numbers of convictions of traffickers. Our paper, then, demonstrates the potential of quantitative indices of counter human trafficking policies as tools for both effective monitoring of the implementation of international standards and for analytical purposes.     

Policy work at the sub‐national level: Analytical styles of Canadian and Czech directors and managers

This paper uses data from two countries to develop profiles of policy directors and managers in the sub‐national public bureaucracies of Canada and the Czech Republic. Canadian directors and managers undertake more analytically complex tasks for which research and evaluation is necessary. In comparison, Czech managers are more firmly engaged in project management agendas, and Czech directors tend to rely on personal experience and routine approaches. Overall, the sample shows that different policy styles are emphasized in each country and at different levels ranging from rational‐technical and advisory‐interactive (Canadian directors and managers), process expertise (Czech managers), and a combination of analytical rationality and issue activism (Czech directors).     

The trust deficit in Sino-Japanese relations

Abstract

Recent years have seen a deterioration in political relations between China and Japan, in particular over the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu islands and history-related problems. Commentators have noted an attendant decline in trust between the two sides and have stressed the need for confidence-building measures in order to address the trust deficit. This article explores the origins of declining trust between the Chinese and Japanese leaderships. It argues that attempts to build a friendly and trusting relationship in the early post-war and post-normalisation periods began to fail in the 1980s, and have been in a gradual state of decline ever since. Using the concepts of trust and friendship, the article suggests that the lack of trust properties such as empathy, bonding, reliability and predictability have contributed to the deterioration of trust at both elite and popular levels.     

Gender Differences in Resistance to Schooling: The Role of Dynamic Peer-Influence and Selection Processes

Boys engage in notably higher levels of resistance to schooling than girls. While scholars argue that peer processes contribute to this gender gap, this claim has not been tested with longitudinal quantitative data. This study fills this lacuna by examining the role of dynamic peer-selection and influence processes in the gender gap in resistance to schooling (i.e., arguing with teachers, skipping class, not putting effort into school, receiving punishments at school, and coming late to class) with two-wave panel data. We expect that, compared to girls, boys are more exposed and more responsive to peers who exhibit resistant behavior. We estimate hybrid models on 5448 students from 251 school classes in Sweden (14–15 years, 49% boys), and stochastic actor-based models (SIENA) on a subsample of these data (2480 students in 98 classes; 49% boys). We find that boys are more exposed to resistant friends than girls, and that adolescents are influenced by the resistant behavior of friends. These peer processes do not contribute to a widening of the gender gap in resistance to schooling, yet they contribute somewhat to the persistence of the initial gender gap. Boys are not more responsive to the resistant behavior of friends than girls. Instead, girls are influenced more by the resistant behavior of lower status friends than boys. This explains to some extent why boys increase their resistance to schooling more over time. All in all, peer-influence and selection processes seem to play a minor role in gender differences in resistance to schooling. These findings nuance under investigated claims that have been made in the literature.     

Getting to Sweden,Part II: Breaking with Corruption in the Nineteenth Century

Issues about corruption and other forms of ‘bad government’ have become central in large parts of the social sciences. An unresolved question, however, is how countries can solve the issue of systemic corruption. In this article, based on Elinor Ostrom's theory of common pool resource appropriation, a new theoretical model for explaining this type of institutional change is developed. Sweden during the nineteenth century is used as an illustration of the model by showing how the country made a transition from being largely patrimonial, nepotistic and corrupt to a modern, Weberian, efficient and impartial state structure. Building upon a companion article about the importance of losing a war as a precondition for breaking systematic corruption, this article stresses the importance of three additional factors in Sweden: previous changes in courts and the legal system; recognition of the problem by the main contemporary political actors as shown in debates in the Diet; and the new liberal ideology that made an important impact on the Swedish political scene during this period.