New Public Management in Dutch Local Government

This article investigates the adoption of New Public Management (NPM) in Dutch local government. According to Hood's concept of NPM, it will show the extent to which Dutch municipalities have adopted businesslike instruments and styles. Following Pollitt's framework on studying public management changes, a distinction will be made between changes in ideology, instruments, practices and impacts. The article concludes that, unlike ideological and instrumental innovations, the evidence for NPM-like practices and impacts is limited. To put it crudely, a lot of apparent changes in Dutch local government seem to be only skin-deep.     

Namibia: Consensus institutions and majoritarian politics

This article assesses the utility of Arend Lijphart's classification scheme of democracies by means of a case study of Namibia. In particular, the article examines whether Namibia represents a case of consensus democracy, based on institutional criteria within the power-sharing and power-division dimensions, as developed in Lijphart's Patterns of Democracy (1999). The application of the ten criteria results in a mixed outcome, with an overall modal value of ‘moderately consensus’, a modal value of strongly majoritarian for the executive-parties dimension, and moderately consensus for the federal-executive dimension. The highly varied scores for each of the criteria, particularly within the first of Lijphart's two dimensions, present several problems. It is argued that the statistical modal value represents a distorted image of Namibian politics. Namibia scores consistently on the majoritarian side for criteria which conceptually concern the essence of the consensus modal. Moreover, apparent consensus features such as tripartite institutions, bicameralism, and a rigid constitution do not ‘behave’ as such due to one-party dominance, and neither does proportional representation produce consensus politics. Lijphart's criteria are too formal, and should not receive equal weight. The article concludes that power-sharing is better investigated by focusing on just two criteria, namely the party system and the strongly related criterion of government coalitions. Moreover, it is essential to examine political behaviour, in particular of governing elites, to look for the presence of cooperation and compromise, paradoxically issues which were more prominent in Lijphart's earlier work.     

Review essay / institutional roles and moral autonomy

Elizabeth Wolgast, Ethics of an Artificial Person: Lost Responsibility in Professions and Organizations Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1992, 161 pp.     

Sibling Proactive and Reactive Aggression in Adolescence

We describe sibling proactive and reactive aggression in middle and late adolescence. Participants were 8th (n?=?303, M _age?=?13.74 years, SD?=?.59) and 12th (n?=?300, M _age?=?17.73 years, SD?=?.56) grade adolescents who completed an in-school survey. Findings revealed that these adolescents were significantly more likely to engage in reactive than proactive aggression with their closest-aged sibling. However, 8th grade adolescents reported greater aggression toward their closest-aged sibling than did 12th grade adolescents. In addition, sex composition of the sibling dyad moderated the association between sibling relationship quality (i.e., warmth and rivalry) and both proactive and reactive aggression indicating unique links for brother-brother and older sister-younger brother pairs.     

Economic strain and perceptions of social cohesion in Europe: Does institutional trust matter?

The degree to which different social groups get along is a key indicator of the cohesiveness of a society. This study examines perceptions of social cohesion among Europeans and explains variations in those perceptions by considering the separate and combined effects of economic strain and institutional trust. Analyses were conducted with the 27 member countries of the EU based on the Eurobarometer 74.1 on poverty and social exclusion conducted in 2010. Results show that individuals living in households experiencing economic strain perceive social cohesion to be weaker than their less economically hard‐pressed counterparts. By contrast, individuals trusting their political institutions perceived there to be higher levels of cohesion. Furthermore, institutional trust substantially moderates the negative relationship between economic strain and perceptions of cohesion. These results are robust to various model specifications. Moreover, extending the analysis revealed that this moderating effect held when considering social relations between the poor and rich and between different racial and ethnic groups. Theoretical and practical implications of the results are discussed.     

Predicting Short-Term Institutional Aggression in Forensic Patients: A Multi-Trait Method for Understanding Subtypes of Aggression

Accurately predicting inpatient aggression is an important endeavor. The current study investigated inpatient aggression over a six-month time period in a sample of 152 male forensic patients. We assessed constructs of psychopathy, anger, and active symptoms of mental illness and tested their ability to predict reactive and instrumental aggression. Across all levels of analyses, anger and active symptoms of mental illness predicted reactive aggression. Traits of psychopathy, which demonstrated no relationship to reactive aggression, were a robust predictor of instrumental aggression. This study (a) reestablishes psychopathy as a clinically useful construct in predicting inpatient instrumental aggression, (b) provides some validation for the reactive/instrumental aggression paradigm in forensic inpatients, and (c) makes recommendations for integrating risk assessment results into treatment interventions.

Filtering speed in a Continental European reorganization procedure

Recent studies of US Chapter 11 show it to be a relatively efficient procedure. We examine reorganization cases in a Continental European, creditor-oriented bankruptcy system, viz. Belgium, and report very different findings. Using hazard and cure regression models to determine what drives the length of time spent in reorganizations, we find evidence suggesting that courts have little impact on the screening and filtering process. In fact, many drivers of procedure length prove to have the opposite sign of what one would expect if the procedure would efficiently realise its goals. Instead, the procedure appears to be mainly creditor or owner-driven.     

Observation of tri-allelic patterns in autosomal STRs during routine casework

We report three cases of tri-allelic patterns observed during routine forensic casework on 5964 Belgian residents. These individuals had been typed for the following 15 autosomal STRs: CSF1PO, D3S1358, D5S818, D7S820, D8S1179, D13S317, D16S539, D18S51, D21S11, vWA, FGA, TH01, TPOX, D2S1338 and D19S433.The first example of a tri-allelic pattern had the genotype 13;15;16 for the D8S1179 locus. In the second observation there was 16;21;22 pattern for the D18S51 locus. The third case had the alleles 10;11;13 also for D18S51.All cases belonged to the Type I tri-allelic pattern, with three uneven peaks, the sum of the heights of both smaller peaks equalling the height of the tallest peak.Three cases in 5964 typed individuals is a frequency for tri-allelic patterns in autosomal STRs of 0.05%.