Religion,Secularization and Democracy in the Mediterranean Region: Problems and Prospects

Political debates in many Mediterranean countries today are increasingly framed in dichotomous terms, highlighting divisions between religious and secular worldviews. In some countries, for example Israel, the issue is so contentious that it is described as a ‘culture war’. While Israel struggles to balance its commitment to a Jewish state and a democracy, it does not seem to matter if the countries in question are democracies or non-democracies, or what their majority religious faith is. Instead, the role of religion in public life or, put another way, the ‘public return of religion’, is a pertinent and controversial political question everywhere in the Mediterranean region. How do we explain this phenomenon? On the one hand, we can point to both economic and demographic changes, while, on the other, we can trace the impact of continuing secularisation. Together these two sets of developments produce new challenges to existing political arrangements.     

Do Better Monitoring Institutions Increase Leadership Quality in Community Organizations? Evidence from Uganda

We offer a framework for analyzing the impact of monitoring—a commonly recommended solution to poor leadership—on the quality of democratically elected leaders in community organizations in low‐income countries. In our model, groups may face a trade‐off between leader ability and effort. If the group's ability to monitor the leader is low, then the leader may exert too little effort. A higher level of monitoring increases leader effort, raising the value of the public good. However, more intense monitoring may also drive higher‐ability members to opt out of candidacy, reducing public‐goods value. The result is an inverted U‐shaped relationship between the level of monitoring and the value of the public good. The trade‐off between leader effort and ability, however, only exists in the presence of sufficient private‐income opportunities. These predictions are assessed using original data gathered from Ugandan farmer associations.     

Walk and Die: An Unusual Presentation of Head Injury

Abstract:  We report three deaths in young adult males following closed blunt trauma to the head and face where the affected individuals were able to walk away from the incident, before subsequently collapsing and dying a short distance from the site of the assault. In each case, due to the rapidity of the posttrauma collapse, the pathologist was faced with a diagnostic difficulty at autopsy; the external examination revealed multiple injuries to the head and face, but internal examinations showed limited findings with no structural explanation for the death. We discuss possible mechanisms that could account for this scenario, the implications of alcohol consumption with a concussive head injury, and parallels that can be drawn with the so-called "talk and die,""talk and deteriorate," and "second impact syndrome." Finally, the possible role of so-called "postexercise peril" is discussed in relation to these deaths.     

The policy process: an institutionalist perspective

Abstract: The stages model of the policy process constitutes the conventional wisdom about the policy-making for much of political science and public administration. That model has performed a number of important tasks for these disciplines, but also contains a number of fundamental weaknesses. These include its assumptions concerning linearity and the temporal ordering of the stages, and the difficulty of the model in coping with policy change. Further, outcomes of the stages model tend to be determined by the environment of politics, rather than by the actors and institutions within government. The analysis presented in this article attempts to restore institutions (including the public bureaucracy) to a more appropriate central position in the formulation and determination of policy choices. The use of institutional analysis not only reflects more clearly the complex reality of policy-making and the interaction of organizations within the public sector, but it restores value concerns to a central place in the analysis and interpretation of public policy. Sommaire: Le modèle d'étapes utilisé dans le processus d'élaboration des politiques constitue le modèle conventionnel par excellence pour une bonne partie des sciences politiques et de l'administration publique. Bien que ce modèle ait permis de mener à bien des tâches importantes dans ces disciplines, il fait preuve de faiblesse sur certains points fondamentaux. Mentionnons notamment ses hypothèses sur la linéarité et l'ordonnancement temporel des étapes, ainsi que ses difficultés à tenir compte des changements de politiques. De plus, les résultats obtenus avec ce modèle tendent àêtre déterminés par l'environnement des politiques, plutôt que par les intervenants et les institutions au sein du gouvernement. L'analyse présentée dans cet article tente de redonner aux institutions (dont la bureaucratie publique) la place plus centrale qu'elles méritent dans l'élaboration et la détermination des politiques. Le recours à une analyse institutionnelle ne se contente pas de refléter plus clairement la réalité complexe de l'élaboration des politiques et l'interaction des organisations au sein du secteur public, mais il redonne une place essentielle aux questions de valeurs dans l'analyse et l'interprétation des politiques publiques.     

Administration in the year 2000: serving the client

One component of the increasing emphasis on management in the public sector is an emphasis on serving the “customer” of public sector agencies. Although it is difficult to argue that the clients of the public agencies should not be served courteously and efficiently, there are a number of questions about whether they should be thought of as customers in the same way as in the private sector. Some of those questions are empirical, related to difficulties in clearly identifying the customers of agencies. Other questions are normative, related to the proper definition of the role of the clients of public agencies and the definition of the public interest. These problems require serious rethinking of any simplistic adoption of a customer orientation in government.     

Escaping the joint‐decision trap: Repetition and Sectoral politics in the European union

Decision making in the European Union has been argued to present a ‘joint‐decision trap’, in which the ability of national actors to block decisions unilaterally produces decision making by the lowest common denominator. While this outcome is apparent in some decision situations it is far from a general outcome. The division of decisions into functional specialities and the continuing nature of the policy debates limits the capacity of ‘high politics’ to hinder decision making. Further, there are ways in which a policy entrepreneur can structure decisions to eliminate this sub‐optimal outcome.