Reform Strategies Matter: Explaining the Perplexing Results of Regional Government Reforms in Norway and Denmark

Reforming the public sector often means imposing immediate costs on well-organised interests in return for longer-term, diffuse benefits to voters and taxpayers. Nonetheless, reforms sometimes are carried through. Investigations of this puzzle have followed two approaches: The first is structural and explains reforms as a consequence of the institutional setting in which policymakers operate. The second focuses on human agency. It investigates how reformers search for ways to overcome structural obstacles. This approach has lived a quiet life in recent decades. In this paper, we investigate recent attempts to reform the regional government level in Norway and Denmark. Despite very similar structural settings and political preferences, the reforms failed in Norway, but were successful in Denmark; failure and success being defined by the two governments' intensions. We argue that the explanation lies in the different reform strategies pursued by the central governments in the two countries.     

Strategic Management in the Public Sector: How Tools Enable and Constrain Strategy Making

ABSTRACT

Strategic management (SM) has become prominent on the agenda in several public organizations due to new public management (NPM) reforms. Nevertheless, there are few studies investigating how public organizations apply SM in practice and what tools are used. As a result, calls have been made for such studies. This article can be seen as an attempt to meet this call by presenting a qualitative case study of how SM has been applied in the Swedish Transport Administration (STA), a central government agency in Sweden, and what tools it used in strategy making. By analyzing the micro processes of strategizing at STA, our results indicate that public organizations need to be aware of at least three specific tensions that can enable or constrain strategy making. These tensions are: short v. long-term, parts v. whole, and reactivity v. proactivity.     

How Pollution Taxes may Increase Pollution and Reduce Net Revenues

This paper develops a positive theory of pollution taxation by a federal authority when pollution abatement subsidies are used by local governments. Environmental and industry lobby groups influence governments with campaign contributions. First, pollution may increase in the pollution tax because the abatement subsidy increases (decreases) with the tax, and pollution increases (decreases) in the abatement subsidy. This occurs because the lobbying incentives change at a pollution tax reform. Second, pollution taxes may reduce net revenues because subsidy expenditures rise. Third, pollution may increase simultaneously as net revenues fall. Finally, the welfare effect of a pollution tax may be negative.     

Preadolescent antecedents of depressive symptomatology at age 18: A prospective study

The purpose of this article is twofold: (1) to summarize the theoretical frame-work, methodological orientation, and gender-differentiated findings of our ongoing study of the personality context, prospective and concurrent, for depressive symptoms at age 18; and (2) to report new longitudinal relations between preadolescent play constructions (at age 11) and depressive tendencies reported seven years later. Eighty-seven 18-year-olds completed the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale (CES-D). Seven years earlier, at age 11, the subjects were observed in a play construction situation. Six psychologically coherent, reliable play composite variables were generated from the codings of videotapes and related longitudinally, in a hierarchical polynomial regression design, to the later CES-D scores. Among preadolescent girls, concern with morality and loss foretold, linearly, depressive experiences. The quadratic regression function explained additional variance: relative to girls receiving intermediate CES-D scores, girls earning loworhigh scores were seen as more overcontrolling of impulse, more angry, and more concerned with loss. Among preadolescent boys, only curvilinear relations were obtained. Relative to boys receiving intermediate CES-D scores, boys earning loworhigh CES-D scores were seen during preadolescence as more undercontrolling of impulse, more angry, and more concerned with loss as theme. The implications of these findings are discussed.This study was supported by National Institute of Mental Health Grant MH 16080 to Jack Block.Received Ph.D from University of California at Berkeley in 1984. Major research interests include socio-emotional development in adolescence, developmental psychopathology, and cross cultural perspectives on development.Received Ph.D from Stanford University in 1950. Major research interests include logitudinal analyses of personality and cognitive development, personality theory, and personality assessment.     

Postmortem measurements of thyroid hormones in blood and vitreous humor combined with histology.

The aim of this study was to investigate whether clinical reference premortem values can be used to assess postmortem concentrations of thyroxine, triiodothyronine, and thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH), to compare the postmortem concentrations in blood and vitreous humor, and to study the possibility of diagnosing hyperthyroidism by comparing thyroid histologic appearance and postmortem hormone values. Biochemical analyses of free thyroxine (FT4), free triiodothyronine (FT3), and TSH in femoral blood and vitreous humor were made in 38 cases. In 40 cases, the hormones and thyroid histologic appearance were studied; 22 had no significant pathologic changes, and 18 showed focal hyperplasia of the follicular epithelium. A positive correlation was seen between the femoral blood and vitreous humor concentrations of FT4 (R = 0.66) but not between the corresponding concentrations of FT3 and TSH. A positive correlation was also seen between FT3 and FT4 in femoral blood (R = 0.74). In cases with normal thyroid histologic appearance, 58% were found to have FT4 values >24 pmol/L (clinical reference interval 9-24 pmol/L), mean value 27.5 +/- 9.4 pmol/L), which did not differ from the FT4 values in the cases with hyperplasia, 31.6 +/- 15 pmol/L. Only 5% of the T3 measurements in the group with normal histologic appearance were >9 pmol/L (clinical reference interval 3-9 pmol/L). The mean value of FT3 in cases with normal histologic appearance was 3.4 +/- 1.3 pmol/L, and in the group with hyperplasia 8.6 +/- 6.1 pmol/L. The difference was statistically significant P < .005). It is concluded that postmortem values of FT3 and FT4 in femoral blood are fairly comparable to premortem clinical reference values, but the upper normal limit, especially for T4, has to be adjusted upward. Analysis of vitreous humor cannot be used post mortem to assess thyroid function. Histologically, hyperplastic changes correlate well with elevated FT3 in femoral blood.     

Sienkiewicz v Greif (UK) Ltd and Willmore v Knowsley Metropolitan Borough Council: A Material Contribution to Uncertainty?

In the conjoined cases of Sienkiewicz and Willmore, the Supreme Court decided that the exceptional Fairchild approach to the proof of causation in negligence applied where a mesothelioma victim had been negligently exposed to asbestos by one defendant at a level well below unavoidable environmental asbestos exposure. The negligent exposures in both cases materially increased the risk of mesothelioma thereby satisfying the Fairchild test. Whilst reasserting the primacy of the common law as governing the rules of causation in mesothelioma cases, the Supreme Court failed to clarify the scope of the Fairchild exception. Moreover, in an extensive obiter discussion of epidemiological evidence, the Supreme Court has raised more questions than it has answered relating to the role, if any, of scientific evidence in the law of toxic torts.     

Criminal Law, the Victim and Community: The Shades of ‘We’ and the Conceptual Involvement of Community in Contemporary Criminal Law Theory

The article addresses the argument, put forward by Lernestedt, that the proprietor of the ‘criminal-law conflict’ is the community (or the community and the offender) and discusses his proposed theoretical model of criminal law trial. I raise questions regarding the legitimacy of such a model, focusing on four counts. Firstly, I assert that his assumptions about the state the individual and the old/new versions of criminal law theory are society-dependent. Secondly, I address some problems with the concept of community and particularly with the proposed conception of community, which seems to mostly exclude the offender. Thirdly, I question the need for (or added value of) such a proposed conceptual involvement of the community as an actor in the criminal law process and theory. Lastly, some potential problems with the idea of the victim as a mere “representative of us” are mentioned, including the possibly undesirable demands and limitations on the victim’s agency and issues of respect for the victim’s individuality.