The politics of government reorganization in Western Europe

The reorganization of governments is crucial for parties to express their policy preferences once they reach office. Yet these activities are not confined to the direct aftermath of general elections or to wide-ranging structural reforms. Instead, governments reorganize and adjust their machinery of government all the time. This paper aims to assess these structural choices with a particular focus at the core of the state, comparing four Western European democracies (Germany, France, the Netherlands, and United Kingdom) from 1980 to 2013. Our empirical analysis shows that stronger shifts in cabinets' ideological profiles in the short- and long-term as well as the units' proximity to political executives yield significant effects. In contrast, Conservative governments, commonly regarded as key promoters of reorganizing governments, are not significant for the likelihood of structural change. We discuss the effects of this politics of government reorganization for different research debates assessing the inner workings of governments.     

The effects of political design and organizational dynamics on structural disaggregation and integration in Norway 1947–2019

In countries with long-standing agency traditions, the creation of new agencies rarely comes as a large-scale reform but rather as one structural choice of many possible, most notably a ministerial division. In order to make sense of these choices, the article discusses the role of political design—focusing on the role of political motivations, such as ideological turnover, replacement risks and ideological stands toward administrative efficiency—and organizational dynamics—focusing on the role of administrative legacies and existing organizational palettes. The article utilizes data on organizational creations in the Norwegian central state between 1947 and 2019, in order to explore how political design and organizational dynamics help us understand the creation of agencies relative to ministry divisions over time. We find that political motives matter a great deal for the structural choices made by consecutive Norwegian governments, but that structural path dependencies may also be at play.     

Decoding Deficits of Different Types of Batterers During Presentation of Facial Affect Slides

The ability to decode emotional cues is associated with both personality disorders and violence. This study investigated whether subtypes of intimate partner abusers differ in their ability to label facial affect displays. Intimate partner violent (IPV; n = 69) and nonviolent (NV; n = 32) men were asked to label slides of facial affect. Cluster analyses classified the IPV men into three different types as per the Holtzworth-Munroe and Stuart (1994; Typologies of male batterers: three subtypes and the differences among them. Psychological Bulletin, 116, 476–497) typology: family-only (FO), borderline or dysphoric (BD), and generally violent or antisocial (GVA). Overall, IPV men did not make more errors decoding facial affect slides than did NV men. However, GVA batterers showed deficits while BD batterers were particularly accurate in identifying emotions. Clinical implications are that emotional recognition skills training techniques may be useful for GVA batterers only.     

Can Callous-Unemotional Traits and Aggression Identify Children at High-Risk of Anti-Social Behavior in a Low Socioeconomic Group?

Frick et al. (2005) proposed that Callous-Unemotional (CU) traits may be an important personality dimension associated with youth offending. The goal of the present study was to examine whether CU traits were associated with risk factors for offending in a low SES sample of children aged 10 years to 11 years in New Zealand. Two subgroups were identified: one high (High-CU/Agg group) and one low (Low-CU/Agg group) on CU traits and aggression. Results showed that scores for the High-CU/Agg group were significantly worse compared to the Low-CU/Agg group on a range of measures including stress management, caregiver criminal convictions, and dysfunctional parenting. However, analyses revealed that the measure of aggression accounted for more unique variance compared to CU traits. Further research is needed with youths from low SES communities to develop a more robust profile of potential youth offenders.     

Propping up dictators? Economic cooperation from China and its impact on authoritarian persistence in party and non‐party regimes

This article investigates how China's economic cooperation affects authoritarian persistence elsewhere. For the period 1998–2008, the article assesses quantitatively whether the effects of economic cooperation from China vary, conditioned by the regime type of the recipient. The analysis finds that China's economic cooperation is associated with regime durability in party‐based regimes. In non‐party regimes, in contrast, it is associated with regime collapse.     

How Policy Rules Shape the Structure and Performance of Collaborative Governance Arrangements

Local food system governance increasingly occurs in collaborative venues at the local, state, and regional levels. Prominent examples of such are food policy councils (FPCs). FPCs take a systemic approach to improve local food systems by including diverse stakeholders to advise on policy development. The authors study public FPCs to understand how policies structure the stakeholder composition and goals of FPCs and how FPCs’ stakeholder composition facilitates and/or impedes performance. Data come from a content analysis of policies that mandate the structure and functions of public FPCs and interviews with FPC representatives. Findings indicate that FPCs connected to a broader array of food policy actors in their communities produce more diverse policy outputs, but this outcome is tempered by whether council members represent personal or organizational interests.