Governance as a Path to Government

During the 1970s, analyses of state and government in Western Europe were preoccupied with crises of governability and legitimacy. The early 1980s witnessed sharply differing responses to these crises, exemplified by the socialist experiment in France and Thatcherism in the UK. By the end of the 1980s, ‘governance’– in both national and European arenas – began to be regarded as the dominant institutional response to problems of governability. Considered from the perspective of comparative European government, the oft-claimed shift from government to governance appears overstated. Governance is less widespread and consequential both at national and European levels than its proponents suggest, as a survey of the propellants, conditions and national and European constellations of governance shows. Viewed historically, governance does not so much indicate a shift from government as towards government, as the core institutions of the state build up capacity to deal authoritatively and hierarchically with new governing challenges.     

Franco-German Intelligence Cooperation and the Internationalization of Algeria's War of Independence (1954–62)

Between 1958 and 1960, the French domestic security and intelligence services came to establish a close, multi-layered, and secret working relationship with their German counterparts. The purpose of this collaborative arrangement was to enlist German support in combating the subversive activities of the Algerian Front de Libération Nationale, whose members had taken refuge in Germany. In particular, the metropolitan authorities sought to impose on their German counterparts some of the same methods of colonial policing and intelligence that characterized their own counter-insurgency in France. These efforts proved counter-productive, however, for in internationalizing the Algerian war, they drew public attention to the colonial nature of France's hold over Algeria.     

The Rare Event of Choice: Party Primaries in German Land Parties

The selection of party leaders in Germany has traditionally been characterised by elite agreement behind closed doors. Most often, only one single candidate was presented to the conference delegates. Yet things have changed to some degree since the 1990s. First, most parties have introduced statutory reforms at the national level allowing for intra-party plebiscites. At the national level, this has basically remained paperwork. Second, and more interesting for the purposes of this paper, similar reforms have been introduced at the Land level. In an increasing number of cases, Land parties have chosen their party leader or top candidate for Land elections via grassroots participation. What have been the motives for opening up selection procedures and giving members a say? The article points to electoral images and elite stalemates as main drivers of this development. It shows that party primaries contain elements of uncertainty about outcomes which make party elites hesitant to make more extensive use of membership ballots.     

The Impact of Drinking Water Quality and Sanitation on Child Health: Evidence from Rural Ethiopia

This paper examines the association between stored drinking water quality and sanitation on diarrhoea incidence among under-five children in Ethiopia. Using primary household survey data and microbiological water quality testing for Escherichia coli, our results show that uncontaminated stored drinking water and safe child stool disposal are associated with decreased child diarrhoea incidences of 18 and 20 percentage points, respectively. In contrast, neighbourhood concentration of pit latrine shows an increased incidence of child diarrhoea of 16 percentage points. To protect rural children from the risk of contracting diarrhoea, improving household drinking water quality and changing people’s behaviour towards safe sanitation practices is needed.     

The decision to legalize gambling: a model of why states do what they do

This article compares the three major forms of legalized gambling currently being utilized by states as revenue measures. Unlike most of the previous gambling research, it focuses upon the choice of forms, rather than only the decision to adopt gambling measures. It compares forms of gambling using a variation on a previously published schema of evaluative criteria for revenue types and presents a series of models of why states choose to legalize certain types of gambling. The results suggest that iotteries and parimutuels are similar choices for revenue raising, since both are likely to be adopted in states which are liberal, which exhibit somewhat weak interest groups, and which have relatively low Protestant fundamentalist church membership. Casinos, however, appear to conform to a different decision model and are less likely to be operated in states with large numbers of older citizens and in states which do not already have other forms of gambling.     

A Question of Time: Responsive and Responsible Democratic Politics

Since 2008, European crisis politics have thrown the importance of time in democracy into sharp relief. The need for rapid action by national authorities, the EU and international organisations conflicts with the time-consuming nature of democratic deliberation; short-term political firefighting has given little consideration to the long-term sustainability and time consistency of policies; and decentralised decisions threaten effective synchronisation within multi-level governance systems. This article suggests that democratic politics requires a balance between the temporal characteristics of responsive and responsible politics. The timeframe for responsive politics is shaped by electoral cycles that encourage speedy action; short-term lags between political choices and their effects; and temporal discretion of decision-makers. The timeframe for responsible politics is characterised by time-consuming procedures; solutions that take time to unfold and are sustainable in the longer term; and the purposive synchronisation amongst actors and across policy domains and levels of policy-making. The finely balanced temporal constitution of democracy has been challenged in two fundamental ways. First, as the ability of decision-makers to work within the time limits of their mandates and to respond to the temporal expectations of the electorate decreases, the temporal ties that ensure the responsiveness of political authority to the electorate weaken. Second, the distinct temporal qualities of majoritarian and non-majoritarian institutions that encourage responsibility are called into question. Consequently, political time in Europe runs the risk of becoming both less responsive and less responsible.     

Claims to legitimacy count: Why sanctions fail to instigate democratisation in authoritarian regimes

International sanctions are one of the most commonly used tools to instigate democratisation in the post‐Cold War era. However, despite long‐term sanction pressure by the European Union, the United States and/or the United Nations, non‐democratic rule has proven to be extremely persistent. Which domestic and international factors account for the regimes' ability to resist external pressure? Based on a new global dataset on sanctions from 1990 to 2011, the results of a fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) provide new insights for the research on sanctions and on authoritarian regimes. Most significantly, sanctions strengthen authoritarian rule if the regime manages to incorporate their existence into its legitimation strategy. Such an unintended ‘rally‐round‐the‐flag’ effect occurs where sanctions are imposed on regimes that possess strong claims to legitimacy and have only limited economic and societal linkages to the sender of sanctions.     

Forensic imaging of projectiles using cone-beam computed tomography

In patients with gunshot injuries, it is easy to detect a projectile within the body due to the high-density of the object, but artefacts make it difficult to obtain information about the deformation and the exact location of the projectile in surrounding tissues. Cone-beam computed tomography (CBCT) is a new radiological imaging modality that allows radio-opaque objects to be localised and assessed in three dimensions. The full potential of the use of CBCT in forensic medicine has not yet been explored.In this study, three different modern projectiles were fired into the heads of pig cadavers (n = 6) under standardised conditions. Tissue destruction and the location of the projectiles were analysed separately using CBCT and multi-slice computed tomography (MDCT).The projectiles had the same kinetic energy but showed considerable differences in deformation behaviour. Within the study groups, tissue destruction was reproducible. CBCT is less severely affected by metallic artefacts than MDCT. Therefore CBCT is superior in visualising bone destruction in the immediate vicinity of the projectile and projectile deformation, whereas MDCT allows soft tissue to be evaluated in more detail.CBCT is an improved diagnostic tool for the evaluation of gunshot injuries. In particular, it is superior to MDCT in detecting structural hard-tissue damage in the immediate vicinity of high-density metal projectiles and in identifying the precise location of a projectile in the body.