Trusting and Joining? An Empirical Test of the Reciprocal Nature of Social Capital

This article tests a key hypothesis of the social capital literature: voluntary memberships and generalized trust reproduce one another. Panel data from the Michigan Socialization Studies from 1965 to 1982 are used to test the contemporaneous and lagged effects of interpersonal trust on joining groups and the contemporaneous and lagged effects of joining groups on interpersonal trust. We find no evidence supporting the hypothesis that interpersonal trust encourages group memberships and only limited evidence suggesting that belonging to groups makes individuals more trusting.     

Robust governance for the long term and the heat of the moment: Temporal strategies for coping with dual crises

Today the world is confronted with dual crises: creeping and acute threats unfolding at the same time—for example, the manifestation of extreme weather events such as drought and flooding and the creeping crisis of climate change. To cope with dual crises, this article develops a novel temporal perspective that offers policy actors a repertoire of interrelated strategies for enhancing the robustness of institutional efforts. The repertoire consists of five temporal strategies that policy actors can use to navigate the twin challenges of immediate and latent threats in conjunction: strategic coupling of short-term shocks and creeping crises, crafting time horizons, molding the pace of public problem-solving, mobilizing anticipatory capacity through futuring techniques, and adaptive iteration of policy decisions. We illustrate the practical application of these strategies in an exploratory case study of adaptive water management in the Netherlands.

Samenvatting

De wereld wordt geconfronteerd met duale crises: sluipende en acute dreigingen op hetzelfde moment, zoals extreme weersgebeurtenissen als droogte of watersnood tegelijkertijd met de sluipende crisis van klimaatverandering. Om te reageren op duale crises, ontwikkelt dit artikel een nieuw repertoire van vijf temporele strategieën voor beleidsmakers om de robuustheid van overheidssystemen te vergroten. Dit repertoire bestaat uit de volgende strategieën: strategische koppeling van onverwachte korte termijn schokken en sluipende crises, tijdshorizonnen creëren, het tempo aanpassen van implementatie, het mobiliseren van anticiperende capaciteit door middel van scenariotechnieken, en de adaptieve iteratie van beleidsbeslissingen. We illustreren de werking van deze vijf strategieën aan de hand van een uitgewerkt voorbeeld van adaptief watermanagement in Nederland: de invoering van het programma Ruimte voor de Rivier.     

ACCès à information et reassignments personnel's: le précédent qéuébcois

Sommaire: En 1982, l'Assembly e nationals du Québec a jumele, sous me seule loi, l'acces a I information et la protection des reassignments personnel. Elle a mandate un organism nouveau, la Commission d'acces a I information (cai), pour assurer la surveillance de ce regime. Vingt ans plus tard, un premier bilan permit de saisir la faqon dont ce mandat a &b mis en muvre, tout en degageant les raisons et les circumstances de I'Clargissement des tlches assumées par la cai. Comme la plupart des assembltks legislatives du Canada ont imité le «modele» qubbkois dans ce domaine en crbant le poste de Information and Privacy Commissioners, les questions qui dkoulent de cet examen revCtent une portbe plus large. Ces questions portent notamment sur la co‐existence de plusieurs mandats et sur la responsibilities de cet organism a l'egard du sedeur privb en matiere de reassignments personnel. Elles visent aussi le sens du reattachment de cette Commission a l'Assemblee nation ale en tant que « chien de garde » de l'administration publique. Abstract: In 1982, the Quebec national assembly brought access to information and the protection of personal information together under one piece of legislation. It created then a new independent body, the “Commission d'acces a l'information (cai)” (information and privacy commission), to ensure the monitoring of this legislation. Twenty years later, a first assessment of the path taken by Quebec reveals how the cai has been fulfilling its mandate and identifies the reasons and circumstances for extending the scope of the cai's responsibilities. As most of the legislative assemblies in the rest of Canada have imitated the Quebec “model” by creating the position of information and privacy commissioner, the questions that arise from this examination have a broader scope. These questions bear mainly on the co‐existence of several mandates and on the commission's accountability to the private sector with regard to personal information. Moreover, they focus on the meaning of the relationship of this commission to the national assembly as the watchdog of the public administration.     

Secret Intelligence And Escape Clauses: Australia and the Indonesian Annexation of East Timor, 1963-76

In September 2000 the Australian government declassified thousands of pages of documents concerning the Indonesian invasion and annexation of East Timor in 1975. Some 68,000 pages of documents were released. About 2,600 pages of diplomatic documents were withheld, along with Cabinet papers, intelligence materials, and Defence Department records. The documents cover only the period from early 1974 to mid-1976 and do not document the Indonesian war and its human costs. What they do document is the process whereby Australia acquiesced in the Indonesian annexation of East Timor. Above all, they show that secret briefings by the Indonesians kept the Australian government closely informed of Indonesian intentions and operations at every step. In the light of these secret briefings and related documents, it is clear that Prime Minister Gough Whitlam's claim that he wanted to see a “genuine act of self-determination” by the East Timorese is and always was hollow. This was a fig leaf covering his desire to see East Timor incorporated into Indonesia as West Papua had been in the 1960s. Its patina of moral responsibility and legal respectability were his alibi or, as Richard Woolcott put it in late 1974, “escape clause,” if and when Indonesian actions led to accusations of Australian complicity with Jakarta. Mr. Whitlam was complicit. The record is clear.     

Identifying Fatal Head Injuries on Postmortem Computed Tomography Using Convolutional Neural Network/Deep Learning: A Feasibility Study

Postmortem computed tomography (PMCT) is a relatively recent advancement in forensic pathology practice that has been increasingly used as an ancillary investigation and screening tool. One area of clinical CT imaging that has garnered a lot of research interest recently is the area of “artificial intelligence” (AI), such as in screening and computer-assisted diagnostics. This feasibility study investigated the application of convolutional neural network, a form of deep learning AI, to PMCT head imaging in differentiating fatal head injury from controls. PMCT images of a transverse section of the head at the level of the frontal sinus from 25 cases of fatal head injury were combined with 25 nonhead-injury controls and divided into training and testing datasets. A convolutional neural network was constructed using Keras and was trained against the training data before being assessed against the testing dataset. The results of this study demonstrated an accuracy of between 70% and 92.5%, with difficulties in recognizing subarachnoid hemorrhage and in distinguishing congested vessels and prominent falx from head injury. These results are promising for potential applications as a screening tool or in computer-assisted diagnostics in the future.     

The boundary conditions for regulation: Welfare systems,state traditions,and the varied governance of work safety in Europe

Studies of the relationship between the welfare and regulatory state have hitherto either focused on the latter displacing the former, or presented regulation as an alternative means for achieving welfare goals. Little is known, however, about their varied mutual interactions. This article addresses that gap by examining the coevolution of workers' compensation and occupational safety regulation in Germany, France, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands. Drawing on an extensive international analysis of primary documents, secondary literature, and interviews with regulator, insurance, business, and labor representatives, the article identifies strikingly varied but stable national preferences for: (a) the use of financial versus regulatory instruments and (b) the allocation of regulatory responsibilities between state and nonstate actors. The article presents a novel explanation of that variation as dependent on the relative coherence of interactions between the particular cost‐control logics of welfare provision and wider norms and traditions of state action in each country.     

Dynamic transparency: An audit of Mexico's Freedom of Information Act

Freedom of Information Acts (FOIAs) aim to provide a channelled exchange between citizens and public officials that, irrespective of the citizen's identity, results in the provision of timely, relevant, and often new information about policy. We evaluated Mexico's FOIA by submitting 307 information requests on behalf of an average male citizen to government entities in the years 2007, 2013, and 2015. In 2007, we also submitted the same requests to 87 comparable entities on behalf of a male citizen who signalled economic and political clout. Encouragingly, entities do not discriminate between regular and seemingly influential citizens. Entities also answer more frequently and provide more information in 2015 compared to earlier years, but they are taking longer to answer, frequently charging fees, and often failing to provide quality information to questions they are legally bound to answer. Mexico's FOIA is a functional system demanding significant improvements.     

Developing Countries in Need: Which Characteristics Appeal Most to People when Donating Money?

Abstract

A discrete choice experiment was conducted to discover the relative importance of five characteristics of developing countries considered by people when choosing countries to donate money to. The experiment was administered via an online survey involving almost 700 university student participants (potential donors). The most important recipient country characteristic for participants on average is hunger and malnutrition, followed by child mortality, quality of infrastructure, income per capita, and, least importantly, ties to the donor’s home country. A cluster analysis of participants’ individual ‘part worth utilities’ representing the relative importance of the country characteristics reveals they are not strongly correlated with participants’ demographic characteristics.     

Predicting Homophobic Behavior Among Heterosexual Youth: Domain General and Sexual Orientation-Specific Factors at the Individual and Contextual Level

As a form of bias-based harassment, homophobic behavior remains prominent in schools. Yet, little attention has been given to factors that underlie it, aside from bullying and sexual prejudice. Thus, we examined multiple domain general (empathy, perspective-taking, classroom respect norms) and sexual orientation-specific factors (sexual orientation identity importance, number of sexual minority friends, parents’ sexual minority attitudes, media messages). We documented support for a model in which these sets of factors converged to predict homophobic behavior, mediated through bullying and prejudice, among 581 students in grades 9–12 (55 % female). The structural equation model indicated that, with the exception of media messages, these additional factors predicted levels of prejudice and bullying, which in turn predicted the likelihood of students to engage in homophobic behavior. These findings highlight the importance of addressing multiple interrelated factors in efforts to reduce bullying, prejudice, and discrimination among youth.