THE LOGISTICS OF MINISTERIAL RESHUFFLES

Ministerial reshuffles are complex exercises requiring careful handling. A frequent occurrence in British government, their significance is usually seen in political terms. Prime Ministers attach great importance to maximizing the political advantages to be gained from them. This factor is the chief determinant of their logistics, the principal characteristics of which are secrecy in advance and the speed with which ministerial changes are executed. These features - as much as the frequency of ministerial changes per se - may disrupt the policy process and have serious implications for minister-civil servant power relations. Such problems could be alleviated by giving ministers advance notice of changes of post. The institution of a process of ministerial handovers would strengthen the position of incoming ministers by making them less dependent on their officials, upon whom they rely heavily for initial briefing at present.     

Dangerousness of the delusional misidentification of children.

Misidentification syndromes have been studied from a variety of perspectives, including phenomenological, biological, and nosological approaches. More recently, misidentification syndromes have been studied from a psychiatric-legal perspective, especially with regards to the problem of dangerousness. Capgras syndrome and other syndromes of misidentification can lead to hostile mood and subsequent physical violence. Little attention has so far been devoted to children as the objects of the psychotic person's misidentification delusion(s). We provide a review of cases from the anglophonic literature that have children as the misidentified objects, add three new cases, and then discuss the relationship between misidentification and potential harm to these children.     

A case of sudden infant death due to massive hemorrhage in primitive neuroectodermal tumor.

A case of the sudden death of a 14-month-old girl due to massive hemorrhage in a primitive neuroectodermal tumor (PNET) is presented along with a review of the relevant literature. PNET is a rare, malignant brain neoplasm occurring predominantly in children.     

The political economy of the peace dividend

We develop a model of the peace dividend and use it to predict the fiscal consequences of a reduction in the demand for military spending. The model is based on the assumption that the political process responds to political demands and costs in a way that maximizes net political benefits. The predictions of our model on how a peace dividend will be allocated over nonmilitary spending, tax relief, and deficit reduction is tested against the experience of eight major wars in United States history.     

Trade union behaviour and inter-regional variations in unemployment rates

An important problem in the political economy of the UK is that the disparity of unemployment rates across its regions is much more marked than the corresponding dispersion of wage rates. One possibility is that this is due to the attitude of trade unions to their members in different regions. If unions wish to preserve parity between members in different regions then they will value wage equality between regions over and above wage levels. This may then persuade them to overlook inter-regional productivity differences in setting wages. The price that low-efficiency regions will then pay for this desire for wage equality is higher unemployment rates.Much of the research for this paper was carried out while the author was visiting the Trade Union Economics Research Institute (FIEF), Stockholm in 1989. An earlier version of this paper was presented at a seminar there and the author is gratefully to Villy Bergstrom, Paul Chen, Douglas Hibbs, Eva Udden-Jondal and other institute members for several useful comments. Comments from Kevin Lee, John Spencer and an anonymous referee have also substantially improved the paper. The usual disclaimer applies.     

Dissecting intramural haematoma of the coronary artery with intimal tears.

A dissecting intramural haematoma of the coronary artery is an infrequent cause of sudden and unexpected death. Most cases are women and in a significant number of these women, the haematoma occurred at term to 80 days postpartum. Because the intimal rupture and communication with the lumen were not found in most of the cases, the site of rupture has been considered to be a vasa vasorum. The authors report on a case of one woman who was at a later postpartum period (106 days). The microscopic finding of the dissected coronary artery revealed two intimal tears in a section. The case showed that the dissecting intramural haematoma of the coronary artery is caused not only by the rupture of the vasa vasorum but also by the rupture of the intima.