The INSPIRE Framework: How Public Administrators Can Increase Compliance with Written Requests Using Behavioral Techniques

Public administrators rely on written communications to send information to citizens and stakeholders, and they are among the heaviest users of the postal service. Behavioral science research has identified several techniques that public administrators can use to increase compliance with written requests and, in turn, increase effectiveness. Currently, however, many written communications from government bodies are not written in a manner that utilizes these techniques. It remains an ongoing challenge for public administrators to identify, understand, and use these techniques in the written communications sent by their organizations. This article presents a framework capturing seven prominent techniques in a simple mnemonic—INSPIRE—that is already being used by several government bodies in Australia. It also provides practical examples of how to use each technique and demonstrates that using these techniques could result in large aggregate improvements in effectiveness and socially desirable outcomes of public administrators' written communications.     

Non‐Governmental Monitoring of Local Governments Increases Compliance with Central Mandates: A National‐Scale Field Experiment in China

Central governments face compliance problems when they rely on local governments to implement policy. In authoritarian political systems, these challenges are pronounced because local governments do not face citizens at the polls. In a national‐scale, randomized field experiment in China, we test whether a public, non‐governmental rating of municipal governments' compliance with central mandates to disclose information about the management of pollution increased compliance. We find significant and positive treatment effects on compliance after only one year that persist with reinforcement into a second post‐treatment year. The public rating appears to decrease the costs of monitoring compliance for the central government without increasing public and media attention to pollution, highlighting when this mode of governance is likely to emerge. These results reveal important roles that nonstate actors can play in enhancing the accountability of local governments in authoritarian political systems.     

When Syria was in Egypt’s land: Egyptians cooperate with Syrians,but less with each other

Public Choice - With the number of people fleeing Syria since 2011 exceeding 5 million, and unclear prospects regarding the country’s future, Syrians currently residing outside their homeland...     

Framing Trade‐offs: The Politics of Nuclear Power and Wind Energy in the Age of Global Climate Change

This article outlines recent debates over nuclear energy and wind farms in an age of growing concern about climate change. Proponents of these technologies have used “trade‐off” frames to promote these technologies in the face of current and potential opposition to them. This article examines the nature and limits of the trade‐off frames being used and their probability of success. We argue that using the language of trade‐offs is generally a suboptimal framing strategy: trade‐off frames remind the public of the costs associated with particular policies, and therefore play into the hands of policy opponents. However, policy advocates may turn to them when the costs of a technology are well known and are perceived as high. In such cases, trade‐off frames may help to justify controversial policy solutions. Like any frames, the trade‐off frames used in the debate over climate change solutions both illuminate and obscure the deeper issues involved in energy policy reform.     

Problematic police performance and the personality assessment inventory

A relative newcomer to personality assessment in the area of law enforcement is the Personality Assessment Inventory, or PAI. Earlier MMPI research in the area of police selection has focused upon antisocial behavior, control of aggression, and validity indices, particularly the L scale. In this study T scores for 800 male and female police officer candidates on the PAI scales Negative Impression (NIM), Positive Impression (PIM), Antisocial-Antisocial Behaviors (ANTA), Antisocial-Egocentricity (ANTE), and Antisocial-Stimulus Seeking (ANTS) were used as predictors of the criterion variables Insubordination, Excessive Citizen Complaints, and Neglect of Duty. Highly significant coefficients were obtained for ANTE as a predictor of Insubordination and Excessive Citizen Complaints. For Neglect of Duty, two significant coefficients were obtained, one for ANTS and another for NIM. Discussion centered on the fact that egocentricity is a predictor of Insubordination and Excessive Citizen Complaints, and Neglect of Duty is related to stimulus seeking. Authors' Note: William U. Weiss, Ph.D., is a professor in the Department of Psychology, The University of Evansville, 1800 Lincoln Avenue, Evansville, IN 47722. Sarah Zehner is an undergraduate psychology major at The University of Evansville. Robert Davis, Ph.D., is executive vice-president and director of science, research, and development for Matrix, Inc., and Cary Rostow, Ph.D., is president of Matrix, Inc., Baton Rouge, LA. Emily DeCoster-Martin was an undergraduate psychology major at The University of Evansville at the time this paper was written.     

Amnesties in International Law: The Experience of the Special Court for Sierra Leone

The Special Court for Sierra Leone, a hybrid criminal tribunalestablished to try persons accused of serious crimes duringthe conflict in Sierra Leone, has recently commenced its judicialoperations. Several of the preliminary issues raised by variousdefendants have required the Court to examine the validity ofthe amnesty granted to combatants by the Lomé Peace Agreementand the amnesty's impact upon the Court's jurisdiction to trythe defendants. This article examines the decisions of the Courton the amnesty issue and evaluates the jurisprudence of theCourt with reference to the current status of amnesties in internationallaw.