Reviews

Roger Moody, ed.: The Indigenous Voice: Visions and Realities. Zed Books, London and The International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs, Copenhagen, 1988.

Marcus Colchester: Pirates, Squatters and Poachers: The Political Ecology of Dispossession of Native Peoples of Sarawak. Survival International, London and Institute of Social Analysis, Selangor, Malaysia, 1988.

Maria Mies: Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale: Women in the International Division of Labor, Zed Books, London 1986.     

Realism about the Nature of Law

Legal realism comes in two main versions, namely American legal realism and Scandinavian legal realism. In this article, I shall be concerned with the Scandinavian realists, who were naturalists and non‐cognitivists, and who maintained that conceptual analysis (in a fairly broad sense) is a central task of legal philosophers, and that such analysis must proceed in a naturalist, anti‐metaphysical spirit. Specifically, I want to consider the commitment to ontological naturalism and non‐cognitivism on the part of the Scandinavians and its implications for their view of the nature of law. I argue (i) that the Scandinavians differ from legal positivists in that they reject the idea that there are legal relations, that is, legal entities and properties, and to varying degrees defend the view that law is a matter of human behavior rather than legal norms, and (ii) that they do not and cannot accept the idea that there is a ‘world of the ought’ in Kelsen's sense. I also argue, more specifically, (iii) that the objection to non‐naturalist theories raised by the Scandinavians—that there is and can be no connection between the higher realm of norms and values (the ‘world of the ought’) and the world of time and space—is convincing, and (iv) that Kelsen's introduction of a so‐called modally indifferent substrate does nothing to undermine this objection. In addition, I argue (v) that the Scandinavians can account for the existence of legal relations that do not presuppose the existence of morally binding legal norms by embracing conventionalism about the existence of the sources of law, while pointing out that in doing so they would also be abandoning their legal realism for legal positivism. Finally, I argue (vi) that the implications for legal scholarship of the realist emphasis on human behavior instead of legal norms is not well explained by the realists and appear to amount to little more than a preference for teleological interpretation of legal norms.     

Does Ownership Matter for Employee Motivation When Occupation Is Controlled for?

The public service motivation literature argues that public employees are more motivated than private employees to deliver public service for the benefit of society. But the reason for this may be that the classical welfare services are predominant in the public sector. This article therefore investigates if ownership matters to employee motivation when occupation is controlled for. The findings show that the employees in both sectors have pro-social motivation, but that public sector employees are more motivated to work for the public interest, whereas private sector employees are more motivated to help individual users of services. The survey data are based on 3,304 Danish employees working in private as well as public organizations.     

Public Service Efficacy

This article develops a measure of user capacity called Public Service Efficacy (PSE), which is applied to four sectors: hospitals, elementary schools, day care, and higher education. Tests of validity and reliability indicate good properties and consistent patterns across three of four sectors. The measure differentiates between users of the same services, and it increases with level of education. This indicates that PSE can enable us to identify individual users with low capacity and sectors with low average user capacity and thus improve our ability to address equity concerns and harvest potential benefits from user involvement in public service provision.     

Crime and Punishment in Norwegian Mid-adolescents: A Normal Population Study

Does the 'penal eye' of our society most easily catch sight of those with scant resources and lower-class backgrounds? In a national representative sample of Norwegian adolescents, we investigated the selection process to the penal system. Of the adolescents studied, 2.8% had received a penal sanction during the last year, 3.7% of the boys and 1.9% of the girls. The sanctions varied in seriousness, from a ticket fine to a prison sentence. These adolescents had much higher crime participation than other adolescents. In particular, substance-related offences were of importance. They had a high frequency of alcohol intoxication, and they often had a previous history of police contacts. No links were found to parental social class, but there was an association with parental history of unemployment. Furthermore, numerous other parental risk factors were found, such as marital breakup, low level of care, lack of monitoring and frequent alcohol intoxication. However, these factors were also associated with the development of crime. Were such extra-legal factors predictors of penal sanctions, when crime, alcohol intoxication and a previous history of police contacts were controlled for? Poor parental monitoring was the only (marginally) significant predictor. On the other hand, criminal behaviour had a highly significant effect, as early as at the lowest level of participation, and this effect increased steeply at higher levels. Alcohol had an effect, but only when the adolescents reported a rather high number of intoxication episodes. Thus, a problematic family background and small resources obviously play a role in the development of crime, but are less important as direct factors of being caught by the police and punished by the penal system. However, the subjects in our sample were still in their midteens and it might well be that development in late adolescence and young adulthood takes a different course.     

The Rise of Citizen Groups? The Mobilization and Representation of Danish Interest Groups, 1975–2010

Over the last several decades, a number of societal changes can be expected to have led to the increased mobilization of interest groups representing citizen interests. For this mobilization to be effective, citizen groups need to win access to relevant political arenas. This article investigates the development of the Danish interest group system and the representation of interest groups in political arenas. While replicating findings of increasing citizen mobilization from other countries is expected, it is argued here that the development of groups’ political representation as a consequence of this mobilization depends on the dynamics of resource exchange in different political arenas. This argument is tested on a unique dataset of Danish interest groups in 1975 and 2010 which includes data on group populations and group access to the administration and the media. The analysis demonstrates that citizen groups must overcome not only the challenge of organizing, but also persistent logics guiding the inclusion of, interest groups in different political arenas. Citizen groups have been more successful in increasing their representation in the media than in the administrative arena.     

Question order bias revisited: A split‐ballot experiment on satisfaction with public services among experienced and professional users

Public decision‐makers increasingly rely on satisfaction surveys to inform budget and policy decisions. Yet, our knowledge of whether, and under what conditions, this input from public service users provides valid performance information remains incomplete. Using a preregistered split‐ballot experiment among government grant recipients in Denmark, this article shows that the ordering of survey questions can bias satisfaction measures even for highly experienced and professional respondents. We find that asking about overall satisfaction before any specific service ratings lowers overall user satisfaction, compared to the reverse order, while the correlations between specific ratings and overall satisfaction are relatively stable. Also, the question order effect outweighs that of a large‐scale embezzlement scandal, which unexpectedly hit the investigated government agency during the data collection. Our results support rising concerns that subjective performance indicators are susceptible to bias. We discuss how practitioners should approach satisfaction surveys to account for the risk of question order bias.     

Customizing a commercial laboratory information management system for a forensic genetic laboratory

The need for high-throughput laboratories to comply with regulatory requirements makes data management an important aspect of forensic genetics. A Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS) enables efficient workflows and ensures traceability if designed and implemented properly. We customized a commercial LIMS to support STR typing of reference samples according to in-house defined requirements. The customization focused on data validity, traceability and automated solutions.