Labour Market Organisations' Participation in Swedish Public Policy–Making

Unions and employers are political actors. Besides defending their interests on the labour market they act in the political arena. In order to weaken the trade unions, neoliberal parties and employers’ organisations have tried to change existing systems in Sweden and elsewhere. Hence, the general questions being asked in this article are: Do Swedish labour market organisations still participate in (i.e. try to influence) public policy–making on a large scale? Are there any substantial differences in the degree to which unions and employers’ organisations participate or in their access and strategies of participation? In this article it is argued that while participation of labour market organisations in the old institutionalised framework has decreased, it has not vanished. Labour market organisations are also very much involved in public policy–making by informally contacting politicians and public servants. The unions have extensive contacts with politicians on all levels, but especially with the Social Democratic Party, while employers’ organisations have more intense contacts with the public administration and public servants. The overall picture being presented in this article is that labour market organisations in Sweden have not at all been left out in the cold. It is clear that Sweden is far from the British situation and still remains similar to its Scandinavian neighbours.     

Public pensions and voting on immigration

In a recent paper, Scholten and Thum (1996) analyze the impact of a pay-as-you-go (PAYG) pension system with a fixed replacement ratio on the immigration policy in a democracy. We extend the analysis of median voter's choice in two respects. First, in contrast to Scholten and Thum (1996) who assume myopic voting behavior, our paper considers fully rational agents and provides a solution under this more complex behavioral assumption. Voting with rational agents yields a more liberal immigration policy than with myopic voters. Second, we examine a different decision structure with a fixed contribution rate to the pension system. In this case the majority rule leads to a completely different solution.     

Beyond “financial incentives”: how stakeholders interpret Ontario's funding structure for midwifery

Abstract: The 1994 introduction of midwifery as a publicly paid service in Ontario created new incentives in the health-care system. Traditional economic models of financial incentives explain stakeholder responses in terms of the pursuit of financial gains and avoidance of financial losses. To explore and explain more social and political responses by stakeholders, we conducted a qualitative case study. We applied an alternative model of financial incentives to analyze funding arrangements as policy messages and to investigate how stakeholders interpret them. Interpretations of the midwifery funding structure follow three broad themes. First, payment structures make a policy statement about the legitimacy and autonomy of the midwifery profession and its status relative to other professions such as medicine and nursing. Second, funding mechanisms imply how midwifery's services will fit in with other health services (specifically, substituting for, adding to, or competing with traditional obstetrics). Finally, stakeholders caricaturize midwifery clients to illustrate whether public funding creates more or less equitable access to care. Ontario's experience with midwifery offers insights for understanding the social dimensions of financial incentives, as well as for anticipating issues that arise when using funding policies as instruments of health-care reform. Sommaire: L'introduction en 1994 des services de sage-femme déefrayés a même les deniers publics en Ontario a Créeée de nouveaux incitatifs au sein du systéme de soins de santé. Selon les modèles économiques d'incitatifs financiers classiques, les réactions des intervenants s'expliquent par la recherche de gains financiers ou l'effort d'éviter les pertes. Nous avons entrepris une étude de cas qualitative pour explorer et expliquer d'autres réactions sociales et politiques de la part des intervenants. Nous avons fait appel à un modèle d'incitatifs financiers alternatif pour analyser les schémas de financement en tant que messages politiques et pour vérifier la manière dont les intervenants les interprètent. Les interprétations de la structure de financement des services de sage-femme se rangent dans trois grandes catégories. Premièrement, les structures de paiement équivalent à une déclaration sur la légitimité et l'autonomie de la professon de sage-femme et sur son statut relativement à d'autres professions, telles que la médecine et l'infirmerie. Deuxièmement, les mécanismes de financement indiquent comment les services de sage-femme se rapportent aux autres services de santé (plus précisément s'agit-il là d'un substitut, d'un complément ou d'un concurrent des services obstétriques classiques?). Enfin, les intervenants tracent les portraits types de la clieritèle des sages-femmes pour déterminer si le financement public permet d'accéder aux soins voulus de manière plus ou moins équitable. L'expérience ontarienne dans le domaine des services de sage-femme aide à cerner les dimensions sociales des incitatifs financiers ainsi qu'à prévoir les questions qui se posent lorsqu'on utilise des politiques de financement comme instruments de réforme des soins de santé.     

Federal Cost Recovery in Child Support Enforcement: Incentives for Improving Long-Term Effectiveness

Over the last 15 years, the benefits of operating an efficient child support enforcement program has received greater attention. This article examines the general environment in which child support enforcement programs operate and describes the Virginia experience over the last three years, which has seen AFDC collections increase by over 45 percent and all collections increase by more than 60 percent.     

Reallocating liability to medical staff review committee members: a response to the hospital corporate liability doctrine

Under the doctrine of hospital corporate liability, the hospital governing board bears the responsibility for detecting the incompetence of its staff physicians. Since hospital governing boards are generally composed of lay community members, they lack the expertise to evaluate the clinical competence of their staff. Therefore, they must delegate their screening responsibilities to medical staff review committees. After analyzing the development of hospital corporate liability doctrine, this Note examines the respective policing capabilities of review committees and the governing board. The Note contends that the board should not be held liable for aspects of the policing process which it is incapable of controlling. The Note concludes that, given their superior ability to evaluate clinical competency, staff review committees should shoulder the responsibility for the clinical aspects of staff evaluation, leaving remaining aspects to the hospital governing board. The Note proposes that courts should recognize a cause of action for negligence against medical staff review committee members in order to upgrade the effective policing of the medical profession.     

Psychopathy among condemned capital murderers

Psychopathy is an important forensic mental health construct. Despite this importance, the research base of psychopathy among individuals convicted of capital murder is limited. Archival data were collected from a sample of 636 persons convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death in the State of California. Psychopathy was assessed using the Psychopathy Checklist – Revised (PCL-R) instrument. Data on criminal careers and other behavioral disorders were also extracted. The sample mean PCL-R total score was 23.31 (SD = 9.92) and one-third of individuals in this sample were considered clinically psychopathic with PCL-R total scores of 30 or greater. Factor analytic examination yielded support for four facets: affective, interpersonal, lifestyle, and antisocial. Criterion validity findings revealed positive correlations of psychopathy scores with Antisocial Personality Disorder (ρ = 0.72), Conduct Disorder (ρ = 0.46), sexual sadism (ρ = 0.24), Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ρ = 0.20), ADHD (ρ = 0.15), arrest charges (r = 0.56), prison sentences (r = 0.53), and age of arrest onset (r = −0.57). Individuals convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death reflect heterogeneity in psychopathy with some individuals exhibiting pronounced psychopathic features.     

Accuracy of comparison decisions by forensic firearms examiners

This black box study assessed the performance of forensic firearms examiners in the United States. It involved three different types of firearms and 173 volunteers who performed a total of 8640 comparisons of both bullets and cartridge cases. The overall false-positive error rate was estimated as 0.656% and 0.933% for bullets and cartridge cases, respectively, while the rate of false negatives was estimated as 2.87% and 1.87% for bullets and cartridge cases, respectively. The majority of errors were made by a limited number of examiners. Because chi-square tests of independence strongly suggest that error probabilities are not the same for each examiner, these are maximum-likelihood estimates based on the beta-binomial probability model and do not depend on an assumption of equal examiner-specific error rates. Corresponding 95% confidence intervals are (0.305%, 1.42%) and (0.548%, 1.57%) for false positives for bullets and cartridge cases, respectively, and (1.89%, 4.26%) and (1.16%, 2.99%) for false negatives for bullets and cartridge cases, respectively. The results of this study are consistent with prior studies, despite its comprehensive design and challenging specimens.     

Metabolism and toxicological detection of the designer drug N-(1-phenylcyclohexyl)-3-methoxypropanamine (PCMPA) in rat urine using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry

Studies on the metabolism and the toxicological detection of the phencyclidine-derived designer drug N-(1-phenylcyclohexyl)-3-methoxypropanamine (PCMPA) in rat urine are described using gas chromatographic-mass spectrometric (GC-MS) techniques. Based on the identified metabolites, the following metabolic pathways could be postulated: N-dealkylation, O-demethylation partially followed by oxidation of the resulting alcohol to the corresponding carboxylic acid, hydroxylation of the cyclohexyl ring at different positions, and aromatic hydroxylation. The formed metabolites were identical to those of the homologue N-(1-phenylcyclohexyl)-3-ethoxypropanamine (PCEPA) with exception of the mono hydroxyl metabolites of PCEPA. All PCMPA metabolites were partially excreted in conjugated form. An intake of a common drug users' dose of PCMPA could be detected in rat urine by the authors' systematic toxicological analysis (STA) procedure using full-scan GC-MS after acid hydrolysis, liquid-liquid extraction and microwave-assisted acetylation. The STA should be suitable for proof of an intake of PCMPA also in human urine assuming similar metabolism.