Constructing Authoritative Answers to a Latent Crisis? Strategies of Puzzling,Powering and Framing in Dutch Climate Adaptation Practices Compared

While adaptation tends to be approached as an issue for policy analysis, framing and powering strongly interact with policy analysis (puzzling) and are at least as important for adequate outcomes in such an ambiguous context. The present contribution compares and analyzes two Dutch adaptation strategies in the Central Netherlands: (1) realizing a flood bypass channel near the town of Kampen and (2) exploring possibilities to raise the water level of Lake IJssel, enhancing the country’s freshwater storage capacity. The article concludes that in both trajectories there is an important role for policy analysis (puzzling) but the cases differ strongly in the way actors frame the intervention, their corresponding powering strategies and the policy outcomes.     

Can the Body Change the Score? Application of Sensory Modulation Principles in the Treatment of Traumatized Adolescents in Residential Settings

There is a compelling need for varied “trauma specific” treatment models for children and adolescents with complex trauma in residential treatment whose affect and behavioral dysregulation disrupts daily living and impedes treatment engagement. This conceptual paper introduces exploratory applications of sensory motor approaches to the treatment of affect and behavioral dysregulation. Sensory Integration, a specialization within occupational therapy (Ayres 1972, 2004) provides knowledge of the sensory motor systems and strategies for sensory modulation that addresses arousal regulation, which underlies this dysregulation. The article describes three clinically supported approaches to the use of sensory modulation in residential treatment sites: use of sensory rooms; use of sensory integration occupational therapists at residential treatment sites; and a trauma psychotherapy that utilizes sensory motor strategies to improve regulation and support trauma processing.     

Outsourcing Public Service Delivery: Management Responses in Noncompetitive Markets

Capturing the benefits of competition is a key argument for outsourcing public services, yet public service markets often lack sufficient competition. The authors use survey and interview data from U.S. local governments to explore the responses of public managers to noncompetitive markets. This research indicates that competition is weak in most local government markets (fewer than two alternative providers on average across 67 services measured), and that the relationship between competition and contracting choice varies by service type. Public managers respond to suboptimal market competition by intervening with strategies designed to create, sustain, and enhance provider markets. In monopoly service markets, managers are more likely to use intergovernmental contracting, while for‐profit contracting is more common in more competitive service markets. The strategies that public managers employ to build and sustain competition for contracts often require tangible investments of administrative resources that add to the transaction costs of contracting in noncompetitive markets.     

Refining Stable Oxygen and Hydrogen Isoscapes for the Identification of Human Remains in Mississippi,

Isoscape refinement is an essential component for accurately predicting region‐of‐origin in forensic investigations involving isotope analysis of unidentified human remains. Stable oxygen (δ¹⁸O) and hydrogen (δ²H) isotopes were measured from 57 tap water samples collected across Mississippi to model refined isoscapes for the state. A tap water conversion equation, δ¹⁸O_tw=1.64 δ¹⁸Op?31.35, was developed for the southeastern USA to test the prediction accuracy of the δ¹⁸O_tw isoscape using individuals with known residential histories. A local Mississippi resident (USAFA‐134) was assigned with 90% probability to the correct region‐of‐origin reported by the participant. Assignments for Georgia residents (USAFA‐118 and USAFA‐205) had variable results, predicting USAFA‐118 from Mississippi and USAFA‐205 as a nonlocal resident. Stable isotope values often overlap geographically and a multi‐isotope approach should be used when narrowing region(s)‐of‐origin(s). This study demonstrates the utility of refining isoscapes and the importance of tissue calibration in prediction assignments of human remains.     

Retention and retirement: The case of the U.S. military

The military retirement system provides an immediate, lifetime, inflation-protected annuity to personnel who complete 20 or more years of service. The cost of this system has risen substantially in the past 15 years, and the system's actuarial costs now comprise almost one-third of total military manpower costs. Because of its importance in the total military compensation system, the military retirement system exerts a significant influence on the age structure of the force and on personnel turnover patterns. This article evaluates the relative efficiency of the current retirement system by comparing it with two recently proposed alternatives, one by a presidential commission and one by the Department of Defense. It estimates the impact of these proposed alternatives on the military personnel force structure and on manpower costs. It is concluded that these alternatives would provide a force as capable as today's force at significantly lower cost.Order of authorship determined alphabetically. This paper presents results of analysis conducted while Enns and Nelson were associated with the Department of Defense and Warner was on the staff at the Center for Naval Analyses. The views presented herein are those of the authors.     

Suicide Squads: The Logic of Linked Suicide Bombings

What strategic logics underlie terrorist groups’ use of linked suicide attacks? Are the goals that groups seek to achieve when sending linked bombing teams somehow inherently different than when sending individual suicide bombers? To answer these questions, this article introduces three typologies of linked suicide bomber detonation profiles—simultaneous, sequential, and nonproximate—and theorizes why terrorist groups might view each type of linked suicide bombing to be preferable to deploying a single suicide bomber. Improvements resulting from using an individual attacker include: ensuring a higher likelihood of successfully hitting a given target (simultaneous detonations); causing more casualties than a single bombing (sequential-wave detonations); and engendering wider-spread shock and awe (nonproximate detonations). Drawing on an original dataset detailing the entirety of Boko Haram’s suicide bombing efforts from 2011 to 2017, we then examine the extent to which these linked bombing typologies do actually appear to successfully lead to an improvement over the deployment of single suicide bombers. While we find that sequential-wave and nonproximate suicide bombings demonstrate evidence of hypothesized improvements over the deployment of single suicide bombers, our data show that deploying simultaneous suicide attackers does not lead to higher efficacy at targeting when compared to the deployment of individual bombers. In attempting to account for this fact, we argue that Boko Haram’s simultaneous detonation teams likely fail to show an improvement over single-bomber attacks because they tend to be composed of what we call “unenthusiastic and under-trained” bombers: teams of often uncommitted women, and sometimes children, which it deploys in tandem in a bid to avoid individual defection and increase the likelihood of at least one detonation in an attack. We conclude by suggesting what the process of linked bombing reveals about both terrorist groups in general and Boko Haram specifically.