Media News Evaluation and Welfare Retrenchment: The Untransparent Cutbacks of the Housing Allowance

Radical welfare cutbacks normally only occur if there is obfuscation and citizens do not notice the changes. However, the media can potentially make untransparent events known and understandable to citizens. The role of the media in welfare retrenchment has not been sufficiently theorised or studied. This article attempts to partly remedy this. Research on media's news evaluation has not been in vogue lately. The literature largely has an anecdotal or atheoretical character. Here two dimensions are identified that underlay many of the news factors on the existing checklists: form and substance. Contrary to most existing research, this article focuses on an important political topic that has not had media coverage. Such a bias is a democratic problem per se. Social policy cutbacks offer an indicator upon which one can argue that there is a mismatch between the importance of an event and the media coverage it has received. The case studies of media coverage of cutbacks discussed in this article show that the media did not expose governmental blame‐avoiding behaviour, but there is evidence that media's news evaluation gave priority to transparent events whether they were important or not. Almost nothing was written on the untransparent cutbacks of the housing allowances, but the media covered the relatively insignificant, but very transparent, repayment of the housing allowance very much. Interviews with a number of important journalists regarding their news evaluation of these events substantiate the importance of transparency for press coverage. The implication is that obfuscation of cutbacks is indeed a useful governmental strategy.     

Democratic Accountability in Decentralised Governance1

This article develops a conceptual framework for studying democratic accountability in decentralised governance, and discusses critical issues about democratic accountability from a citizen's perspective. First, the concept is discussed and adapted to make it useful for studying democratic accountability in different governance structures. Second, the article scrutinises conditions for democratic accountability in decentralised governance based on three models. Third, democratic accountability is discussed with reference to a case study of public reviewers operating in four municipalities in Sweden. The study indicates that municipal auditors and the local media have the greatest impact on municipal policy. On the whole, auditors improve local governments’ internal control and systems for steering and monitoring municipal policy, whereas the media sometimes alter the policy agenda without changing the policy. Auditors maintain and support an elitist democratic orientation of democratic accountability, and the media maintain this democratic orientation and in addition promote democratic dialogue. Viewed from a citizen's perspective, the traditional accountability system does not work satisfactorily. State inspectors and municipal auditors – two important public reviewers in the current system – could improve their work to make it more useful to citizens’ democratic control. Another way discussed to develop democratic accountability is to promote participatory policy and concrete means of accountability (e.g. on‐site visits, conducted tours and different forms of democratic dialogue). The formal way to improve democratic accountability implies more transparency, monitoring and control, which may also lead to distrust and scapegoat thinking (i.e. a surveillance society), whereas concrete modes of accountability, more associated with participatory and deliberative democracy, imply mutual responsibility and trust building. Strengthening participatory policy, active citizens, collective responsibility and democratic dialogue could be an alternative to the emerging audit society.     

One Stop Shops for Public Services: Evidence from Citizen Service Centers in Brazil

Citizen Service Centers are government offices where different authorities are co-located and where several public services are offered in the same physical location. The goal of implementing such One Stop Shops for public services is to solve problems with a malfunctioning government bureaucracy for frontline service delivery. In spite of reforms in at least 70 countries, however, there are few evaluations. This paper evaluates the impact of Poupatempo (“Savetime”), a Brazilian Citizen Service Center reform that has inspired similar programs in other countries. We collect data on one of the most common errands at the Brazilian bureaucracy, driver's license renewal, and evaluate the impact of Poupatempo on the time, number of trips, and payments needed to undertake the renewal, and on other variables representing transaction costs, red tape, and transparency in the citizen-state interaction. Our difference-in-differences estimates indicate large reductions in the time expended by citizens and in proxies for transaction costs, but are less encouraging for the social quality of the licensing procedure, which we also evaluate. We discuss whether incentives to speed up processes prevailed where other steering instruments would have been more appropriate, and explore remedies. We also discuss limitations to establishing a true One Stop Shop.     

Suicidal electrocution using timers. Case reports and review of the literature]

Suicidal electrocution using a time switch is relatively rare. Based on two cases from the authors' own forensic material and seven cases from literature peculiarities regarding the concomitant intake of medicines (benzodiazepines) and alcohol are discussed and comments are made how to proceed in the criminal and forensic investigation of such cases.     

Internal current mark in a case of suicide by electrocution.

Fatalities caused by electrocution often lack specific morphologic evidence. Investigation of the death scene along with technical inspection of the electrical apparatus may help in clarifying the cause and manner of death. Cutaneous current marks may be the only sign of low voltage associated fatalities. The authors report a case of an electrician who committed suicide by electrocution using a time switch after oral ingestion of diazepam. Electrodes (coins) were fixed with adhesive tape at the height of the heart to the front and back of the left side of the chest. Autopsy revealed a blackish linear mark on the pleura parietalis of the inner side of the thoracic cavity, connecting the cutaneous current marks. Current-related and heat-related changes, such as hypercontraction bands of the intercostal muscles and coagulative changes of the perineurium of peripheral nerves, were found at histologic examination. Taking into consideration that the body had been under the influence of low-voltage current for 7 days, the morphologic alteration on the pleura parietalis was in accordance with an internal current mark, indicating the main route of current flow through the body. To the authors' knowledge, such a current-related phenomenon has not been reported to occur on an inner body surface before.     

Dismantling the Social Democratic Welfare Model? Has the Swedish Welfare State Lost Its Defining Characteristics?

The Swedish welfare state was often seen as the most highly developed welfare state and a model for others to follow. In the early 1990s, however, the Swedish economy was in big trouble; the state budget had enormous deficits which the government had to cover by loans in the finance market, exposing the Swedish welfare state model to the evaluation of international capital. This article describes what happened to the welfare state in the 1990s. Was it dismantled? The Swedish experience can shed some light on two competing hypotheses. Globalisation is often seen as an irresistible force that dismantles national autonomy and particularly the possibility of generous welfare arrangements. Another line of thought, however, points out that the welfare state is highly resilient to cutbacks. Cuts are very unpopular among voters and are therefore very dangerous for politicians or parties that aspire to be re‐elected. I argue that my data show that although the Swedish welfare state was reformed in many ways in the 1990s and some cutbacks were made, the welfare state has not been dismantled. Its major attributes when compared with other countries —— e.g. its generosity, universality and developed welfare services —— are almost as prominent as before the crisis. This result is in line with the thesis of the welfare state's resilience and contradicts the globalisation thesis.     

Promoting academic engagement: university context and individual characteristics

The Journal of Technology Transfer - This paper aims to explore the impact of organizational context on individuals’ industry activities in Chinese universities. Academic engagement, which...     

Does Public Broadcasting Make a Difference? Political Knowledge and Electoral Campaigns on Television

The political role of the modern media and the impact on public opinion has come under intense scrutiny. The arguments in the scientific dispute have been structured under the optimistic ‘cognitive mobilisation’ and pessimistic ‘media malaise’ banners. For obvious reasons the role of television has been most intensely discussed. TV has the widest reach and is believed to have to the strongest impact. So far, much of the exchange of arguments has been based on data from the United States. In many European countries, public broadcasting is far more prominent than in the United States, and one can argue that the ideals underlying public broadcasting have put their mark on the TV industry in many European countries. Norway is such a case. The interesting question is, of course, whether this matters. Does public broadcasting foster a ‘virtuous circle’ of increased political competence, whereas commercial TV creates ‘media malaise’? Data from the Norwegian 1997–2001 election survey panel is used in this study to overcome the main methodological problem in the many studies based on cross‐sectional data: the question of causality. Too often researchers have based their inferences about the link between media exposure and political knowledge on cross‐sectional correlations. The empirical results do little to support the optimistic view of TV as the great political educator. On the contrary, neither exposure to the state‐owned public broadcasting NRK nor the commercial TV2 help to increase the general level of political knowledge. However, NRK seems to be the preferred channel among the politically well‐informed.     

Civil Society Democratising Global Governance? Potentials and Limitations of “Counter-Democracy”

A major aspect of global interdependencies during the last two decades has been the intensified interactions between international organizations (IOs) and civil society organizations (CSOs). In this paper, we propose a new way of analysing the potential of CSO inclusion to democratise global governance. The aim is to explore the possibility for CSOs to function as a form of counter-democratic force. This approach contrasts with earlier research that has tended to focus on participation, voice or representation when evaluating IO-CSO interaction from a democratisation perspective. Using Pierre Rosanvallon's term, we argue that counter-democratic actors organise distrust against power-holders, pressuring them to strengthen accountability. Counter-democracy is manifested in the institutions, agents and functions that are committed to overseeing ruling institutions, expressing mistrust and channelling dissent. Importantly, counter-democracy is not contrary to democracy, but a vital and perennial aspect of it. Our argument is that Rosanvallon's concept of counter-democracy can help us understand how the monitoring activities of CSOs may restrain the power of IOs and make them more responsible which in turn can be related to democratic qualities of global governance. However, we maintain that not all activities of transnational CSOs have counter-democratic qualities. To examine if and how a specific CSO might serve as a democratising force in global governance, we suggest that the actors and their activities should be scrutinised according to an analytical framework centred on the concepts of power-resources, ideational foundations and activities. Empirically, we investigate three carefully selected cases of CSOs that perform monitoring activities in a global governance context: the Corporate Europe Observatory, the NGO forum on the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and NGO Monitor.