A picturesque travelogue: Mary Wollstonecraft's “letters written during a short residence in Sweden,Norway, and Denmark”, 1796

The article presents a reading of Mary Wollstonecraft's “Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark”, dated 1796, in which the concept of the Picturesque is used as an analytical framework. The Picturesque is a contemporary British aesthetics concerned with how we look at landscape, and with the aestheticism of viewing. It is suggested that the Picturesque offers a new way of understanding Mary Wollstonecraft's position in‐between Enlightenment and Romanticism, Revolution and Restoration, authorship and journalism.     

EU–Japan “Structured Cooperation” and energy efficiency for Asia

The paper argues that for EU–Japan cooperation the time has come to move from declarations of intent to action. It is suggested that in order to function and to last the cooperation needs a framework that pulls together and organizes different cooperation areas and concrete projects. The framework, it is suggested, should be a flexible “Structured Cooperation” in and under which cooperation would be treated as a negotiating project, in which the advantages and benefits of individual projects would lead to an agreed BoB—balance of benefits. To ensure delivery and allow for adjustments, adding and adjusting of subjects etc. a management and surveillance structure would be required to ensure an enduring interest of both sides in continuing cooperation. The individual cooperation projects, it is suggested, should be organized around common themes—the pillars—for better coherence and management. In a second part the paper suggests a practical and feasible cooperation project for improving the energy efficiency of some products widely used in Asia. That proposal uses the main elements of a relatively easy to implement approach that has been successfully applied in Europe. This approach has the advantage over others to make harmonization of efficiency requirements for energy using products in Asia possible, without the need to engage in time consuming and potentially controversial mutual recognition negotiations of national standards or the need to harmonize national Asian standards.     

Fragmented Government Effects on Fiscal Policy: New Evidence

Using a panel of 22 OECD countries over the 1971–1996period, this paper extends previous literature on the effectsof fragmented government on fiscal policy outcomes in variousdirections. First, we focus on data relating to centralgovernment as alltheories refer to central government. Second, we also examinegovernment's position vis-à-vis parliament andgovernment's political fragmentation. We find evidence thatmore fragmented governmentshave higher deficits, while governments that have a largemajority in parliament have lower deficits. Right-winggovernments appear to have been fiscally more responsible inthe seventies. Political fragmentation does not affect agovernment's budget deficit.     

An Interactional Perspective of Intimate Partner Violence: An In-depth Semi-structured Interview of a Representative Sample of Help-seeking Women

This article reports a study of women victimized by intimate partner violence (IPV). We describe three interactional aspects of IPV: (1) responses and conduct before, during, and after IPV episodes, (2) impact of alcohol and drug intoxication, and (3) Predictors of risk for IPV victimization in more than one partnership. A representative sample of 157 help-seeking women, recruited from family counseling offices, the police and shelters, were interviewed about physical, psychological and sexual IPV. The nature and characteristics of the IPV interactions were complex and heterogeneous. There were significant interactional differences between the IPV categories concerning the women’s responses and conduct before, during and after the IPV. The impact of alcohol and drug intoxication was relatively small on the occurrence of IPV. About 75% reported that neither the perpetrator nor the female victim had consumed alcohol or drugs before the index IPV exposure. Only 23% of the women had experienced IPV by previous partners. Women who had been subjected to sexual abuse in their family of origin were at almost 25 times increased risk of IPV victimization in more than one partnership. Childhood exposure to physical IPV between parents increased the risk of IPV victimization in more than one partnership significantly more than if the woman had been subject to childhood physical victimization.     

Cernoises and Horrible Cernettes: a history of women at CERN 1954–2017

The European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) was founded in 1954 by a group of men seeking to explore the fundamental building blocks of our Universe. Since then, they and a host of international scholars have succeeded, exemplified by the discovery of the Higgs Boson in 2012 and numerous Nobel Prize awards. But running parallel to the ‘great men’ of high-energy physics, is the untold story of the women of CERN. The organisation is an elite institution, and can thus provide insight into why numbers of women remain low in all facets of its work (except professional administrative). This viewpoint explores the role of women at CERN, both scientists and non-scientists, drawing on archival research from the organisation’s collection in Geneva and interviews, providing an analysis of why gender diversity is still one of the puzzles left for this elite space to solve.     

Comparative Implementation Research: Directions and Dualities

Abstract

The study of policy implementation developed steadily and considerably in the 1970s and 1980s through two generations of research. Since then progress towards a more rigorous scientific “third generation research paradigm”, assumed to be crucial for further theoretical development, has been much slower and more uneven. Comparative studies figure prominently in this respect. On one hand they are strongly encouraged but on the other they are difficult to conduct according to best practice advice in the textbooks. Comparative implementation research is the theme of this special issue. In this Introduction the articles included are presented, focusing on how they deal with some of the issues posed by the norms of a rigorous “third generation” approach. Reasons for the state of affairs in implementation research are discussed. Some inherent dualities and tensions in contemporary comparative implementation research are identified as particular challenges.     

Crucial Factors in Implementing Radical Policy Change: A Comparative Longitudinal Study of Nordic Central Agency Relocation Programs

Abstract

Why do public policies succeed or fail? The aim of this article is to contribute to answering this enduring research question in policy research through a comparative study of the variable efforts by Nordic governments to relocate their central agencies from the capital regions over a period of several decades. This was a radical redistributive policy program premised on a policy instrument – coercion – which was very alien to political systems characterized as consensual democracies. Hence, it is no surprise that only two out of seven relocation programs of any substance were successful. The really intriguing research question here is how any relocation program was achievable at all in a policy context where this was very unlikely. A broadly based multi-theoretical analytical framework linking interest groups, institutions, human agency in the form of policy entrepreneurship/design and situational factors is employed to solve this research puzzle. Findings from this study offer important contributions to the following research fields: comparative public policy, radical policy change and most specifically the so-called third generation of public policy implementation research.     

Security Identities and ‘No More,No Less’ Operations: On Making NATO's Involvement in Darfur Possible

This article explores NATO's support mission to the African Union's peacekeeping operation in Darfur, Sudan between 2005 and 2007. NATO policies are commonly presented as functional responses to events, but how did a conflict on the African continent become the Atlantic Alliance's business? In this essay, a poststructuralist practice-oriented approach is used to understand the way in which discursive practices progressively establish a policy option as ‘natural' in a given situation. It is argued that the normalization of NATO's support mission to the African Union in Darfur and the integration of this operation in NATO's security identity were the result of complex and conflict-ridden social interactions between different discursive practices supported by different actors.     

Corrupt reciprocity - Experimental evidence on a men's game

Why are women regarded to be more resistant towards corruption? We address this question by letting students allotted the role of public servants receive a bribe and choose between reporting (whistleblowing), opportunism and reciprocity (delivery of a contract to the briber). Those acting as businesspersons choose whether or not to publicize at the end of the game. Male businesspersons more often depart from maximizing payoffs and allocate resources to punishing opportunistic public servants. Instead of acting opportunistically, some public servants tend to reciprocate or report. We find that female public servants are less inclined to reciprocate. Their resistance towards corruption is found to relate less to a willingness to report. Survey data from international households shows that men are more confident that bribes will be reciprocated, supporting our results.