Bringing the Company Back In: A Firm-Level Analysis of Foreign Direct Investment

The industry standard for studying multinational corporations (MNCs) has been to evaluate patterns in aggregate country-level measures of foreign direct investment (FDI). Though certainly related, these data are at best a proxy for the actual commercial and productive activities of multinationals that most political scientists purport to be interested in. Simply put, this is a very indirect way of testing theories about the sociopolitical and economic factors that motivate MNCs’ choice of host countries. This article introduces a new firm-level data set designed to get around this problem by permitting more direct analysis of multinationals’ foreign operations. It then revisits the relationship between regime type and direct investment, finding evidence that MNCs are more likely to establish new subsidiaries in democracies than in nondemocracies. However, further analysis reveals that the strength of this relationship varies by context. Specifically, MNCs rely on regime type as an indicator of political risk when they lack an existing relationship with the host state. In addition, those operating in extractive industries are generally less responsive to political institutions than those operating in manufacturing or services. These results suggest that firm- and sector-specific factors deserve greater consideration than they have been given in the existing literature.     

An Improved Equation for TBS and ADD: Establishing a Reliable Postmortem Interval Framework for Casework and Experimental Studies

Megyesi et al.'s (J Forensic Sci, 2005, 50, 618) paper was important to forensic anthropology as it introduced a quantitative framework for estimating time since death in human cadavers, based upon physical appearance by way of scoring on a novel scale. However, errors concerning rounding, temperature scale, and incorrect use of a statistical regression model render their predictive formula unusable. Based upon only their more reliable data, a more appropriate regression model to predict accumulated degree days (ADD) from total body score (TBS) is presented. The new model is also a superior fit (r² = 0.91) and produces markedly narrower confidence intervals than the original, which also allowed impossible, negative ADD values. Explanations of the shortcomings in the original analysis and calculations are presented, which it is hoped will help forensic scientists avoid making similar mistakes.     

Discovering Collaborative Advantage: The Contributions of Goal Categories and Visual Strategy Mapping

Collaboration can make sense when there is some sort of “collaborative advantage” to be gained, meaning organizations can achieve something together that they cannot easily achieve by themselves. However, the literature is essentially silent on how to identify collaborative advantage. This article addresses this shortcoming in the theory of collaborative advantage for public purposes by proposing a set of goal categories that may be used to help articulate collaborative advantage and introducing the use of visual strategy mapping as part of a facilitated group process to figure out what the collaborative advantage might be. Collaborative advantage, as it is normally understood, consists of shared core goals. Collaborative advantage for public purposes should take into account public values beyond shared core goals.     

Expediency,Legitimacy, and the Rule of Law: A Systems Perspective on Civil/Criminal Procedural Hybrids

In recent years an increasing quantity of UK legislation has introduced blended or ‘hybridised’ procedures that blur the previously clear demarcation between civil and criminal legal processes, typically on the grounds of normatively-motivated political expediency. This paper provides a critical perspective on instances of procedural hybridisation in order to illustrate that, first, the reliance upon civil law measures to remedy criminal law infractions can raise human rights issues and, second, that such instrumental criminal justice strategies deliberately circumvent the enhanced procedural protections of the criminal law. By conceptualising the rule of law as a structural coupling between the political and legal systems, and due process rights as necessary and self-imposed limitations upon systemic operations, this paper employs a systems-theoretical approach to critique this balancing act between expediency and principle, and queries the circumstances under which legislation contravening the rule of law can be said to lack legitimacy.     

Homicides committed by youth assailants: a retrospective study

The pediatric population has received considerable attention in the forensic community; the youth assailant of homicide, however, is understudied. The authors retrospectively reviewed all cases referred to the Forensic Pathology Section of the Medical University of South Carolina between January 1991 and May 2006. Cases included in the study were homicides in which 1 or more assailants were 19 years of age or younger. The cases were examined as to the cause and manner of death, victim age, gender, race, incident location, weapon used, assailant-victim relationship, assailant age, gender, race, motive, and postmortem toxicology results. Assailant information was obtained from forensic records at Medical University of South Carolina, police department records, and online search engines of South Carolina State newspaper archives confirmed by law enforcement reports. The youth assailants were predominantly black men, 15 to 19 years of age (range, 4-19 years). Most victims were black male acquaintances, and the motive was most often an argument. The most common cause of death was cerebral laceration because of a gunshot wound. The incident occurred in the home in 41% of cases, followed by the street in 31%. Victim toxicology was frequently positive for cocaine, marijuana, and alcohol.     

The privacy commissioner of Canada: Multiple roles,diverse expectations and structural dilemmas

Abstract: The contemporary roles of the privacy commissioner of Canada are multiple: he can be an ombudsman, auditor, consultant, educator, policy adviser, regulator and judge. Yet, Canadian privacy legislation provides quite poor guidance as to how he should perform and balance these roles and tends to put emphasis on complaints‐resolution, a function that is less useful in promoting general compliance with the privacy principles. The analysis of the experience of privacy protection agencies, however, suggests that the most important powers are those that are general rather than specific, and proactive rather than reactive. The implementation of privacy protection law is as much an educational effort as a regulatory one, as much can be achieved in anticipation of policy and system development if privacy protection is built in at the outset. The successful implementation of privacy protection policy involves a considerable degree of learning and mutual adjustment and readjustment. It is not characterized by a top‐down process of command, control and sanction. The privacy commissioner is one among many actors involved in privacy protection policy in Canada, and his success is dependent on the recognition that he has many policy instruments at his disposal, besides the law, to encourage higher standards for the treatment of personal information by Canadian organizations. Sommaire: Le Commissaire à la protection de la vie privée du Canada joue à l'heure actuelle des rôles multiples: il peut être ombudsman, vérificateur, consultant, éducateur, conseiller en politique, responsable de la réglementation et juge. Et pourtant, les lois canadiennes relatives à la protection de la vie privée n'offrent que de médiocres directives quant à la manière dont il devrait s'acquitter de ces différents rôles et les équilibrer. Elles ont tendance à mettre I'accent sur la résolution des plaintes, fonction qui est moins utile pour promouvoir I'observation des principes du respect de la vie privée. L'analyse de l'expérience des organismes de protection de la vie privée laisse entendre cependant que les plus importants pouvoirs sont ceux qui sont généraux plutôt que spécifiques, et proactifs plutôt que réactionnels. La mise en aeuvre de lois sur la protection de la vie privée représente un effort autant éducatif que réglementaire, car de bons résultats peuvent être atteints si la protection de la vie privée fait dès le depart partie intégrante de l'élaboration de politiques et de systèmes. La mise en ceuvre réussie d'une politique de protection de la vie privée comporte un important degré d'apprentissage et d'ajustement et de réajustement mutuels. Elle n'est pas caractérisée par un processus pyramidal descendant de commande, de contrôle et de sanction. Le Commissaire à la protection de la vie privée est l'un des nombreux acteurs de la politique de protection de la vie privée au Canada. Son succès repose sur le fait qu'il dispose de nombreux instruments de politique, en plus de la loi, pour encourager les organismes canadiens qui traitent les renseignements personnels à adopter des normes très éelevées.     

Think global,talk local: getting the party political message across in the age of the internet

This paper seeks to test the view that the Internet will provide politicians and political parties with a means of directly communicating with electors, so circumnavigating the perceived bias of the mass media, and explores how the political use of the Internet will impact on campaigning, particularly at the local/personal level. The evidence surveyed shows that political use of the Internet is, despite the hype, still in its infancy, but that more extensive use will lead to changes in the style and mode of political communications. The Internet will eventually enable politicians and parties to address a mass audience in qualitative new ways, tailoring their message and information dissemination to individual and local concerns. But this will bring all the consequences of direct communication, such as increased workloads and the danger of atomising the political process. Politicians and parties may hanker for the days when the traditional mass media intervened in the process of political communications. This paper is an edited version of the one presented to 'On Message: A Conference on Political Communication and Marketing sponsored by the Political Studies Association Media and Politics Group, Loughborough University, September 2000. Copyright © 2001 Henry Stewart Publications     

Accountability in the Regulatory State

Accountability has long been both a key theme and a key problem in constitutional scholarship. The centrality of the accountability debates in contemporary political and legal discourse is a product of the difficulty of balancing the autonomy given to those exercising public power with appropriate control. The traditional mechanisms of accountability to Parliament and to the courts are problematic because in a complex administrative state, characterized by widespread delegation of discretion to actors located far from the centre of government, the conception of centralized responsibility upon which traditional accountability mechanisms are based is often fictional. The problems of accountability have been made manifest by the transformations wrought on public administration by the new public management (NPM) revolution which have further fragmented the public sector. In this article it is argued that if public lawyers are to be reconciled to these changes then it will be through recognizing the potential for additional or extended mechanisms of accountability in supplementing or displacing traditional accountability functions. The article identifies and develops two such extended accountability models: interdependence and redundancy     

Public Sector Reform in Central Asia and the Caucasus

Many developing countries are constantly seeking to reform their public services as part of a wider agenda which supports moves to a market economy and better governance arrangements. Some have embraced public management reforms as the template for their activities with limited success. This paper considers existing research on the impact of public sector reform in developing countries and offers an alternative approach, through case studies of Azerbaijan, Georgia and Kazakhstan, based on two keys elements: an agenda which attempts to shift developing countries to an outcomes based accountability approach operationalized through a “quality of life” framework; and, peer‐to‐peer learning.