Foreign Policy, Rationality and Morality

To determine the relevance of judgments of rationality and of morality in foreign policy decisions, it is necessary to provide a value-neutral definition of "the national interest." This makes it possible to ascertain, in principle, whether a given governmental foreign policy decision is rational with respect to this goal, in turn a necessary means to any government's ultimate purposes. While it is pointless to judge the pursuit of the national interest itself morally right or wrong, moral judgments are relevant to policies and goals compatible with the national interest. However, moral principles are often invoked to justify the pursuit of this intermediate goal.     

Tactiques d'influence des cadres supérieurs dans la fonction publique québécoise

Sommaire: Cette étude considère neuf tactiques utilisées par les gestionnaires de la fonction publique québécoise pour tenter d'influencer, dans la direction des réultats désirés, les comportements et les actions de leurs supérieurs et de leurs subordonnés: la confiance, le raisonnement, la flatterie, la coalition, la compensation, la pression, la réglementation, le parrainage et la coercition. Les résultats montrent que le raisonnement et la pression sont les tactiques d'influence les plus populaires qui s'appliquent à tous. Deux tactiques se partagent le troisième rang: les cadres s'appuient sur la réglementation pour influencer leurs supérieurs, tandis qu'ils pratiquent la flatterie à l'égard de leurs subordonnés. Les résultats révèlent aussi que le choix des tactiques d'influence est conditionné par d'autres facteurs que le type d'agents visés. Abstract: This study considers nine tactics used by Quebec civil service managers to try to influence in the desired direction the behaviour and actions of their superiors and subordinates: trust, reasoning, flattery, coalition, remuneration, pressure, regulation, mentorship, and coercion. The results show that reasoning and pressure are the most popular influence tactics that apply to everyone. Two tactics share third place: officials use the regulations in order to influence their superiors, while practising flattery towards their subordinates. The results also reveal that the choice of influence methods depends on factors other than those intended.     

Conflicting Images? Germany and the Rise of China

While Germany's ‘Chinapolitik’ under Chancellor Gerhard Schröder was driven by economic interests, Angela Merkel promised a normative turn in foreign policy toward China. This apparent turn became most visible in 2007 when she met with the Dalai Lama, which caused strong diplomatic protest from Beijing. This article asks whether Germany's foreign policy toward China did in fact shift under the leadership of Angela Merkel. Based on cognitive approaches, especially image theory, the perception(s) of China held by Chancellor Merkel and their impact on German foreign policy toward China are analysed. The findings suggest that the dominant image of China is that of a key trade partner on whom Germany's economy is increasingly dependent with little emphasis given to the political or normative discrepancies between the two countries. The article argues that Sino-German relations under Merkel appear to be more one-dimensional than the fall-out over the Dalai Lama issue suggests.     

Broadcasting Regulation and Building the Multicultural Canadian Nation: Understanding the CRTC's Al-Jazeera Arabic Decision

The Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission provoked extensive debate in 2004 when, in a seminal decision, it approved controversial and popular satellite television network Al-Jazeera Arabic for Canadian distribution. While the broadcast regulator's decision placed what some consider onerous responsibilities on potential Al-Jazeera carriers, others argue that given past egregious incidents of abusive speech on the network, it should not have been approved at all. This article accounts for the policy and regulatory context in which the Al-Jazeera decision is situated and the factors leading to the decision. The article argues that in proscribing abusive speech on the airwaves, the regulator locates freedom of expression within the context of a mandate to ensure that the Canadian broadcasting system makes a tolerant, multiethnic and multicultural Canadian nation imaginable.     

Visibility and facticity in policy diffusion: going beyond the prevailing binarity

Quantitative-oriented diffusion studies, either focused on diffusion patterns or mechanisms, take for granted that policy adoptions are manifest and therefore directly observable in the legislation. A more nuanced perspective of policy adoption taking into account gradual differences between adoption and non-adoption is proposed with this paper, valid for diffusion among communities and states in federal settings and among countries on the global level. Besides the aspect of visibility, intentions are also important when measures are adopted. While some measures are transferred with a clear instrumental aim, others are rather transferred for symbolical reasons. Looking at specific processes, the paper proposes a concept that disentangles the current understanding of policy diffusion and provides empirical evidence that current diffusion research misconceives instances. The four different transfer types are illustrated with empirical evidence from sub-national energy policy-making in Switzerland. The systematic investigation of the cases allows to finding explanations for the different transfer types.     

Results of the 2003-2004 GEP-ISFG collaborative study on mitochondrial DNA: focus on the mtDNA profile of a mixed semen-saliva stain

We report here a review of the seventh mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) exercise undertaken by the Spanish and Portuguese working group (GEP) of the International Society for Forensic Genetics (ISFG) corresponding to the period 2003-2004. Five reference bloodstains from five donors (M1-M5), a mixed stain of saliva and semen (M6), and a hair sample (M7) were submitted to each participating laboratory for nuclear DNA (nDNA; autosomal STR and Y-STR) and mtDNA analysis. Laboratories were asked to investigate the contributors of samples M6 and M7 among the reference donors (M1-M5). A total of 34 laboratories reported total or partial mtDNA sequence data from both, the reference bloodstains (M1-M5) and the hair sample (M7) concluding a match between mtDNA profiles of M5 and M7. Autosomal STR and Y-STR profiling was the preferred strategy to investigate the contributors of the semen/saliva mixture (M6). Nuclear DNA profiles were consistent with a mixture of saliva from the donor (female) of M4 and semen from donor M5, being the semen (XY) profile the dominant component of the mixture. Strikingly, and in contradiction to the nuclear DNA analysis, mtDNA sequencing results yield a more simple result: only the saliva contribution (M4) was detected, either after preferential lysis or after complete DNA digestion. Some labs provided with several explanations for this finding and carried out additional experiments to explain this apparent contradictory result. The results pointed to the existence of different relative amounts of nuclear and mtDNAs in saliva and semen. We conclude that this circumstance could strongly influence the interpretation of the mtDNA evidence in unbalanced mixtures and in consequence lead to false exclusions. During the GEP-ISFG annual conference a validation study was planned to progress in the interpretation of mtDNA from different mixtures.