Swedish Police Officers’ Job Strain,Work-Related Social Support and General Mental Health

This study investigated the association between psychosocial job characteristics and general mental health among police officers and the extent to which social support at work plays a role in this association. The findings are based on a cross-sectional survey. A written questionnaire was assessed by 714 police officers volunteered to participate in the study. The participants completed a series of validated instruments assessing job demand, control and social support at work (JDCS); general mental health (GHQ); and sociodemographic characteristics. High job strain was associated with low levels of work-related social support. Moreover, poor mental health was associated with low levels of work-related social support, active work and high job strain. The joint effect of high job strain and low levels of work-related social support had a significant effect on poor mental health. Work-related social support buffered job strain to some extent. Workforce health promotion policies should attempt to reduce job strain and emphasise the importance of work-related social support. Knowledge about police officers’ general mental health and policymakers’ support for police officers may have positive effects on the performance of the police force.     

Human eye colour and HERC2, OCA2 and MATP

Prediction of human eye colour by forensic genetic methods is of great value in certain crime investigations. Strong associations between blue/brown eye colour and the SNP loci rs1129038 and rs12913832 in the HERC2 gene were recently described. Weaker associations between eye colour and other genetic markers also exist. In 395 randomly selected Danes, we investigated the predictive values of various combinations of SNP alleles in the HERC2, OCA2 and MATP (SLC45A2) genes and compared the results to the eye colours as they were described by the individuals themselves. The highest predictive value of typing either the HERC2 SNPs rs1129038 and/or rs12913832 that are in strong linkage disequilibrium was observed when eye colour was divided into two groups, (1) blue, grey and green (light) and (2) brown and hazel (dark). Sequence variations in rs11636232 and rs7170852 in HERC2, rs1800407 in OCA2 and rs16891982 in MATP showed additional association with eye colours in addition to the effect of HERC2 rs1129038. Diplotype analysis of three sequence variations in HERC2 and one sequence variation in OCA2 showed the best discrimination between light and dark eye colours with a likelihood ratio of 29.3.     

The impact of cybercrime on businesses: a novel conceptual framework and its application to Belgium

Despite growing indications and fears about the impact of cybercrime, only few academic studies have so far been published on the topic to complement those published by consultancy firms, cybersecurity companies and private institutes. The review of all these studies shows that there is no consensus on how to define and measure cybercrime or its impact. Against this background, this article pursues two aims: 1) to develop a thorough conceptual framework to define and operationalize cybercrime affecting businesses as well as its impact, harms, and costs; and 2) to test this conceptual framework with a survey of businesses based in Belgium, which was administered in summer 2016 and elicited 310 valid responses. Consisting of five types, our conceptualization of cybercrime is, unlike others, technology-neutral and fully compatible with the legislation. Drawing on Greenfield and Paoli’s Harm Assessment Framework (The British Journal of Criminology, 53, 864–885, 2013), we understand impact as the overall harm of cybercrime, that is, the “sum” of the harms to material support, or costs, and the harms to other interest dimensions i.e., functional (or operational) integrity, reputation and privacy. Whereas we ask respondents to provide a monetary estimate of the costs, respondents are invited to rate the severity of the harms on the basis of an ordinal scale. We claim that this “double track” gives a fuller, more valid assessment of cybercrime impact. Whereas most affected businesses do not report major costs or harm, 15% to 20% of them rate the harms to their internal operational activities as serious or more, with cyber extortion regarded as most harmful.     

Le phénomène “Krouman” à Sassandra: la marque d’une institution séculaire

A recurrent anxiety in contemporary Botswana is the perception of an immediate threat from external forces: strangers, livestock, and disease. How do the state and its citizens react under these conditions? The following article explores this question in the context of globalization, discourses of autochthony, and the blood-based politics of population management in Botswana. In recent years, Batswana increasingly see themselves as a nation under siege from foreigners, and in particular, newly arrived migrants from Zimbabwe. Under pressure from outside, Botswana citizens fear the loss of their physical homeland and the denigration of their collective identity and sense of morality. Through a reading of publications in the print media, I examine the articulation of the rhetoric of invasion and national paranoia that has taken root in Botswana. Although the presumption of assault by outsiders is said to threaten the existence of the Batswana nation through the erosion of the supposedly distinct boundaries between citizen and stranger, these apprehensions also carry a potent creative potential. I argue that, in an environment of economic uncertainty and ethnic instability, the specter of the stranger/Zimbabwean is used to reconfigure the content and emphasis of citizenship in Botswana.     

The Long Walk to Knowledge: On the Determinants of Higher Education Mobility to Europe

This paper investigates the determinants of demand for higher education mobility from students in developing countries to Europe. Used together with various linguistic relations, we emphasise the relevance of informal and formal networks in explaining resistance to student migration. The former are made up of friends or previous students while the latter are formal partnerships that have been established among higher education institutions. Overall, our results show that, apart from the usual economic considerations, student mobility is strongly correlated with non-monetary factors specific to origin and destination, such as socio-demographic characteristics, individual beliefs, and institutional profiles.     

The Dictator's New Clothes: The Relationship Between E-Participation and Quality of Government in Non-Democratic Regimes

It is often assumed that the development of e-participation and e-government initiatives aimed at stimulating citizen participation in the political process and fostering more efficient governmental services harbors a great potential for improved control of corruption and government performance. Thus, it is often argued that e-participation is an efficient instrument for increasing transparency and quality of government in non-democratic and developing countries. However, this article argues that these assumptions should be questioned on theoretical, empirical, and methodological grounds. The results of the empirical time-series cross-section analyses show that positive development in terms of e-participation in non-democratic countries does not lead to corresponding positive effects in terms of control of corruption and quality of government. Rather, in many cases the Internet offers political elites new opportunities in their quest for remaining in power.     

Issue Ownership Stability and Change: How Political Parties Claim and Maintain Issues Through Media Appearances

Drawing on a large-scale online experiment embedded in an electoral survey in Belgium, this study tests whether issue ownership is, rather than a stable condition, a dynamic process that can be manipulated by an experimental stimulus. Five thousand subjects were confronted with an embedded fake TV-news item in which the five leaders of the main Belgian parties offered their parties' stance on six issues. We find that issue ownership is a dynamic process and that news exposure leads to significant shifts in issue ownership. Especially on issues that are not owned by any party, a communicative performance by the party leader can make a difference. Regarding preowned issues, the effect is conditional; it depends on the balance of the news item.     

Quasi-Contractual Ministerial Steering of State Agencies: Its Intensity,Modes, and How Agency Characteristics Matter

ABSTRACT:

This article demonstrates the value of conceptualizing four ideal types when studying ministries’ contract steering of state agencies—relational, double-whammy, performance, and behavioral steering—each defined by its combination of input- and output-oriented steering. In the system under study—Norway—about half of all agencies are subjected to steering with a clear profile; the other half are not. The two profiles often dismissed or overlooked in existing research—relational and double-whammy steering—are most common. Thus, introducing a contract regime has not meant a clear shift from input to output control, as posited by some. Most agency characteristics under study—size, age, political salience, and tasks—have significant effects on the likelihood that an agency is subjected to one type of steering or another. Still, the analysis suggests that agency-level characteristics constrain ministerial choice about which steering to practice only to a limited extent.