The Eroding Effect of Corruption on System Support in Sweden

Sweden is consistently found at the top in international indices of corruption. In recent years, however, several instances of corruption have been exposed, and surveys show that large shares of Swedish citizens harbor perceptions that public corruption is widespread. Drawing on recent surveys, two questions are asked. First, to what extent do Swedish citizens believe that corruption constitutes a serious problem? Second, how do citizens' evaluations of the extent of public corruption affect support for the democratic system? Approaching the issue from a comparative Nordic perspective, the data indicate that Swedes are considerably more prone to believe that politicians and public officials are corrupt than their Nordic counterparts. The analysis also suggests that such perceptions constitute an important determinant of support for the democratic system. Thus, even in a least likely case of corruption, such as Sweden, growing concerns about corruption has a potential to affect democratic legitimacy negatively.     

Project oasis: A case study in jamaican development administration

This paper is concerned with development administration in practice, at the level of a particular project which was implemented in the Caribbean island of Jamaica in 1979. We are essentially concerned with the problem of the degree of fit between operational project objectives and the management of project resources, including personnel. The intent is to provide empirical evidence of some of the major difficulties encountered in the field by the development administrator, with a focus upon project organization and the managerial sub-system. We found the management of Project OASIS to be characterized by the lack of control mechanisms, weak discipline, and inadequate information flows. These problems were only exacerbated by the nature of the local policy environment. Development is in fact particularly difficult to administer. The conclusion emphasizes the need to involve the target communities directly in both development planning and in the process of implementation. It is also imperative to mobilize and maintain sufficient political concensus to attain the agreed outcomes, on the basis of a congruent ordering of values and utilities.     

Corruption and conflict: connections and consequences in war-torn Sri Lanka

In the transition from war to peace, one key challenge is to ensure that those who gained something from the war can be convinced to support the peace. At the same time, however, it is crucial to avoid reproducing corrupt practices and inequalities that fuelled the conflict. The problem of corruption during post-war peace-building has gained considerable attention recently, academically as well as in policy-making circles. This exploratory case study of Sri Lanka traces and problematises the complex linkages between corruption and conflict at the shift from war to peace, building on field research in Sri Lanka before and after the end of the war between the Sri Lankan government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in 2009. The article illustrates how global resource flows and politics have enabled conflict-fuelling corruption in Sri Lanka, and how local experiences of corruption feed into the popular grievances which have both caused and kept the conflict going. The end of the war has not presented a break with the corruption-conflict links of the wartime—and these connections will have implications for reconstruction and reconciliation in the country.     

A post-residential-treatment follow-up of socially and emotionally deviant adolescents in Israel

Fifty-five emotionally and socially deviant but normally intelligent adolescents who had spent 2–7 years in a children's and apprentice home in Israel were followed up 5–9 years after they had left the institution. Their postresidential social and vocational careers were evaluated by means of personal interviews, home visits, and reports from employers, and it was found that good adjustment was substantially related to family background variables (having lived with biological parents prior to residential placement, mutual positive relationship between parent and child, being first born) as well as to satisfactory behavior and performance in peer group, school, and workshop during residence. Level of intelligence, unrelated to overall adjustment, correlated positively with vocational status and income at followup. On the other hand, length of stay in the apprentice home had no impact on postresidential adaptation to work and society. Fewer than 10% of exinmates expressed retrospectively a negative attitude toward their stay in the institution. The importance of paying more attention to the eventual long-term and enduring impact of family relationship on the residential and postresidential behavior of adolescents is discussed, suggesting a shift of emphasis in evaluating factors involved in institutional treatment. Findings also indicate that later social and vocational success may be fairly predicted from observation of behavior during the stay in the institution.The empirical study reported in this article was supported by a grant from the Australian Women's International Zionist Organisation (WIZO), through the initiative of Mrs. Martha Jacobson, Melbourne, chairman of the board of directors.Received his Ph.D. in Psychology and Special Education from the University of Zurich, Switzerland, in 1954. Main research interests are normal and abnormal child development, high-risk infants, adolescence, and handicapped children.Main research interest is institutional care.     

Genetic variation of three tetrameric tandem repeats in four distinct Israeli ethnic groups.

The allele frequency distributions of three STR loci amplified by PCR have been studied in four Israeli communities: Ashkenazi Jews and three non-Ashkenazi groups, namely Moroccan, Yemenite, and Ethiopian Jews. The loci analyzed were CSF1PO, TPOX, and HUMTHO1. The typing was performed in sequencing polyacrylamide gels under denaturing conditions that could separate alleles with differences of a single base. The population data were analyzed with respect to Hardy-Weinberg (H-W) equilibrium and found that all loci meet the H-W expectations. No-ticeable differences were encountered between the four Jewish ethnic groups studied hereby indicating the importance of establishing a local database to be used in human identity testing in these different Israeli Jewish groups.