Right-Wing Authoritarianism and Social Dominance Orientation Predict Different Moral Signatures

Moral Foundations Theory posits five distinct foundations of morality: Harm/Care, Fairness/Reciprocity, In-group/Loyalty, Authority/Respect, and Purity/Sanctity. In combination, this should yield between four-to-six moral signatures—distinct combinations or patterns of support for these aspects of morality. We extend previous research by examining the replicability of these moral signatures in a New Zealand-based national sample (n = 3,635). Latent Profile Analysis identified four distinct moral signatures: Individuators, Moderates, Neutrals, and High Moralists. We integrate these moral signatures within the Dual Process Model (DPM) framework and show that Social Dominance Orientation predicts membership in the Neutral moral signature (moderate/lukewarm support for multiple moral foundations); whereas Right-Wing Authoritarianism predicts membership in the High Moralist signature (undifferentiated high support across moral foundations). These findings were observed controlling for Big-Six personality and various demographics. Thus, the authoritarian and dominance-based motives identified by the DPM independently predict categorical differences in the signatures people use to judge morality.     

Interventionary order and its methodologies: the relationship between peace and intervention

Abstract

¹Recently there have been calls from policymakers around the world for practically engaged research to produce evidence-based policy for peace, security and development. Policymakers aim to align three types of methodological approaches to knowledge about peace, security and development in international order: methodological liberalism at state and international levels, aligned with ‘methodological everydayism’ in order to constrain methodological nationalism. Policy operates through broad forms of intervention, spanning military, governmental and developmental processes, which scholarship is expected to refine. Critical scholarship is sensitive about the subsequent ‘interventionary order’, often connecting methodological everydayism with global justice frameworks rather than methodological nationalism or liberalism.

Sir Philip Mitchell, later colonial governor of Uganda, Fiji, and Kenya, responded to Malinowski’s claims [that the British government needed the support of anthropologists] with great scepticism, emphatically expressing a preference for the ‘practical man’ rather than the scientist.²     

Exchange rate volatility and regional trade agreements in Southern Africa

Economic Change and Restructuring - Exchange rate volatility is often perceived to cause a reduction in the overall level of trade. In view of the proliferation of rapid regional trade agreements...     

The webs of belief around ‘evidence’ in legislatures: The case of select committees in the UK House of Commons

A wide‐ranging literature has explored the relationship between research, knowledge and policy. However, legislatures have often been overlooked in this research. While some studies have looked at ‘who has access’, the literature on how parliaments seek to engage with knowledge claims is particularly scarce. This article addresses this gap through a case study of UK select committees. By adopting an interpretive lens, the article explores how MPs and officials make sense of evidence in committee settings. It finds that legalistic definitions around ‘evidence’ shape wider beliefs in how to engage with knowledge claims and the practices of undertaking inquiries, and are underpinned by a distinctly political function of knowledge use in politics. Beliefs around evidence have significant repercussions and highlight tensions (i) around the authority of committee reports, (ii) between epistemic and democratic claims and (iii) with respect to who is included and who is excluded.     

Marketization reforms and co-production: Does ownership of service delivery structures and customer language matter?

In public services that are tax funded, public goods are sometimes marketized by being delivered using private companies instead of public organizations. In addition, marketization reforms can entail service users being described as customers for the service rather than as citizens. We assess the effects of these aspects of marketization reforms on users' willingness to co-produce public services. First, service delivery using private companies risks reducing users' willingness to co-produce because firms cannot commit ex ante to not appropriate donated labour for private gain. Second, using customer-oriented language risks reductions by priming individualistic market norms that lower prosocial motivation compared to citizen-oriented language priming citizenship duty. Using three survey experiments in the United States, we find that delivery structures are not neutral. Private firms delivering local public services reduce users' willingness to co-produce, although similar effects are not evident from primimg customer rather than citizenship thinking.     

Global uncertainty,economic governance institutions and foreign direct investment inflow in Africa

Economic Change and Restructuring - Based on the fact that Africa has not fared well in attracting foreign direct investments in the last decade compared to other regions of the world, especially...     

The changing role of the Prime Minister's Office†

Abstract. It is impossible to understand how the Prime Minister's Office has evolved without a clear appreciation of the prime minister's ‘office’ - his powers, responsibilities and influence. By the ‘office’ of prime minister, I am referring not only to his role as shaped by constitutional custom and usage, but also to his contemporary leadership role in its widest context. The ‘raison d'être’ of the Prime Minister's Office is to serve the prime minister in the discharging of all his responsibilities - as leader of the Canadian people, as head of the government and of the administration, as chief spokesman within the House of Commons, and as leader of a particular political party. His Office reflects, in large measure, his priorities, thinking, personality and style. Today, more than ever before, however, die Prime Minister's Office reflects the increasing burden and changing emphasis of his many responsibilities. Herein lies the principal theme and thrust of this paper. Only by defining what the contemporary prime minister does can we appreciate the task of the Office that helps him to do it. This paper is, therefore, divided into two major parts: the first one is entitled the office of prime minister and attempts to describe in a summary way the powers, functions and contemporary role of die prime minister; the second one is entitled the Prime Minister's Office and analyses how the Prime Minister's staff provides him with the assistance he requires in the discharging of his many responsibilities. I conclude with some brief personal thoughts about possible future developments of the office of the prime minister and the Prime Minister's Office. Sommaire. Il est impossible de camprendre l'évolution du Cabinet du Premier Ministre si l'on n'a pas une idée Claire de la charge de premier ministre, c'est-à-dire de ses attributions, de ses pouvoirs et de son influence. Par charge, j'entends non seulement le rôle de premier ministre tel que l'ont façonné les us et coutumes constitutionnels, mais aussi, au sens le plus large, ce rôle de meneur d'hommes qui est devenu le sien dans notre monde contemporain. La raison d'être du Cabinet du Premier Ministre est de l'aider à assumer toutes ses responsabilités de chef du peuple canadien, de chef du gouvernement et de la fonction publique, de premier porte-parole à l'interieur de la Chambre des Communes, et de chef d'un parti politique. Dans une large mesure, son Cabinet est à l'image de sa personnalité, de son style, de sa pensée et de ses objectifs. Cependant, aujourd'hui plus que jamais, ce qui marque surtout son Cabinet, c'est le fardeau croissant de ses nombreuses responsabilités, aux solicitations toujours mouvantes. C'est là le thème majeur que j'entends développer. Ce n'est qu'en précisant ce que fait le premier ministre actuel que nous pourrons apprécier à sa juste valeur la tâche du Cabinet qui le seconde. Le présent exposé est, par conséquent, divisé en deux parties: la première, sous le titre de “La charge de premier ministre”, décrit brièment les attributions, les pouvoirs et le rôle actuel du premier ministre; la seconde, intitulée “Le Cabinet du Premier Ministre”, analyse la manière dont l'équipe du premier ministre lui apporte l'aide dont il a besoin pour assumer ses multiples responsabilités Je conclurai par quelques vues personnelles sur l'évolution possible de la charge de premier ministre et du Cabinet du Premier Ministre.     

Relational legal consciousness in the punitive welfare state: How Dutch welfare officials shape clients' perceptions of law

With a growing number of strict obligations and harsh sanctions for welfare recipients, the Netherlands has increasingly become a punitive welfare state. This article looks at what this means for welfare clients and their commonsense understandings of the law. To analyze how welfare officials shape clients' legal consciousness, I draw on an online survey among Dutch welfare clients (N = 1305) and a correlation analysis. The findings show that there is a clear relationship between welfare clients' own legal consciousness and their assessment of welfare officials' beliefs about the law. However, not all elements of their legal consciousness are relationally influenced by the same factors. Also, clients' self-reported compliance behavior is less relationally influenced than other elements of their legal consciousness. This study adds to our understanding of the mechanisms that constitute the production of relational and second-order legal consciousness and it contributes to the development of new research methods to study people's perceptions of law.     

Public Service Motivation: A Systematic Literature Review and Outlook

Over the past two decades, research on public service motivation has seen rapid growth. Despite the relatively large number of publications to date, no systematic research overview has been created, leaving the body of literature somewhat unstructured and possibly hampering future research. This article fills this void by providing a systematic literature review of 323 publications that examines six key aspects of the literature on public service motivation: the growth of research on the concept, the most prominent studies based on a referencing network analysis, the most frequent publication outlets, research designs and methods, lines of inquiry and patterns of empirical findings, and implications for practice drawn from the publications in the study sample. Strengths and weaknesses of the existing literature are identified, and future research directions are proposed.     

Regulation Inside Government: Public Interest Justifications and Regulatory Failures

Regulation is normally thought of as government regulation of the private sector, particularly business. However, there is a developing literature on regulation inside government, exploring the ways in which government regulates itself through a range of bodies which set standards for public sector organizations, monitor them and seek to bring about compliance with those standards. Reading across economic theories of business regulation to regulation inside government, this article suggests that the current wave of reform inside the UK public sector implicitly reflects a public interest view of regulation. However, the analogous public interest justification for the regulation of business has been heavily criticized and regulatory failures have been suggested including regulation in the interest of regulated bodies, regulation in the interest of regulators and the high costs of operating regulatory systems.