Leeway for Personal Impact: The Case of Foreign-Policy Making in Norway*

Setting their focus on the role of decision-makers at intermediate and higher levels of a country's foreign policy administration, the authors analyze contextual factors that may determine the impact of decision-makers' personal characteristics on foreign policy. The article highlights the dynamics of these factors in the case of Norwegian foreign policy-making in the mid- and late 1970s. Over time, there has been a general relaxation of formal bureaucratic constraints, including the use of internally recruited political appointment, compounded by the growth of non-traditional international public affairs. The Foreign Minister's leadership style appears to have served as a catalyst to create an environment in which middle-to-upper level administrative leaders and political appointees have had greater opportunity than previously to garner influence and make it felt.     

Identification and age estimation of blood stains on colored backgrounds by near infrared spectroscopy

Non-destructive identification and subsequent age estimation of blood stains are significant steps in forensic casework. The latter can provide important information on the temporal aspects of a crime. As previously shown, visible spectroscopy of blood stains on white backgrounds can successfully be used for their identification and age estimation. The use of this technique however, is hampered by dark backgrounds. In the present study the feasibility to use near infrared (NIR) spectroscopy was evaluated for blood stain identification and age estimation on dark backgrounds. Using NIR reflectance spectroscopy, blood stains were distinguished from other substances with 100% sensitivity and 100% specificity. In addition, Partial Least Squares Regression analysis was applied to estimate the age of blood stains on colored backgrounds. The age of blood stains up to 1 month old was estimated successfully with a root mean squared error of prediction of 8.9%. These findings are an important step toward the practical implementation of blood stain identification and age estimation in forensic casework, where a large variety of backgrounds can be encountered.     

Understating the Logic of Regime Survival? Conceptualizing State–Society Relations and Parliamentary Liberation in Post-2011 Jordan

Both reform and revolutionary movements in the Arab world have called on institutions of state to follow through on the cries for dignity, bread and social justice emanating from the street. These movements are not necessarily mutually exclusive, and may demonstrate overlapping commonalities of practice. Asef Bayat has designated this phenomenon an example of ‘refo-lution’, the amalgamation of a revolutionary agenda with a reform process. This paper will argue that 2011/2012 demonstrations in Jordan fall into this category, and that they elucidate that the relationship between the Hashemite monarchy and Jordanian society needs to be reframed for political stability. The theoretical frame of this article, grounded in the selectorate theory of Bruce Bueno de Mesquita in conjunction with insights from Nazih Ayubi, suggests that this stability requires a more defined separation of powers and functions of the monarchy and the parliament, making the latter an autonomous legislative body.     

Measuring the impact of public perceptions on child welfare workers

The Public Perceptions of Child Welfare Scale measures how the social environment influences child welfare workers, including their job satisfaction and intent to leave. Psychometric studies have validated the scale for private child welfare workers, but there are no validation studies with public agency staff. This study fills that gap, showing stigma and respect are important constructs that also predict worker intent to leave. This research found an additional construct, blame, which was not present in private worker validation studies. The scale provides an important tool for the field as we continue to build evidence for effective recruitment and retention.     

Is experimentalist governance self-limiting or self-reinforcing? Strategic uncertainty and recursive rulemaking in European Union electricity regulation

Is experimentalist governance (XG) self-limiting or self-reinforcing by virtue of its relationship to strategic uncertainty as an essential scope condition? This article tackles this important but understudied question by elaborating a series of idealtypical pathways for the temporal evolution of XG in specific policy domains, ranging from reversion to hierarchical governance through endogenous reduction of strategic uncertainty at one extreme to institutionalization of experimentalism as a multipurpose governance architecture at the other. It then goes on to test the empirical validity of these contrasting theoretical expectations about the long-term relationship between XG and strategic uncertainty through a process-tracing analysis of electricity regulation in the European Union over a series of policy cycles since the 1990s. Building on and extending previous research in this domain, this article's findings strengthen empirical confidence in the theoretical expectation that XG is self-reinforcing, while diminishing confidence in the claim that it is self-limiting.