Incentives to Rebel,Bargaining, and Civil War

To fully understand the effects of factors that encourage rebellion, we must differentiate between the way such factors influence mass decisions to join an ongoing rebellion and the way they influence the level of concessions offered by the government. We analyze a three-player bargaining model that allows us to do so. Our results indicate that governments tolerate a greater risk of conflict with their chosen concessions when any conflict that does occur is likely to take the form of a limited, rather than popular, rebellion. We demonstrate that rebellions are more likely to be popular when the general populace is relatively dissatisfied with the status quo and when the government is relatively incapable of putting down rebellions. Widespread poverty and low state capacity might therefore be associated with a lower likelihood of conflict, but a greater probability that the general populace will participate in any conflict that does occur.     

A New Tool for Coding and Interpreting Injuries in Fatal Airplane Crashes: The Crash Injury Pattern Assessment Tool Application to the Air France Flight AF447 Disaster (Rio de Janeiro–Paris), 1st of June 2009

For investigation of air disasters, crash reconstruction is obtained using data from flight recorders, physical evidence from the site, and injuries patterns of the victims. This article describes a new software, Crash Injury Pattern Assessment Tool (CIPAT), to code and analyze injuries. The coding system was derived from the Abbreviated Injury Score (AIS). Scores were created corresponding to the amount of energy required causing the trauma (ER), and the software was developed to compute summary variables related to the position (assigned seat) of victims. A dataset was built from the postmortem examination of 154/228 victims of the Air France disaster (June 2009), recovered from the Atlantic Ocean after a complex and difficult task at a depth of 12790 ft. The use of CIPAT allowed to precise cause and circumstances of deaths and confirmed major dynamics parameters of the crash event established by the French Civil Aviation Safety Investigation Authority.     

Joined-Up Government in The Netherlands: Experiences with Program Ministries

Over the last 15 years there have been many experiments with joined-up (also known as whole of) government practices, aimed at horizontal coordination to overcome the fragmentation of vertical governmental structures due to departmentalism and New Public Management. These practices were initiated to address wicked problems and to better interact with society at large. Now that there are signs that the rhetoric of joined-up government is winding down and many joined-up government developments are being dismantled, it is time to evaluate this approach. This is especially appropriate as some suggest that the overall impact of these developments may be relatively small, despite (overly) optimistic claims made in the past. In this article we take experiences with joined-up government in the Netherlands as the departing point for a critical discussion of this approach. By comparing the Dutch experiences with those in other countries, we will draw a picture of the challenges and dilemmas of horizontal coordination in the vertical world of government.     

Job evaluation committees as small groups: implications of group dynamics for fairness in pay

This paper reviews the nature of group processes, and the implications that such group dynamics have for the setting of pay in organizational settings. Job evaluation committees, widely used in the setting of salary structures, are described as small groups. In particular, the nature of group tasks as related to job evaluation is discussed, the nature of intrapersonal dynamics within the job evaluation committee is reviewed, the implications of the composition of the job evaluation committee are considered, and the broader organizational context of job evaluation is noted. Finally, implications for the practice of job evaluation are discussed.     

Five Areas of Value Judgement in Local Adaptation to Climate Change

Abstract

Climate change has generated several new theoretical and policy challenges, many of which concern how local communities ought to adapt to a warmer climate. This paper identifies and analyses a number of value judgements that come to the fore as local authorities adapt to climate change. Five categories of judgements are discussed: evaluation (how should the consequences of adaptation be evaluated?), timing (when should adaptive action be taken?), distribution (how should the benefits and burdens of adaptation be distributed?), procedures (who should be involved in adaptation decision making?), and goal conflicts (how should goal conflicts in adaptation be dealt with?). For each category, further research is needed to assist decision making at the local level.     

Modernisation and Political Management Arrangements: The Case of Redcar & Cleveland Borough Council

In the United Kingdom the Labour government has placed considerable emphasis on the need to modernise public services. In the case of local government, Labour's belief in the need for modernisation has resulted in radical measures to change local authorities' political management arrangements designed, in part, to achieve greater efficiency, transparency and accountability. In its response to the Labour government's agenda, Redcar &; Cleveland Borough Council established interim political management arrangements in May 2000 prior to the establishment of permanent arrangements. The permanent arrangements were to be decided upon following public consultation and a review of the interim arrangements. This article reports the outcomes and, in doing so, provides evidence of the impact of Labour's measures to achieve change in local government.     

The More Things Change,the More They Stay the Same: the Swedish Local Government Elite between 1985 and 2005

This article examines the development of the main characteristics of the Swedish local political–administrative elite, by analysing repeated surveys, performed in 1985, 1991, 1999 and 2005, of all important leaders in a representative sample of 20 towns and cities. Despite the great changes that have occurred at the local government level, the local government elite retains a surprisingly high degree of homogeneity and stability over time. Although this elite has become increasingly gender equalised and professional, local problems are perceived to have become slightly more complex; meanwhile, the perceived influence and effectiveness of leaders in solving these problems has remained unchanged, probably because the perceived power and autonomy of local government to act effectively has declined somewhat. In contrast, the leaders' political capital (networks, democratic values and global relations) has remained strong and stable.     

Books received

The Politics of Local Expenditure, K. Newton and T.J. Karran, Macmillan, 1985, pp. 165, £5.95 paperback.

Welfare Bureaucracies, David Billis, Heinemann, 1984, pp. 252, £11.50 paperback.

Paying for Welfare, Howard Glennerster, Black well, 1985, pp. xi + 273, £7.50.

School Governing Bodies, M. Kogan, D. Johnson, T. Packwood and T. Whitaker, Heinemann Educational Books, 1984, pp. 210, £18.50 hardback, £8.50 paperback.

Something in the Air, Andrew Blowers, Harper and Row, 1984, pp. 359, £6.95.

Controlling the Constable: Police Accountability in England and Wales, Tony Jefferson and Roger Grimshaw, Frederick Muller/The Cobden Trust, 1984, pp. 205, £18.95 hardback, £7.95 paperback.     

Understanding Havel?

The presented article tries to make sense of Václav Havel, a man of many qualities and professions yet not a professional in the conventional sense of the word. The aim is to offer deeper insight into diverse cognitive elements which formed Havel's political reasoning and attitudes. The idea is to provide an alternative interpretation and get beyond the customary explanations expressed through traditional IR language seeing Havel as a dissident idealist who was pushed by some realist impulses to clearly define real political and later also geopolitical stands. In doing so, the article is divided into three parts. The first part discusses conceptual frameworks (rather than a single framework) within which Have saw and understood the political world. The middle part examines Havel's political agenda, namely the issues of the return to Europe, the German question, and relationships with Russia, the United States and toward multilateral institutions. The final part that utilizes primary data obtained through personal interviews with many Havel's close collaborators presents two faces of Václav Havel: the dramatist and the ideologue.     

Bibliographic service

In Turkey, a politically autonomous and secular military is pitted against a popularly elected, Islamic-rooted government, which has acquired new energy for domestic and foreign policy agendas and political reform. The election of Barack Obama and the Democrats in the US, as well as reverberations from the ongoing Ergenekon revelations and attempts to address the Kurdish question have brought new influences and players into the game of domestic Turkish politics. This article analyses the possible impact of these changes domestically, as well as from the EU and US perspectives.