Network of Networks: Preliminary Lessons from the Antwerp Port Authority on Crisis Management and Network Governance to Deal with the COVID-19 Pandemic

In this article, the authors describe and illustrate what they call a “network of networks” perspective and map the development of a lead network for the Antwerp Port Authority that governed organizations and networks in the port community before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. They find that setting a collective focus and selective integration are crucial in the creation and reproduction of an effective system to adequately deal with a wicked problem like the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings on crisis management and network governance are used to engage practitioners and public policy planners to revisit the current design and governance of organizational networks within organizational fields that have been hit by the COVID-19 pandemic.     

Street-Level Bureaucrats’ Attitude toward Clients: A Study of Work Group Influence in the Dutch and Belgian Tax Administration

Abstract

Classic street-level bureaucracy literature has suggested that individual bureaucrats are shaped by their work group. Work group colleagues can impact how bureaucrats perceive clients and how they behave toward them. Building on theories of work group socialization, social representation, and social identification, we investigate if and how the attitude of individual street-level bureaucrats toward clients is shaped by the client-attitude of the bureaucrat’s work group colleagues. We also test whether this relation is dependent on conditions of attitudinal homogeneity and perceived cohesion of the work group. Results of a survey among street-level bureaucrats in the Dutch and Belgian tax administration (1245 respondents from 210 work groups) suggest that different mechanisms underlie the work group’s impact on the individual street-level bureaucrat in this specific attitude. The analysis furthermore reveals that work groups have a limited impact on the individual’s client-attitude. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.     

American Terrorism and Extremist Crime Data Sources and Selectivity Bias: An Investigation Focusing on Homicide Events Committed by Far-Right Extremists

This paper examines the reliability of the methods used to capture homicide events committed by far-right extremists in a number of open source terrorism data sources. Although the number of research studies that use open source data to examine terrorism has grown dramatically in the last 10 years, there has yet to be a study that examines issues related to selectivity bias. After reviewing limitations of existing terrorism studies and the major sources of data on terrorism and violent extremist criminal activity, we compare the estimates of these homicide events from 10 sources used to create the United States Extremist Crime Database (ECDB). We document incidents that sources either incorrectly exclude or include based upon their inclusion criteria. We use a “catchment-re-catchment” analysis and find that the inclusion of additional sources result in decreasing numbers of target events not identified in previous sources and a steadily increasing number of events that were identified in any of the previous data sources. This finding indicates that collectively the sources are approaching capturing the universe of eligible events. Next, we assess the effects of procedural differences on these estimates. We find considerable variation in the number of events captured by sources. Sources include some events that are contrary to their inclusion criteria and exclude others that meet their criteria. Importantly, though, the attributes of victim, suspect, and incident characteristics are generally similar across data source. This finding supports the notion that scholars using open-source data are using data that is representative of the larger universe they are interested in. The implications for terrorism and open source research are discussed.     

Violence and Mental Illness: A New Analytic Approach

Empirical studies of violence and mental illness have used many different methods. Current state-of-the-art methods gather information from both subject and collateral interviews as well as official records. Typically these sources are treated as additive. Any report of a violent incident from any source is treated as true and all reported incidents are added to generate estimates of frequency. This paper presents a new statistical technique that uses the level of agreement between the sources of data to adjust those estimates. The evidence suggests that, although the additive technique for using multiple sources correctly estimates how many people are involved, it substantially underestimates the number of incidents. The new technique substantially reduces both false negatives and false positives.     

Accuracy of eyewitness identification is significantly associated with performance on a standardized test of face recognition

OBJECTIVES: This study assessed the relationship between Eyewitness Accuracy regarding a person met under conditions of high stress and performance on a standardized, neutral test of memory for human faces. METHOD: Fifty-three U.S. Army personnel were exposed to interrogation stress. Forty-eight hours later, participants were administered the Weschler Face Test and then asked to identify the one interrogator who they had encountered 48 h earlier. RESULTS: A significant positive relationship was observed between performance on the Weschler Face Test and performance on the Eyewitness task. Inaccurate eyewitnesses exhibited more False Negative errors when performing the Weschler Face Test. DISCUSSION: Trait ability to remember human faces may be related to how accurately people recall faces that are associated with highly emotional circumstances. Detection probability methods, such as ROC curve analyses, may be of assistance to forensic examiners, the police, and the courts, when assessing the probability that eyewitness evidence is accurate.     

The sensitivity and specificity of control surface injuries in aircraft accident fatalities

Among the important determinations that aircraft crash investigators try to make is which occupant of an aircraft was attempting to control the aircraft at the time of the crash. The presence or absence of certain injuries of the extremities is used to help make this determination. These "control surface injuries" reportedly occur when crash forces are applied to a pilot's hands and feet through the aircraft's controls. We sought to clarify the significance of these injuries and the frequency with which their presence indicates that the decedent was the person that might have been trying to control the aircraft, questions that are frequently asked of the examining pathologist. We studied sequential fatalities of airplane and helicopter crashes in which autopsies were performed by the Office of the Armed Forces Medical Examiner, excluding those that were known to have been incapacitated before the crash and those that were known to have attempted to escape from the aircraft, collecting 100 "qualified" crash decedents. The incidence of control surface injuries was determined for both pilots and passengers. The sensitivity and specificity of control surface injuries were calculated by classifying the decedents into a 4-cell diagnostic matrix. The positive and negative predictive values for control surface injuries were also calculated. Injuries that met the published definitions of control surface injuries had high incidences in passengers, as well as pilots, giving the term control surface injury a diagnostically unacceptable sensitivity and specificity for indicating "a pilot attempting to control an aircraft." We offer caveats and refinements to the definition of these injuries that help to increase the sensitivity and specificity of this term.     

Gavels in the nursery: an Appellate Court shuts out parents and physicians from care decisions

This article explores a recent Wisconsin Court of Appeals decision in a medical malpractice case and its ramifications regarding Wisconsin's informed consent statute. The authors compare and contrast this decision with previous Wisconsin Supreme Court cases and consider the relevance of applicable federal law. The article presents a thoughtful analysis of how the Wisconsin Court of Appeals should have approached the issue, as well as how it created potential conflicts regarding the ethical duties of healthcare providers treating children.     

The Effect of Education on Voter Turnout

e-mail: stenn{at}ftc.gov Numerous studies demonstrate that the highly educated are morelikely to vote. The literature has not determined, however,why this is the case. The panel structure of the Current PopulationSurvey allows us to exploit exogenous life cycle differencesacross otherwise similar cohorts, so that the marginal effectof education can be isolated from unobserved correlated factors.We find that an additional year of schooling has very littleimpact on voter turnout. Author's note: Helpful comments from two anonymous referees,Sharmi Dasgupta, George Deltas, Steve Levitt, Rob McMillan,Casey Mulligan, Norman Nie, Sam Peltzman, Shawn Ulrick, BrettWendling, John Whitley, and John Yun are greatly appreciated.Data were provided by the Inter-University Consortium for Politicaland Social Research. The views expressed in this paper are thoseof the author and do not necessarily represent the views ofthe Federal Trade Commission or any individual Commissioner.