IN IT FOR THE LONG HAUL? POST‐CONFLICT STATEBUILDING,PEACEBUILDING, AND THE GOOD GOVERNANCE AGENDA IN TIMOR‐LESTE

Statebuilding after conflict often entails liberal peacebuilding measures. The end of the UN mission in post‐conflict Timor‐Leste in December 2012 provides a unique opportunity to investigate statebuilding in practice. The liberal peacebuilding agenda has met with stiff academic resistance—mainly from the critical theorist camp—and is questioned as an appropriate measure of …statebuilding success. We deploy instead the good governance (GG) agenda as a hybrid local‐liberal guide. Drawing on field work, interviews, and secondary documents, we investigate what we see as four key, intertwined and overlapping aspects of GG: state capacity including the establishment of a state bureaucracy, participation and the engagement of civil society, institution building and rule of law, and corruption control and transparency. We note GG provides a useful policy heuristic, while abstract “one‐size‐fits‐all” liberal peacebuilding models, which avoid the complexities of machinery of government issues, the time taken to develop institutions, and historical and contextual environments of countries, are likely to face severe problems. New states may be dependent on external forces to maintain monopoly of violence. The reversibility and uncertainty of statebuilding and the decades‐long commitment needed by international agencies are noted. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

THE OPERATIONAL DIMENSIONS OF RESULTS‐BASED FINANCING

As part of a growing focus on the effectiveness of development assistance from the World Bank and other agencies, new efforts are being made to relate development finance more closely to outcomes achieved rather than to inputs used, through the results‐based financing approach. We provide a framework for analyzing the operational dimensions of results‐based financing, including the conditions that suit this approach, and how best to define, measure, and report results. We review some of the early World Bank experience with this approach. Noting that this approach is as yet not fully tested, we suggest evaluative issues for future research while highlighting strengths and challenges in the range of techniques adopted so far. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Gamson rule not for all: Patterns of portfolio allocation among Italian party factions

This article investigates the dynamics of portfolio allocation within political parties to shed light on the patterns of conflict and cooperation between rival party factions. It provides a game‐theoretic model that helps in explaining differences in portfolio allocation due to alternative modes of party organisation or party system competitiveness. Focusing on party congresses to estimate the number, strength and policy positions of party factions, the Italian case is analysed by testing some hypotheses generated by the theoretical model. The results shown that, overall, spoils are shared in proportion to the strength of each faction, in line with the prediction of Gamson's Law. However, there are also some important deviations from this path. Rules that foster party leaders' autonomy in fact provide them with a higher degree of discretion that will be used to reward their followers and to ward off any credible and harmful threat to party unity. Indeed, strategic portfolio allocation might balance out a lower amount of policy payoffs and becomes a strategy to restrain minorities from breaking away, thus contributing to the preservation of party unity in highly competitive political systems.     

Elements of Successful Change: The Service Tasmania Experience to Public Sector Reform

For Tasmanians accessing Government services has traditionally required visits to various Lead Agency locations, as service delivery was fragmented and bureaucratic. The Tasmanian Government adopted a customer‐focused approach implementing ‘Service Tasmania’ a One‐Stop‐Shop service delivery concept. This paper investigates what led to the success of this public service reform and in particular what change management practices were applied during the change effort. Ten common factors of successful change have been identified in the literature; these are explored determining their relevance throughout this initiative. Data were collected with semi‐structured interviews conducted with 63 staff plus senior management. Data were analysed using a grounded theory approach and open coding was applied during the first pass through the data to reach the initial codes identifying critical terms and generic key issues. Findings confirm that several management interventions were necessary to address resistance and conflict issues and keep the government reform project on track.     

Avoiding Another ‘Squatter in Downing Street’ Controversy: The Need to Improve the Caretaker Conventions before the 2015 General Election

In the UK the rules governing caretaker situations have historically been underspecified. The UK's constitutional traditions, such as prime ministerial discretion to time elections and its two‐party system, have in the past limited the frequency and duration of caretaker periods. However, the recently lengthened election timetable, new constraints on the executive introduced by the Fixed‐term Parliaments Act (2011), and a decline in the dominance of the two largest parties are raising the risk that the UK will experience caretaker periods more often and for longer stretches of time. In this paper, we offer an analysis of the UK's current caretaker provisions and conclude that the existing conventions are insufficiently detailed and can render such periods problematic and controversy‐prone. Important lessons, we suggest, can be learned from reforms in other Westminster systems, and from the caretaker rules of other countries.     

Postmortem Distribution of 3‐Beta‐Hydroxybutyrate

The concentrations of 3‐beta‐hydroxybutyrate (3HB) in femoral blood, urine, vitreous humor as well as pericardial and cerebrospinal fluids were retrospectively examined in a series of medico‐legal autopsies, which included cases of diabetic ketoacidosis, hypothermia fatalities without ethanol in blood, bodies presenting mild decompositional changes, and sudden deaths in chronic alcoholics. Similar increases in 3HB concentrations were observed in blood, vitreous, and pericardial fluid, irrespective of the cause of death, suggesting that pericardial fluid and vitreous can both be used as alternatives to blood for postmortem 3HB determination. Urine 3HB levels were higher than blood values in most cases. Cerebrospinal fluid 3HB levels were generally lower than concentrations in blood and proved to be diagnostic of underlying metabolic disturbances only when significant increases occurred.     

VARIETIES OF VIOLENT BEHAVIOR

There is an implicit assumption of homogeneity across violent behaviors and offenders in the criminology literature. Arguing against this assumption, I draw on three distinct literatures [child abuse and neglect (CAN) and violence, violence and post‐traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and CAN and PTSD] to provide a rationale for an examination of varieties of violent behaviors. I use data from my prospective cohort design study of the long‐term consequences of CAN to define three varieties of violent offenders using age of documented cases of CAN, onset of PTSD, and first violent arrest in a temporally correct manner [CAN → to violence, CAN → PTSD → violence (PTSD first), and CAN → violence → PTSD (violence first)], and a fourth variety, violence only. The results illustrate meaningful heterogeneity in violent behavior and different developmental patterns and characteristics. There are three major implications: First, programs and policies that target violence need to recognize the heterogeneity and move away from a “one‐size‐fits‐all” approach. Second, violence prevention policies and programs that target abused and neglected children are warranted, given the prominent role of CAN in the backgrounds of these violent offenders. Third, criminologists and others interested in violence need to attend to the role of PTSD, which is present in about one fifth (21 percent) of these violent offenders, and not relegate the study of these offenders to the psychiatric and psychological literatures.     

Effect of Substrate Interferences from High‐Density Polyethylene on Association of Simulated Ignitable Liquid Residues with the Corresponding Liquid

The effect of substrate interferences from high‐density polyethylene (HDPE) on the ability to associate an ignitable liquid residue with the corresponding liquid standard, using statistical procedures, is demonstrated. Gasoline, kerosene, and lighter fluid, at three different evaporation levels, were spiked onto HDPE and subsequently burned to generate simulated ignitable liquid residues (ILRs). Samples were extracted using a passive headspace procedure and analyzed by gas chromatography–mass spectrometry. The total ion chromatograms were subjected to data pretreatment procedures prior to principal components analysis and Pearson product moment correlation. Using the combination of these statistical procedures, simulated ILRs were successfully associated with the corresponding liquid type, despite the presence of compounds inherent to the HDPE substrate, as well as those resulting from pyrolysis of the substrate.     

Use of Craniofacial Superimposition in Historic Investigation

A skeleton discovered in Grand Forks, North Dakota was purported to belong to Clelland “Clell” Miller, a James‐Younger gang member, who was killed during the Northfield Bank robbery on September 7, 1876. A 3‐D image from a computer tomography (CT) scan of the skull was obtained, and a craniofacial superimposition was conducted to determine if the skull could belong to Miller. The superimposition method used in this case was to overlay the CT image of the skull onto Miller's postmortem photograph. In addition to the craniofacial superimposition, the images were juxtaposed to compare similarities or differences in facial morphology between the skull and photograph. Superimposition methods can be used to exclude identifications; however, they should not be used as a conclusive method for identification. In this case, there were sufficient similarities between the skull and Miller's photograph; therefore, the skull could not be eliminated as possibly being that of Miller.     

Sexual Dimorphism in the 7th Cervical and 12th Thoracic Vertebrae from a Mediterranean Population

Sex determination is an important task in physical anthropology and forensic medicine. The study sample comprised 121 individuals of known sex, age, and cause of death from San Jose cemetery in Granada (Spain). Eight dimensions were analyzed, and discriminant function analysis was performed for each vertebra to obtain discriminating functions and study the percentage of correct assignations of these functions. The percentage accuracy was approximately 80% for both vertebrae, but varied according to the sex, being higher for the 7th cervical in males and higher for the 12th thoracic in females. As reported in other populations, the greatest dimorphism values were found for the length of the inferior surface of the vertebral body and the width and length of the vertebral foramen of the 7th cervical vertebra and for the length of the inferior surface of the vertebral body of the 12th thoracic vertebra.