Getting to the Table in Oslo: Driving Forces and Channel Factors

Using the secret Middle East peace talks in Oslo, Norway as a case example, the authors develop a conceptual framework for analyzing prenegotiation processes in negotiation. The framework focuses on understanding changes in the balance of geopolitical, internal, political, and group psychological forces that lead parties to negotiate. The framework also highlights the importance of channel factors, such as the use of unofficial representatives, small-state sponsorship, co-mediation, secret diplomacy, and staged agreements. Although developed with reference to the Oslo peace process, the authors believe this framework has broader applicability to the analysis of prenegotiation processes in international and ethnic disputes and other situations of protracted conflict. They conclude with a series of questions for future prenegotiation research.     

The politics of management in health care: a British perspective

This paper discusses the contribution of organizational political perspectives to a better appreciation of policy implementation problems in health care. The context is the efforts of successive British governments to accord a higher priority to community health and long-stay services. The limited success of these policies owes much to continuing medical control of the philosophy of the organization and agenda, in spite of government responsibility for funding and providing health services. More effective policy implementation depends on a recognition of the "naturalness" of organizational politics, rather than treating them as constraints in an otherwise rational, managerial system.     

What Draws Politicians’ Attention? An Experimental Study of Issue Framing and its Effect on Individual Political Elites

What politicians devote attention to, is an important question as political attention is a precondition of policy change. We use an experimental design to study politicians’ attention to incoming information and deploy it among large samples of elected politicians in three countries: Belgium, Canada, and Israel. Our sample includes party leaders, ministers and regular members of parliament. These elites were confronted with short bits of summary information framed in various ways and were then asked how likely it was that they would read the full information. We test for three frames: conflict, political conflict, and responsibility. We find that framing moderates the effect of messages on politicians’ attention to information. Politicians react more strongly (i.e., they devote more attention) to political conflict frames than to non-political conflict frames and they react stronger to political responsibility attributions than to non-political responsibility attributions. Conflict frames attract more attention than consensus frames only from members of opposition parties. Political conflict frames attract more attention from government party politicians. These effects occur largely across issues and across the three countries.     

From Female Shamans to Danish Housewives: Colonial Constructions of Gender in Greenland, 1721 to ca. 1970

Abstract

Taking its inspiration from post-colonial feminist scholarship, particularly the writings of Greenland scholar Karla Jessen Williamson, this paper sets out to trace the ways in which conceptions of gender in Greenland changed as a consequence of the eighteenth-century colonial encounter with Christian missionaries and a Danish trade monopoly. According to Jessen Williamson, pre-colonial Greenlandic conceptions of gender were characterized by a certain social indifference to gender, and the absence of a given hierarchy of male dominance/female subordination—a situation of genderlessness. During the process of colonization, European morals of sexuality and hierarchies of gender were introduced, along with hierarchies of race. The paper focuses on two historical periods, the 1700s and the 1900s. We see the first period as characterized by intricate intersections of gender, race, and class, as well as transformations of existing norms of gender and sexuality. As for the second period, the paper investigates how the notion of genderlessness might provide a background for understanding the different implications of the process of modernization for different groups of women in Greenland. Our aim is to contribute to a continued discussion of different understandings of gender in Greenland and elsewhere.     

The Capacities and Challenges of Faith-Based Human Service Organizations

This essay addresses four questions by comparing the management capacities and challenges of congregations, faith‐based organizations, and secular organizations that provide human services: (1) What role, if any, do congregations and faith‐based organizations currently play in the social service delivery system? (2) Are congregations interested in changing their role in the social service delivery system? (3) Compared to faith‐based and secular organizations, do congregations have the capacity to adapt to new roles in the social service delivery system? Finally, (4) compared to faith‐based and secular organizations, do congregations have similar service capacities and management challenges? The findings indicate that although more than half of congregations already provide some type of health or human services, they provide a narrower range of services, consider these services a lower priority, and seem to encounter more extensive management challenges than faith‐based and secular organizations.     

A comparison of nonviolent, psychologically violent, and physically violent male college daters

This brief report explores dating violence by comparing three groups of male college students (nonabusive, psychologically abusive only, and physically abusive). These men were compared on measures of impulsivity, problems with alcohol, life satisfaction, anger management skills, history of witnessing abuse, history of experiencing abuse, and relationship satisfaction. Data for this analysis were obtained from a sample of 115 male college students. Differences between the three groups of men were found in the levels of problems with alcohol, relationship satisfaction, and anger management skills. Anger management skills best differentiated the three groups of men leading to the conclusion that dating violence prevention and intervention strategies with male college students should address anger management skills.     

Reconstruction of a real car-pedestrian-accident. Part 2: Modelling and simulation

A real pedestrian-car-crash was reconstructed by use of a multi-body simulation. The main aspect was the use of an individual body surface for the human body model and the car. The simulation allowed a plausible reconstruction of the accident. A good correlation of the contact-pairs in the model and the real forensic data was achieved by variation of the hypothetical szenario.     

Don't be a Martyr to Res Judicata

The High Court rules that a party who unsuccessfully opposesa trade mark application cannot later re-challenge the validityof the same trade mark by way of defence to an infringementclaim.