Complementarity, Amnesties and Alternative Forms of Justice: Some Interpretative Guidelines for the International Criminal Court

The question to what extent amnesties and pardons may bar criminalinvestigations or prosecutions under the Statute of the InternationalCriminal Court (the Statute) has been left unresolved by theRome process. This essay seeks to develop some general guidelinesthat may help the Court to address this problem, should it arisein a specific case. It suggests four basic principles to dealwith the issue of amnesties and pardons: (i) the Court has interpretativeautonomy to decide whether an amnesty or a pardon is permissibleunder the Statute; (ii) exemptions from criminal responsibilityfor the core crimes within the jurisdiction of the Court byamnesties or pardons should generally be considered incompatiblewith the Statute; (iii) prosecution by states and by the Courtmay be limited to the most serious crimes and the most responsibleperpetrators (targeted prosecution); (iv) amnesties or pardonsshould, if it all, only be permitted in exceptional cases, namelywhere they are conditional and accompanied by alternative formsof justice.     

Citizen participation and the democratization of policy expertise: From theoretical inquiry to practical cases

This article examines the case for a participatory policy analysis. An idea advanced mainly by democratic and postpositivist theorists is increasingly becoming a practical concern. Criticizing conventional conceptions of science and expertise, theorists advocating participatory democracy argue that the conventional model of professionalism based on a practitioner-client hierarchy must give way to a more collaborative method of inquiry. While such arguments have largely remained in the domain of utopian speculation, recent experiences with a number of wicked policy problems have begun to suggest the viability, if not the necessity, of participatory research methods. Through two case illustrations of a wicked problem, the so-called Nimby Syndrome, the essay seek to demonstrate that collaborative citizen-expert inquiry may well hold the key to solving a specific category of contemporary policy problems. The article concludes with some observations on the possibilities of bringing participatory research more fully into mainstream policy science.     

From newspapers to social media? Changing dynamics in Swiss direct democratic campaigns

Switzerland is a laggard in terms of digital campaigning. Direct democratic votes, more particularly, are centered around issues and little personalized. Combined with the specificities of voters’ information behaviour in direct democratic campaigns, these features are likely to disincentivize political actors from extensively campaigning online. Instead, we expect political actors to continue relying on traditional media. These propositions are tested on a large data base of social media posts and newspaper advertisements published before direct democratic votes held in Switzerland from 1981 to 2020 and 2010 to 2020, respectively. Counterintuitively, this research note finds a strong discontinuity in campaign communication practices. Over the past decades, and between 2010 and 2020 in particular, newspaper ads have become less central to direct democratic campaign communication. At the same time, political actors are increasingly shifting their communication to the digital sphere.     

公共服务的竞争性外包:比较丹麦和瑞典的政策与执行

本文比较和分析了丹麦和瑞典对公共服务实行竞争性外包的道路。人们通常认为 ,这两个国家不存在或者只有少量的外包现象。但事实正好相反 ,这两个国家都有很长的将公共服务外包出去的历史 ,而且自从 2 0世纪 80年代就开始争论和执行竞争性外包政策了。     

Issue Redefinition, Venue Change and Radical Agricultural Policy Reforms in Sweden and New Zealand

This paper compares radical agricultural policy reforms in Sweden and New Zealand in the 1980s and 1990s to establish which factors bring about such types of policy reforms. Ruling out a number of alternative explanations for reform found in the public policy and political economy literature, we focus on the role of reform strategies. We show that the redefinition of agricultural policy – from a matter of finding the balance between budgetary costs and farmers' income to considering agricultural policy as part of macroeconomic policies – was important, particularly in Sweden. Change of policy venue is the other reform strategy identified, which was crucial to the successful introduction of the reform. In both countries, ministers of finance deliberately shifted agricultural policymaking to arenas in which they were able to control the reform process.     

Dynamic Success on YouTube: A Longitudinal Analysis of Click Counts and Contents of Political Candidate Clips during the 2009 German National Election

Since the 2008 Obama victory, mass media and academic research have contributed to the widespread notion that modern political campaigns are won in the so-called ‘web 2.0’, more precisely on YouTube. While respective studies were able to identify some major factors for the success of political YouTube videos, some videos ‘failed’ to have the presumed success online. This lack of clarity has not been convincingly explained by cross-sectional designs without taking into account the dynamic aspects of the success of YouTube videos. This study evaluates and validates the impact of presentation, professionalism, topic, age and the typical slope of the website-visits over time on the total amount of page visits. Political YouTube videos were analysed over a five-month period before the 2009 German national election. Most strikingly, one has to ignore some of the YouTube conventions to be successful on the platform during an election campaign, like uploading user-generated content.     

The influence of shared R&D-project innovativeness perceptions on university-industry collaboration performance

The Journal of Technology Transfer - University-industry collaboration (UIC) partners’ different organizational backgrounds entail socialization with distinct thought worlds, management...     

Debating Food Security Policy in Two Different Ideational Settings: A Comparison of Australia and Norway

Food security has emerged as a relatively new policy issue in agricultural policy making in developed countries. This policy problem is addressed within an institutional landscape in which agricultural ideas and institutions are well‐established. In this article, food security policy making in Australia and Norway is compared. In Australia, agricultural normalism (agricultural markets and production are considered to be similar to those of other economic sectors) has been dominant since the mid‐1980s, while Norwegian agricultural policy making has been dominated by agricultural exceptionalism (agriculture is considered a unique economic sector with special market and production conditions). It is demonstrated in the article how these two opposing institutionalised ideational foundations have influenced the nature of the food security debate in the two countries. In Australia, the debate emphasises the positive role of the market and trade in providing global food security. In Norway, the debate highlights the need to regulate market forces and restrict trade in order to allow countries to develop their own agricultural sectors.