Thyreoglobulin and violent asphyxia

The concentration of thyreoglobulin (tg) was determined for death caused by hanging, strangulation by ligature, and throttling. Cases of sudden death (traumatic aortic rupture, penetrating wounds of the heart) were used for comparison. The mean values in cases of hanging (149.9±202.3 ng/ml), strangulation by ligature (193.1±173.3), manual strangulation (561.6±173.9) are distinguishable from violent acute deaths (23.3±27.6) and living healthy individuals (17.3±16.1). By means of statistical comparisons, significant differences were found between throttling and strangulation by ligature and between throttling and hanging (adjusted P<0.001). In connection with examination of the bodies high tg values can be regarded as a vital reaction in obstructive asphyxia.     

The Effects of Local Government Consolidation on Turnout: Evidence from a Quasi‐Experiment in Switzerland

In the last decades, municipal mergers have been one major element of local government reforms in Switzerland and beyond. In this article, we describe and analyze the political effects of this development. We use a quasi‐experimental setting to test the impact of municipal mergers on electoral participation. We find that in merged municipalities, the decrease in turnout is significantly stronger than in non‐merged municipalities. Further, the effect is more pronounced in relatively small localities. There is a temporal dimension to this effect—that is, turnout drops mainly in the first election after the first merger, but not so much after the second or third merger. Hence, the study provides a skeptical yet differentiated perspective on the democratic consequences of municipal mergers and points to further research avenues to develop a more comprehensive understanding of local government consolidation.     

New Public Management and Management Education: Foundations of Successful Management Reform

International experience shows that the main objective of New Public Management (NPM) reform has predominantly been to overcome the current crisis in funding and public service delivery. The achieving this objective has involved adopting a philosophy of 'more for less' or, in other words, by enhancing 'value for money' in public service delivery. To this end,NPM reforms have generally aimed at replacing the inherited or traditional bureaucratic structure of management with a market – or at least a competition-based – contract arrangement. As is the case in any contested market setting, the main concern of state and public administration is no longer merely to ensure a legally correct application of laws, but also to use scarce resources as 'efficiently' as possible in the pursuit of the desired ends of increased productivity and 'more for less'.