scholarly journals Parliaments in security policy: Involvement, politicisation, and influence

2018 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick A Mello ◽  
Dirk Peters
Keyword(s):  
Security Policy ◽  
Research Literature ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Research Needs ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Individual Decision ◽  
Political Issue ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Systematic Understanding

While parliaments have long been neglected actors in the analysis of security policy, a research literature on the subject is growing. Current research is focused primarily on how parliaments, relying on formal legal competences, can constrain governmental policies. However, this research needs expansion in three areas. First, informal sources of parliamentary influence on security policy deserve more systematic attention as the significance of parliaments often hinges on contextual factors and individual decision-makers. Second, we still lack a systematic understanding of the effects of parliamentary involvement on security policy. Finally, the role of parliaments for the politics of security is almost completely uncharted territory. When parliaments become involved in security policy, does it foster transparency and contribute to the politicisation of security policy so that security policy becomes a ‘normal’ political issue? The article reviews current research, derives findings from the contributions to this Special Issue, and spells out their wider implications.

scholarly journals Shopping Centres, Cycling Accessibility and Planning—The Case of Nova Lund in Sweden

Urban Science ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 70
Author(s):  
Till Koglin ◽  
Lucas Glasare
Keyword(s):  
Conflicts Of Interest ◽  
Current Situation ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Power Structures ◽  
Literature Study ◽  
Shopping Centre ◽  
The Past ◽  
Whole Process ◽  
The Subject

This paper evaluates the history and cycling accessibility of Nova, a shopping centre established in Lund, Sweden, in 2002. The current situation was also analysed through observation and a literature review. Moreover, the study conducted a closer analysis of the history and role of the municipality based on further literature study and interviews with officials. The conclusion of the analysis indicates poor and unsafe bikeways caused by conflicts of interest between politicians, officials, landowners and the general public. It also depicts a situation in which the municipality’s master plan has been ignored, and, in contrast to the local goals, cycling accessibility at Nova has seen no significant improvement since the shopping centre was first established. The reasons for this, arguably, are a relatively low budget for bikeway improvements in the municipality, as well as a situation in which decision-makers have stopped approaching the subject, as a result of the long and often boisterous conflicts it has created in the past. Lastly, it must be noted that it is easy to regard the whole process of Nova, from its establishment to the current situation, as being symptomatic of the power structures between drivers and cyclists that still affect decision-makers at all levels.

The role of agency in project initiation decisions

2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 518-535 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Mullaly
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Decision Rules ◽  
Personal Characteristics ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Organizational Dynamics ◽  
Substantive Theory ◽  
Content Type ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Board Level

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of decision rules and agency in supporting project initiation decisions, and the influences of agency on decision-making effectiveness. Design/methodology/approach – The study this paper is based upon used grounded theory methodology, and sought to understand the influences of individual decision makers on project initiation decisions within organizations. Data collection involved 28 participants who were involved in project initiation decisions within their organizations, who discussed the process of project initiation in their organization and their role within that process. Findings – The study demonstrates that the overall effectiveness of project initiation decisions is a product of agency, process effectiveness or rule effectiveness. The employment of agency can have a direct influence on decision-making effectiveness, it can compensate for organizational inadequacies of a process or political nature, and it can be constrained in the evidence of formal and effective organizational practices. Research limitations/implications – While agency was recognized by all participants, there are clearly circumstances where actors perceive the ability to exercise agency to be externally constrained. The study is exploratory, contributing to the development of substantive theory. Theory testing as well as a more in-depth investigation of the underlying drivers of agency would be valuable. Practical implications – The study provides executives and individuals supporting the initiation of projects with insights on how to effectively influence the effectiveness of project initiation decisions, and the degree to which personal characteristics influence organizational dynamics. Originality/value – Most discussions of agency has been framed the subject as an executive- or board-level phenomenon. The current study demonstrates that agency is in fact being perceived and operationalized at all levels. Those demonstrating agency in the majority of instances in this study do so in exercising stewardship behaviours. This has important implications for how agency is perceived by executives, and by how agency is exercised by actors at all levels of the organization.

scholarly journals Novel Parameterized Distance Measures on Hesitant Fuzzy Sets with Credibility Degree and Their Application in Decision-Making

Symmetry ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (11) ◽  
pp. 557 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jiaru Li ◽  
Fangwei Zhang ◽  
Qiang Li ◽  
Jing Sun ◽  
Janney Yee ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Fuzzy Sets ◽  
Cardinal Number ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Distance Measures ◽  
Hesitant Fuzzy Set ◽  
Hesitant Fuzzy Sets ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Relationship

The subject of this study is to explore the role of cardinality of hesitant fuzzy element (HFE) in distance measures on hesitant fuzzy sets (HFSs). Firstly, three parameters, i.e., credibility factor, conservative factor, and a risk factor are introduced, thereafter, a series of novel distance measures on HFSs are proposed using these three parameters. These newly proposed distance measures handle the relationship between the cardinal number and the element values of hesitant fuzzy set well, and are suitable to combine subjective and objective decision-making information. When using these functions, decision makers with different risk preferences are allowed to give different values for these three parameters. In particular, this study transfers the hesitance degree index to a credibility of the values in HFEs, which is consistent with people’s intuition. Finally, the practicability of the newly proposed distance measures is verified by two examples.

scholarly journals Unwanted Conflict? The Analysis of the Impact of Misperception, Beliefs and Psychology of President Nasser at the Outbreak of the Six Day War

2019 ◽  
Vol 01 (02) ◽  
pp. 1950003
Author(s):  
Janko Šćepanović
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Structural Explanation ◽  
Defining Moments ◽  
The Us ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Six Day War ◽  
The Impact

The Six Day War was one of the most defining moments in the history of the Modern Middle East. This paper seeks to add to the existing scholarship on the subject by going beyond the structural explanation. It gives special attention to the role of unit-level variables like perception, personality, and political psychology of decision-makers. As one scholar noted, threats are not perceived in a vacuum, and are, instead, products of complex synthesis of subjective appraisal of events by the decision-makers. The focus will be on the beliefs and perceptions of the most impactful actor in this crisis: Egyptian President Nasser. As will be argued, his decision-making was shaped by his experience with foreign imperialism, a general misconception of super power intentions, an incorrect analogy between two crucial crisis situations with Israel: the February 1960 Rotem Crisis, and the build-up to the June War in 1967, and especially his complicated relations with the US leaders.

A Struggle for Institutionalization: the Tunisian Assemblée des Répresentants du Peuple and the Dominance of Consensus-Oriented Politics

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Chahd Bahri ◽  
Jan Claudius Völkel
Keyword(s):  
North Africa ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Transformation Process ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Financial Resources ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Power Structures ◽  
Individual Decision ◽  
Main Challenge ◽  
Major Transformation

Abstract This article is part of the Special Issue “Parliaments in the Middle East and North Africa: A Struggle for Relevance.” Tunisia’s parliament has undergone a remarkable internal transformation process since 2011, from a formerly mostly irrelevant institution to an influential locus of policy-making. This successful progress notwithstanding, the parliament’s transformation to a democratic assembly has not been fully concluded yet. A main challenge is that the legislature still shows a number of characteristics of an “authoritarian parliament”: besides a lack of staff and financial resources, the continuous dominance of personal kinship over institutionalized power structures remains particularly problematic.While private networks of individual decision-makers were perceived as crucial for Tunisia’s stability during the turbulent post-revolution years, they concomitantly contain the risk for a resurrection of former authoritarian structures. The article thus traces the Tunisian parliament’s major transformation steps from a former irrelevant legislature to a consolidated, influential assembly, and points out the still existing challenges.

Introduction: Neglecting, Rediscovering and Thinking Again about Power in Finance

2014 ◽  
Vol 49 (3) ◽  
pp. 331-341 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Moran ◽  
Anthony Payne
Keyword(s):  
Financial Markets ◽  
Political Science ◽  
The Political ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Political Role ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject

The articles in this special issue survey comparatively the shape of power and finance. The introduction sketches the history of the study of the political role of financial markets and examines the reasons for the comparative neglect of the subject by the discipline of political science.

What War Narratives Tell About the Psychology and Coalitional Dynamics of Ethnic Violence

2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 1-38
Author(s):  
Michael Moncrieff ◽  
Pierre Lienard
Keyword(s):  
Ethnic Violence ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Individual Decision ◽  
Domain Specific ◽  
War Narratives ◽  
Coalitional Psychology ◽  
Game Theoretic ◽  
Classical Economic ◽  
Core Features

AbstractModels of ethnic violence have primarily been descriptive in nature, advancing broad or particular social and political reasons as explanations, and neglecting the contributions of individuals as decision-makers. Game theoretic and rational choice models recognize the role of individual decision-making in ethnic violence. However, such models embrace a classical economic theory view of unbounded rationality as utility-maximization, with its exacting assumption of full informational access, rather than a model of bounded rationality, modeling individuals as satisficing agents endowed with evolved domain-specific competences. A newer theoretical framework hypothesizing the existence of a human coalitional psychology, an evolved domain of competence, allows us to make sense of core features of memorial narratives about ethnic violence. Qualitative data from the interviews of fifty-seven participants who were impacted by the Croatian Homeland War support expectations entailed by a coalitional psychology model of ethnic strife.

STRATEGIES FOR ADVICE TAKING: THE ROLE OF EPISTEMIC SOCIAL INFORMATION

2015 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-91 ◽  
Author(s):  
Annika Wallin ◽  
Richard McElreath
Keyword(s):  
Model Comparison ◽  
Empirical Investigation ◽  
Social Information ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Process Models ◽  
Individual Decision ◽  
Course Of Action ◽  
Particular Solution ◽  
Advice Taking

Abstract:How does an individual decision maker update his or her beliefs in the light of others’ beliefs? We present an empirical investigation that varies decision makers’ access to other peoples’ beliefs: whether they know what course of action others have taken (in this case how a problem is solved) and whether they know why this course of action was taken (why a particular solution is preferred). We propose a number of process models of advice taking that do and do not accommodate the reasons given for belief (epistemic social information), and evaluate which is used through model comparison techniques.

Special Issue on Managing Catastrophic Technological Risks and Role of Technology Assessment (TA) in the Post 3/11 Society

2011 ◽  
Vol 6 (5) ◽  
pp. 473-475 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tatsujiro Suzuki ◽  
Go Yoshizawa
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Power Plant ◽  
Technology Assessment ◽  
Nuclear Power ◽  
Objective Assessment ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Fukushima Daiichi ◽  
Societal Impacts

The nuclear accident at Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCo)’s Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant on March 11, 2011, triggered by the Great East Japan Earthquake and subsequent Tsunami, is probably the worst “catastrophic technological risk” ever experienced by Japan. Whether this serious accident could have been prevented or managed better is the key question that we need to pursue. Technology Assessment (TA), which is intended to help decision making by assessing possible societal impacts of particular technology, can play significant role in managing catastrophic technological risks by providing an objective assessment of technological risks before it happens, while it is happening and even after the accident. In this special issue on TA, we are fortunate to have papers and reviews from both distinguished experts as well as young scholars. The variety of the subject is also very useful to see how TA can be applied under the different situations. In particular, in the post 3.11 society, we believe it is a good occasion to consider institutionalization of TA in Japan.

scholarly journals The Security Council in practice: Haiti, cholera, and the elected members of the United Nations Security Council

2019 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 157-176 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rosa Freedman ◽  
Nicolas Lemay-Hébert
Keyword(s):  
Security Council ◽  
United Nations Security Council ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Cholera Outbreak ◽  
Privileged Access ◽  
Key Stakeholders ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Right ◽  
Do The Right Thing

AbstractWhile the cholera outbreak in Haiti still claims victims every month, it is also the backdrop of one of the biggest legal battles the UN has been engaged in – one for the recognition of harm caused and for reparations for victims of cholera. Having used its immunity to disengage from the issue, the UN finally changed its stance in December 2016 and apologized for the organization’s role in the cholera outbreak. This article analyses the role of the elected members of the Security Council – alongside other key stakeholders – in contributing to the UN’s change of policy. Based on privileged access to a number of actors in this politico-legal fight, this article argues that elected members of the Security Council have played a crucial role in pushing the UN to ‘do the right thing’. This article, along with other contributions to this special issue, sheds a different light on the practices inside the Security Council, demonstrating that elected members are far from being powerless, as most of the literature on the subject tends to assume. They can successfully play a significant role inside the organization when the right conditions permit them to play this role.

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