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"L'énigme algérienne: Chroniques d'une ambassade à Alger" by Xavier Driencourt is a book that recounts the author's experiences as France's longest-serving ambassador to Algeria. Driencourt discusses the two main pillars of French influence in Algeria: economic position and cultural and educational influence. He also addresses the tensions and complexities in the France-Algeria relationship, including the perception of the French embassy as a lobby seeking to control Algeria. The book provides insights into the political landscape of Algeria, including the emergence of the hirak protest movement and the role of the military in the country's governance. However, some readers may find the book lacking in historical context and a deeper analysis of the Algerian regime. [Extracted from the article]

In Westminster parliamentary democracies like Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, research has found that cabinet composition is driven mainly by longstanding norms and practices that privilege older, white males with certain educational and political experiences. Do these trends apply at the subnational level where the demographic make‐up can be quite different? To answer this question, we draw upon an original dataset of all members of the legislative assembly and cabinet in three Canadian territories from 1979 to 2022. These territories are unique given that Indigenous communities loom large in their governments and societies. Using an event history model, we find that territorial cabinets very much reflect the demographic make up of their legislatures, similar to what occurs at the federal level. We also observe important differences between the territories, which suggest that the influence of Westminster structures and norms are likely mediated by factors unique to each territory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ending gender-based violence was a central promise of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's self-declared feminist government. Executive speeches about gender-based violence provide clues about what types of feminist ideas undergird the 42nd Parliament. Was carceral feminism advanced, by focusing on punishment? Or neoliberalized feminist ideas, by focusing on the market? Or social justice feminist ideas, by focusing on systemic change? Applying the concept of governance feminism and using Bacchi's WPR approach, this article investigates how gender-based violence is problematized in English- and French-language House of Commons debates in the 42nd Parliament by the cabinet. The speeches problematize gender-based violence as preventable and caused by systemic issues, but this transformational discourse is undermined by a focus on strengthening carceral responses and limiting human potential to economic productivity. Feminist ideas about gender-based violence were adopted, relying on carceral and neoliberalized feminist ideas. The Trudeau Liberals' campaign for change was discursively undermined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Court of Appeal has ruled that the UK government was wrong to introduce regulations in 2019 stating that pre-settled status (PSS) awarded under the EU Settlement Scheme was not sufficient for EU nationals to pass the habitual residence test when claiming benefits. The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) also found that people with PSS were not protected from nationality discrimination. However, the Court of Appeal determined that those with PSS are entitled to protection from the Charter of Fundamental Rights, specifically the right to dignity. The Supreme Court has refused the Secretary of State's permission to appeal, making the Court of Appeal's decision binding. [Extracted from the article]

The phenomenon called legislative inflation is extensively used in public debate across jurisdictions – including new democracies attempting to overcome communist legal heritage. Typically, the phrase refers to the quantitative aspect – growth in the number, volume and frequency of amendments of primary and secondary legislation exceeding the natural demands of the technological progress and growing complexity of business relations. This paper attempts to provide a bird's eye view of legislative inflation in Poland after the 1989 democratic breakthrough. As Poland is an example of successful democratic and market transition of the nineties, substantial redrafting of the legal framework during EU accession and populist right-wing governance, the results seem relevant beyond the domestic context. Documented patterns suggest that the search for driving forces behind the legislative inflation should shift from the parliament towards cabinet ministers and the bureaucratic apparatus under their supervision, the pace of legal text production justifies the search for a theoretical conceptualisation of how the law could govern societies unwilling and unable to familiarise themselves with its flow and to examine the impact of legal text production on society and the economy it seems useful to shift from the data on the text itself towards its actual impact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the effect of official visits by U.S. Presidents and Secretaries of State on foreign direct investment inflows. The key difficulty in determining a causal effect is the issue of endogeneity. To address potential endogeneity, we use the Endogenous Treatment model (ETM). The estimation results provide evidence that the official visits of U.S. Presidents have a statistically significant positive effect on both foreign investment inflows from the U.S. and on total foreign direct investment inflows. This is robust even after the inclusion of other control variables identified by the literature as confounding factors for foreign direct investment. When we examine the effect of different types of visits, the results show that bilateral meetings during the official visits of U.S. Presidents have a statistically significant positive effect on both foreign investment inflows from the U.S. and total foreign direct investment. These results imply that the visits of U.S. Presidents offer a signal of the confidence of American administrations in the host country, which may in turn encourage American and non-American firms to invest in that country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Not all governments survive until the next scheduled election. Some are replaced during their term in office by executives with a different party composition and/or portfolio distribution. Others are able to be 'reborn' as the successor government, undergoing only minimal changes. Such variation has to date received scant attention in studies on government durability. By classifying non-electoral replacements according to the degree of ministerial turnover, this article shows that new cabinets are often similar to their predecessors. It hypothesises that the likelihood of this pattern occurring is greater: when members of the current cabinet face bargaining problems in forming a very different cabinet, as in the case of surplus (unnecessary) parties in oversized coalitions; when the policy distance between the parliamentary median party and the current opposition widens; and when the executive's economic performance discourages opposition parties from forming new coalitions with some incumbent parties. The risk of experiencing different types of replacement is estimated using data on Western European cabinets (1946–2021). Consistent with the hypotheses, the results indicate that governments are able to return to power almost untouched after their termination if they are oversized, if the opposition is far from the legislative median voter, and if inflation grows during a government's tenure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study identifies how three prominent Israeli online newspapers frame gay Members of Knesset (Israeli parliament) and cabinet ministers. 2019 was chosen since the number of gay MKs reached a historic milestone of representation. The study employed a mixed-methods design, combining descriptive statistics, based on a quantitative content analysis, with a thematic qualitative analysis. 1015 retrieved news items constituted the initial database. They were divided into two categories: "Gay relevant" (items explicitly referring to, or mentioning the politician's sexual orientation); or "Gay irrelevant" (all other items), to thematically focus on the Gay relevant items (N = 159). Six themes were then identified: Novelty; LGBTQ Political Representation; Private Sphere; Homophobia; Community Recognition and Rights; and Incongruity. Findings revealed that elite newspaper coverage is similar to popular ones; cabinet ministers' framing is more neutral compared to junior MKs; and liberal MKs are framed differently than conservative ones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of the research is disclosing the administrative and legal status of public administration subjects regarding countering terrorism. It has been established that a fairly clear and logical structure of State bodies regarding organization and coordination of the fight against terrorism has been created in Ukraine. The system of counter-terrorism entities is a set of specific, legally defined entities that interact with the goal of preventing, detecting, stopping, and minimizing consequences of terrorist activities. In the research, methods such as the analysis of biographical sources, synthesis, deduction, comparative analysis and meta-analysis were used. With this, it was established that the President of Ukraine, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, and the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine are key actors when countering terrorism in Ukraine in the system of higher authorities. The defining areas of activity of the President of Ukraine in the sphere of countering terrorism are the activities aimed at the regulatory and legal support of countering terrorism in Ukraine, as well as the creation, liquidation, reorganization and management of the relevant counterterrorism subjects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article studies determinants of political actors' visibility in the news, and their stability over time, observing the press coverage received by Chilean politicians in the elite press since the beginning of the democratic transition in 1991 and until 2019. In dialogue with theories of news values, we test how political positions in a markedly presidential system, the belonging to a government coalition, gender, and the association to conflict frames behave as determinants of the presence and prominence of politicians in the news in the three decades following the recovery of democracy in Chile. We have three key findings. Firstly, the visibility of political actors in the news follows a clear institutional hierarchy led by the president and cabinet members. Secondly, female politicians are less likely to be mentioned or have speaking space in newspapers than male politicians. Lastly, although an association with conflict-framed news boosts politicians' visibility, such association is unable to disturb structural power hierarchies, and the value of conflict does not increase over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The famous diplomat and statesman Henry Kissinger has died at the age of 100. He served as President Nixon's National Security Advisor and Secretary of State and had a significant influence on international politics. Kissinger founded a political consulting firm in New York and remained a sought-after interlocutor for government leaders and CEOs even after leaving office. He is praised for his policy of détente with the Soviet Union, but also criticized for his support of right-wing regimes such as Pinochet in Chile. [Extracted from the article]

On June 14, 2023, Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, Interior Minister Nancy Faeser, Defense Minister Boris Pistorius, and Finance Minister Christian Lindner presented the first German National Security Strategy (NSS) at a joint press conference. The strategy encompasses various sectors of society and deals with policy-making and implementation in industry, agriculture, construction, finance, education, health, and the environment. Russia, Ukraine, and China are considered important actors for Germany's security, with Russia being seen as the biggest threat. The strategy also includes a focus on human rights, economic sustainability, cybersecurity, and space security. Cooperation with the United States, NATO, and the European Union is emphasized, while anti-democratic states are intended to be influenced through non-governmental organizations. Overall, the NSS does not contain groundbreaking provisions or ideas, but is based on previous government documents. [Extracted from the article]

Like coeval classical kingdoms of Southeast Asia, the Dali Kingdom (937–1253 CE) of Yunnan adopted politico-religious ideologies for Buddhist kingship. Understanding Buddhist kingship as a medium for bolstering both spiritual and temporal authority, this article investigates if relations between twelfth-century Duan monarchs and their Gao ministers of state were the same as those depicted in post-thirteenth-century sources and scrutinises the argument for the eighteenth monarch Duan Zhixing (r.1173–1200) promoting himself as a dharmarāja to assert superiority over his Gao ministers. I reframe Duan-Gao relations from one of tension and conflict to one of collaboration, and postulate twelfth-century Duan-Gao relations then changing before the 1250s, when thirteenth century sources mention Gao domination. I argue for a working hypothesis of the dissemination of Duan Zhixing's politico-religious ideology dovetailing with administration at the kingdom's core areas. Dissemination was implemented by Gao ministers of state and monks from the royal Chongsheng Temple, and the process reveals a collaborative rather than confrontational relationship between Duan monarchs and the Gao clan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ironic as it may seem, one of the major victims of America's diplomatic retreat from Pakistan has been India. China has filled the void of U.S. disengagement, solidifying its grip on Pakistan and locking India in a two-front vise that it cannot cope with on its own. India has no choice but to reach out for alliances with liberal nations it shunned in its Non-Aligned days. This radical policy shift is capped, however, by the ideological constraints of Modi's BJPism. That is the main reason why India has refused to abort its military and economic ties with Russia. A similar anti-liberalism led Imran Khan, the ex-prime minister of Pakistan, to seek an anti-Western accord with Russia. Conversely, Pakistan's current leadership is trying hard to repair its U.S. relations. Following the lead of Secretary of State Antony Blinken, this extended commentary favors robust U.S. engagement with all of South Asia but qualifies that case by stressing that the wrong kind of engagement would end up serving the cause of Sino-authoritarianism. What is needed is moral realism, which avoids the ethical blight of both Kissingeresque realism and globalist irrealism. Pakistan is ripe for this post-globalist realism because it affords no clean and neat "right" choices yet is far too important to abandon. Such cases compel us to search for lesser evils: the best available bad choices we can locate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prime ministers in parliamentary systems confront a challenging agency problem in leading cabinets toward cross-government priorities: ministers tend to prioritize departmental interests and may lack incentives and/or information enabling co-ordinated effort. In Canada, a novel mechanism for both increasing incentives and information provision has been developed in recent decades: the mandate letter. These letters are issued by Canadian prime ministers to their ministers, reinforcing government priorities, each minister's responsibilities, and specific policy expectations. This article examines mandate letters as mechanisms inducing interministerial policy co-ordination, focusing on the 2015–2021 period, under Justin Trudeau, as the first Canadian prime minister to release these letters publicly. Using topic modelling and social network analysis, I find that Trudeau has increasingly sought to strengthen ministerial co-ordination and ministers' focus on crosscutting policy priorities. This case study contributes to our understanding of intraexecutive co-ordination and the agency problem in cabinet government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the case of R (Pearce) v Parole Board & Secretary of State for Justice, which deals with allegations against a prisoner and how the Parole Board should consider them when determining whether to release the prisoner. The Court of Appeal held that the Parole Board's guidance on allegations was unlawful to the extent that it allowed unproven information to be taken into account. However, the Supreme Court allowed the appeal and held that the Parole Board can consider allegations that have some evidential basis, even if they have not been proven. The Court emphasized the importance of making proper findings of fact and ensuring procedural fairness. [Extracted from the article]

This article analyses the effect of ministers' exposure to periods of low presidential approval in Brazil and Chile between 1990 and 2014. Approval is explored with quarterly estimates using a dyad-ratios algorithm and merged into a time-dependent cabinet data set to evaluate individual ministerial terminations (N = 4245). The empirical strategy combines time-varying exposure Cox regressions with observational data and propensity score and matching to estimate the effect of low approval on ministerial survival and perform a moderation analysis with three profiles associated with presidential strategies: (1) nonpartisan ministers to limit agency loss and moral hazard; (2) economists as ministers to optimise cabinet performance and send positive signals to the electorate; and (3) party leaders as ministers to optimise legislative support. The main findings show that risk increases by 135.1% in periods of low approval. In addition, approximately only one in five nonpartisan ministers is removed compared to party members. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To explore what we call the 'European art of governing', this article examines the Cabinets of the members of the European Commission. They function at the interface between levels and modes of governance, between the Commission and Member State governments, between national interests (of capitals) and sectoral interests (their portfolios). A new interpretation of the 'denationalization' process is given, focusing more on profiles than on practices. Cabinets have been remarkably stable since the end of the 1960s in their role as conduits of collegiality. However they also reflect a new form of 'intergovernmentalization' of the Commission. Using a historical and sociological approach, the article shows how collegiality at the Commission has been exercised since the Delors period of presidentialization and Juncker's introduction of real Vice-Presidents, generating complex forms of competition between horizontal and vertical coordination processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents the text of the instructions imparted by Cardinal Secretary of State Alderano Cybo to Luigi Bevilacqua, the apostolic nuncio and mediator at the multilateral peace congress of Nijmegen (1676–1679). It also offers a historical contextualization of the source, found in the Archivio Bevilacqua Ariosti in Bologna. The instructions reflect a change in Papal diplomacy, which remained active among the European powers even after the peace of Westphalia. By sending a nuncio into Protestant territory, Pope Innocent XI's curia increasingly tended to integrate itself into the secularising diplomacy. During the peace negotiations, the Holy See tried to fulfil its ideal role as a padre comune, entailing strict impartiality between the conflicting Catholic parties. The orders regarding contacts with Protestant actors and interests are an example of the flexible dialogue of a normative text with the changing circumstances of 17th-century diplomatic practice. Although the wording reflects the intransigent tradition of the Holy See, the instructions show clear signs that the Protestant presence at the congress was handled pragmatically. On site, Bevilacqua even tried to go further and expand the recently established norm in favour of an effective interaction with Protestants, but ultimately failed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A key feature of parliamentary democracy is government accountability vis‐à‐vis the legislature, but the important question of who speaks for the government—cabinet ministers or unelected bureaucrats, and the institutional underpinnings of this behavior—receives scant attention in the existing literature. We investigate this question using the case of Japan, and data on more than four million committee speeches spanning distinct electoral and legislative institutional environments. We document how a party‐strengthening electoral system reform in 1994 facilitated a dramatic shift in the nature of government accountability to parliamentary committees: speeches by ministers increased, speeches by bureaucrats decreased, and discursive accountability between ministers and opposition legislators increased. Subsequent legislative reforms expanding junior ministerial roles and placing explicit limits on bureaucratic participation further reinforced the effects. These findings shed new light on the institutional foundations of responsible party government in general as well as its progressive development in Japan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In coalition governments, parties invest much effort to manage delegation costs to individual ministers. In this article, we examine an intra-executive mechanism for managing delegation costs: Assigning ministerial co-responsibility in cabinet decisions. Using data of cabinet decisions in Israel, we test when and under what conditions co-responsibility is assigned. We find that co-responsibility is assigned strategically by cabinet members weighing the risk of a drift against the costs of imposing co-responsibility. These findings demonstrate an understudied mechanism through which coalition governments narrow ministerial autonomy and informational advantage once policies reach the cabinet. In doing so, this research contributes to a better understanding of policymaking in coalition governments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Which patterns of democracy perform best? Although a decades-long research tradition has fairly robustly suggested that consensual democracies outperform their Westminster-style majoritarian counterparts, the scope of previous studies has been limited to 'normal times'. In this article, the endogenous context of the COVID-19 pandemic is leveraged to study whether the alleged superiority of consensualism also holds during crises. It is hypothesised that, in addition to consensus democracy, inclusive institutions – i.e. cabinet size and interest-group corporatism – enhance crisis-related performance. Drawing on new and original data, cross-sectional and hierarchical time-series regression analyses show that horizontal power-sharing and the number of ministers substantively reduced excess mortality, while the structure of the interest-group system had no effect. Although established consensus democracies can draw on their built-in institutional assets even during crises, our findings indicate that majoritarian systems may, as a compensatory performance-enhancing tool, flexibly gear up for crisis-induced necessities by adding more ministers to the cabinet. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article sheds light on the obstacles that women face as members of the government by answering the questions: How does the sex of ministers shape the way MPs' assess the quality of their work? And, how does this relationship differ depending on the political ideology of MPs? We argue that legislators assess the competencies of women ministers differently after the activation of gender stereotypes, but that the way they react depends on the ideological orientation of their party. We investigate this topic in a real-word context using a unique survey experiment with German and Austrian MPs. The evidence reveals that, while MPs belonging to right-wing parties perceive women in the executive as less competent than men ministers, their colleagues from left-wing parties actually assess them more favorably. These findings highlight the persistence of old myths about women's lacking political skills and the emergence of new ones about women's superior ability to govern. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interest groups seek to influence parliamentarians' actions by establishing exchange relationships. We scrutinize the role of exchange by investigating how interest groups impact parliamentarians' use of individual parliamentary instruments such as questions, motions, and bills. We utilize a new longitudinal dataset (2000–2015) with 524 Swiss parliamentarians, their 6342 formal ties to interest groups (i.e., board seats), and a variety of 23,750 parliamentary instruments across 15 policy areas. This enables us to show that interest groups systematically relate to parliamentarians' use of parliamentary instruments in the respective policy areas in which they operate—even when parliamentarians' time-invariant (fixed effects) and time-variant personal affinities (occupation, committee membership) to the policy area are accounted for. Personal affinities heavily moderate interest groups' impact on their board members' parliamentary activities. Moreover, once formal ties end, the impact of interest groups also wanes. These findings have implications for our understanding of how interest groups foster representation in legislatures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the creation of regions and communities in the second half of the 20th century for resolving ethnic tensions between the French- and Flemish-speaking communities, provinces are still relevant to understand contemporary Belgian politics. Observing provincial political dynamics is essential to understand multi-level political elite dynamics and territorial cleavages in contemporary Belgium. For instance, political parties are internally structured in provincial federations, and federal elections rely on provincial electoral districts. Combined with constitutional factors such as language and region, this article investigates the provincial origins of ministerial elites in all Belgian federal cabinets between 1980 and 2020. It observes that provinces are far from being perfectly present in a balanced manner in the federal government: some provinces are overrepresented while others – in particular large provinces – are underrepresented. This provincial imbalance is stable over time and independent on the types of cabinet but can be explained by party strategies and vote-seeking considerations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article takes a closer look at the ministerial representation of peripheral elites in central state institutions. We assess the ministerial portfolios that regionalist parties hold once they enter national government. We use a novel dataset that consists of a large sample of ministerial posts (N=1880) allocated to regionalist parties across Western multilevel democracies throughout the post–World War II period. An empirical analysis shows that regionalist parties control a disproportionately high share of the minister posts, a proportionate share of the policy domains, and a disproportionately low share of the key leadership positions in national cabinets. They have a distinctive preference to hold territorial and institutional (that is, decentralization) responsibilities in their ministerial portfolios. In contrast, concerning secondary policy domains (social-economic and culture-identity) they appear to be highly flexible. Ministerial appointments are an important gateway for peripheral elites to get access to central state institutions. It is also one of the clearest manifestations of (policy) payoffs: portfolios are meaningful tools to defend the interests of a territorial subgroup. Yet, there is no straight line from portfolio distribution to policy outcomes at the end of a legislative term. Resolving this broader question of a party's influence on public policy requires continued research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study focuses on Catalan cabinet ministers in democratic Spain with a view to understanding what function they perform in the central government: regional ambassador or state agent? To this end, this analysis draws on a sub-dataset comprised of 22 Catalan cabinet ministers taken from a general pool of 220 cabinet ministers and 371 ministerial appointments from 1977 to 2021. Our findings demonstrate, first, that no Catalan cabinet minister has ever reached the position of Prime Minister and Catalans constitute a kind of ministerial "middle class" occupying intermediate positions in the cabinet. Second, the examination of career paths and publications of Catalan ministers shows that their role varied according to circumstances. Third, in this article we argue that those variations can be best interpreted as a delegation between principal and agent relying on two main variables, namely the type of party they belong to in Catalonia and the parliamentarian majority sustaining the party controlling the Spanish cabinet. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The territorial composition of governments (that is, the geographical origin of its members) has received little attention from political scientists. However, prime ministers, ministers, and junior ministers clearly have a territorial characterization and preferential attachments to specific places that can potentially affect the way decisions are made and resources are allocated. In this article, we focus on these aspects, showing the evolution of the territorial representativeness of Italian governmental elites over the last four decades and proposing some interpretations of its changes. In particular, we describe the transition from a balanced regional representation (the "parity norm") to a multitude of different patterns of territorial representation that we observe across parties nowadays. We propose three explanations for such changes: the first is based on the transformation of the party system in the nineties, with the emergence of parties such as the Northern League, with a specific regional focus; the second is based on the regionalization of the Italian state and its consequences on political career paths; the third is based on the increasing recruitment of technocrats in ministerial offices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the topic of deprivation of citizenship appeals in cases of fraud. It explains that the British Nationality Act 1981 grants the Home Secretary the authority to strip individuals of their British citizenship if it is deemed necessary for the public good or if the citizenship was obtained through fraudulent means. The article delves into the ongoing debate surrounding the role of the tribunal on appeal, questioning whether it involves a complete reconsideration of the decision or a more limited review based on public law principles. Recent court judgments have introduced uncertainty regarding the principles established in the Begum v Secretary of State for the Home Department case. The article provides an overview of relevant legislation and previous case law, including the Rehman case, which addressed the powers of the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC) on appeal. The article concludes by discussing the judgment in the Begum case, which clarified SIAC's jurisdiction and powers on appeal. The interpretation of Lord Reed in the Begum case has implications beyond specific cases and extends to fraud cases as well. The Court of Appeal has not directly addressed the jurisdiction of the First-tier Tribunal (F-tT) in deprivation appeals, leaving the issue unresolved. The Court's recent decision in the U3 v Secretary of State for the Home Department case allows SIAC to consider new evidence and make findings of fact while respecting the Home Secretary's assessment of national security. However, the position regarding appeals under section 40(3) remains uncertain, and it is expected that a future case will [Extracted from the article]

Existing research suggests that government participation is crucial for how voters evaluate party performance and how they cast their votes. However, in real life the distinction between government and opposition is not as straight-forward as one would think. Minority governments often enjoy the legislative support of external support parties, which play an ambiguous role in politics: while they are formally part of the opposition, they are simultaneously committed to keeping the government in office and passing its bills. How do voters evaluate parties that support a minority government? Will they respond to different frames about the significance of the commitment that support parties have made to government policy and survival? In a survey experiment, I test whether framing a written agreement as effective will cause voters to attribute more or less responsibility to the support parties and find that they respond to different frames by altering their perceptions of the importance of the agreement, but not their responsibility attribution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Despite accumulating evidence of the implications of trade policy for public health, trade and health sectors continue to operate largely in silos. Numerous barriers to advancing health have been identified, including the dominance of a neoliberal paradigm, powerful private sector interests, and constraints associated with policymaking processes. Scholars and policy actors have recommended improved governance practices for trade policy, including: greater transparency and accountability; intersectoral collaboration; the use of health impact assessments; South-South networking; and mechanisms for civil society participation. These policy prescriptions have been generated from specific cases, such as the World Trade Organization's Doha Declaration on TRIPS and Public Health or specific instances of trade-related policymaking at the national level. There has not yet been a comprehensive analysis of what enables the elevation of health goals on trade policy agendas. This narrative review seeks to address this gap by collating and analysing known studies across different levels of policymaking and different health issues. Results: Sixty-five studies met the inclusion criteria and were included in the review. Health issues that received attention on trade policy agendas included: access to medicines, food nutrition and food security, tobacco control, non-communicable diseases, access to knowledge, and asbestos harm. This has occurred in instances of domestic and regional policymaking, and in bilateral, regional and global trade negotiations, as well as in trade disputes and challenges. We identified four enabling conditions for elevation of health in trade-related policymaking: favourable media attention; leadership by trade and health ministers; public support; and political party support. We identified six strategies successfully used by advocates to influence these conditions: using and translating multiple forms of evidence, acting in coalitions, strategic framing, leveraging exogenous factors, legal strategy, and shifting forums. Conclusion: The analysis demonstrates that while technical evidence is important, political strategy is necessary for elevating health on trade agendas. The analysis provides lessons that can be explored in the wider commercial determinants of health where economic and health interests often collide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Charles Montagu (c. 1662–1722), Earl (later Duke) of Manchester, played an important role in furthering the establishment of Italian-style opera in London. He gained knowledge of opera and continental singers and musicians on his Grand Tour and three diplomatic missions abroad. This article prints relevant portions (some for the first time) from his correspondence and other printed and manuscript sources to expand our knowledge of his involvement with opera in London, Vienna, France and Italy. The correspondence suggests why his advice and assistance were sought by John Vanbrugh and later by the Royal Academy of Music and adds to our knowledge of the history of opera in London in its so-called 'critical decade'. Most important was his mission to Venice in 1707–8. Although no evidence has emerged that Manchester met Handel in Venice or extended to him an invitation, he was responsible for the recruitment of Nicola Grimaldi (called 'Nicolini'), painters and other singers to London. Even at this early stage, opera in London was part of an operatic system that extended across Europe, involving not only musicians and impresarios but also ministers of state and foreign diplomats. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper analyses physical and verbal confrontations that unfolded in the Argentine Congress during the process of state formation, to understand the connections between those altercations and other dimensions of the political conflict of the time. In the mid-nineteenth century, Argentina was organised as a representative and federal republic. Congress became then the incarnation of the federation, the place where the representatives of all the districts met, and where congressmen regularly questioned Cabinet members. Focusing on those episodes, it examines how congressmen related to each other, the Executive, the public that followed the sessions in the Chamber, and the press. It takes into consideration drawings, pictures, photomechanical prints, lithographs, and cartoons of the Legislative and its members that provided a visual experience of Congress and affected its legitimacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rule 2(22) was therefore meant to place blame (if things went wrong and a high-profile offender committed a further offence or having been released by the Parole Board) upon the Parole Board and not upon the SSJ or other politicians. Rule 2(22) of the 2022 rules amended the Parole Board Rules 2019 (SI 2019/1038) (the "2019 rules") and came into effect on 21 July 2022 (r. 1(2)). Keywords: Release of prisoners; Parole Board procedure; ability of witnesses to give evidence and recommendations; judicial review EN Release of prisoners Parole Board procedure ability of witnesses to give evidence and recommendations judicial review 299 302 4 09/20/23 20230801 NES 230801 This case stemmed from the changes made to the way in which the Parole Board (an interested party) managed the receipt of the evidence from the Secretary of State for Justice (the SSJ). [Extracted from the article]

Incumbent prime ministers who win re-election often reshuffle their cabinet ministers. These post-election cabinet reshuffles have important implications for policymaking and present a puzzle: why would prime ministers alter the 'winning team' that has just received an electoral mandate? Existing literature has largely overlooked post-election reshuffles, so offers few compelling answers. At most, a plausible but under-theorised and untested conventional wisdom suggests that electoral success increases prime ministers' authority over their ministers. This article thus provides the first systematic study of post-election cabinet reshuffles in single-party governments. It argues that re-elected prime ministers use a temporary increase in their authority to pre-empt future leadership challenges by moving or sacking cabinet rivals. Larger election victories should thus produce larger reshuffles. However, analysis of post-election cabinet reshuffles in four 'Westminster' democracies since 1945 shows no support for this expectation, suggesting that further work is needed to understand these important political events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How does the execution of horizontal accountability mechanisms affect cabinet members' instability? This article analyzes distinct features of no-confidence motions (NCMs) in presidential systems, using a mixed-method research design that identifies elements of legislative control mechanisms in Peruvian and Colombian polities. Although the congress in presidential systems rarely approves NCMs, high salience policy shocks trigger their proposal, resulting in the dismissal or resignation of the cabinet member in question. Those results are subtle opportunities for opposition legislators to indicate the incompetence of the incumbent government in particular policy areas. This study contributes to understanding how contextual factors affect the effectiveness of the check and balance principle in presidential systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The notion that early modern ministers of state were useful functionaries and thus the very opposite of ridiculously parasitic courtiers is something traditional historians of ancien régime France and Brandenburg-Prussia could have agreed on, even though these states were otherwise assumed to have been polar opposites. Once new research had shown that both groups were in fact part of the same system of power and status in both states, simply reversing the judgement became as tempting as it would be misleading. It is true that both France and Brandenburg-Prussia developed what one may only semi-facetiously call relatively absolutist systems, and that both states set out to do so with an elite clearly divided into an old chivalric and a new judicial nobility. Yet their subsequent trajectories not only provide us with two interesting variations on the theme of elite integration; more importantly, this article argues that a closer look at these processes will disprove the currently dominant interpretations of both cases. In France, co-operation, social mobility and (decreasing) intermarriage between noblesse d'épée and noblesse de robe, far from proving their alleged fusion, were in fact the necessary consequences of what remained a sharp functional differentiation right up to 1789. Instead, it was Prussia which saw an actual fusion of both groups into a social elite that was not only much more court-orientated than hitherto assumed, but also (and somewhat ironically) both less military and less socially open than its French counterpart. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the Great Seljūk State, the wazīr was the highest administrative authority after the ruler. According to the viewpoint of the period, the good or bad course of the sulṭān and the country depended on the wazīr. As in the previous Islamic and TurkishIslamic states, in the Great Seljūk State, the wazīr managed the state affairs with wide authority. Therefore, the wazīr had authority in administrative, military, financial, political and religious affairs. With an administrative hierarchy, each dīwān (dīwān-i inshā wa alṭughrā, dīwān-i istīfā-i mamālik, dīwān-i ishrāf-i mamālik, dīwān-i arż) constituting the state organization was subordinate to the dīwān-i a’lā, headed by the wazīr. Therefore, the wazīr was the head of the bureaucracy. The wazīr also had extensive judicial-criminal wide authority. In this study, it is going to be examined the issues in appointing and dismissing the ḳāḍī al-ḳuḍât and ḳāḍīs, dealing with complaints both in the dīwān al-maẓālim and out of the dīwān al-maẓālim, hearing a case, giving a verdict, forgiving the offences, revoking the punishments within the judicial-criminal duties, authorities and responsibilities of the wazīrs in the Great Seljūk State. Finally, appreciation and criticism directed to the Great Seljūk wazīrs within justice and cruelty will be discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]