How Unpopular Policies are Made: Examples from South Africa, Singapore, and Bangladesh

In this article we contribute to the emerging knowledge on migration policy?making in two ways. Firstly, we address the relative lack of research on the gendered nature of migration policy?making. Secondly we contribute to understanding migration policymaking in postcolonial contexts. Based on case studies from Bangladesh, South Africa, and Singapore, we trace the drivers of policy change in these contexts and how the gendered vulnerability of the intended beneficiaries impacted the policy process. We found that there were four main drivers of migration policy?making in each of the countries. They were: the role?players in the policy change process, the debates that shaped the policy change, the research involved, and the political context in which the policy change took place. While our research drew on existing policy frameworks, it also showed that policy development is shaped by complex socio?political conditions.DFIDMigrating out of Povert

The effects of centralising electoral management board design

The public administration of elections frequently fails. Variation in the performance of electoral management boards around the world has been demonstrated, illustrated by delays in the count, inaccurate or incomplete voter registers, or severe queues at polling stations. Centralising the management of the electoral process has often been proposed as a solution. There has been little theorisation and no empirical investigations into the effects that centralising an already decentralised system would have, however. This article addresses this lacuna by conceptualising centralisation through the literature on bureaucratic control and discretion. It then empirically investigates the effects through a case study of centralisation in two UK referendums. Semi-structured interviews were used with those who devised the policy instrument and those who were subject to it. The introduction of central directions had some of the desired effects such as producing more consistent services and eliminating errors. It also had side effects, however, such as reducing economic efficiency in some areas and overlooking local knowledge. Furthermore, the reforms caused a decline of staff morale, job satisfaction and souring of relations among stakeholder organisations. The process of making organisational change therefore warrants closer attention by policy makers and future scholarship on electoral integrity

Tendencias de la cultura y cambio organizacional: estudio de caso

La imagen corporativa en relación con el medio se evidencia en el informe de Deloitte (2018) sobre tendencias del capital humano, en donde se reportan alrededor de 11.000 cuestionarios aplicados a gerentes de 140 países y 150 líderes de empresas colombianas, el planteamiento realizado sugiere que el capital social cobra tanto importancia como el físico y el financiero. Estos aspectos están relacionados con la identidad corporativa y cómo se relaciona a su vez con la cultura y la gestión del en la organización. La cultura y la gestión del cambio han cobrado mucho interés para las personas que guían las organizaciones, los estudios realizados por Deloitte en 2017 se focalizaron en la relación de la cultura y el compromiso como elementos importantes del empleado; los resultados del estudio dejan en evidencia cómo la habilidad de las organizaciones para afrontar inconvenientes de compromiso y cultura tenían una reducción del 14% con respecto al año anterior, estos datos permiten entender la complejidad del ambiente en el ámbito laboral y dan cuenta de la importancia de desarrollar conocimiento válido que oriente a académicos y empresarios para que puedan abordar de una manera adecuada estos aspectos.1a edició

Optimal policy for labeling training samples

Confirming the labels of automatically classified patterns is generally faster than entering new labels or correcting incorrect labels. Most labels assigned by a classifier, even if trained only on relatively few pre-labeled patterns, are correct. Therefore the overall cost of human labeling can be decreased by interspersing labeling and classification. Given a parameterized model of the error rate as an inverse power law function of the size of the training set, the optimal splits can be computed rapidly. Projected savings in operator time are over 60 % for a range of empirical error functions for hand-printed digit classification with ten different classifiers

Variation in the Gene Encoding the Serotonin 2A Receptor Is Associated with Outcome of Antidepressant Treatment

Depressive disorders account for a large and increasing global burden of disease. Although the condition of many patients improves with medication, only a minority experience full remission, and patients whose condition responds to one medication may not have a response to others. Individual variation in antidepressant treatment outcome is, at present, unpredictable but may have a partial genetic basis. We searched for genetic predictors of treatment outcome in 1,953 patients with major depressive disorder who were treated with the antidepressant citalopram in the Sequenced Treatment Alternatives for Depression (STAR*D) study and were prospectively assessed. In a split-sample design, a selection of 68 candidate genes was genotyped, with 768 single-nucleotide–polymorphism markers chosen to detect common genetic variation. We detected significant and reproducible association between treatment outcome and a marker in HTR2A (P range 1×10(-6) to 3.7×10(-5) in the total sample). Other markers in HTR2A also showed evidence of association with treatment outcome in the total sample. HTR2A encodes the serotonin 2A receptor, which is downregulated by citalopram. Participants who were homozygous for the A allele had an 18% reduction in absolute risk of having no response to treatment, compared with those homozygous for the other allele. The A allele was over six times more frequent in white than in black participants, and treatment was less effective among black participants. The A allele may contribute to racial differences in outcomes of antidepressant treatment. Taken together with prior neurobiological findings, these new genetic data make a compelling case for a key role of HTR2A in the mechanism of antidepressant action