Party policy responsiveness at the agenda-setting and decision-making stages: The mediating effect of the types of government and promise

To what extent are political parties responsive to voters before and after elections (that is, during the campaign and in office)? And what explains responsiveness at both of these stages: agenda-setting and decision-making? We argue that parties are more responsive at the agenda-setting stage than at the decision-making stage, and that responsiveness tends to be mediated by the type of promise (change versus status quo, and issue salience), and type of government (majority versus minority, and left- versus right-wing). This research focuses on the Portuguese case using data from party manifestos between 1995 and 2015, as well as surveys of Portuguese citizens. Findings generally support our expectations, although with some differences between parties as a whole and governments. Our results have important implications for understanding opinion–policy linkages and mandate-responsiveness, as well as more broadly for party competition.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Pilfering for survival: how health workers use access to drugs as a coping strategy

BACKGROUND: Coping strategies have, in some countries, become so prevalent that it has been widely assumed that the very notion of civil services ethos has completely – and possibly irreversibly – disappeared. This paper describes the importance and the nature of pilfering of drugs by health staff in Mozambique and Cape Verde, as perceived by health professionals from these countries. Their opinions provide pointers as to how to tackle these problems. METHODS: This study is based on a self-administered questionnaire addressed to a convenience sample of health workers in Mozambique and in Cape Verde. RESULTS: The study confirms that misuse of access to pharmaceuticals has become a key element in the coping strategies health personnel develop to deal with difficult living conditions. Different professional groups (mis)use their privileged access in different ways, but doctors diversify most. The study identifies the reasons given for misusing access to drugs, shows how the problem is perceived by the health workers, and discusses the implications for finding solutions to the problem. Our findings reflect, from the health workers themselves, a conflict between their self image of what it means to be an honest civil servant who wants to do a decent job, and the brute facts of life that make them betray that image. The manifest unease that this provokes is an important observation as such. CONCLUSION: Our findings suggest that, even in the difficult circumstances observed in many countries, behaviours that depart from traditional civil servant deontology have not been interiorised as a norm. This ambiguity indicates that interventions to mitigate the erosion of proper conduct would be welcome. The time to act is now, before small-scale individual coping grows into large-scale, well-organized crime