Public Scandals Research Articles

Is England facing an opioid epidemic?

The opioid crisis in the United States (US) is one of the most high-profile public health scandals of the 21st century with millions of people unknowingly becoming dependent on opioids. The United Kingdom (UK) had the world's highest rate of opioid consumption in 2019, and opiate-related drug poisoning deaths have increased by 388% since 1993 in England and Wales. This article explores the epidemiological definitions of public health emergencies and epidemics in the context of opioid use, misuse, and mortality in England, to establish whether England is facing an opioid crisis.

Do sanctioned audit firms strive to restore their damaged reputation under imperfect institutional settings?

In this paper, we investigate whether audit firms take measures to improve their audit quality subsequent to government sanctions in imperfect institutional settings. Using data from the emerging markets of China, we find that audit firms with damaged or shredded reputations have lower audit quality prior to the publicized accounting scandals and related disciplinary actions than non-sanctioned audit firms. The lower audit quality is particularly prevalent in less developed regions and smaller audit firms. Audit firms with shredded reputations significantly increased their audit quality after the disciplinary actions regardless of whether they are bigten or small audit firms. Such an improvement is more significant in state owned client firms, less developed regions, and firms sanctioned only once. These results suggest that institutional factors do play a significant role in encouraging audit firms to do high quality work. Finally, audit firms with shredded reputations experience more client turnover, although they do not earn audit fees lower than other firms. Among audit firms with shredded reputations, audit firms taking actions to improve are less likely to be dismissed by their clients and more likely to charge higher audit fees. These results have strategic implications for the regulators in emerging markets.

Back to Bedlam: is mental health nursing going backwards?

Back to Bedlam: is mental health nursing going backwards?

Missionary Cosmopolitanism in Nineteenth-Century British Literature

Missionary Cosmopolitanism in Nineteenth-Century British Literature

Surviving on Soy Salami: Dissidents, Exiles, Prisoners, and the Rhetoric of Affect in Postcommunist Romania

After decades of being seen, or rather heard, through Radio Free Europe as moral and political authorities preserving Romania’s values and hopes from abroad, exiles of the Cold War had a disappointing political career in the postcommunist transitional society. The main figures hailing on behalf of historic pollical parties failed to win the election in 1990, and failed to convince the electorate that they could lead them to freedom and democracy. The former dissidents who had lived overseas likewise did not manage to become opinion leaders, at least not compared to local intellectuals, and eventually damaged each other’s reputation in public fights and scandals. Why weren’t these exiles, once so full of promise for a democratic future in Romania, more impactful? The answer may point to their systematic undermining orchestrated by the neo-communist power brokers of the transitional era. Yet the answer is rather more complicated, one that this paper offers by focusing on the rhetoric of the early postcommunist decade and its emphasis on the shared deprivation experienced under communism. The slogan built around hunger—“who ate soy meat with us”—was part of a larger effect of political survivalism that viewed exiles as outsiders. I show that the contest of moral superiority, pitting those who had been imprisoned against those who had fled, fed a rhetoric of suffering that would eventually marginalize the exiles and any political contribution they could have made after 1989.

Standardising care of the dying: An ethnographic analysis of the Liverpool Care Pathway in England and the Netherlands.

The Liverpool Care Pathway for the Dying Patient (LCP) was a prominent set of guidance in the late 2000s and early 2010s within palliative and end-of-life care. Developed in England to improve the care of dying patients, it was later adopted in 20 counties. After a public scandal, it was removed from practice in England but remains in other locations, including the Netherlands. Drawing on two sets of ethnographic data, from England and the Netherlands, we consider the ways in which the LCP was engaged with as a form of standardisation aimed at improving practice, how it was deployed in relation to other forms of knowledge, and the political and moral statements that are being made through the (selective) use of it. Looking into the use of the LCP shows that, while the LCP attempts to standardise some of the values associated with palliative care, there are significant differences between how these standardised values are then enacted in different institutional and national contexts and by different individual care professionals. We conclude that the LCP was used to impart moral values, establish protocols of care, and demonstrate professionalism, showing the multiplicity of the use of standards in healthcare practice.

The memory of an outrageous public health scandal

Introduction: Manaus is an isolated city, localized in the hearth of the Amazonas rainforest, with two million inhabitants, a big territorial extension, distant from neighbor cities and next to the shores of Negro and Solimões rivers. The access overland is difficult, which obligates the oxygen tanks be transported by river or air. This created and enormous logistical problem, added to the neglect of the Federal Government with the northern region of the country. Objective: Analyze what are the psychiatric repercussions on the explosion of in the lack of oxygen in Manaus, capital of the Amazonas, Brazil. Methods: Studies were identified using large-circulation international journals. Results: A scandal is happening. This situation is creating a grief community – particular grief became a common and public one – to the memory of an outrageous public health scandal. Therefore, dramatic stories of families of patients and the overwhelmed healthcare professionals shared on the social media and local press brings glimpses of the angst of this chaos. An entire wing of patients died caused by the oxygen depletion. Conclusion: This situation is causing a collective hysteria, taking healthcare workers and families of patients to desperation. Fear appears to be a consequence of the feeling of powerlessness. Anxiety levels are really elevated causing direct side effects to another mental health measures.

Citizens of Scandal: Journalism, Secrecy, and the Politics of Reckoning in Mexico

Citizens of Scandal: Journalism, Secrecy, and the Politics of Reckoning in Mexico

Literature on Professional Social Work and Controversies Surrounding Roman Catholicism in the Republic of Ireland: Adapting the Dynamic Model

ABSTRACT Critical commentary on the literature addresses the relationship between Roman Catholicism and professional social work in the Republic of Ireland. The context is a series of highly publicized clerical-abuse scandals and controversies associated with institutional segregation. Focused commentary operates in two phases across six subthemes. Thereafter application of a dynamic model of social work progresses insights from the former review toward learning for practitioners moving forward. It is concluded that sensitivity to the implications of tragedies and controversies for survivors and their families remains an ethical imperative in Irish social work practice. Within this, sensitivity that goes beyond rhetoric and sentiment to achieve a meaningfully sensitive approach to practice is most needed and will be strongest when operationalized within set parameters.

Fake news for the American Revolution

Abstract The case of the false letters attributed to George Washington—the first president of the United States—serves as a classical example of character attacks conducted with the help of “fake news”. The fake letters attributed to Washington were allegedly intercepted in 1776. The seven letters were addressed to Washington’s relatives and to a friend. This alleged Washington’s correspondence revealed his serious character flaws, indecisiveness, remorse, his sympathies toward Britain, as well as his wavering commitment to the revolution. These attacks attempted not only to discredit a major public figure and hurt him emotionally but also, feasibly, generate a public scandal and thus achieve or further certain political goals such as winning a military conflict. This article demonstrates whether and how this case fits into the general theory of character assassination and ultimately suggests that many forms, methods, and responses to character attacks remain consistent throughout the ages.

Conspiracy of Corporate Networks in Corruption Scandals

Corruption in public procurement transforms state institutions into private entities where public resources get diverted for the benefit of a few. On this matter, much of the discussion centers on the legal fulfillment of the procurement process, while there are fewer formal analyses related to the corporate features which are most likely to signal organized crime and corruption. The lack of systematic evidence on this subject has the potential to bias our understanding of corruption, making it overly focused on the public sector. Nevertheless, corruption scandals worldwide tell of the importance of taking a better look at the misuse and abuse of corporations for corrupt purposes. In this context, the research presented here seeks to contribute to the understanding of the criminal conspiracy of companies involved in public procurement corruption scandals under a network and complexity science perspective. To that end, we make use of a unique dataset of the corporate ownership and management information of four important and recently documented cases of corruption in Mexico, where hundreds of companies were used to embezzle billions of dollars. Under a bipartite network approach, we explore the relations between companies and their personnel (shareholders, legal representatives, administrators, and commissioners) in order to characterize their static and dynamic networked structure. In terms of organized crime and using different network properties, we describe how these companies connect with each other due to the existence of shared personnel with role multiplicity, leading to very different conspiracy networks. To best quantify this behavior, we introduce a heuristic network-based conspiracy indicator that together with other network metrics describes the differences and similarities among the networks associated with each corruption case. Finally, we discuss some public policy elements that might be needed to be considered in anti-corruption efforts related to corporate organized crime.

The Personal is Political: Reconsidering the Impact of Scandals on Congressional Incumbents

While a number of studies reveal that incumbent members of the House of Representatives are adversely affected by scandal, rarely do these studies analyze a scandal’s impact both on election outcomes and the decision to run for reelection. Studies of retirements in particular, moreover, rarely analyze separately the effects of private (i.e., sex and other moral scandals) and public (i.e., corruption and procedural) scandals or consider media coverage of the scandal. This research proposes that members of Congress involved in private and public scandals will be more likely to retire and win a smaller percentage of the vote than members not involved in a scandal, that private scandals will be more impactful than public scandals, and that the higher level of media coverage further harms an incumbent’s congressional career. Also explored is whether the consequences of sex and other scandals were greater for accused members in the 115th Congress than in past Congresses because of heighted awareness and attention to sexual assault in the workplace since the 2016 presidential election and subsequent #MeToo campaign. From data collected over 10 Congresses (106th–115th Congresses) and elections (2000 through 2018), the results show that incumbents who are involved in a sex scandal or other private scandal are substantially more likely to retire than members not involved in a scandal but that public scandals do not matter. In addition, both sex scandals and corruption scandals reduce the incumbent’s vote share in the general election but that sex scandals matter slightly more. Higher media coverage affects both the decision to retire and the share of the vote. There is no evidence of a more pronounced direct effect of sex scandals on retirement decisions in the 115th Congress and scandals more generally on the share of the vote in the 2018 elections.

ЦИНИЗМ И НЕУЧТИВОСТЬ РЕГИОНАЛЬНОЙ ПОЛИТИЧЕСКОЙ ЭЛИТЫ В КОНТЕКСТЕ СТРУКТУРНО-БИОГРАФИЧЕСКОГО АНАЛИЗА

The purpose of the article is to analyze the biographies of a number of representatives of the regional political elite, who in the period of 2018-2020 (mainly) due to incorrect, sometimes boorish statements and actions against citizens, became participants in public scandals. The authors focused on more than 80 biographies of leaders and employees of regional and municipal authorities. The structural and biographical analysis made it possible to determine to which generation this cohort of politicians belongs, the peculiarities of the spiritual and professional atmosphere of their socialization in the context of both their previous work and the time they came to power structures, geographical and regional aspects, as well as the educational level. The factors that determine the tendency of the modern regional elite to harsh neoliberal rhetoric provoking public outrage and scandals are highlighted. Within the framework of the regional cut of the scandalous mass-elite communication, the Volga-Ural region turned out to be predominant. The statements and activities of politicians / officials from the central and (especially) southern regions were the least likely to find themselves in the center of public scandals.

“Higher Education” or the Making of a Succès de Scandale

Recent studies of Philip Roth’s The Ghost Writer (1979) have focused on how the public controversy surrounding Nathan Zuckerman’s short story “Higher Education” enables Zuckerman to separate from his family and distinguish himself as an autonomous artist. Little has been said about the impact the public scandal had on the short story itself. This article contributes to filling that gap by arguing that the public scandal brings about Zuckerman’s decision to revise the short story, extending it and publishing it as a full-length book. Rather than Zuckerman revolting against the reception of the work, the reception is a catalyst for Zuckerman’s ability to decide what to do with his manuscript. While a draft of “Higher Education” causes a stir, it might be the scandal that causes “Higher Education” to become a published book in the second installment of the Zuckerman trilogy. Zuckerman is resentful of public pressures, but he is also buoyed by the conflict with his readers.

Public scandals: typologization and socio-technological aspect

Public scandals: typologization and socio-technological aspect

The algorithm audit: Scoring the algorithms that score us

In recent years, the ethical impact of AI has been increasingly scrutinized, with public scandals emerging over biased outcomes, lack of transparency, and the misuse of data. This has led to a growing mistrust of AI and increased calls for mandated ethical audits of algorithms. Current proposals for ethical assessment of algorithms are either too high level to be put into practice without further guidance, or they focus on very specific and technical notions of fairness or transparency that do not consider multiple stakeholders or the broader social context. In this article, we present an auditing framework to guide the ethical assessment of an algorithm. The audit instrument itself is comprised of three elements: a list of possible interests of stakeholders affected by the algorithm, an assessment of metrics that describe key ethically salient features of the algorithm, and a relevancy matrix that connects the assessed metrics to stakeholder interests. The proposed audit instrument yields an ethical evaluation of an algorithm that could be used by regulators and others interested in doing due diligence, while paying careful attention to the complex societal context within which the algorithm is deployed.

In from the socialist “cold,” but burned by the capitalist “heat”? The dynamics of political revolution and economic transformation in Eastern Germany after 1990

This article examines the crisis-ridden path from planned to market economy in Eastern Germany after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. By analyzing the history of the highly debated Treuhandanstalt—the so-called Trust Agency and the main actor of the economic reconstruction—the discussion sheds light on the political modes of decision making in the East and especially its long-term effects. The focus is on the negotiations carried out at the Central Round Table in early 1990, the first free elections in March 1990, the deliberations between Federal and East German governments in summer 1990, the discrete bargaining strategy of the Treuhand in 1991‒1992, and the massive public debates and scandals connected to the Treuhand in 1993‒1994. The organization is interpreted as an exceptional regime of economic experts that managed the socioeconomic “shock” of economic reconstruction as a kind of “shield of protection” for the political system, but at the same time it was unable to buffer the dramatic sociocultural consequences of closures and mass unemployment: Recent debates and election campaigns in 2019 highlight the fact that the Treuhand is still present as a negative myth or “bad bank” of East German memory culture open for populist campaigning.

Regulatory niches: Diagnostic reform as a process of fragmented expansion. Evidence from the UK 1990–2018

This paper analyses the politics of regulatory expansion within the diagnostics sector. Since 1990, an informal, clinician-led process of diagnostic innovation within the UK NHS has been challenged by new mechanisms for the evaluation of diagnostics. We describe these diagnostic reforms as a process of fragmented regulatory expansion. New governance mechanisms function as regulatory niches: discrete spaces within an overarching sociotechnical regime. The boundaries of regulatory niches are organisational and epistemological. Organisational boundaries map onto established communities of practice that constitute the regulatory target; epistemological boundaries are defined by distinctive evaluation frameworks. Niches are also distinguished by their outcomes (rate of positive decisions) and their origins. Niche formation was triggered by five drivers: public scandal; technological change; marketisation; institutional isomorphism; and transnational policy transfer. Each niche was triggered by a unique confluence of these drivers, but common to all were historic shifts in healthcare politics, as the rise of evidence-based medicine intersected with the centralising impulse of the regulatory state, which encroached on clinical autonomy in a contest for power that is increasingly mediated by influential non-governmental organisations.

Reassessing the Compensation Payments to British Slave Owners in Current Caribbean Claims to Reparations

This paper deals with the compensation paid to British slave owners at the end of slavery in the 1830s. It explores its current reassessment within Caribbean claims to slavery reparations, exemplified by Jamaican activists and scholars, who have always been at the forefront of calls for reparations across the whole Americas in different regions and periods. Based on anthropological research and interviews I conducted with members of National Council for Reparations in Kingston in 2014 and 2017, I analyse how they trace back the legacies of slavery and compensation, link them to current social conditions, and generate a political agenda on behalf of reparations, addressing foremost the British government. I highlight narratives that reassess the compensation of British slave owners while the enslaved people went to freedom without any compensation for the injuries they suffered. I emphasize how powerfully the notion of injustice and the need to repair resonates in Jamaica. In particular, the paper explores activists’ reactions in relation to research that uncovered the links of former British Prime Minister David Cameron to the Caribbean slavery economy and a public scandal in relation to a bank loan for compensation that was paid off only in the year 2015. Finally, I reflect on their countering of the British politics of denial of recognition and of the hierarchy of global power relations. My research encourages further academic and political debates on how to come to terms with historical injustices through a framework of reparations that would include slavery, colonialism and its long-lasting legacies.

Compensation Funds, Trials and the Meaning of Claims: The Example of Asbestos-Related Illness Compensation in France

In France, occupational exposure related to asbestos has been responsible for nearly 200,000 deaths, leading to a massive scandal in the 1990s. In this article, I report the results of a qualitative empirical study, based on 50 interviews with victims, of how those affected by asbestos exposure interacted with two types of compensation mechanism: a compensation fund – a public administrative system subsidized by employers’ taxes – and the courts. Several scholars have asserted that, given that the employers are not judged to be guilty in this instance, compensation through such funds does not carry any moral meaning. In contrast to these arguments, I show that victims attribute a diversity of normative meanings to these mechanisms. The analysis highlights, in particular, how three factors affect the ability of victims to attribute normative meanings to compensation processes: the career paths of the victims; the trust of victims in their employer; and the type of legal intermediaries they meet – namely, doctors or victims’ associations. The article encourages scholars to analyze the role of these legal intermediaries in order to understand how victims make sense of a particularly complex public health scandal.