Menasse, Eva. Darkenbloom. Translated by Charlotte Collins. Scribe, 2024.

A case study of an unknown mass grave — Hostages killed 70 years ago by a Nazi firing squad identified thanks to genetics

How local officials moderate the spatial impact of politically and economically driven environmental regulations on green economic efficiency?

The Uganda Constitution of 1995 spelt out the principle of decentralization by devolution. Accordingly, from 1995 to 2005, district local governments had a dejure mandate to hire and fire all categories of civil servants through their respective district service commissions (DSCs). Following the Constitutional amendment in September 2005, the right to hire and fire district chief administrative officers (CAOs) reverted to central government. Critics of recentralization of CAO appointments contend that the shift in the policy and legislation for managing CAOs runs contrary to the principles of decentralization by devolution. This paper argues that recentralization of CAOs has confused reporting, reduced the autonomy of sub-national governments in civil service management, undermined accountability of CAOs to elected councils, and shifted the loyalty of CAOs from local governments with and for which they work to central government that appoints and deploys them. To deepen accountability in local governments, the paper advocates for decentralization of CAO appointments, but for participation of central government in recruitment of CAOs within the confines of a separate personnel system. It further calls for a rethinking of the current call by the 9th Parliament to recentralize human resource in health in local governments owing to accountability challenges of managing the civil service in sub-national governments under an integrated personnel system.

The worlds of local bureaucrats are under researched and under theorized compared with those of civil servants in core executives. Yet local bureaucratic elites, sitting as they do between central states and localities, are key actors in governance networks. In England, the role and responsibilities of local bureaucratic elites has been transformed since the days of professionalized officers heading departmental structures reporting to committees, firstly by NPM and politicization in the 1980s and 1990s and, more recently, by political management reform introducing a separation of powers. Drawing on interviews in 15 local authorities, this paper examines the changing narratives and dilemmas of local government elites. In particular it explores, but argues against, early expectations that the creation of an elected executive, with considerable devolution of decision‐making responsibilities to individual cabinet member councillors, has meant a move closer to the logics of the ‘Whitehall mandarin’ tradition by local government chief officers.

We examine local government Chief Executive Officers' (LG CEOs) experiences of incivility, the negative subjective well‐being consequences, and individual factors that can reduce these interpersonally challenging work experiences. In Study 1, we contrasted the social distance theory of power and the importance of context to explore experienced incivility amongst LG CEOs (N = 43) using semi‐structured interviews. Results pointed to the critical role of context such that LG CEOs reported experiencing incivility, with many describing it as ‘professional incivility’ characterised by high frequency and intensity of otherwise normal work‐related behaviours (e.g. emails). The findings also highlighted perceived psychological and physical well‐being consequences that LG CEOs associated with incivility experiences. Additionally, greater LG CEO surface acting and less negative work affect emerged as two salient factors bounding their incivility experiences. Elaborating on Study 1 insights and reoccurring themes, we developed and examined a moderated mediation model in Study 2 including LG CEOs (n = 92) and non‐CEOs (n = 192) as a referent comparison. Results suggested that LG CEOs who reported higher surface acting and lower negative work affect reported experiencing less incivility, which corresponded with improved subjective psychological and physical well‐being. Our mixed‐method research integrates the insights of the interpersonally demanding social context of LG CEOs by exploring factors that could attenuate the experienced incivility of LG CEOs, whilst contributing to the nascent literature on leader and CEO, in particular, well‐being.

ABSTRACTObjectivesThis study aimed to illustrate the state of stroke care and rehabilitation in the Philippines through the perspectives of local government officials, policymakers, and organisational leaders. It sought to identify challenges, opportunities, and recommendations for improving stroke policies and services across different administrative levels.MethodsMixed‐methods approach involving a structured survey of 131 local government officials and in‐depth interviews with eight key stakeholders. Survey participants included Department of Health (DoH) officials, local chief executives, policymakers, Local Government Unit (LGU) employees, and representatives from non‐government agencies. Interviewees comprised leads and managers from the DoH and representatives from organisations including the Philippine Academy of Rehabilitation Medicine (PARM), Physicians for Peace Philippines, and the Philippine Council for Health Research and Development (PCHRD). Quantitative survey data were analysed using descriptive statistics and qualitative interview data were thematically analysed, then the two types of data were triangulated and organised by theme.ResultsFindings revealed significant gaps in funding, healthcare infrastructure, and policy implementation. Challenges included inadequate facilities, lack of qualified staff, financial barriers, and regional disparities in service provision. Survey and interview participants emphasised the need for increased government support, comprehensive policies, and community‐based rehabilitation (CBR) programmes. Improving stroke survivors' quality of life was ranked as the most critical aspect of rehabilitation programmes.ConclusionsThe study highlights the critical need for more equitable and accessible stroke care and rehabilitation in the Philippines. This can be facilitated by sustained government support, inter‐agency collaboration, community engagement, and the implementation of holistic, evidence‐based, and cost‐effective CBR initiatives.

The devolution of health systems development to local governments in the Philippines in 1991 brought with it unintended consequences as local chief executives found themselves with new responsibilities for which they were not prepared. These unintended consequences were exacerbated with the implementation of the country's Universal Health Care Act in 2019. To address this problem, the Zuellig Family Foundation, a non-profit and non-government organization based in the Philippines with the aim of improving health outcomes, has designed a local level health governance strengthening intervention: the Bayang Malusog (literally Healthy Communities) Municipal Leadership Development Program (BM-MLDP). The BM-MLDP is a 12-month capacity building intervention for local chief executives and local health officials consisting of deep dive immersions, change management and leadership sessions, sustainability of health reform sessions, and co-design sessions to improve population health outcomes. Its implementation on the municipalities of Balete and New Washington in 2022-2023 contributed to improving and sustaining optimal population health outcomes despite resource constraints. This highlights the potential of health governance and capacity building interventions like the BM-MLDP in improving population health outcomes and advancing the implementation of universal health coverage in resource-constrained, devolved healthcare settings.

Reviewed by: Moroni and the Swastika: Mormons in Nazi Germany by David Conley Nelson David J. Howlett Moroni and the Swastika: Mormons in Nazi Germany. By David Conley Nelson. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2015. Pp. xvi + 416. Cloth $29.95. ISBN 978-0806146683. Works on Mormon history could once be divided into two categories: "faith-promoting" accounts aiming to strengthen the convictions of members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) and "warts and all" accounts written to counter such narratives. David Conley Nelson's excellent work descends from the latter tradition, engaging a gravely serious topic of how members of the church managed to survive and even thrive under the Nazi regime. As Nelson shows, Mormons became the most successful foreign-born new religion in Germany during the Nazi years. Nelson attempts to explain how Mormon acts of accommodation and limited resistance have been remembered or forgotten by subsequent generations of Mormons. While he is less successful in these latter tasks, Nelson offers a frank and fascinating historical account of Mormons in the Hitler state. At the beginning of the Nazi era, 11,000 Germans claimed membership in the LDS Church. The products of concerted missionary work since the mid-nineteenth century, these Germans accounted for the second-largest LDS church membership in any nation at that time. In contrast to other new religious movements such as Jehovah's Witnesses and Christian Science, the LDS Church had a relatively congenial relationship with local and national Nazi officials. One American LDS mission president in Berlin succeeded so well at ingratiating his church with the Nazis that he and his wife attended an annual Nuremberg rally and convinced Goebbels to publish a highly favorable article about the Mormons in the Nazi party paper. Unlike any other American-born new religion, the Mormons had powerful American protectors—US senators and government officials who were LDS—which the Nazis saw as evidence of this church's political importance. With these advantages, Mormon leaders became masters at accommodation, resisting restrictions on their activities only when they thought they could do so without any serious repercussions. Nelson argues that Mormon officials, ever eager to convert more Germans, attempted to exploit imagined commonalities between their church and the Nazi ideological program. Mormon leaders—many of them Americans—deleted all positive references to Jews in their German hymnals or Sunday school materials, and they enthusiastically promoted their religion's expertise in genealogical research as dovetailing with the Nazis' obsession with proving non-Jewish ancestry. German Mormons admired the propagandized image of Adolf Hitler as a clean-living individual who did not drink or smoke, habits that were in accord with the Mormon health code. Some German Mormons even believed that Hitler himself was a secret Mormon who had read the Book of Mormon. [End Page 447] In the days after Kristallnacht 1938, LDS officials became weary of trumpeting their links with the Nazi government, but they did not offer serious resistance to the state. Even while LDS leaders did all that they could to successfully evacuate American missionaries once war began in 1939, they categorically refused to evacuate German converts who had Jewish ancestry. Nelson explains that this policy was partly out of fear of the repercussions for other German LDS and partly due to the opposition for such aid by J. Reuben Clark, first counselor to the LDS president, thus a powerful Mormon leader with antisemitic views. Even as officials pursued a path of calculated accommodation, a few isolated LDS individuals took matters into their own hands. For eight months in 1941–1942, an LDS teenager, Helmut Hübener, and four other coconspirators (three of them LDS) led a secret campaign in Hanover to write and distribute anti-Nazi pamphlets. The youths thought that they would spark a revolution. The Gestapo caught Hübener, however, and the Nazi state beheaded the teenager, while his coconspirators were sentenced to hard labor. Hübener's LDS branch president, a true Nazi, summarily excommunicated the young resister before the execution. As Nelson argues, Hübener's resistance to the Nazi state was not simply resistance to a government in Berlin, it was resistance to...