Katerina Linos

Plenty of moustaches but not enough women: cross sectional study of medical leaders

Objectives To draw attention to sex related disparities in academic medical leadership by investigating the representation of female leaders compared with leaders with moustaches. Design Cross sectional analysis. Setting Academic medical departments in the United States. Participants Clinical department leaders (n=1018) at the top 50 US medical schools funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Main outcome measures The proportions of female leaders and moustachioed leaders across institutions and specialties (n=20). Additionally, the moustache index: the proportion of women compared with the proportion of moustaches, analyzed with multinomial logistic regression models. Results Women accounted for 13% (137/1018) of department leaders at the top 50 NIH funded medical schools in the US. Moustachioed leaders accounted for 19% (190/1018). The proportion of female department leaders ranged from 0% (0/20) to 26% (5/19) across institutions and 0% (0/53) to 36% (19/53) across specialties. Only seven institutions and five specialties had more than 20% of female department leaders. The overall moustache index of all academic medical departments studied was 0.72 (95% confidence interval 0.58 to 0.90; P=0.004). Only six of 20 specialties had more women than moustaches (moustache index >1). Conclusions Moustachioed individuals significantly outnumber women as leaders of medical departments in the US. We believe that every department and institution should strive for a moustache index ≥1. Known, effective, and evidence based policies to increase the number of women in leadership positions should be prioritized.

How to Select and Develop International Law Case Studies: Lessons from Comparative Law and Comparative Politics

To develop international law claims, it is often critical to compare different countries’ laws. This essay explores how methods drawn from comparative law and comparative politics research can help international lawyers make comparative inquiries more simply and straightforwardly. International lawyers recognize three main sources of legal authority: treaties, custom, and general principles. Cross-national comparisons are deeply embedded in the very definitions of two of these three sources. To establish international custom, an international lawyer must show that a broad range of states consistently engage in a certain practice out of a sense of legal obligation. To establish a general principle, an international lawyer must show that it is “recognized by civilized nations”; in practice this requires that the principle be found in diverse legal families. Treaty interpretation does not necessitate cross-country comparison as a matter of definition: in theory, the text of the treaty itself could provide the requisite answers. However, in practice, international and domestic courts are typically faced with ambiguous treaty terms. To interpret them, they often turn to the jurisprudence of diverse states and to subsequent state practice, thus implicitly beginning a comparative inquiry. in sum, comparative international law is useful for identifying and applying international law, as this volume’s introduction explains.

The Language of Compromise in International Agreements

To reach agreement, international negotiators often compromise by introducing flexibility in language: they make controversial provisions vague, or add options and caveats. Does flexibility in agreement language influence subsequent state behavior? If so, do states follow both firm and flexible language somewhat, as negotiators hope? Or do governments respond strategically, increasing their energies on firmly specified tasks, and reducing their efforts on flexibly specified ones? Testing claims about agreement language is challenging, because states often reserve flexible language for controversial provisions. To make causal claims, we study an unusually drafted agreement, in which states had almost no opportunity to water down controversial provisions. We examine the influence of the 1991 Paris Principles on the Design of National Human Rights Institutions (NHRIs), using an original dataset of 22 institutional safeguards of NHRIs in 107 countries, and case studies. We find that variations in agreement language can have large effects on state behavior, even when the entire agreement is non-binding. Both democracies and authoritarian states followed the Principles’ firm terms closely. However, authoritarian states either ignored or reduced their efforts on flexibly specified tasks. If flexibly specifying a task is no different from omitting it altogether, as our data suggest, the costs of compromise are much larger than previously believed.

The Supreme Court, the Media, and Public Opinion: Comparing Experimental and Observational Methods

Can Supreme Court rulings change Americans’ policy views? Prior experimental and observational studies come to conflicting conclusions because of methodological limitations. We argue that existing studies overlook the media’s critical role in communicating Court decisions and theorize that major decisions change Americans’ opinions most when the media offer one-sided coverage supportive of the Court majority. We fielded nationally representative surveys shortly before and after two major Supreme Court decisions on health care and immigration and connected our public opinion data with six major television networks’ coverage of each decision. We find that Court decisions can influence national opinion and increase support for policies the Court upholds as constitutional. These effects were largest among people who received one-sided information. To address selection concerns, we combined this observational study with an experiment and find that people who first heard about the Court decisions through the media and through the experiment responded in similar ways.

What Works in Human Rights Institutions

Abstract Since 1993, the United Nations has promoted national human rights institutions (NHRIs); these have spread to almost 120 countries. We assess what makes NHRIs effective, using quantitative and qualitative methods. We find that formal institutional safeguards contribute greatly to NHRI efficacy even in authoritarian and transition regimes. Complaint-handling mandates are particularly useful because they help NHRIs build broad bases of support. Our findings show how international organizations can wield great influence with soft tools such as recommendations and peer-review mechanisms.

Is International Law International? By Anthea Roberts. New York, New York: Oxford University Press, 2017. Pp. xvi, 406. Index.

quences of dual citizenship and ways of mitigating global inequality, perhaps in the form of a “privilege levy/tax,” an extra fee for the status entitlement that will be contributed to global causes, as suggested by Ayelet Shachar in a different context.23 Spiro’s book is rich and inspiring. It indicates how arbitrary citizenship rules are and stimulates a debate on the future of citizenship. It is time for considering the propositions underlying the law of citizenship at the international level and the norms governing it. Spiro’s scholarship could be—and would be—a cornerstone in this reshaping of international law.

The Democratic Foundations of Policy Diffusion: An Introduction

Why do law reforms spread around the world in waves? In the dominant account of diffusion through technocracy, international networks of elites develop orthodox policy solutions and transplant these across countries without regard for the wishes of ordinary citizens. But this account overlooks a critical factor: in democracies, reforms must win the support of politicians, voters, and interest groups. This book claims that laws spread across countries in very public and politicized ways, and develops a theory of diffusion through democracy. I argue that politicians choose to follow certain international models to win domestic elections, and to persuade skeptical voters that their ideas are not radical, ill-thought-out experiments, but mainstream, tried-and-true solutions. This book shows how international models generated domestic support for health, family, and employment law reforms across rich democracies. Information that international organizations have endorsed certain reforms or that foreign countries have adopted them is valuable to voters. Public opinion experiments show that even Americans respond positively to this information. Case studies of election campaigns and legislative debates demonstrate that politicians with diverse ideologies reference international models strategically, and focus on the few international organizations and countries familiar to voters. Data on policy adoption from many rich democracies document that governments follow international organization templates and imitate the policy choices of countries heavily covered in national media and familiar to voters. The book provides a direct defense to a major criticism international organizations and networks face: that they conflict with domestic democracy. The book also explains how to design international institutions and transnational advocacy campaigns to spread laws more effectively. The introductory chapter follows.