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Maintaining contact between captives and their families; seeking persons who are missing; reuniting families dispersed by events (international conflicts, civil wars, internal disturbances)—such are the main duties of the ICRC Central Tracing Agency in Geneva, where it maintains its principal working instrument, a card-index system of more than 45 million entries. The Agency also sets up, when circumstances require, offices which act as its correspondents in other countries.

Children are increasingly described as agents and agency is important to arguments for children's rights and participation. Yet agency is rarely defined or theorised in childhood studies. This article reviews common uses and meanings of agency and argues that critical, social conceptualisations have yet to be extensively taken up in childhood studies but offer much to the field. Based on the work of Giddens, his critics and feminist theory, I propose a model of agency that is more ambivalent than that usually presented in childhood studies. Given the conventional emphasis of agency on articulation, rationality and strategy, a failure to incorporate a critical, embodied, engendered, material account of agency into childhood studies risks reinscribing a model in which privileged children will be accorded more agency than those who do not display rationality and choice in conventional ways.

The regulations granting the establishment of EU agencies were meant to ensure institutional independence in order to insulate everyday decision-making from political pressure, vested interests and political short-termism. However, recent events, including managerial resignations and the introduction of new rules concerning conflicts of interest, have brought renewed attention to the autonomy/independence debate. This article goes beyond the traditional de jure/de facto dichotomy of approaches to approaching the question of independence to consider perceptions of agency staff. It seeks to gauge the opinions of members of the European Medicine Agency's Management Board with regard to agency autonomy, distinguishing between four types of independence: legal, financial, administrative, decision-making. It draws on data collected using questionnaires, and interpreted using the expert evaluation method, to rank the importance given to types of independence among sub-sets of stakeholders overseeing the EMA.

ZusammenfassungIn diesem Beitrag werden die beiden zentralen Begriffe des Symposiums, agency und patiency (respektive passio), zunächst ideengeschichtlich sowie anhand ethnographischer und historischer Beispielen erläutert. Daraufhin wird argumentiert, dass es vor allem die hierarchisch geordnete Dialektik von agency und patiency ist, die in einer auf Standpunkte der Akteure fokussierten Analyse unweigerlich in den Mittelpunkt der Betrachtung rückt. Diese dialektische Beziehung aus emischer Sicht in die Analyse einzubeziehen, stellt, so die These des Artikels und des Symposiums als solches, eine wichtige Ergänzung und Korrektur zu den gängigen agency-versus-structure-Debatten dar.

Abstract
This study explores cooperation in the circular agency problem. In circular agency, an agent has weak power in the face of its principal. This research explores a cooperation mechanism in which three participants simultaneously have the identity of principal and agent, in order to illuminate the power struggle between the board of directors, the external shareholder, and the manager of a company. We use the equilibrium results to explain the phenomenon of cooperation between members of the enterprise in practice. Our results have implications for firm governance.

Abstract
This article critically examines the contributions of Pan-Africanism to the nexus of African agency debate in the broader spectrum of great power-small power relationships, particularly during the era of colonialism. The article puts special emphasis on the colonial empire as a great power and Africa as a small power in the tussle of what was known as the "gunboat diplomacy." What were the approaches; who were the actors; what were the grand geopolitical strategies employed in exerting influence in the complex relationship between the colonies and the colonialists? Relying on archival records (online), interviews, speeches, and other publications, sifted through the functionalism and neo-functionalism theories, the article contends that the Pan-African thinkers and advocates were significant actors in the fight against European dominance in Africa and provided a gateway for the final nationalist movement and liberation of the continent.

▪ Abstract  This review describes and critiques some of the many ways agency has been conceptualized in the academy over the past few decades, focusing in particular on practice theorists such as Giddens, Bourdieu, de Certeau, Sahlins, and Ortner. For scholars interested in agency, it demonstrates the importance of looking closely at language and argues that the issues surrounding linguistic form and agency are relevant to anthropologists with widely divergent research agendas. Linguistic anthropologists have made significant contributions to the understanding of agency as it emerges in discourse, and the final sections of this essay describe some of the most promising research in the study of language and gender, literacy practices, and the dialogic construction of meaning and agency.

"Agency problems in economics virtually always entail self-interested agency exhibiting "insufficient" loyalty to principal. Social psychology also has a literature, mainly derived from work by Stanley Milgram, on issues of agency, but this emphasizes excessive loyalty -- people undergoing a so-called "agentic shift" and forsaking rationality for loyalty to a legitimate principal, as when "loyal" soldiers obey orders to commit atrocities. This literature posit that individuals experience a deep inner satisfaction from acts of loyalty -- essentially a "utility of loyalty" -- and that this both buttresses institutions organized as hierarchies and explains much human misery. Agency problems of excessive loyalty, as when boards kowtow to errant CEOs and controlling shareholders, may be as economically important in corporate finance as the more familiar problems of insufficient loyalty of corporate insiders to shareholders. Overt conflict between rival authorities is shown to reverse the "agentic shift" -- justifying institutions that formalize argumentation such as the adversary system in Common Law courts; the Official Opposition in Westminster democracies; discussants and referees in academia; and independent directors, non-executive chairs, and proxy contests in corporate governance"--National Bureau of Economic Research web site

The article considers the attitude of representatives of the top bureaucracy to the draft of the State Duma, developed by a Special Council chaired by the Minister of the Interior A.G. Bulygin in 1905. Particular attention is paid to the high officials assessments of the dignitaries of the place and role of the Duma in the system of state administration of the Russian Empire, the arguments that officials cited in favor of its convocation. It analyzes intellectual context of the emergence of the "bulyginskaya duma" ("Bulygin Duma") project is analyzed, which largely determined the breadth of the actual, not declared powers of the people's agency. The research is based on unpublished documents from the funds of state institutions, as well as materials from the personal funds of officials and public figures. The article shows that, despite the legislative nature of the Duma, it had to have significant powers. The electoral system, which was proposed and defended by the high officials, was originally modeled in such a way as to avoid the triumph of the estates principle. The monarch's open opposition to the people's agency was considered a politically short-sighted move, which indicated a limitation of his power. The results of the study allow considering the government policy in 1905 not as an untimely response to public demands, but as a conscious strategy for systemic political reforms.

Officials of the Central Intelligence Agency's Office for Africa, Office of Legislative Counsel, and the Freedom of Information Coordinator were contacted in an attempt to obtain information on the CIA's involvement in Africa. These officials all declined to provide such information. Moreover, they all declined to provide a written statement of refusal to answer the ASA's questions on the CIA's involvement in Africa. The only material provided by the CIA was the Central Intelligence Agency Information Kit from which the photograph from page 112 is reproduced.

Officials of the Central Intelligence Agency's Office for Africa, Office of Legislative Counsel, and the Freedom of Information Coordinator were contacted in an attempt to obtain information on the CIA's involvement in Africa. These officials all declined to provide such information. Moreover, they all declined to provide a written statement of refusal to answer the ASA's questions on the CIA's involvement in Africa. The only material provided by the CIA was the Central Intelligence Agency Information Kit from which the photograph from page 112 is reproduced.