Suchergebnisse

The emerging pattern of crisis and war triggered by the terror attacks on New York and Washington in September 2001 and sustained through successive wars against Afghanistan and Iraq, provides a new context within which we must re-evaluate the English School claim that international society is a key element in the reality of world politics. From today's perspective, two dilemmas are undermining international society. There is the old fear that international order - meaning the security of the actors and the stability of the system - cannot be sustained without the members of international society participating in the working of common institutions. And there is the new fear that US preponderance is such that even prudential considerations are not sufficient to compel it to act in ways that support international order. Running these arguments together, we are forced to address the question, `How far can international society be maintained alongside a hierarchical system?'

The movement to privatize correctional institutions has gained considerable momentum as the need to reduce the costs of incarceration to public agencies has become more critical. The empirical evidence regarding whether private prisons are more cost-effective and whether they provide a higher quality of confinement to inmates, however, is inconclusive. To help clarify this portion of the prison privatization debate, this article contains a systematic review of the evaluation literature comparing the costs and quality of confinement of public versus private prisons. In doing so, three issues are highlighted: (a) the conclusions that can be reached based on the existing literature,(b) the major methodological inconsistencies that have hindered researchers' ability to draw firm conclusions from the body of empirical studies thus far, and (c) the direction that future research in this area may take to advance a better understanding of the potential advantages and disadvantages of prison privatization.

The ontological turn in Castoriadis' thought is exemplified in The Imaginary Institution of Society ( IIS). Castoriadis did not stop there, however, but was drawn to enquire into more general ontological questions. In turn, this line of questioning made its presence felt significantly in Castoriadis' intellectual trajectory, such that, as I argue in this article, we can speak of a shift from a regional ontology of the social-historical (as developed in the IIS) to a later transregional ontology of physis as creative emergence. Castoriadis' ontology of physis occurs at the convergence of three intertwined threads in his thought: the rethinking of the idea - and regions - of nature, his growing onto-epistemic critique of `objective' knowledge and his theorization of the creativity of being via time. This leads him to develop an (unfinished) philosophical cosmology that, although placing more emphasis on continuity between anthropic and non-anthropic modes of being, can still highlight the autonomy and uniqueness of the social-historical.

Using results from the 1999 Eurobarometer survey and a parallel telephone survey done in the United States in 2000, this study explored the relationship between levels of knowledge, educational levels, and degrees of encouragement for biotechnology development across a number of medical and agricultural applications. This cross‐cultural exploration found only weak relationships among these variables, calling into question the common assumption that higher science literacy produces greater acceptance (whether or not mediated by lower perceived risk). The relationship between encouragement and trust in specific social institutions was also weak. However, regression analysis based on "trust gap" variables (defined as numerical differences between trust in specific pairs of actors) did predict national levels of encouragement for several applications, suggesting an opinion formation climate in which audiences are actively choosing among competing claims. Differences between European and U.S. reactions to biotechnology appear to be a result of different trust and especially "trust gap" patterns, rather than differences in knowledge or education.

Acknowledging the importance of diverse political institutions in explaining party system fragmentation, this is the first attempt to extend the existing perspective on local elections to legislative elections under a 'single-member simple-plurality electoral system in a decentralized unitary context'. The importance of electoral competition patterns in local elections is assessed to determine electoral multipartism in a given district in legislative elections. The unit of analysis is thus the 'electoral district' in which a legislative election under an SMSP is basically held. With evidence from the Korean case, it is argued that 'local/district partisan characteristics' - different levels of partisan strength and subsequent partisan fragmentation - influence the degree of electoral multipartism in legislative elections across districts, while all other district-level factors are held constant. The findings suggest that we need to consider sub-national and sub-provincial local elections if we are to obtain a systematic understanding of electoral multipartism in legislative elections.

Crusades and jihads have been a part of the histories of Christianity and Islam for more than a century. This article examines this often-violent history from several perspectives, focusing heavily on the period between 1000 and 1300, and on the factors that allowed Europe and its overseas extensions in North America and Australia to economically overtake the rest of the world by 1600. While some weight is given to religion in the discussion, many of the effects seem to have been accidental, both negative and positive. These include the reforms in marriage and family formation introduced by the Catholic Church; demographic pressures in Europe; and the development of institutions in Northern Europe that provided continuity in commerce, administration, and archiving of intellectual advances. The factors that favored the economies of Northern Europe and/or held back other parts of the world do not appear to be related to anything inherent in Christianity or Islam.

Australian government has undergone an "audit explosion" in the last twenty years. This article observes, first, that the constitutional function of public sector audit institutions (AIs) gives them a strong cultural commitment to the assessment of the regularity and legality of public expenditure. New functions connected with performance audit and evaluation of nonfinancial performance indicators are liable to be interpreted through the lens of these more traditional concerns. The second observation is that, if we think in terms of "regimes" of financial control, we find that AIs form only part of the overall regulatory regime. This calls into question the coherence and potential for effectiveness of regimes of financial control. However, AIs could also be conceived as "meta‐regulators" with the capacity to steer the self‐regulatory capacities of public sector organizations in respect of financial controls. Auditors may be effective as meta‐regulators through speaking softly, even though they demonstrably lack big sticks.

Alternative service delivery (ASD) is a Canadian phenomenon that spread, surfaced important issues and made a wider impact. ASD refers to the many and varied organizational forms and delivery mechanisms governments use to achieve their objectives. It is anchored in a spectrum of options that mirrors the diversity of the nation, its governments and its public institutions. Innovations sustain the capacity to serve the public interest and to leverage efficiency, accountability and renewal. They embrace a strategy of collaboration across sectors and boundaries to overcome impediments to change and to transform service delivery. Countless spin-offs cascade throughout the Canadian public sector. Many governments benchmark the international scene and adapt innovations to their settings. Respect for situation and reciprocal learning facilitate the transfer of good practice. Lessons learned from ASD experiences across Canada and in countries like Tanzania, Latvia and New Zealand improve the prospects of `getting service delivery right'.

Popular resistance to globalization and neoliberalism in Latin America is extensive and has been increasing both in scale and intensity. The polyarchic neoliberal regimes in Latin America have responded to this increasing popular resistance by relying on two types of measures: (1) tactical measures aimed at suppressing eruptions of popular resistance; and (2) more strategic measures aimed at preventing or at least maintaining within manageable limits the growing resistance to their policies. The United States Government and the main international financial institutions operating in the region have played a major role in both developing the second type of measures and assisting most of the Latin American governments to implement these measures. This essay examines the increasing popular resistance to neoliberal policies and capitalist globalization in Latin America; the responses of the existing neoliberal regimes and their backers to this increasing resistance; and the alternatives to polyarchy, neoliberalism and capitalist globalization that are emerging in the region.

The thaw of the Cold War ended the chess game between the superpowers and seemingly gave new momentum to the revival and spread of liberal democracy and its corollary, capitalism. Just as missionaries once offered Christianity to "save" colonised peoples, democracy has become the new gospel promising "salvation". Both donor and recipient countries appeal to democracy, hoping that it will reverse decades of misfortune. Donor nations and multilateral financial institutions preach democratic governance. "Born again democratic" national leaders in the South who are intent on clinging to power attend to their sermons. None appear to have a genuine faith in democracy. While some nations and NGOs do give altruistically, most use foreign aid as another means of pursuing their national interest. Democracy is an elastic concept. Indeed it seems, at least at this point, that the new gospel of democracy is but a convenient tool used by different players for they own selfish reasons.

This article describes the findings of a study undertaken to shed light on some of the factors that determine the employment of foreign biomedical scientists in the United States by examining their presence at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). NIH was selected as the focus of the study for its unique combination of characteristics. It is a federal agency with the ambiance of academe that carries out biomedical research and training internally while supporting like activities externally through grant- and contract-based linkages with a host of academic institutions and biotechnology firms in the United States and abroad. Over a two-year period, in-depth interviews were conducted with more than 200 stakeholders at the NIH campus and elsewhere, as well as ethnographic observations. The study identified several hitherto unreported important functions that NIH plays in facilitating the inflow of talented foreign scientists to meet its manpower needs and those of the broader national economy.

This essay challenges the conventional wisdom that democracy must be built upon the foundation of an established middle class, a belief forthrightly asserted in Barrington Moore's resolute dictum of "no bourgeois, no democracy". Taking a lead from Aristotle who thought peasants to be the best social group on which to build a political order that would preserve liberty, I consider the hypothesis that peasants can construct democratic systems of government. The little‐known little country of San Marino provides a case study. Its long history serves to demonstrate that the driving force behind the establishment of democracy need not be an educated and wealthy middle class but that a poor and uneducated peasantry can provide this impetus. This is a finding that calls into question the very formula that Western governments, scholars and institutions such as the IMF and World Bank routinely prescribe for Third World countries.

Striving to shorten the time‐period necessary for the huge transfer of the property needed by the ongoing economic reforms, Bulgaria developed a mass privatisation scheme (MPS). Based on specific financial intermediaries called privatisation funds (PF) that scheme encounters a major problem – to facilitate the establishment of an effective system for corporate governance of the privatised companies. Can it succeed in resolving that problem? This paper provides an analysis of mass privatisation objectives, the legal and economic frameworks of privatisation, funds' activities, their goals and portfolio structures. It examines the types of funds' founders and the presence of different groups among their shareholders. Additionally, it outlines the role of financial institutions in the process. The study is based on the PFs' prospectus for capital rise. Its results should not be seen as final, since the process is competitive, and not all funds will be able to achieve what they strive for in their prospectus.

Résumé En posant la métaphore hors de son champ poétique, nous interrogeons les pratiques du scientifique : la métaphore dérange et peut de ce fait révéler la fragilité de certaines de nos évidences. Elle provoque un choc bousculant les habitudes d'une démarche structurée selon un modèle scientifique. C'est comme si elle en découvrait un à un les points sensibles, et qu'elle forçait à ouvrir ce qu'on essaie de maintenir à distance. L'auteur revisite les dichotomies habituelles qui mettent la métaphore dans le camp du poète. A travers la fiction, le concept, le modèle, l'affect et l'écriture, elle cherche sa place. En « contredanse » dans l'espace de la science..., telle pourrait être sa position dans la pratique qui est la sienne : construire et transmettre un savoir dans le cadre d'une institution universitaire. Cette pratique demande de prendre position dans le langage. La sienne pourrait se soutenir de l'éloge d'une pensée métaphorique.

Résumé La Revue d'études et d'informations de la Gendarmerie nationale fut créée, en 1949, avec l'objectif avoué de redonner confiance à son personnel, d'apporter des éléments de réflexion à même d'intéresser les lecteurs, mais également de leur fournir une aide utile dans le cadre concret de leurs actions. L'étude de cette revue montre une institution dont la culture et les traditions sont indiscutablement militaires, mais qui se définit également par une pratique judiciaire permanente. La représentation du gendarme est celle d'un militaire, soucieux de légalité, mais dont l'action n'est pas exclusivement répressive, puisqu'elle se conjugue avec un rôle de protection de la population, une image que la revue cherche à développer. La revue diffuse l'image d'un gendarme soldat de la loi, rempart pour la société contre toutes les agressions dont elle pourrait être la victime, le gendarme apparaissant comme un moine-soldat moderne protégeant la population.