Suchergebnisse

Discusses how Jewish organizations in the US are misrepresenting the political leanings of their members, drawing on an annual survey of American Jewish public opinion. Adapted from the source document.

This book reviews the current state-of-the-art within each of the four major themes: science and policy; inventory and monitoring; statistics and modelling; and information and knowledge management, in the context of sustainable forestry. It fosters dialogue across thematic areas concerning both strategic and operational approaches to integrate research on sustainable forestry. It also enhances and encourages international collaboration towards sustainable forestry practice worldwide.

What lessons can we learn from 40 years of policy entrepreneurship scholarship on policy entrepreneurs' strategies and defining characteristics? While scholars have offered important insights, many questions remain open. This article systematically reviews 229 articles that were published between 1984 and 2017. Our findings provide (i) an analysis of policy entrepreneurship characteristics by sector, policy domain, individual/group, government layer, and geographical spread, (ii) an empirically based identification and classification of policy entrepreneurship strategies, and (iii) a statistical analysis of the relationship between policy entrepreneurs' characteristics and strategies. We conclude with an agenda for future studies that will continue to examine new theoretical approaches that advance our understanding of the role that individuals and small groups play in the policy process.

Reprinted from a chapter of her book, "Restructuring the world economy." Factors in the trend toward restructuring; 1980s. Productivity, decentralization, incentives, the contract system, IMF/World Bank guidance.

This PhD research investigates de facto influence of EU agencies on the development of EU policies. Based on a case-study approach and expert interviews, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control as well as the European Chemicals Agency are analyzed. The main findings are that EU agencies, albeit to varying degrees, do influence the content of policy proposals developed by the European Commission. However, the Commission does fully exercise its formal power to decide on the content of proposals. Only under willing guidance by the Commission, do EU agencies increase influence. While European governance inevitably involves technocratic characteristics, it should not be directly interpreted as a deficit of democracy or legitimacy in the EU.

In industrialized economies such as the European countries unemployment rates are very responsive to the business cycle and significant shares stay unemployed for more than one year. To fight cyclical and long-term unemployment countries spend significant shares of their budget on Active Labor Market Policies (ALMP). To improve the allocation and design of ALMP it is essential for policy makers to have reliable evidence on the effectiveness of such programs available. Although the number of studies has been increased during the last decades, policy makers still lack evidence on innovative programs and for specific subgroups of the labor market. Using Germany as a case study, the dissertation aims at contributing in this way by providing new evidence on start-up subsidies, marginal employment and programs for youth unemployed. The idea behind start-up subsidies is to encourage unemployed individuals to exit unemployment by starting their own business. Those programs have compared to traditional programs of ALMP the advantage that not only the participant escapes unemployment but also might generate additional jobs for other individuals. Considering two distinct start-up subsidy programs, the dissertation adds three substantial aspects to the literature: First, the programs are effective in improving the employment and income situation of participants compared to non-participants in the long-run. Second, the analysis on effect heterogeneity reveals that the programs are particularly effective for disadvantaged groups in the labor market like low educated or low qualified individuals, and in regions with unfavorable economic conditions. Third, the analysis considers the effectiveness of start-up programs for women. Due to higher preferences for flexible working hours and limited part-time jobs, unemployed women often face more difficulties to integrate in dependent employment. It can be shown that start-up subsidy programs are very promising as unemployed women become self-employed which gives them more flexibility ...

If candidates sometimes seek to distinguish themselves from their parties and are ambiguous about their policy positions, to what extent do the policy platforms of parties affect individuals' perceptions of presidential candidate positions? Using data from the American National Election Study and the Comparative Manifesto Project from 1972 to 2000, we show that citizens are able to use party platforms in their assessments of presidential candidates. We also demonstrate that an individual's level of education is important in the process of linking Republican Party platforms to Republican presidential candidates. Our findings have important implications for the role of parties in presidential elections. Adapted from the source document.

In countries like India, construction industry plays a significant part to develop the economy. But many time this construction industry is blamed for poor quality, delay in completion of work and losses gain during the project period. Construction projects are divided into various stages and these stages includes various task due to this the project becomes complex in nature. Errors, omissions, defects etc are clearly going to happen when complexity is involved. These errors, omissions, and defects result in rework. Rework leads to cost and schedule overrun, material wastage, client dissatisfaction, disagreement between the contractor and client which may result in a legislative dispute. Study on rework shows that the rework cost may increase to 10% of project cost. So rework cannot be ignored in a construction project. Performance of project gets adversely affected by the added cost and tight schedule due to rework

The move from territorial defence to 'wars of choice' has influenced the domestic politics of military interventions. This paper examines the extent to which both the substance and the procedure of military interventions are contested among political parties. Regarding the substance, our analysis of Chapel Hill Expert Survey data demonstrates that across European states political parties on the right are more supportive of military missions than those on the left. On the decision-making procedures, our case studies of Germany, France, Spain and the United Kingdom show that political parties on the left tend to favour strong parliamentary control whereas those on the right tend to prefer an unconstrained executive, although with differences across countries. These findings challenge the view that 'politics stops at the water's edge' and contribute to a better understanding of how political parties and parliaments influence military interventions.

Abstract
As public mass shootings continue to plague the United States, a growing scholarly literature seeks to understand the political effects of these tragic events. This literature, however, focuses on public opinion or turnout and vote choice, leaving open to question whether or not public mass shootings affect a range of other important actions citizens may take to engage with gun policy. Leveraging the as-good-as random timing of high-publicity public mass shootings over the past decade and an immense array of publicly available and proprietary data, we demonstrate that these events consistently cause surges in public engagement with gun policy—including internet searches, streaming documentaries, discussion on social media, signing petitions, and donating to political action committees. Importantly, we document the behaviors where shootings induce polarizing upswings in engagement and those where upswings skew toward gun control. Finally, we demonstrate that low-publicity shootings largely exert little-to-no effect on our outcomes.

Complex policy issues such as climate change adaptation can be interpreted in many different ways, resulting in different assumptions about their purpose and goals. Using material from a qualitative study in the Australian local government sector, this research shows that stakeholders involved in local adaptation policy formulation often do not have a shared view about the meaning and purposes of adaptation, although such shared understanding is commonly assumed in adaptation processes. Drawing on the frame-research literature and current conceptualisations of climate change adaptation, we argue that subconscious frame divergence can present a major challenge for effective organisational-level adaptation. Conversely, making frames and framing processes explicit is a first step towards clarifying adaptation goals and generating shared ownership of adaptation processes. While frames have been shown to be intrinsically subjective, we discuss three dominant frames that emerged from the study: avoiding disasters, community resilience, and averting organisational risk. We evaluate these in light of their theoretical origin and recent application towards climate change adaptation. Our research suggest that the 'averting organisational risks' frame is by far the most commonly activated frame. Individuals working in the community services sector frequently referred to the 'community resilience' frame, while the 'avoiding disasters frame' was used in public and policy discourse to circumvent the arguments of those sceptical about the existence and causes of climate change. We suggest that, by incorporating frame reflexivity into existing adaptation planning processes, a more diverse range of policy options can be explored, delivering more effective adaptation policies.