Suchergebnisse

Privathochschulen haben bislang kaum rechtswissenschaftliche Beachtung erfahren, obwohl es in den letzten Jahren zu einer Reihe von Neugründungen gekommen ist. Diese wissenschaftlichen Privathochschulen wurden und werden - teilweise mit erheblichen finanziellen Mitteln - vom Staat gefördert, während die staatlichen Hochschulen Mittelkürzungen hinnehmen müssen. Ursula Steinkemper untersucht dieses Problem vor dem Hintergrund der verfassungsrechtlichen Verankerung der Privathochschule. Die Autorin geht zunächst der Frage nach, warum in Deutschland das Hochschulsystem durch die Staatlichkeit der Hochschulen geprägt wird. Die in den letzten Jahren aufgekommene Diskussion um die Vorzüge und Nachteile von Privathochschulen wird mit der allgemeinen Privatisierungsdiskussion in Zusammenhang gesetzt. Dabei dient die Übertragung des in der Verwaltungsrechtswissenschaft entwickelten Verantwortungskonzepts dazu, das entstehende Duale Hochschulsystem theoretisch zu untermauern. Die Dualität kommt neben der hohen staatlichen Verantwortung für das Hochschulwesen vor allem in der verfassungsrechtlichen Verankerung der Privathochschule im Rahmen der Wissenschaftsfreiheitsgarantie des Art. 5 Abs. 3 GG zum Ausdruck, an dem insbesondere die landesrechtlichen Vorschriften zur staatlichen Anerkennung zu messen sind. Vor diesem Hintergrund wird im zweiten Teil der Arbeit die staatliche Förderung von Privathochschulen untersucht. Zwar trifft den Staat, ähnlich wie bei den Privatschulen, eine objektiv-rechtliche allgemeine Förderungspflicht, ein Anspruch der Privathochschule auf finanzielle Unterstützung folgt daraus jedoch nicht. Hinsichtlich der Art der Förderung besteht vielmehr ein Einschätzungsspielraum des Gesetzgebers. Die Autorin stellt verschiedene Konzepte direkter und indirekter Förderung vor und untersucht sie. Die staatlichen Maßnahmen werden auch hier im Wege einer grundrechtlichen Sicht durch die verfassungsrechtliche Stellung der Privathochschule begrenzt.

Der Autor behandelt die Mediation im Umweltrecht. Mit einer rechtlichen Analyse und Formulierungsvorschlägen für Verträge will er der praktischen Implementation zum Durchbruch verhelfen. -- Im ersten Kapitel behandelt Mathias Hellriegel Begriffliches, Systematisches und Tatsächliches. Nach der Definition der Mediation – Vermittlung in Verhandlungen durch einen neutralen Dritten ohne Entscheidungsbefugnis – werden die Phasen eines Mediationsverfahrens untersucht. Dabei geht der Verfasser davon aus, daß Mediationsverfahren die traditionellen Verwaltungsverfahren nicht ersetzen, sondern diese ergänzen sollen. Mediation als Einschaltung eines privaten Dritten wird der Verfahrensprivatisierung zugeordnet. -- Im zweiten Kapitel untersucht der Autor die gesetzlichen Grundlagen für die Mediation und wendet sich dem Problem des Gesetzesvorbehalts zu. Eine gesetzliche Grundlage für die Durchführung der Mediation ist nur erforderlich, wenn der Mediator beliehen wird und ihm Hoheitsgewalt und Entscheidungsbefugnisse übertragen werden. Dagegen ist eine Mediation ohne gesetzliche Ermächtigung möglich, wenn der Mediator nur mitwirkt bzw. als bloßer Verwaltungshelfer auftritt. Mediation in förmlichen Verfahren ist derzeit ohne gesetzliche Grundlage nur eingeschränkt zulässig; außerhalb förmlicher Verfahren ergeben sich größere Übertragungsmöglichkeiten. Für Mediation in förmlichen Verfahren werden Ermächtigungsgrundlagen untersucht. -- Im dritten Kapitel behandelt der Verfasser das Verhältnis von Mediation und öffentlich-rechtlichem Vertrag. Die Mediation ist in einem System von Verwaltungsverträgen zu sehen: In der eröffnenden Mediationsvereinbarung verabreden die Parteien die Durchführung der Mediation und treffen Regelungen über die Verhandlungsmodalitäten. Der Mediationsauftrag regelt die Beauftragung des Mediators sowie dessen Aufgaben, Rechte und Pflichten. Die abschließende Verhandlungsübereinkunft wird im Mediationsvertrag festgehalten. Untersucht werden der Inhalt und die rechtliche Zulässigkeit der Bestimmungen, wobei Formulierungen für die Mediationsvereinbarung und den Mediationsauftrag vorgeschlagen werden.

Although emerging streams of historical institutional (HI) analysis have generated substantial insights in the field of comparative politics, this scholarship has lacked a self-conscious approach to methodology. This article specifies the comparative historical methods that many HI scholars have implicitly used for estimating the causal effect of political institutions on key policy and other political outcomes. It demonstrates how various periodization strategies are deployed to sort out the influence of a host of hypothesized and rival explanatory factors. In addition to explicating these methods, the article critically examines recent works of HI scholarship, highlighting the analytical leverage generated through studies that might ordinarily seem to suffer from the problem of small samples. More explicit deployment of these methods would both improve the quality of HI analysis and make its findings more transparent for further evaluation and emulation.

The Western Australia Wheatbelt contains the largest area of dry‐land salinity in Australia with major economic, social and environmental consequences. In recent years salinity has been widely recognised as the State's worst environmental problem. Yet, the historical record shows that this crisis, which has taken half a century to fully materialise, was largely foreseen by contemporary agricultural scientists. In examining the origins of the salinity crisis, the article examines the reasons why this scientific advice was ignored. It locates the schemes to open up the area for agriculture in the period 1900‐1980s within the ideology of developmentalism which became the major plank in the policy of successive governments. The article identifies the key elements in the way developmentalism was applied to agriculture and discusses its populist appeal; the separation of science from policy; and the institutionalisation of the developmentalist ethos in the administrative arms of government.

This article reports the results of a major survey that was distributed to the members of the International Personnel Management Association and the Section on Personnel and Labor Relations of the American Society for Public Administration. The intent of the survey was twofold: to gauge the respondents' perspectives on the relative importance of various personnel techniques, activities, and values, and to assess their projections concerning the changes that will occur during the next decade. In addition to providing an interesting snapshot of the perceived state of modernization within public‐sector human resource management, the results reflect a considerable degree of agreement concerning the expected direction of further changes. Themes arising from the reinvention movement, as well as the technological revolution, dominate the response patterns. The implications of these perceived alterations in the field of human resource management are discussed, and potential problem areas are identified.

"Local," "indigenous," and "traditional" knowledge are emerging as important categories in environment-development policy-making. This paper provides an overview of international policies and programs for addressing these historically marginalized ways of knowing, and explores how the World Bank, and processes under the Convention to Combat Desertification, and the Convention on Biological Diversity are attempting to incorporate "other" knowledges and knowledge holders. The study argues that long-standing assumptions and practices of multilateral policy-making are often at odds with the new perspectives for which these knowledges presumably provide a vehicle. On the one hand, policy-making bodies cite "other" knowledges as alternatives to technocratic problem-solving methods of earlier decades because they are unique and situated, holistic and processual. On the other hand, international institutions are attempting to systematize "other" knowledges in ways that seem poised to render them standardized and universal, compartmental, and instrumental.

Both candidates in the 2000 presidential campaign focused on issues related to health and education as key components of their platforms. Yet the campaign failed to address an emerging problem with the American and world community—health literacy. Health literacy is the degree to which individuals have the capacity to obtain, process, and understand basic health information and services needed to make appropriate health decisions. Large numbers of the U.S. population lack an adequate level of health literacy to be able to function effectively in the health care system. Within the context of the presidential campaign rhetoric on health and education, this study examines health literacy and summarizes the voluminous research published on this topic and its implications for health communication, intervention and research. Although health literacy did not receive adequate attention in the presidential campaign, the authors advocate that it should be a focus for policy makers.

It is puzzling that links between Gandhian social philosophy and recent conflict resolution/negotiation literature, especially given the latter's Gandhian `flavour', have received so little scholarly attention. While there seems to be no direct causal link between the two bodies of knowledge, conflict resolution literature in the guise of modern problem-solving and win-win (as opposed to power-based and zerosum) approaches leading to integrative conflict resolution (as opposed to mere compromise and distributive outcomes) strongly echoes Gandhi's own writings and the analyses of some Gandhi scholars. This is especially true in the case of non-mainstream writings that see conflict resolution techniques as potentially being about more than the solution of immediate problems, that see a broader personal and societal transformation as the ultimate goal. This article explores these connections and argues that Gandhian satyagraha should be squarely located within conflict resolution discourse.

The "big questions" articles previously published in Public Administration Review found a widely divergent set of questions rather than a shared research agenda. This article applies the concept of layers of society to analyzing the author's starting points and developing questions that link the organizational and institutional levels. Connecting these levels offers the potential to overcome the limitations of problem solving on only one level. In addition, this framework explains the diversity of research in public administration as potentially productive and connected, rather than fragmented and in intellectual disarray. This article offers four researchable questions that connect the organizational and institutional levels. The proposed questions build on existing research and address practical problems in public administration. This framework provides a typology that expects diverse research questions and can productively connect researchers with each other and with the complex challenges of democracy.

Abstract
The paper reconsiders the hold-up problem in long-term bilateral trade with specific investments. In our framework, the parties face several trading opportunities (goods) whose characteristics cannot be described at the start of the relationship. Specifically, there exists an investment responsive `innovative' good, and (at least one) non-responsive `standard' good. In line with Hart and Moore (1988), renegotiation takes place as outside option bargaining. We first establish a first-best outcome for the case where trading the innovation is always efficient. This results contrasts with findings in Segal (1999) and Hart and Moore (1999) who adopt an alternative view of renegotiation. Then, we consider a setting where final trade is not always efficient, and show that a properly chosen at-will contract still implements the first best for a non-empty set of parameterizations. Finally, we show that at-will contracts strictly outperform option or specific-performance contracts.

Modern societies appear to be going through a phase of dehierarchization, that is, a change in the way of governance of nation states, from direction of, to cooperation with, civil society; and in more general terms political pluralization, the emergence of "polities" other than the nation state. The paper argues that one of the most stressing problems of political pluralization is the co-existence of mutually effacing or contradictory systems of political norms. To tackle this problem of incompossibility, it has been suggested that policy teloi, shared conceptions giving direction to cooperative political ventures, in particular sustainable development, could be helpful. This article investigates whether sustainable development as a policy telos can tackle incompossibility, both in liberal (democratic) and non-liberal (democratic) societies. The paper concludes that its best chances of being temporarily successful lie in understanding it in the broadest sense possible—particularly if one values moral pluralism.

Objective: To determine whether empirical clinical practice (ECP) techniques such as the use of standardized scales and single-subject designs are associated with improved outcomes for clients. Method: One group of clients was served by workers who used ECP techniques in combination with a standard intervention; a second group was served by workers who used only the intervention. Results: Clients whose workers used ECP techniques showed significantly greater reductions in problem severity than clients in the comparison group. No significant differences were found between groups with respect to reductions in number of client problems or client satisfaction at posttest. Conclusions: Design limitations, including the study's inability to randomly assign workers to groups, mean its findings must be considered tentative. However, the results suggest that combining an intervention with the use of ECP techniques may positively affect client outcomes beyond the effect of the intervention alone.

ABC Consumer Electronics is headquartered in the USA, with major operations in Mexico. During the Mexican peso devaluation and economic crisis of late 1994, the company faced the greatest labor problem of its long history. The workers' purchasing power was reduced to nearly one‐half of its value before the crisis. Other underlying and un‐addressed problems at ABC were brought to surface by workers who found themselves incapable of providing the basic necessities of life for themselves and their families. This paper explores the manner in which ABC handled the strike, how the strike affected ABC's operations and strategies; and the impact of ABC's decisions on other maquiladoras in Juarez, Mexico is fully explained and delineated. The case's arguments are supported by the collection of field‐based data, the company's archival records, numerous interviews, and the US and Mexican statistical abstracts.

AbstractAs system dynamicists, we spend our days finding and patching up faulty policies, giving surprisingly little thought to the origin of these poor decision rules. And yet, if we understood their origin, we might be able to attack the problem of faulty policy at its source. This article presents a theory of policy formation that is consistent with what is known about evolutionary processes and human psychology. The theory is translated into a computer simulation model, which is used to illuminate several "handles" on policy creation. The handles influence two potential failure modes in policy creation: (1) "learning drift", a process in which people learn unselectively and, hence, learn without improving; and/or (2) "premature consensus", a process in which managers agree on a policy before the "best" one has emerged. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.