Suchergebnisse

This article analyses the evolution of archaeologi-cal excavations in Andalusia since the transfer of responsibilities for Archaeological Heritage management from central Government to the Junta de Andalusia. Special attention is paid to the negative effects of the division between research and salvage archaeology, and to how interest in developing the former has hindered the conceptual development of the latter, thus risking its being considered a mere administrative act, with no scientific projection. ; Este trabajo analiza la evolución de las excavaciones arqueológicas en Andalucía desde la transferencia de competencias del Gobierno del Estado a la Junta de Andalucía. Se presta especial atención a los efectos negativos de la división entre una arqueología de investigación y otra de salvamento; y a cómo el interés en favorecer la primera ha entorpecido el desarrollo conceptual de la segunda, corriendo el riesgo de ser considerada como un mero acto administrativo carente de proyección científica.

During World War I a movement developed in the forests of Gilan to free Iran from foreign control and internal despotism. Tsarist Russian, Soviet, Ottoman, German, and British forces all attempted to influence the course of events in Gilan, often through the use of force. From their strongholds in the forests, or jangal—whence their name—the Jangalis gained the strength several times, first with the weakening of Russian forces in the region after the 1917 Russian Revolution and then with the assistance of the Iranian Communist Party after the arrival of Soviet troops in Gilan in May 1920, to take control of Rasht, Anzali, and other towns in Gilan province. They even harbored hopes of marching on Tehran to take control of the Iranian central government. This nationalist movement initially had a formal organizational structure under the name ittihād-i Islām, but basically was under the control of the charismatic Mirza Kuchik Khan, along with several other powerful leaders.

Since the beginning of the Persian poetic tradition, "occasional" poetry has played a significant role in Iranian political, social, and literary life. Although it lost much of its literary prestige in the mid-twentieth century with the Romantic and Modernist valuation of "pure poetry," the new holidays and heroes of the Islamic Republic have given a fresh purpose and status to commemorative verse. After several decades of speaking for the political opposition, modern Persian poetry in Iran now often serves as a means of articulating and celebrating the rhetoric and ideology of the government. This, too, marks a return to one of the principal functions of poetry in the classical tradition.Perhaps nothing illustrates these developments more clearly than the outpouring of verse that followed the death of Ayatollah Khomeini on 4 June 1989. Within a year, a collection of nearly 300 elegies was published under the title Sugnameh-ye Emam (Book of Mourning for the Imam).

On 15 October 1994, 134 writers in Iran composed and published a statement in the form of an open letter entitled "We Are the Writers!" Writers with different cultural and political orientations signed this document to publicly support the establishment of a writers' association and oppose censorship.The publication of "We Are the Writers!," while attracting considerable support both inside and outside Iran, outraged the Islamic regime. Several signatories were approached by pro-government media to explain their action. Some authors were pressured to disavow the content of the letter. The signatories were accused of political conspiracy against the Islamic Republic. As the statement carefully and emphatically underlines, however, the association was to be apolitical and primarily centered on the writers' professional concerns, including copyright, censorship, paper shortage, and cost of publication. The official reaction points to a fundamental trait of writing in Iran: the very act of writing, regardless of content, is political.

Historians of economic thought typically have seen little or no connection between William Stanley Jevons's economic theory and policy issues. Wesley C. Mitchell, for example, suggested that Jevons had little interest in politics and was uncertain on the questions of the day. He was "basically interested in the subject [of economics] as a science and not as a means of bettering economic organization" (Mitchell 1969, pp. 31, 101-2). Mitchell's comments are curious in view of Jevons's extensive writings on public issues. His book, The State in Relation to Labour (1882), is considered a classic on the subject of policy and a rationalization for interventionist government. Jevons's pronouncement that "we can lay down no hard and fast rules, but must treat every case upon its merits" may well have marked the end of the "liberal era of principles," according to F. A. Hayek (Hutchison 1978, pp. 100-101). Certainly Jevons intended as much.

Although constitutional protection for rights is increasingly popular, there is little systematic research on the extent to which bills of rights affect the process of government. This article examines the effects a bill of rights may be expected to produce, and then uses a quasi-experimental design to analyze the effects of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms on the Canadian Supreme Court's agenda. The data suggest that the Charter indeed has influenced the Court's agenda, although the effects are more limited than generally recognized. More important, the data suggest that a number of the influences often attributed to the Charter likely resulted instead from the growth of what I call the support structure for legal mobilization, consisting of various resources that enable litigants to pursue rights-claims in court. The political significance of a bill of rights, then, depends on factors in civil society that are independent of constitutional structure.

The Commonwealth Department of Finance, together with the Treasury from which it was hived off in 1976, constitutes the central budgetary agency at the Australian federal level. For the purposes of this article, I identify Finance as a convenient working model of central budgetary agencies, at least in their traditional Australian incarnation. I accept that Finance is unlikely to be fully representative of all such Australian agencies, and I acknowledge that the federal government's annual budget is officially introduced into parliament by the Treasurer, and that the Treasury is deservedly regarded as the core budgetary agency. But my focus here is on Finance's special responsibility for the public management framework, and Finance's role in providing policy advice to government organisations on how to make the best use of budget funding. This article then presents the findings of a recent evaluation of selected policy‐advising activities with the department.

Noting that budgeting now represents the most important instrument of governance, transcending the traditional role of legislation, and also noting that recognition of this development stimulated a search for better methods, which is still underway, the author explores the possibility of using periodic, criteria‐based appraisals to encourage governments to adopt exemplary practices. Surfacing after World War II, dissatisfaction with budgetary practice led to continuing experimentation with alternative formats and procedures. Although the alternative approaches reflect different standards, they also share similarities, which can provide a foundation for the construction of an exemplary model of public budgeting, embracing critical dimensions of the budgetary process. Further noting the constructive impact of auditing standards on accounting practices and financial reports, the author suggests that the post‐audit model may be applicable to budgeting. Experimenting with this model is advanced as a likely next step in the search for better budgeting methodologies.

The prospects for international administrative law and the international administrative legal system in the future and particularly in the next century will be determined to a large extent by how much importance the world attaches to international organisations and particularly to the maintenance of an independent international civil service as a means of securing international peace and security, promoting development and fostering international co-operation. Not only must there be a change in the current attitude of certain governments towards international organisations as a means to this end but there must also be a more sanguine approach to the singular importance of an independent civil service in the process. What can be said about the international administrative legal system and international administrative law in the future must be conditioned necessarily to a large extent by assumptions made about what is going to happen in the future to both international organisations and the civil service.

Even if they are confident that prosperity lies just over the horizon, politicians who embark on promarket reforms know they are in for some stormy weather. How will they fare in voters' eyes once the pain is felt? Will voters inevitably turn against politicians who impose painful measures without an electoral mandate to do so? The story of economic reform and public opinion in Peru under Alberto Fujimori (1990-1995) poses just these questions. The author uses monthly public opinion polls and monthly economic data to analyze the impact of economic changes during Fujimori's reform program on opinions of the reforms and the president. The author finds that Limeños withdrew support from the program and the president when employment fell and inflation rose, responses consistent with the findings of the economic voting literature. But when real wages fell, they became optimistic about the future and more likely to support reforms and the government.

Launched during the heydays of the copying machine and the U.S. sunshine laws and surrounded by controversy from its inception, genetic engineering may be the best documented technology ever to emerge from a laboratory. This essay draws on the pages that flowed forth from formal policy arenas as well as from less accessible places to examine the rise and fall of genetic engineering controls in the United States and Britain. The general argument developed here is that the settling of the issues raised by this field was achieved not through the resolution of technical problems but rather through the exertion of social interests—notably those of national governments, transnational corporations, genetic engineering firms, scientists, and sectors of the public. A synthesis of methods of analysis drawn from critiques of pluralism and from Foucault's analysis of the relation between power and discursive practice is used to assess the relative effects of these interests.

Recent legislation in the U.K., particularly the NHS and Community Care Act 1990, has encouraged the direct participation of service users in the planning and management of care services. This paper explores evidence of how the interests of service users experiencing mental distress are represented within community care services in the U.K. and the extent to which this leads to a devolution of power to those service users. The evidence is drawn from a survey of principal officers in social services departments responsible for mental health services and interviews with 135 service users. This reveals considerable confusion about the meaning and purpose of user involvement and about how service users can best be represented; little evidence, despite users' interest in it, of power-sharing; and limited commitment of resources to make further participation possible. The conclusion considers how, in the light of this evidence, Central and Local Government might further develop user involvement.

Two broad models of planning inform public administrators and planners. One is a public management model in which involvement in decision making is on a "need-to-know " basis, and public participation and input are viewed as forces to be overcome. It echoes the private sector practice of flexible specialization in that it relies on quick decision making and noninclusive planning to reduce intraorganizational conflict. The other is a participatory planning model that invites many stakeholders to discuss and debate aspects of pending decisions. Emphasis is frequently placed on stakeholder concerns and equity issues. Current efforts to restructure local government service delivery through privatization and contracting-out potentially privilege the public management model over the participatory model. The City of Indianapolis recently contracted its wastewater treatment operations and management to a private consortium using the public management model. This article links several recent and unintended outcomes in the Indianapolis case to the planning model used.

With the rapid multiplication of channels, television has all but ceased to function as a shared public space. Except for occasional media events, the nation no longer gathers together. Unlike the replacement of radio by television as radio underwent a similar process of segmentation, there is no new medium in the wings to replace television that is likely to promote national political integration. No less than in the United States, the governments of Europe—once proud of their public broadcasting systems—are bowing to the combined constraints of the new media technology, the new liberal mood, the economic and political burden of public broadcasting, and the seductions of multinational corporations. Thus is mass democracy deprived of its last common meeting ground, and, if theories of technological determinism are applicable, the cohesion of the nation-state itself is in jeopardy. The case of Israeli broadcasting—now in the throes of this paradigm change—is presented in illustration.

In 1990 Oregon passed Measure 5, a constitutional property tax limitation that threatens massive funding cuts to education and government services. In response, Governor Barbara Roberts undertook an experiment in policy sharing, engaging in a "conversation" via closed circuit television with some 10,000 Oregonians about taxes and services before she formulated a tax restructuring plan. The resultant tax proposal appeared carefully balanced and moderate. It had something to offer each of the state's powerful constituencies but managed, nonetheless, to balance the budget. A special legislative session was called to decide whether to refer the governor's proposed tax restructuring to a vote of the people in the wake of Measure 5. At the end of a short, emotionally charged session, the legislature voted not to refer the plan to a vote of the people. This paper examines this process in the light of the literature and examples of other attempts to use citizen participation in formulating public policy.