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The federal and corporate initiative to technologize education has transformed schools, colleges, and universities into a new frontier for the computer industry. While educational institutions have maintained an equivocal relationship with markets and the state, they had striven to preserve a simulacrum of independence until the early 1980s. Then, neoconservative ideologies and their accompanying discourse on restructuring education discovered in the computer the ideal neutral tool to promote, in its virtual clothes, their gospel. The Clinton administration and big corporations, taking advantage of the myth of the computer and the new vocabulary associated with computers, launched a massive program of wiring schools. The process, still unfolding at a rapid pace, poses grave problems for the teaching profession and the role of schools in society. The author argues that the unethical ways in which computers force their ways into many educational institutions, the values they embody, the contexts of their multiple usages, the hyperfragmentation and increasing commodification of knowledge that they cause through online education, the vocationalization of education, and the atomization of teachers are likely to shrink pedagogical and democratic possibilities both at local and global levels.

This essay deals with needs and problems of the initiatives aiming at a legal integration in Europe. In the first part of the paper (II-IV) the need of a wider and deeper knowledge of legal data is stressed by the author through the comparison of (overt) methods and (hidden) implications pursued by research-oriented enterprises — such as "The Common Core Project' or the 'European Case-books Project' - on the one hand, and the initiatives whose goal is the creation of rules — such as the UNIDROIT Principles or the 'Lando Commission' - on the other. The second part of the article (V.-VI.) highlights the reality of multi-level legal systems as one of the most important problems any integrative enterprise has to face. The author's ranking and analysis of the legal layers at work in the European societies — eg: different levels of local customary rules, 'national' rules, tansnational business rules, EU rules — aims at making out, at least, how fully aware a Code or any other authoritative regulation has to be about the kind and level of integration to pursue.

The Islamic Republic of Iran arguably has one of the most successful family planning programs in the developing world. This success is all the more interesting for advocates of population programs because the political leaders of the Islamic regime were once strongly opposed to family planning. Indeed, after gaining power following the 1979 revolution, they were responsible for dismantling Iran's relatively new family planning program and introducing pronatalist policies. This article provides an account of the different phases of the population policy in Iran and examines the diverse elements that led politicoreligious leaders to revise their views about fertility control and to participate in creating a workable family planning program. The complex formal and informal strategies that the political experts, the media, the religious authorities, and the government of the Islamic Republic adopted in order to achieve this about‐face are described. The analysis is based on data collected by the first author during anthropological field research in 1993–96, by means of informal interviews with officials, with medical personnel, with family planning clients, and with religious leaders

Results of the comparative study presented in this paper suggests that local government organization influences land-use planning, and local development strategies and disparities. Local government reforms can, therefore, serve to modify spatial patterns of development and disparities. Based on a review of studies made in the developed and the developing world, the author provides a comparative perspective on these influences. Five major dimensions of local government organization—territorial, functional, political autonomy, fiscal, and electoral—are used to define four extreme models of local government. The American self-government model leads to substantial inequalities and to considerable sprawl. The Western welfare-state model alleviates these problems somewhat, but at a cost to central government. Its positive impact is also dependent on norms of administration at the central level, whereas reduced competition over economic development has its negative sides. Developing-world-type centralism has no real advantages in terms of development or disparities. The developing-world decentralized model can be regarded as a transitional phase towards either the self-government or the welfare-state models. Its implementation has been partial; hence its impact has, so far, been rather small.

Policy network analysis (PNA) and the advocacy coalition framework (ACF) are relatively recent additions to the toolbox of policy analysis. The author explores the strengths and limitations of each through comparative application. The two frameworks are used to analyse policy change and stability in the UK industrial pollution sector over a period of more than twenty-five years. Innovations derived from policy-oriented learning generated in the 1970s were initially rejected before being implemented fourteen years later. The case study illustrates the limits of both theories. Change was not an open competition between advocates of different core policy beliefs. Nevertheless the ACF analysis of contrasting, broadly defined, beliefs can help explain some events beyond policy networks. Resource interdependencies in the policy network provide a good explanation for the stabilities exhibited in the case study. PNA can also explain why some actors were excluded from the policy process whereas others exercised decisionmaking and nondecisionmaking power. In combination, the more fundamental agency-oriented and structure-oriented emphases on beliefs and resources associated with the ACF and PNA, respectively, can enrich policy analysis.

Increasing demand for clean energy sources is expanding investment in natural gas infrastructure around the world. Many international projects involve pipelines connecting energy markets in two or more countries. A key feature of investment taking place in Latin America is the convergence of gas and electricity markets. Many projects are being developed to supply gas to new power generation plants needed to meet electricity demand. Construction of a pipeline over the Andes mountains to supply gas from Argentina to energy markets in central Chile was an idea long unfulfilled for political, economic, and technical reasons. Great changes have now taken place in a very short time. The author discusses both the achievements and the challenges to be faced by pipeline developers and Chiles energy sector. He details the benefits of the cooperative effort to consumers in terms of lower energy prices, higher environmental standards, and a more reliable energy system. The experience in Latin Americas southern cone shows how technological innovation, economic deregulation, and regional integration make it possible to build major international gas pipeline projects within a competitive framework, and without direct state involvement.

The author claims that in Hegel's Philosophy of Law there are two convergent, overlapping, & concurrent tendencies. The first asserts that the state is such a condition of society in which the universal will of citizens is paramount. It is the sole source of positive law, since only the state warrants the laws that do not do injustice to its subjects. In this theory, the state is considered an ideal universal entity, adjusted to the speculative shifts of auto-reflection. The second claims that as the rational state, the state is a union of different interests, providing good life for its citizens. The principle of their union is a particular benefit; not self-determination as the absolute principle but mutual compromise, mutual achievement & relatively equal contribution that creates interdependence. These two tendencies have entirely defined the understanding of the state in the German cultural space: at one time it is an ideal association among reflective individuals, & at other an apparatus of power. These two abstract solutions may only be overcome via a forceful democratic mediation of the civil society. Adapted from the source document.

The author discusses the problems faced by the fishermen of Riveira (Galicia), as they deal with the fishing regulations of Galicia's autonomous government. These regulations hinder with red tape the strategies of small, skillful fishermen and put the profitability of their work at risk. He concludes by pointing out that, for fishermen, legitimate regulations are only those fishermen help to draft and enforce. In their view, any successful fishing system depends on shared, responsible management. ; A partir del contexto pesquero de la población de Riveira (Galicia), el autor plantea la problemática generada entre los pescadores por las normativas dictadas por la administración autonómica en materia de alternancia de artes, en tanto que suponen un bloqueo administrativo que incide sobre las estrategias económicas de los productores menores y artesanales, poniendo en peligro la rentabilidad de sus unidades productivas. Asimismo concluye que tanto en la elaboración como en la aplicación y control de estas regulaciones la participación de los pescadores es decisiva para que éstos las perciban como legítimas, pues sólo la gestión compartida y responsable garantiza el éxito del sistema de gestión de los recursos pesqueros.

Major Tony Pfaff, a former Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the United States Military Academy, addresses an important source of much of the confusion that currently surrounds many of the Operations Other Than War (OOTW) that the military finds itself participating in with increasing frequency. The author points out that, though the source of this confusion is primarily ethical, it has important operational implications as well. In the Just War Tradition, as well as the Law of War, there has always been a tension between winning and fighting well, and the peacekeeping environment does not change this. Commonly, the resolution of this tension is expressed in the maxim: always use the least amount of force necessary to achieve the military objective. This maxim applies, regardless of what environment one is in. The author's contention is, however, that the understanding of necessary is radically different in the peacekeeping environment than it is in more conventional operations. Failure to understand this results in a great deal of confusion as soldiers try to apply an ethic designed for dealing with enemies in environments where there are none. ; https://press.armywarcollege.edu/monographs/1128/thumbnail.jpg

Comments on Paul Pierson's article(2000), "Not Just What, but When: Timing and Sequence in Political Processes," arguing that the adoption of path dependence from economics to political science does not realistically explain political events. Path dependence explains economic outcomes because of the central mechanism in economics, the market. Technologically inferior products have sometimes succeeded in the free market because of a brief market advantage that made the product more attractive & allowed it to become the popular choice. The market does not, however, have counterparts in the political sciences, & successful outcomes are not the result of individual choices or combined tastes, which would be similar to a market. Path dependence is used to explain countertheoretical outcomes in economics, but using it to describe permanence, stasis, or tenacity in politics may not capture the central dynamics of political change. Bridges considers timing, sequence, & temporal processes, pointing out that taken together, they are not really history. The author concludes that the most powerful theory for the social scientist would be a theory that provokes & informs research & aids in forming questions & organizing the results of the research. L. A. Hoffman

As one of the initial, & arguably most devastated, casualties of WWII, Poland's restoration as a free & independent state was seen as a test case for the viable continuation of the victorious Grand Alliance. Yet seemingly irreconcilable differences between the Western powers & the USSR over intricate territorial & political issues (with the Polish state & people caught firmly in the middle) would signal the end of the working alliance. The US collectively struggled to come to terms with this "Polish problem" -- its government failing to deliver to the Poles on those democratic principles enshrined within the Atlantic Charter, & its people finding the very ideals for which they had gone to war compromised. While reflecting the unique complexities of this particular dilemma, American official perceptions of the conundrum over Poland bear a ringing familiarity to future East European developments & certainly set the tone for the ensuing West-Soviet impasse there. Indeed, this author would not be alone in suggesting that the superpower struggle over Poland at the close of WWII was the genesis of the Cold War conflict. 1 Map. Adapted from the source document.