Suchergebnisse

Naim Kapucu: Civil Society and Democratic Governance in Turkey: Prospects and Challenges 1. - Hüseyin Gül and Hakan M. Kiriş: Democratic Governance Reforms in Turkey and Their Implications 25. - Mustafa Kemal Bayırbağ: Dynamics of Post-crisis Reform in Public Policy: The Case of Education Policy in Turkey 61. - Jennifer Bremer: Challenges to Governance Reform and Accountability in Egypt 83. - Hamid E. Ali: The Evolution of Corruption and Optimal Level of Corruption Reduction: Evidence from Cross-Country Studies 103. - Samir Rihani: Iraq's Revolutionary Cul-de-Sacs 115. - Kaa'ed Al-Hashimi: Iraq's Pressing Need to Legally Binding Conceptual and Procedural Models for Public Policy Making 129. - Talal A. Al-Kassar , Mahmoud Al-Wadi , and Alexander Dawoody: The Innovative Approach for Accounting and Accountability of Government Revenues in Iraq 143. - Ahmad Yaghoubi-Farani, Iraj Malek Mohammadi, and Reza Movahedi: The Role of Organizational Culture and Management Behavior in Organizational Innovation: A Case Study of the Agricultural Extension Organization (AEO) in Iran 163. - Mohamad G. Alkadry: Saudi Arabia and the Mirage of Decentralization 173. - Thomas W. Haase and Randa Antoun: Decentralization in Lebanon 189. - Khaldoun AbouAssi: The Third Wheel in Public Policy: An Overview of NGOs in Lebanon 215. - Nissim Cohen: Solving Problems Informally: The Influence of Israel's Political Culture on the Public Policy Process 231. - Daniel Simonet and Clément Vincent: The Management of Museums in Sharjah 247. - Simon H. Okoth: Public Policy Making Process in the United Arab Emirates 263. - Mohammad Mohabbat Khan and Md. Shahriar Islam: Governance Challenges in Bangladesh 281. - Md. Shahriar Islam: Implementation of Policy to Control Industrial Pollution in Bangladesh: Major Drawbacks 297. - Alexander Dawoody: The Arab Spring of 2011: A Perspective 319. - Alexander Dawoody: Restructuring the Hierarchy of Needs: A Case for Sound Governance in the Middle East 341

The ongoing discussion of U.S.-Japanese trade relations suggests that national differences such as in the institutional environment may be relevant for assessing international trade policies. However, economic trade theory often assumes countries to be organized around common notions of complete markets. This paper compares two alternative modes of trade policy analysis by juxtaposing the ?economic? view inherent in Gene Grossman?s work on ?Japan?s Innovation and Trade? with the ?political? view of ?Japanese-American Relations? expressed by Chalmers Johnson. A synthesis is attempted with the help of some remarks on ?New Trade Theory?s Implications for Policy Analysis? by John Pomery.

ABSTRACTDespite positive findings, small-group activities continue to lag behind lectures in political science classrooms. This article argues that one barrier to wider adoption of more innovative activities is uncertainty about how to efficiently and fairly create teams that each are heterogeneous and as a set are balanced across relevant characteristics. We first describe recent findings and strategies for creating teams; we then detail our concrete, general approach for incorporating several student characteristics into team creation. We then describe implementations of this approach using freely available software in two undergraduate political science courses—one in American politics and one in political methodology. In these applications and in a variety of simulated data, we demonstrate that teams created using our method are better balanced than those created by randomly allocating students to teams.

Scientific results are always afflicted with some uncertainty, especially where emerging technologies are concerned. While there are normative and practical reasons to call for an open admission of scientific uncertainties, concerns about detrimental effects of such communication on public engagement with science have been raised in the literature. The present study was conducted to investigate how the communication of scientific uncertainty in nanotechnology influences laypeople's interest in science and new technologies, beliefs about the nature of science, and trust in scientists. In a longitudinal field experiment, 945 participants were exposed to six real-world media reports (TV features and newspaper articles) on nanotechnology. Contrary to our expectations, the communication of scientific uncertainties was unable to change general beliefs about the nature of science. However, it had no detrimental effect on the trust in scientists, and with respect to interest in science and new technologies, slightly positive effects were observed.

Many of the debates among competing paradigms in political science are concerned with peripheral elements rather than the basic assumptions of the paradigms. Since the major assumptions of any paradigm are rooted in metaphysical theories of the nature of reality, tests of one paradigm are likely to deal with phenomena that may not be considered in another. The article outlines the main metaphysical theories —materialism, idealism, and dualism —then proceeds to demonstrate that the primacy of matter versus ideas is central to paradigms of explanation in one area of political science, namely, theories of urban unrest. A survey of competing theories highlights the metaphysical assumptions and methodological preferences of each contending paradigm. The article argues that more attention should be paid to the metaphysical assumptions of paradigms in order to sharpen the focus of the research agenda.

The article examines Voegelin's understanding ofnousas the ground for theorizing, and relates this back to Aristotle. Aristotle is shown to have understood the activities ofnousin two distinct ways. On the one hand,nousis the divine activity of the soul exploring its own ground. Butnousis also induction (epagôgê) of the first principles of science through sense perception, memory and experience. The two basic activities ofnousare related, but they have different values when it comes to the world of particulars. The argument is that a substantive ethical and political science—one that sheds light on particulars—must include the inductive employment ofnousand that the exclusion of this from Voegelin's political science results in some discernible limitations.The limitations of Eric Voegelin—s work are sometimes difficult to keep in view, particularly while he is expounding upon the totality of Being, the myriad dimensions of human consciousness, and the nature of order in personal, social, and historical existence. But in fact Voegelin's work is more limited than his magisterial tone might suggest. The argument of this article is that while Voegelin offers his readers profoundly important insights into the structure of human consciousness and into what Aristotle called first philosophy, the study of beingquabeing, he does not offer his readers much in the way of a substantive ethical or political science.

In the United States, the primary responsibility for education lies with individual states. To be sure, the federal government plays an enabling role, particularly in higher education; its programs of financial aid and assistance create opportunity for millions of Americans, helping ensure that those who seek a higher education can do so regardless of their financial circumstance. But it is states that create the particular environment for education, not just in the primary and secondary levels but also in the domain of higher education. This report examines the policy environments in two states in the United States: New Jersey and New Mexico. Through an extensive series of interviews with state policy officials as well as data collection and analysis, this report analyses the relationship between the higher education policy environment and the grades these two states attained on the report cards measures. ; The National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education

This research explores voter preferences in the multi-dimensional policy space of the 2015 UK general election, as well as the influence of those preferences on vote choice. In our original pre-election survey, we apply a conjoint experimental design where we use actual party manifestos to examine voters' policy preferences across five main policy domains. This design allows us to both identify voters' sincere preferences, as estimated by their responses to hypothetical policy packages, and to reveal the influence of these preferences on voter support in the actual election. Our analysis reveals a considerable level of congruence between voters' underlying policy preferences and their vote choice in the 2015 election. Our results also speak to the previous literature on policy preferences and vote choice by demonstrating that voters not only weigh the importance of particular policy domains differently, but also have clear preferences regarding specific policy positions in a given domain, which eventually influence their support for a party in the election.

Fiscal policy, including its expenditure aspect, is often discussed and analysed from a variety of angles in the literature on public finances, undoubtedly due to the major importance of this topic. However, not all areas of the expenditure part of fiscal policy have been subjected to in-depth analysis. One of the less discussed tools of fiscal policy consists of general purpose transfers, which are a certain type of expenditure passed from the central budget to local governments. This study focuses on presenting the systems for subsidising sub-national governments in selected European countries and evaluating, based on a synthetic measure, the fiscal policies of France, Italy, the Netherlands, Lithuania, Poland and Finland implemented by means of general transfers, with the aim of identifying the best fiscal policy with respect to subsidising and the characteristic features determining its success. The method of unitisation of statistical feature values was employed in this study to enable comparative analysis. As suggested by the results of the analysis, spanning the years 2003-2012, the highest-ranked fiscal policy implemented via general-purpose transfers has been developed in the Netherlands.

This article sets out and tests a theory of public policy investment - how democratic governments seek to enhance their chances of re-election by managing a portfolio of policy priorities for the public, analogous to the relationship between investment manager and client. Governments choose policies that yield returns the public values; and rebalance their policy priorities later to adjust risk and stabilize return. Do the public reward returns to policy capital or punish risky policy investments? The article investigates whether returns to policy investment guide political management and statecraft. Time-series analyses of risk and return in Britain 1971-2000 reveal that risk and return on government policy portfolios predict election outcomes, and that returns, risk profiles and the uncertainty in public signals influence the prioritization of policies. Adapted from the source document.