Suchergebnisse

In response to increasing globalization, new models that show how factors & actors interact are being suggested. One of the older models, the iron triangles, symbolically represent the Second Industrial Revolution & its three sides represent politicians, bureaucrats, & interests. That model is being replaced with the golden pentangles model that includes the three sides from the iron triangles but also includes the highly institutionalized activities of the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, & the World Trade Organization as one of the new sides, & the interlocking web of governance composed of mixed public/private sector quasi-institutions & nonstate actors as the remaining. This model has a tendency to be more elitist because the actors will be transnationally linked but at the same time increases competition between the groups that limits the chances for a monolithic state. Research will further the understanding of the structure of the golden pentangles. R. Larsen

'Japan Inc.' is manifested in the agricultural sector as a classic subgovernment consisting of the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, the Liberal Democratic Party, and the agricultural cooperative organisation (Nokyo). This three-way coalition of bureaucratic, party and producer organisations forms an 'iron triangle' of vested interest in agricultural support and protection. The agricultural public works component of the agricultural iron triangle is also linked to the larger iron triangle of public works, one of Japan's most notorious interest coalitions. In the past decade, processes of electoral reform, administrative reform and financial liberalisation have presented each of the elements in the agricultural iron triangle with problems of political and organisational adjustment. At the same time, tripartite policymaking within the agricultural policy subgovernment has been institutionalised, and the LDP's agricultural leadership is now directly penetrating the agricultural bureaucracy. Similarly, macro-policy trends such as deregulation, trade liberalization and fiscal stimulus have influenced the concessions and benefits flowing to the agricultural and rural sectors both positively and negatively. While a degree of induced marketisation and liberalisation has taken place, a defensive consolidation of the agricultural support and protection regime can be discerned with the passage of the 1999 Food, Agriculture and Rural Areas Basic Law. Moreover, the iron triangle of vested interests in agricultural and rural public works has been strengthened by policies to combat Japan's sustained economic recession. On balance, therefore, innovation and reform are being offset by factors perpetuating the status quo and even further entrenching the agricultural support and protection regime.

I have entitled this address From the Triangle to the Pentagon: Open Universities in the 21st Century. In the light of current events I hasten to add that I am not talking about the Sunni triangle and the building in Washington from which the war in Iraq is directed. Many of you know my fondness for explaining the success of educational technology in general, and open and distance learning in particular, in terms of an iron triangle made up of the vectors of access, cost and quality. Some colleagues in India even call this the Daniel Triangle, although I disclaim any ownership. // The importance of these three parameters in education is obvious. I first heard them used as a way of analysing developments in higher education when I was a new university president attending one of my first meetings of the Council of Ontario Universities in the mid-1980s. The then president of the University of Toronto, George Connell, used these three vectors to analyse Ontario government policy for higher education and the idea has stayed with me ever since. Today, however, I am going to add two more vectors and look at today's challenges to open universities as a pentagon.

Many political scientists like institutions, in particular exog-
enous institutions, which guide and constrain actions and
allow scholars to concentrate more narrowly on behaviors
within well-defined settings. For the interest groups subfield,
institutions tend to be more mercurial than those in other
areas of American politics. For instance, fundamental aspects
of Congress may be institutionalized, but groups and lobby-
ists come and go. The environment of interests is ever
changing. Characterizing the interactions between legislators
and lobbyists is made more difficult because of the lack of
clear institutional structures that guide or constrain behav-
iors. The iron triangle concept was powerful and meaningful
because it provided at the least a loose framework for the
analysis of legislator-lobbyist interactions. Kevin Hula's new
book follows the reasoning of Hugh Heclo and William
Browne, who argue that the iron triangle concept is outdated
and inappropriate. That convenient metaphor suggested an
informal institutional structure that is simply no longer
appropriate. Without the iron triangle, what can fill the void?

Examines evolution and crisis of the Japanese construction industry and implications of the "iron triangle" model; 1970-2001.