Suchergebnisse

The growing literature on the relationship between democracy and war has focused on two questions-Whether democracies are more pacific than other types of government, and why democracies do not seem to go to war against each other. In the spirit of Lakatosian cumulativeness - looking for explanations with excess empirical content - this commentary supports one explanation of the `why democracies do not fight democracies' question. The model supported is an expected utility formulation by Bueno de Mesquita & Lalman based on the logical relationships between states which are `doves' and `non-doves'. The same explanation for democracy-to-democracy peace provided by the Bueno de Mesquita-Lalman analytics, based on the ability to `separate' states into doves and non-doves, can be used to explain the linkages between integration and the Deutschian concept of `security community'.

Distance learning has become increasingly prominent in discussions of educational change. It holds promise of external learning beyond the physical confines of traditional schools, creating new forms of community. During the last decade, considerable experience has accumulated through projects that have implemented different innovative visions of distance learning. Five groups of issues have emerged that affect the success of projects; they are technology functioning, community creation, discourse forms, activity definition, and quality control. Several projects illustrate the influence of these factors in different contexts. The first research phase allows us to understand how the potential of the technologies can best be used and what supports are needed to ensure that these innovations are robust. The second phase of research asks questions about the impact of distance learning on cognitive and social functioning. These questions can be legitimately asked only from the prior sustained platform of practice.

Recent ethnographic studies of workplace practices indicate that the ways people actually work usually differ fundamentally from the ways organizations describe that work in manuals, training programs, organizational charts, and job descriptions. Nevertheless, organizations tend to rely on the latter in their attempts to understand and improve work practice. We examine one such study. We then relate its conclusions to compatible investigations of learning and of innovation to argue that conventional descriptions of jobs mask not only the ways people work, but also significant learning and innovation generated in the informal communities-of-practice in which they work. By reassessing work, learning, and innovation in the context of actual communities and actual practices, we suggest that the connections between these three become apparent. With a unified view of working, learning, and innovating, it should be possible to reconceive of and redesign organizations to improve all three.

In the next decade, our society may change from its present extensive use of technology as a mediator of human experience to a reliance on technology-permeated experience as a primary form of personal consciousness. In response, our paradigm for distance learning must evolve so that we can replicate the workplaces and communities of the future in schools today. This will aid students in filtering and interpreting the complex, pervasive informational environment that sophisticated media are creating in society. This article presents a scenario crafted to suggest the capabilities of advanced technology for making distance-learning environments more effective. Policies should be developed so that the benefits of these innovations for distance learning are realized as rapidly as possible, but we must ensure that these powerful new media do not shape the instructional message in unwanted ways.

International regimes have received increasing attention in the literature on international relations. However, little attention has been systematically paid to how compliance with them has been achieved. An analysis of the Mediterranean Action Plan, a coordinated effort to protect the Mediterranean Sea from pollution, shows that this regime actually served to empower a group of experts (members of an epistemic community), who were then able to redirect their governments toward the pursuit of new objectives. Acting in an effective transnational coalition, these new actors contributed to the development of convergent state policies in compliance with the regime and were also effective in promoting stronger and broader rules for pollution control. This suggests that in addition to providing a form of order in an anarchic international political system, regimes may also contribute to governmental learning and influence patterns of behavior by empowering new groups who are able to direct their governments toward new ends.

This article develops a framework of analysis for studying institutional approaches to conflict transformation. It draws on E. Haas's model of organizational learning. It argues that the consensus decision rule, third parties (especially the neutral and non-aligned countries, the (N + N)), and non-state actors are important factors in promoting learning and the institutionalization of the CSCE. This has entailed an incremental process of expanding commitments and developing the institutional competency and effectiveness of the CSCE. Non-state actors such as epistemic communities, transnational coalitions and opposition movements play a key role spanning the domestic-international contexts and advancing the `domestication' and effectiveness of the CSCE. Over time, these interactive forces have contributed to the transformation of East-West relations. The conclusions show that the CSCE has moved from its long-range strategy of promoting peaceful change between the blocs, to conflict prevention and crisis management. A number of mechanisms have been developed for these purposes. Whether they are effective remains to be seen.

The management of change has become characterized by an atheoretical pragmatism, overfocused on the political aspects of the change process. Emerging interest in the learning organization provides an occasion to remedy this, by developing a theory of change which is more congruent with the requirement to build learning capacity within organizations. The result should be to place learning theory more centrally within the theory of planned organizational change. This should also reinvigorate action research by defining a wider range of learning technologies and perspectives. The argument is developed by first reviewing theories of learning employed in organizational change. The notion of communities-of-practice is then developed as a core concept to highlight the paradoxical processes of inertia and change centered on groups. A series of examples is then drawn from a recent action research project in order to illustrate the possibilities for applying learning theory. Finally, a research agenda is set out for exploring the role of communities-of-practice, with some preliminary observations from a study of small-medium enterprises.

Research on the rescuers has shown that some were Christians whose activities on behalf of Jews during World War II were, at least in part, religiously inspired. This article argues that these religious rescuers have left behind important clues for the churches as they respond to Christian moral failure during the Holocaust and seek to be morally stronger communities today. Eight lessons for the churches are proposed, in the following areas: Christian attitudes toward Jews; character formation; Christian community; piety and spirituality; the Bible; religious tolerance; patriotism; and Christian moral leadership.

The role of ideas in policy processes is rather neglected in most analyses of economic policy making. This article synthesizes the main concerns of two bodies of literature that, despite their many differences, both address the process of policy formation: the first is institutional in character, exploring the way in which state agencies organize political participation; the second emphasizes the cognitive or symbolic aspects of policy debates. In particular, attention is paid to the way in which policy making is affected by the interaction of political institutions and discourse structures. More specifically, the article analyzes how different types of discourse coalitions shape the prospects for policy change and policy learning.

The debate on the correct application of the terms race and ethnicity continues while community care takes place in a multicultural society. The impact of mental illness and mental handicap (currently referred to as learning disability2) on different ethnic groups partly depends on societai influences which also deter mine the policy for service organisation. As the treatment and support of the mentally handicapped has moved away from the custodial care of yesteryear, professionals must ensure that their practice is sensitive to the religion, ethnicity and languages of the communities they serve. This paper describes examples of psychiatric clinical practice with two families of Greek and Kuwaiti background, in the setting of a community learning disability team.