Minifying Government: The Unintended Consequences of the Bergman Secondary Road Act of 1929*

Objective. In 1929, Iowa adopted the Bergman Secondary Road Act, which transferred control of the state's rural roads from the townships to the counties. This study examines the interesting and potentially important unintended consequences of the law. Method. We gathered the minutes from 2,275 Iowa township meetings in 20 townships from 1917 to 1950 to investigate the effect of the Bergman Act. Results. Multiple regression analysis shows that this apparently innocuous Act turned out to have dramatic and unintended consequences on Iowa's township governments. Without responsibility for the roads, township government activity plunged dramatically—the annual number of meetings and the length of those meetings fell by half from 1929 to 1930. The effect of the law on township activity remains substantial even after controlling for competing explanations, such as the onset of the Depression. Conclusions. The Bergman Act unintentionally caused a sharp drop in township activity and it may have initiated the gradual marginalization of Iowa township governments that continues today. It is even possible that it had a depressing effect on voter turnout in rural Iowa.     

Using Surveys in Public Participation Processes for Risk Decision Making: The Case of the 2003 British GM Nation? Public Debate

This article takes as its case study the “GM Nation?” public debate, a major participation process on the commercialization of agricultural biotechnology, which occurred in Britain during the summer of 2003. We investigate possible self‐selection biases in over 36,000 open questionnaire responses on the risks and benefits of genetically modified crops and food obtained during GM Nation? A comparison sample of equivalent responses from a statistically representative sample (n= 1,363) of the British general public obtained shortly after the conclusion of the debate is reported. This comparison shows that the GM Nation? open responses were indeed not fully representative of British “public opinion” regarding agricultural biotechnology. Rather, such opinion is not a unitary whole, but fragmented, with considerable ambivalence coexisting alongside outright opposition to GM agriculture. The methodological implications for multistage participation processes are discussed: in particular, the need to anticipate outcomes of complex design decisions, and to include representative public surveys as standard where measures of broader public attitudes to risk are an important objective.     

Cardiac measures of stress in British prison officers

This paper considers the experience of stress in British prison officers and in particular the physiological effect of work activity on those individuals. It reviews the evidence provided by some international studies as well as the recent occupational mortality statistics produced by the OPCS (1986). In particular, the paper concentrates on the benefits of using ambulatory measures of heart rate as a measure of stress and illustrates this with the initial data of a study carried out at HM Prison, Gartree. Results are described in terms of mean heart rate by time and by work activity.     

Cultural values as determinants of executive attitudes on decision making: An empirical evaluation

This article presents an empirical, cross-cultural investigation of executive attitudes on decision making, risk taking, and executive courage. Twenty-nine Arab and 40 American executives participated in this study. Six hypotheses were tested, with the results showing significant differences between managers from the two business cultures. Recommendations and directions for future research are provided.     

Back and Forth and Beyond

The Journal invited Tom Andersen, author of major pioneering work on the reflecting team, and his colleagues, to offer comment on The Reflecting Team Process in Training. We thought such a north-south dialogue was in keeping with the spirit of reflecting teams, and the team members in Melbourne and Tromsø agree — Editor.     

Community and individual acceptance: family planning services in the Sudan

The Sudan Community-Based Health Project, initiated by the University of Khartoum in cooperation with the Ministry of Health in 1980, sought to test the proposition that government-trained village midwives could provide maternal-child health and birth spacing services in addition to their ongoing obstetrical duties. The project area encompassed 92,000 people in 93 villages. The 120 midwives serving the project area received training in 4 interventions -- oral rehydration therapy, maternal and child nutrition, immunization, and birth spacing -- and introduced these services by means of 3 rounds of household visits over a 5-month period. Comparison of pre- and post-intervention survey data indicates that village midwives can indeed be used successfully to promote not only contraceptive use, but also health attitudes and practices that are positively associated with fertility regulation. Between the 2 surveys, the percentage of women who ever used contraception increased from 22% to 28%, while the percentage of current users rose from 10% to 13%. Parity was significantly related to current use; each child born multiplied the likelihood of contraceptive acceptance (by a factor of 0.76 in the post-intervention sample). Maternal education was the socioeconomic variable that most enhanced receptivity to contraceptive acceptance after the project's interventions. In terms of community-level variables, village location along the Nile and proximity to a paved road were significant correlates of contraceptive use. When variables related to the project itself were analyzed, women with vaccinated children were found to be twice as likely to contracept as those with nonvaccinated children and women who believed breast feeding should be continued during diarrhea episodes were 1.5 times more likely to use birth spacing than those who did not. Although midwives did not specifically emphasize contraceptive use, it appears women who were encouraged by midwives to take positive steps in the area of child health were also likely to become more innovative in terms of fertility regulation.     

Analysis of environmental flow requirements for macroinvertebrates in a creek affected by urban drainage (Prague metropolitan area,Czech Republic)

The habitat suitability index and environmental flow requirements were assessed for ten species of macroinvertebrates in a 2 km length section of the urban Boti? creek (average flow 0.4 m³ s^?1) in Prague. Boti? creek has been affected by two combined sewer overflows (CSO). Spring, summer and fall seasonal environmental flow requirements were identified using the Physical HABitat SIMulation System (PHABSIM) approach for the whole macroinvertebrate community: Spring – optimal flow 0.32–0.38 m³ s^?1, minimal flow 0.20–0.21 m³ s^?1 and maximal acceptable flow 0.91–0.93 m³ s^?1; Summer - optimal flow 0.42–0.45 m³ s^?1, minimal flow 0.19–0.21 m³ s^?1 and maximal acceptable flow 0.95–1.00 m³ s^?1; Fall - optimal flow 0.38–0.48 m³ s^?1, minimal flow 0.22–0.23 m³ s^?1 and maximal acceptable flow 0.95–0.98 m³ s^?1. The seasonal variability of environmental flow for all three categories is approximately 10%. Environmental flow requirements of the studied species and their life stages vary with depth, velocity and bottom substratum. Due to inflow from the CSOs, the optimal and maximal acceptable flow are not maintained and the maximal flow is exceeded by more than twice its value. Although the Instream Flow Incremental Methodology (IFIM) was primarily designed for large impounded rivers, the study proved its applicability in small streams affected by urbanization and urban drainage.