National planning in the United States

This paper is concerned with the relatively new interest in national planning in the United States. The effects of the Arab oil embargo and price increases, impending scarcities of minerals, inflation, unemployment, and other problems seem to be reversing the American public's negative views of planning by the Federal government. Assuming that negative sentiments are still strong and aware of the difficulty of institutional change, the authors submit a modest proposal for initiating a formal system of indicative national planning.The proposal is based upon an analysis of the economic challenges facing the United States and the apparent inability of the Federal government to respond effectively to change. The solution is seen as the need for an economic intelligence activity coupled to the formulation of ‘inventories of policy alternatives’, with a minimum of structural change or expansion in governmental structure.The recent Humphrey-Javits proposal for national planning is discussed briefly and critically.     

Building alliances: Defending immigrant rights in rural Oregon

Political participation in the rural United States has often been narrowly defined within the confines of electoral politics. Increasingly, participants in rural US social movements have highlighted the shortcomings of democracy defined purely in terms of electoral politics in favour of a more participatory model of politics that focuses on the social and cultural rights of those who are often formally or informally excluded from the liberal definition of citizenship. This article highlights the process of claiming rights as cultural citizens in a political context where there are efforts through the formal political system—usually in the form of ballot referendums at the state or local level—to further limit the rights of specific constituencies such as gay, lesbian and transgendered individuals or immigrants. A second focus of this article is on the dynamics of solidarity and alliance building between different kinds of social movements acting in concert to push for cultural rights and then formal rights for each other's constituencies. The article specifically seeks to illustrate how two organizations that share quite different constituencies and agendas can effectively collaborate in regional and state-wide campaigns in the rural state of Oregon, while also honestly discussing their differences and difficulties in working together.     

参与的必要性——走向现代儒家政治

现代新儒家所面临的一个重要问题是:这一以道德为主要关注点的文化传统如何与现代民主政治相适应?与那种认为儒家应局限于道德教育的观点相反,文章认为儒家必须发展出一种参与性的政治,其原因有三:一是政治参与是个人道德培养的必要手段;二是政治的独立性要求客观的制度结构而不仅仅是道德教化;三是我们人性中的缺陷只有通过广泛的政治参与才能克服.     

Language rights: Moving the debate forward

This article provides an overview of the current issues and challenges facing the nascent paradigm of minority language rights (MLR). It focuses on the theoretical points of dispute and tension with respect to MLR, as well as the challenges attendant upon their implementation in complex, multiethnic and multilingual contexts. The article acknowledges, but also responds to, key critiques of MLR to date. These include debates about linguistic modernisation, linguistic identities and essentialism, language and social mobility, and macro and micro language practices. In light of these debates, the article speculates about possible ways forward for the MLR paradigm.     

Preventing the Importation of Illicit Nuclear Materials in Shipping Containers

We develop a mathematical model to find the optimal inspection strategy for detecting a nuclear weapon (or nuclear material to make a weapon) from being smuggled into the United States in a shipping container, subject to constraints of port congestion and an overall budget. We consider an 11-layer security system consisting of shipper certification, container seals, and a targeting software system, followed by passive (neutron and gamma), active (gamma radiography), and manual testing at overseas and domestic ports. Currently implemented policies achieve a low detection probability, and improved security requires passive and active testing of trusted containers and manually opening containers that cannot be penetrated by radiography. The annual cost of achieving a high detection probability of a plutonium weapon using existing equipment in traditional ways is roughly several billion dollars if testing is done domestically, and is approximately five times higher if testing is performed overseas. Our results suggest that employing high-energy x-ray radiography and elongating the passive neutron tests at overseas ports may provide significant cost savings, and several developing technologies, radiation sensors inside containers and tamper-resistant electronic seals, should be pursued aggressively. Further effort is critically needed to develop a practical neutron interrogation scheme that reliably detects moderately shielded, highly enriched uranium.     

Organizational Structure and Innovation in U.K. Voluntary Social Welfare Organizations: Applying the Aston Measures

This paper discusses the methodological issues involved in assessing the impact of organizational structure upon the innovative capacity of voluntary organizations. It reports the use of a specific methodological tool—the Aston measures—as an approach to these issues. In addition to the empirical findings reported, this paper argues for these measures as a useful addition to the methodological tool kit of voluntary sector researchers.     

Migration Trends in the Kansas Ogallala Region and the Internal Colonial Dependency Model

Abstract The High Plains of the United States has been portrayed both as a place of despair and a region of renaissance. This study proposes that, within the Ogallala Aquifer portion of the High Plains, landscapes of decline and renaissance co-exist within the context of an internal colonial dependency model. While the notion of internal colonial dependency has been applied primarily to the central Appalachian region, an assessment of population change in the High Plains of western Kansas suggests some striking similarities with the population change expected in a region conforming to the internal colonial dependency metaphor. This study identifies a wide range of colonial dependent characteristics, as they apply to the High Plains, with a focus on migration. Demographic changes supporting a colonial influence include long-term population decline in most counties, high median age, high levels of channelized out-migration, even higher levels of channelized in-migration, in-migration flow origins that are concentrated in just four other Ogallala states, and a continued long-term trend of exporting the region'S most educated inhabitants.     

Exploring Strategic Positioning in the UK Charitable Sector: Emerging Evidence from Charitable Organizations that Provide Public Services

The UK voluntary sector operates in an arguably enabling policy context. Yet, other external environmental influences have posed major challenges for charitable organizations within the wider voluntary sector. This paper aims to rectify the current lack of empirical research on how charitable organizations have responded in terms of their strategic positioning to the changing external operating environment and policy context. It both explores the positioning strategies adopted by two contrasting British charities that deliver public services in different ways, and investigates the factors that have influenced their choice of positioning strategies. The cases studied extend our knowledge of strategic positioning in organizations other than commercial (for-profit) ones. The findings provide new evidence that charities have begun to strategically position themselves in response to both internal organizational factors and external environmental influences. Emerging lessons from the experiences of the case study organizations provide guidance to charity managers in planning and implementing strategic positioning in their organizations. The findings also underscore the need to develop theoretical and conceptual management models specific to non-profit organizations, such as charities.     

Mutual benefit as outcome indicator: Factors influencing perceptions of benefit in organization–public relationships

The notion of mutual benefit has been a foundational assumption for scholars who use the relationship management perspective. Although many studies have inferred that mutual benefit links to organizational outcomes, no study to date has linked quantitatively key public member perception of benefit to positive organizational results. The current investigation sought to quantify the link between respondent perception of benefit and traditional organizational outcomes such as satisfaction and behavioral intent.     

A Bayesian Non-parametric Approach to Survival Analysis Using Polya Trees

This paper presents a Bayesian non-parametric approach to survival analysis based on arbitrarily right censored data. The analysis is based on posterior predictive probabilities using a Polya tree prior distribution on the space of probability measures on [0, ∞). In particular we show that the estimate generalizes the classical Kaplanndash;Meier non-parametric estimator, which is obtained in the limiting case as the weight of prior information tends to zero.