The Shi'i ulama and the state in Iran

Conclusion In this article I attempted to explain the politics of the ulama in terms of class struggle. I indicated that ulama political orientations, and the emergence of politically divergent factions in their midst, were historically correlated with the interests of the traditional petty bourgeoisie, the merchants, and the landlords. In other words, from the political class struggle viewpoint, diverse factions among the ulama tended to represent these diverse social classes. The ulama, it is true, defended their divergent political positions through their interpretations of the Islamic laws. Therefore, the assertion that a particular group of the ulama were political representatives of a particular class, say, the petty bourgeoisie, is not to suggest that they consciously interpreted their religious texts so as to justify the petty bourgeoisie interests, or that they were the enthusiastic champions of the petty bourgeoisie. What makes them representatives of the petty bourgeoisie, says Marx, is the fact that in their mind they do not get beyond the limits which the latter do not get beyond in life, that they are consequently driven, theoretically, to the same problems and solutions to which material interest and social position drive the latter practically. This is, in general, the relationship between the political and literary representatives of a class and the class they represent. I should stress that the relationship between class representatives and the class they represent is not unproblematic. Whenever the ulama have defended a particular issue, they have done so according to their own ideological mode of discourse. In their interpretations of the teachings of Shi'ism they all must follow, and submit to, the internal logic of the ideology of Shi'ism and its specific modes of discourse, which are considered proper and acceptable by all the ulama. In other words, all the ulama, conservative or radical, must base their argument on the same set of ideological premises. Thus the content of the (Usuli) teachings of Shi'ism, as well as its specific modes of discourse put limits on the range of ideologically defensible political actions. (Such limits might explain why the ulama never attempted to defend the interests of workers and peasants.) This factor combined with the ulama's conscious efforts to maintain an ideological uniformity and organizational unity may provide them with a certain degree of relative autonomy in the field of class struggle. How these factors affect the course and direction of class struggle is another aspect of ulama politics that needs an in-depth investigation.

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People as partners: Facilitating people's participation in public–private partnerships for solid waste management

Cities in developing countries are facing a double dilemma. On one hand, the urban population is growing rapidly, causing a huge increase in demand for waste management services. On the other hand, the traditional public sector is failing to respond to the increased demand for service. The public sector is constrained by resource and institutional limitations. It is often proposed that the solution lies in private sector participation. It is expected that the private sector, with its dynamism and flexibility, may fill in the service delivery gaps by forming partnership with the public sector. However, a third tier—the people—is often overlooked in the service delivery framework. Citizens can contribute significantly to service delivery. They can support the private sector with payment of service charges. But more importantly, they can play an active role in improving accountability and service quality of both public and private sector. This radical shift in people's role, from passive service receivers to active service partners, however, may not occur endogenously. External help from facilitating agencies may enable the public and private sector to form partnership with people for better service delivery. This article examines the role of facilitating agencies in developing tripartite partnership for solid waste management service in Bangladesh. The key lessons learned are: a number of obstacles prevented spontaneous partnership among the public sector, private sector and people; facilitating agencies were able to overcome the obstacles to form partnership of the three; and, the tripartite arrangement resulted in higher accountability and better service delivery.     

Public sector delivery of waste management services: cases from the Indian Sub-Continent

This paper discusses the role of public sector institutions in the delivery of urban services, with a particular focus on waste management in the Indian Sub-Continent. Public sector institutions are the major stakeholders in the delivery of urban sevices. They hold the major responsibilities, funds and employ a large number of staff. The public sector institutions are also exposed to political influence and the institutional changes are often politically or donors driven. However, since new institutions such as non-government organisations and private sector are taking important roles in the actual delivery of services, there is a greater need to understand the existing linkages to promote integration. The informal sector also provides services to a large number of population. In order to promote efficient and effective delivery of urban services, it is important to work on the integrated approaches involving key stakeholders.     

Using principal components to test normality of high-dimensional data

Many multivariate statistical procedures are based on the assumption of normality and different approaches have been proposed for testing this assumption. The vast majority of these tests, however, are exclusively designed for cases when the sample size n is larger than the dimension of the variable p, and the null distributions of their test statistics are usually derived under the asymptotic case when p is fixed and n increases. In this article, a test that utilizes principal components to test for nonnormality is proposed for cases when p/n → c. The power and size of the test are examined through Monte Carlo simulations, and it is argued that the test remains well behaved and consistent against most nonnormal distributions under this type of asymptotics.     

A New Weibull–Pareto Distribution: Properties and Applications

Many distributions have been used as lifetime models. In this article, we propose a new three-parameter Weibull–Pareto distribution, which can produce the most important hazard rate shapes, namely, constant, increasing, decreasing, bathtub, and upsidedown bathtub. Various structural properties of the new distribution are derived including explicit expressions for the moments and incomplete moments, Bonferroni and Lorenz curves, mean deviations, mean residual life, mean waiting time, and generating and quantile functions. The Rényi and q entropies are also derived. We obtain the density function of the order statistics and their moments. The model parameters are estimated by maximum likelihood and the observed information matrix is determined. The usefulness of the new model is illustrated by means of two real datasets on Wheaton river flood and bladder cancer. In the two applications, the new model provides better fits than the Kumaraswamy–Pareto, beta-exponentiated Pareto, beta-Pareto, exponentiated Pareto, and Pareto models.     

Does Transformational Leadership Better Predict Work-Related Outcomes Than Transactional Leadership in the NPO Context? Evidence from Italy

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations - With limited studies on the relative effectiveness of different leadership styles in NPOs, the purpose of this paper is to...     

Solid waste collection by the private sector: Households’ perspective—Findings from a study in Dar es Salaam city, Tanzania

The issue of poor solid waste management (SWM) is a challenge throughout the world, in both developed and developing countries. People always generate solid waste through their daily activities. This solid waste needs to be properly managed in a way that minimises risk to the environment and human health, which means storage, collection and proper disposal. At the same time solid waste creates livelihoods for the urban poor in terms of employment and business. This paper looks into one aspect of SWM, namely collection service.The importance of SWM is now recognised at international, national and community level. The Agenda 21 declaration of the United Nations [UN. (1993). The global partnership for environment and development: A guide to agenda 21 (pp. 88–94). New York: United Nations] addresses the issue of environmentally sound management of solid waste, with emphasis on the extension of solid waste service coverage to all urban and rural areas worldwide.SWM is a service for which local governments are usually responsible. However, due to inadequate capacity in the public sector, in many developing countries the private sector has stepped in to fill the gap in service provision. Dar es Salaam (DSM), Tanzania, is one such developing country city in which the private sector has become involved in solid waste collection services. The sector comprises Non-Government Organisations (NGOs), Community-Based Organisations (CBOs), and local private companies [Kassim, S. M., & Ali, S. M. (2003). Private solid waste collection SERVICE, Dar es Salaam Tanzania. In Proceedings of the 29th WEDC international conference: Towards millenium development goals. Abuja Nigeria, Water and Engineering Centre WEDC]. The private sector in solid waste collection in DSM has been promoted by Sustainable DSM Programme (SDP) through Environmental Planning and Management (EPM) [UNCHS. (1994a). Sustainable Human Settlements Development: Implementing Agenda 21; UNCHS. (1994b). UNCHS (Habitat) Activities; New Envoy to UNCHS from the United Republic of Tanzania. Habitat News, 16, 1–3].Contracting out of solid waste collection services to the private sector has emerged to fill the gap in service delivery. In 1991 the city was generating 1400 tonnes of solid waste per day out of which only 5% was being collected. Currently daily solid waste generation is estimated at about 2500 tonnes and approximately 48% of the total waste generated is collected. At present, privatisation covers 44 out of 73 city wards, and 45¹ active registered private companies are involved [Chinamo, E. B. M. (2003). An overview of solid waste management and how solid waste collection benefits the poor in the city of Dar es Salaam. Solid waste collection that benefits the poor, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, Collaborating Working Group on Solid Waste Management in Low and Middle -Income Countries (CWG)].This paper presents the findings of a study that explored the households’ perspective on solid waste collection services provided by the private sector. The study showed that the solid waste collection service by the private sector is greatly influenced by households’ attitudes and behaviour. Their participation, demand for service, awareness, satisfaction level and views on cost recovery are important in the sector. The study concludes that the above factors would be superior if customers (households) were more involved in the planning and decision-making.     

Realist Evaluation for Practice

Correspondence to Mansoor A. F. Kazi, Director, Centre for Evaluation Studies, School of Human and Health Sciences, Harold Wilson Building, University of Huddersfield, Queensgate, Huddersfield HD1 3DH, UK. E-mail: m.a.f.kazi{at}hud.ac.uk Summary This paper outlines the new, emerging realist paradigm in evaluationresearch, and applies it to social work practice. This paradigmhas the potential for a ‘white box’ evaluation thatnot only systematically tracks outcomes, but also the mechanismsthat produce the outcomes, the contexts in which these mechanismsare triggered, and the content of the interventions (or thegenerative mechanisms introduced by a programme). Two examplesare provided, both studies with an extensive use of single-subjectdesigns by practitioners within a realist paradigm. This articleis based on the author's invited keynote address at the OhioState University's Thirteenth National Symposium on DoctoralResearch in Social Work, 6 April 2001.     

Knowledge and beliefs about national development and developmental hierarchies: The viewpoints of ordinary people in thirteen countries

Scholars and policy makers have for centuries constructed and used developmental hierarchies to characterize different countries. The hypotheses motivating this paper are that such social constructions have been circulated internationally, are constructed similarly in various countries, and follow the social constructions of elite international organizations, such as the United Nations. This paper uses data from 15 surveys in 13 diverse countries to study how developmental hierarchies are understood in everyday life. Our research shows that most people have constructions of developmental hierarchies that are similar across countries and are similar to the developmental hierarchies constructed by the United Nations. These findings suggest that developmental hierarchies are widely understood around the world and are widely available to ordinary people as they make decisions about many aspects of life.