‘Just like working for the dole’: Rural households,export crops and state subsidies in Papua New Guinea

Globally national governments have been forced to devise means for dealing with a rising tide of unemployed and semi‐employed. One method used in industrial countries involves reducing the levels of welfare payments and attaching particular conditions for the receipt of unemployment benefits. Working for the dole is one such condition. In non‐industrial countries, with primarily rural populations and without previously established unemployment benefits, other forms of dealing with increased levels of the relative surplus population have been devised. When unemployed are associated with lawlessness, forming a threat to social order and capital accumulation, particularly in urban centres, particular efforts are made to keep people in the countryside. Although household production of export crops faces global surpluses and falling international prices, one means of pressing the relative surplus population to smallholdings has been to subsidise their growing of even greater volumes of the produce. The dressing of virtuous rhetoric, ‘honest toil’ and similar terms, should not disguise the fact that the nationally subsidised crop prices are a form of welfare payment. The payment is intended to resecure the subsumption of labour to capital in conditions where accumulation forces increasing numbers of people into pools of surplus labour. Here the case of rural households in Papua New Guinea is utilised for an argument which has a much wider application.     

Shaping the Evolution of the Information Flow: The Centralizing Mechanisms in the Evolution of the North American Tobacco Quitline Consortium

The research reported here is an analysis of the evolution of the relationships that comprise a single public health network, focusing especially on the position of the network administrative organization (Provan and Kenis 2008 Provan, K. G. and P. Kenis. 2008. “Modes of Network Governance: Structure, Management, and Effectiveness.” Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory 18(2): 229–252.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) in the flow of knowledge among a large number of organizations providing similar services. Our study examines the North American Quitline Consortium (NAQC), a multi-sector network that spans the US and Canada and whose members provide telephone-based tobacco cessation services to anyone interested in quitting smoking. Data were collected using web-based surveys at three different points of time. Implications are discussed for network organizing, for both theory and practice, focusing especially on the importance of the network administrative organization in shaping the evolution of the whole network information flow.     

Transfer or transformation? What the German social science literature has to say about unification and its systemic effects

This paper serves as a review and critical assessment of the German social science literature on unification. The main concepts of unification analysis from Offe, Lehmbruch, Seibel, Czada and Wiesenthal are introduced. Each of these authors approaches unification using a form of Lehmbruch ‘s institution transfer paradigm. The usefulness of this paradigm is limited because it plays down the transformative impact of unification in spite of the consensus that unification has wrought significant changes. In the future, the line demarcating the extent to which the transfer paradigm has given way to a transformation‐centred paradigm will define one cutting edge in German studies.     

Parenting Behaviors,Association with Deviant Peers,and Delinquency in African American Adolescents: A Mediated-Moderation Model

The aim of the present study was to examine a model positing that association with deviant peers mediates the relation between adolescent perceived parenting behaviors (maternal monitoring and involvement), the interaction of these parenting behaviors, and delinquency in a sample of 135 urban African American adolescents (13–19 years of age). Regression analyses revealed a monitoring by involvement interaction among African American females, suggesting that maternal monitoring may effectively reduce delinquency among African American female adolescents, and that this reduction may be enhanced by increased maternal involvement. Among African American males, only the relation between association with deviant peers and delinquency was supported, suggesting that maternal parenting behaviors may, in isolation, be insufficient in the prevention of delinquent behaviors in African American male adolescents. The results suggest that the pathways from parenting to association with deviant peers and delinquency may differ in males and females, and the salience of certain parenting behaviors may differ across gender. This article is based on research that was submitted by the first author in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the master’s degree in psychology at the University at Albany, State University of New York. Support for this research was provided by a Faculty Research Award to the second author. Doctoral student in the Clinical Psychology Program at the University at Albany, State University of New York. Her major research interests include risk and resiliency processes in minority youth and measurement equivalence of risk and resiliency constructs. Assistant professor in the Department of Psychology at the University at Albany, State University of New York. She received her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the University of North Texas. Her major research interests are ecocultural models of risk and resiliency in minority youth and measurement equivalence of risk and resiliency constructs. Post-doctoral fellow with the Prevention Research Center at Arizona State University. He received his Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the University at Albany, State University of New York. His major research interests are ecocultural models of risk and resiliency in children, preventive intervention development for diverse children, and quantitative methodology and applications in developmental and cross-cultural psychology.     

The changing face of ‘Drivers of Change’

In 2001 the UK Government's Department for International Development (DFID) launched a new way of conducting political economy analysis, called ‘Drivers of Change’ (DoC). DoC is now well known amongst international development practitioners and professionals. This article provides an introduction to DoC, explaining what it is, where DoC analysis has taken place and which organisations have been involved. It also explores the history and background to DoC, outlines its effect on other bi and multi‐lateral donors and shows how the approach has evolved over the last 5 years. The final section of the article analyses some of the current limitations in the way DoC analysis is used by DFID and predicts how the approach may develop in the future. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

EXEMPT PROPRIETARY COMPANY ANNUAL REPORTING REQUIREMENTS: PUBUC INTEREST OR BUREAUCRATIC EMPIRE-BUILDING?

Abstract: Australian small business enterprises, operated as exempt proprietary companies, are exposed to numerous statutory requirements. The Corporations Law Simplification Taskforce has proposed a number of changes with the stated objective of minimising the statutory burdens faced by small business. One of the recommendations of the taskforce is that most exempt proprietary companies be exempted from the requirement to supply key financial data in annual returns lodged with the Australian Securities Commission. This paper provides a review of the existing statutory responsibility for exempt proprietary companies to prepare annual returns including key financial data and lodge them with the ASC. A common justification offered for the introduction and continued maintenance of annual reporting requirements has been the protection of the public interest. The “public choice” theory of regulation provides alternative explanations for the regulation, including the promotion of producer interests or the promotion of the interests of the regulatory agency responsible for the administration of the legislation, the Australian Securities Commission, and other government departments such as Attorney-General's, Finance and Treasury. The existence of alternative explanations raises the possibility that the regulation is not motivated exclusively by the public interest. Indirect evidence of the usefulness of the annual reporting requirements was gathered with a consideration of the quality of the key financial data disclosed in annual returns. More than 40% of the annual returns lodged by a sample of exempt proprietary companies, during the years 1986 to 1989, contained key financial data which was inconsistent with being extracted from a properly prepared balance sheet (where assets minus liabilities equal shareholders' equity). The possibility that the maintenance of annual reporting requirements is not in the public interest, and the limited reliability of key financial data disclosures made, offers some support for the recent recommendations of the Corporations Law Simplification Taskforce that annual reporting requirements for small business enterprises be modified.     

Cycle avoiding trajectories,strategic agendas,and the duality of memory and foresight: An informal exposition

This paper considers the notion of cycle avoiding trajectories in majority voting tournaments and shows that they underlie and guide several apparently disparate voting processes. The set of alternatives that are maximal with respect to such trajectories constitutes a new solution set of considerable significance. It may be dubbed the Banks set, in recognition of the important paper by Banks (1985) that first made use of this set. The purpose of this paper is to informally demonstrate that the Banks set is a solution set of broad relevance for understanding group decision making in both cooperative and non-cooperative settings and under both sincere and sophisticated voting. In addition, we show how sincere and sophisticated voting processes can be viewed as mirror images of one another — embodying respectively, “dmemory” and “foresight.” We also show how to develop the idea of a “sophisticated agenda,” one in which the choice of what alternatives to propose is itself a matter of strategic calculation.