Moral dilemmas and pedagogical challenges in teaching about genocide

Human Rights Review -     

The Federal Line Item Veto Experiment: After the Supreme Court Ruling,What's Next?

The federal line item veto has ceased to exist, thanks to the Supreme Court's June 1998 ruling invalidating the expansion of the president's rescission authority that was contained in the Line Item Veto Act. This article reviews the application of the Act during 1997, its effect on spending and the deficit, the judicial reaction to its use, and the prospects for the restoration of some version of the power. President Clinton was quite restrained in the use of his new power, with the exception of his cancellations in the Military Construction appropriation bill; these were ultimately restored by the Congress. Because of the president's restraint, the Line Item Veto Act had a miniscule affect on spending and the deficit; total cancellations represented less than .04 percent of FY98 discretionary budget authority. Ultimately, the Supreme Court held that the Act violated Article I, Section 7 because it created a Constituionally impermissable way for the president to change laws. There is no clear fallback position for supporters of the Act; alternatives are either difficult to enact, hard to administer, or too weak to be considered an effective substitute. Given the problems in enacting any alternative, it may be that the federal line item veto will end up only as a historical anomaly.     

Federal Budgeting After September 11th: A Whole New Ballgame,or Is It Déjà Vu All Over Again?

Federal budgeting has undergone some profound changes since the tragic events of September 11th, 2001. Large surpluses that existed prior to September 11th and were forecast to continue have been replaced by equally large and intractable deficits. The consensus around a macro‐level norm for federal budgeting has completely broken down. In other ways, the federal budget process has not changed at all. Despite the emphasis on defense and homeland security, domestic discretionary spending is still continuing unabated, as it has since the late 1980s. Further, the federal government continues to have chronic difficulty adopting its budget in a timely fashion.     

Thinking Globally,Integrating Locally: Gender,Entrepreneurship and Urban Citizenship in Germany

Germany's refusal to pursue active integration policies for three decades has unleashed surprising do-it-yourself-integration processes among migrant communities, as demonstrated by dramatic changes in the Turkish ethnic economy since 1990. This study embeds these developments in an analytical framework linking economic enclaves and urban citizenship. Initially motivated by structural unemployment and social exclusion, guestworkers and their offspring are turning to self-employment, not only adding new jobs to an otherwise moribund national economy but also promoting urban revitalization in cities like Berlin, Frankfurt and Cologne. The study outlines generational differences within the Turkish-German community, ascertaining that third-generation ethnics are more likely to start businesses outside the food sector and more willing to embrace FRG citizenship. It describes the size and scope of ethnic enterprises across Germany, followed by a treatment of women entrepreneurs in Berlin. Ethnic associations indirectly foster “participatory” consciousness among males, but women tend to identify directly with the society that offers opportunities not available to them in the purported Turkish homeland. Instead of producing “parallel societies” (as German politicians often insist), ethnic businesses and local community involvement are crucial in bridging majority and minority cultures, on the one hand, and in granting Turkish entrepreneurs top-level access to state policy-makers—even without the formal rights of citizenship.     

Using Performance Measures for Federal Budgeting: Proposals and Prospects

The political system, the popular press, and the public have recently been concerned about measuring government performance. This concern for measuring performance should imply a concern for measuring it correctly. With this in mind, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) recently conducted an analysis of the use of performance measures in the budget process. The study attempts to review the issues raised by performance budgeting in the context of past and current efforts to link performance measures and budgeting. This article focuses on two portions of that study: The status of the current federal performance measurement efforts and specific observations designed to inject a note of caution into the current debate about performance measurement and budgeting.