Viewpoint: The Evolution of Access to Space as an Idea and Technology

The focus of this paper is on the evolution of access to space from its beginnings as an idea to its implementation as a usable technology. This evolution takes place through the policy process that encompasses agenda setting, formulation, implementation and change. Agenda-setting is where the idea for access to space emerges. Formulation concerns the concepts and policies that then allow for implementation of launch vehicle technology. Implementation generates specific outcomes. These outcomes are initially characterized by rapid technological innovation followed by a steady state of development. The path of development is one of how access to space became wedded to national security. Changes occur as commerce and economics begin to play a role in access to space. The policy process evolves through the actions of the pertinent actors. An examination of the ways in which these pertinent actors interpreted, formulated and implemented the idea and technology of access to space is discussed. The interactions among actors take place on the basis of political, organizational and technical decisions that actors make in regard to access to space.     

Reforming the Westminster Model of Agency Governance: Britain and Ireland After the Crisis

Conventional understandings of what the Westminster model implies anticipate reliance on a top‐down, hierarchical approach to budgetary accountability, reinforced by a post–New Public Management emphasis on recentralizing administrative capacity. This article, based on a comparative analysis of the experiences of Britain and Ireland, argues that the Westminster model of bureaucratic control and oversight itself has been evolving, hastened in large part due to the global financial crisis. Governments have gained stronger controls over the structures and practices of agencies, but agencies are also key players in securing better governance outcomes. The implication is that the crisis has not seen a return to the archetypal command‐and‐control model, nor a wholly new implementation of negotiated European‐type practices, but rather a new accountability balance between elements of the Westminster system itself that have not previously been well understood.     

Scraping by: Income and Program Participation After the Loss of Extended Unemployment Benefits

Many Unemployment Insurance (UI) recipients do not find new jobs before exhausting their benefits, even when benefits are extended during recessions. Using Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) panel data covering the 2001 and 2007 to 2009 recessions and their aftermaths, we identify individuals whose jobless spells outlasted their UI benefits (exhaustees) and examine household income, program participation, and health‐related outcomes during the six months following UI exhaustion. For the average exhaustee, the loss of UI benefits is only slightly offset by increased participation in other safety net programs (e.g., food stamps), and family poverty rates rise substantially. Self‐reported disability also rises following UI exhaustion. These patterns do not vary dramatically across household demographic groups, broad income level prior to job loss, or the two business cycles. The results highlight the unique, important role of UI in the U.S. social safety net.     

The Imprisonment Crisis in America: Introduction

This article provides an overview of recent trends in imprisonment rates in America and introduces the articles in this issue of The Review of Policy Research. Incarceration rates have increased by more than 500 percent since the early 1970s and have now reached a rate of almost 700, higher than anywhere else in the world. The impact has been particularly hard on racial minorities, especially women (whose incarceration rate went from around 8 in 1975 to 59 in 2001). The “war on drugs” has been one of the main reasons behind the increases in imprisonment, along with the more general “get tough on crime” movement that began in the late 1970s. The articles in this issue center around how this recent trend in incarceration impacts the entire society, but especially poor communities. Several of the articles focus on race, age and gender as important variables, in addition to the tendency of the parole system to sort of “recycle” released prisoners back into the prison system.     

论当代资本主义的两难困局:从“滞胀”危机到“次贷”危机

当代资本主义在坚守资本主义根本制度的前提下进行了多次自我调整.凯恩斯主义挽救了资本主义,也给资本主义带来滞胀危机;新自由主义克服了滞胀危机,却加剧了贫富两极分化,引发了社会危机和次贷危机.当代资本主义两难困局表明,资本主义的自我调整不可能医治资本主义的病症,社会根本制度的变革是解决问题的唯一路径;调整不是在强化正统资本主义的元素,而是在为新社会因素的产生发挥着催生作用.     

Crisis and employment: The case of Korea

This paper examines Korea's employment dynamics and analyzes how adverse impacts could be mitigated during the recent economic crisis in comparison with the 1997 to 1998 Asian crisis. A clear lesson is that policies to mitigate adverse impacts of financial crisis on the macroeconomic level should be given priority for preserving employment. In this regard, expansionary monetary and fiscal policies to keep aggregate demand from collapsing need to be emphasized once a crisis breaks out. However, equally crucial is the maintenance of sound pre‐crisis fundamentals to help keep negative impacts from proliferating, even when a crisis is triggered. In addition, flexible labor market structures and temporary employment‐boosting policies appear to be necessary to reduce the negative impacts of a crisis on workers. © 2011 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

The Financial Crisis: A Retrospective

Government efforts to manage the financial crisis and to promote economic recovery have been extensive over the past three years. Hundreds of billions of dollars have been distributed—and much of it now repaid—from the Troubled Asset Relief Program. The Federal Reserve holds more than $2 trillion in mortgage‐backed securities, collateralized loans to financial institutions, and other assets and liabilities to maintain liquidity in the financial markets. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act injected more than $600 billion into the economy through tax breaks, loans, contracts, grants, and entitlements. Congress also passed the Dodd‐Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act in 2010. Yet economic recovery remains flat. The author examines the reform effort to date, key points of its primary focus, and the politics of implementing the reform as a factor in eventual economic recovery. One component of the reform, the creation of a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, holds the greatest potential for changing the way consumers participate in the financial markets, but also has drawn the greatest debate and opposition. While regulatory reform alone will not revive the economy, a newly conceived and broadly participatory Consumer Financial Protection Bureau could simplify and streamline the complex linkages that contribute to the supply of credit.     

生态危机:当代技术文化危机与系统转化

生态危机是人类当代技术文化危机的征候之一。当寻求生态危机的根源时,我们不应把技术当成一种纯粹工具理性进行质疑甚至贬抑,辩证剖析生态危机与技术文化的内在关联,实现系统转化,进而选择适宜的生态文化模式,才能使我们的反思和批判达到一个新的高度。     

Crisis Navigation: Lessons from History for the Crisis Manager in Chief

As fundamental tests of presidential leadership and organizational capacity, crises can make or break an administration. This article presents a conceptual analysis of what makes any crisis situation challenging to deal with, and it develops a set of analytical steps that can help crisis managers diagnose particular crisis situations they might face. The proposed crisis navigation framework brings together case research studies and theories of organizational processes, so that those assuming responsibility for steering the government and society through crises—including the Obama administration—have a useful point of entry into the growing crisis management literature.     

Minorities and Modernity: The Crisis of Liberal Secularism

The Enlightenment as the origin of modernity and as the foundation of moral universalism has been much invoked by social theory in recent years especially by writers influenced by Michel Foucault's essay on the subject. Postmodernism and cultural anthropology have made the question about Enlightenment universalism ever more pressing. At one level the issue is very simple. By its emphasis on universalism in knowledge and ethics, the Enlightenment made particularity a problem and it resulted in a stigmatization of those social groups that patently departed from its magisterial interpretation of rationality appear to be irrational, premodern and dangerous. Aamir Mufti claims uncontroversially that the Enlightenment idea of universalism set up a series of contrasts between the universalism of the bourgeois world of civility, civilization and citizenship on the one hand and local practices and customs on the other. The result was to construct a classification of social minorities who were deemed to be in need of education, moral reform, modernization and assimilation. Enlightenment in the Colony involves a comparison between “the Jewish Question” and the Partition of India. The particularity of Jews and Muslims is examined in the context of modern assumptions about universalism, especially the notion of universal citizenship.