Of pigs and poison shelves

Human Rights Review - The following interview took place in the Kreuzberg section of western Berlin in August 2003. Bernd Lippmann is a secondary school teacher of physics and mathematics in...     

About pigs?: Decisions,outcomes and project planning

At the heart of a misleading conceptualisation of policy practice is what we refer to as the ‘common-sense’, ‘mainstream’ or ‘linear’ model of public policy. This model represents public policy as a dichotomous linear process, of two distinct but sequential phases. The process begins with a decision or a sequence of activities which culminate in a decision. The decision also constitutes a ‘policy’. Then there is a break. On the other side of the divide is ‘policy implementation’ … the unthinking acceptance of the mainstream model in policy analysis has … important and dangeous consequences (Clay and Schaffer, 1985, p.3).     

Paradigms of public financial administration in the evolution of papua new guinea

In the evolution of Papua New Guinea from dependent territory to independent entity, public financial administration has experienced a series of changes. Each historical group of changes may be represented by a characteristic paradigm which identifies the nature of the underlying concepts and their essential dynamics in the context of the political, economic and social environment. From the early days of Australian settlement, public financial administration was dominated by the colonial paradigm as the two constituent territories—initially separately and then jointly—relied almost exclusively on Canberra for the provision of funds, supply of expertise and formation of policies. More recently, since national independence, legislative and staffing changes have occurred in public financial administration but there have been no infrastructural innovations in response to current needs and priorities. Australian support of the recurrent budget and other foreign aid have not abated, while the forms and institutions involved in public financial administration continue to reflect strong metropolitan influences which militate against the formation of an indigenous paradigm consonant with national aspirations, development goals and cultural values.     

Fortifying the future of human rights with human rights education

Abstract

Those scholars debating the health of the human rights movement completely ignore the role of human rights education, HRE. Whether it is Samuel Moyn and Stephen Hopgood declaring the demise of what they also term the “human rights project”, or Kathryn Sikkink defending it, none explore the effect HRE is having or can have. This article argues that those who neglect to recognize the substantial and substantive conversation going on in our institutions of higher education cannot provide a complete picture of the human rights project. It will demonstrate which of the naysayers Moyn and Hopgood's arguments are weakened by ignoring HRE and argue that Sikkink's recommendations for human rights efforts can be strengthened by HRE. Also explored is what HRE should learn from the critiques of these three scholars and how university HRE can be improved.     

Rethinking human rights

He is author of The Political Economy of the International Monetary Fund (published by Transaction).He is presently a visiting lecturer on ethics and statecraft at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville.     

Administration of human rights

It is puzzling that although human rights pervade nearly all actions that affect the public, so little attention is devoted to their administration. The absence of books, chapters or even courses describing human rights administration is a silent reproach to our profession. To suggest how such a study might proceed, this article considers three questions: (1) how rights like those outlined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights are converted to policies; (2) how human experiences can suggest priorities in their administration; and (3) how to improve the performance of the ‘virtual bureaucracy’ that is carrying the related administrative responsibilities. Serious studies of human rights administration must deal with three critical problems: their complexity as they infuse other public policy issues; their universality as they interact at all levels of public and private society; and their ubiquity, which renders coherent bureaucratic structures and reforms difficult. Such studies are justified because large‐scale efforts to provide education in rights administration can make important contributions to the realization of human dignity. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Commercial contracts and human connectedness

She is author of The Madam as Entrepreneurand has published articles in the fields of the sociology of deviance and the sociology of law. Her recent research and publications have been on the legal impact of federal legislation in the education of handicapped children.     

Epistemology of the human sciences

The entrepreneurs of Silicon Valley and Route 128 - America’s leading centers of technological innovation - organized politically in the late 1970s. This paper seeks to explain why high tech business associations in these two regions have adopted widely divergent political stances and behavior. It argues that business interests are defined through the process of organization, and that the attitudes of these groups of industrialists were shaped by distinctive political environments, in turn a result of the different industrial and social histories of the two regions. While much scholarly interest has been devoted to the ways in which business affects political outcomes, the paper suggests that the reciprocal causation is equally important: the political environment is an important determinant of business interests.