On the Object of Arrigo's Critique

International Journal for the Semiotics of Law - Revue internationale de Sémiotique juridique -     

Policy implications of climate forecasts for water resources management in the Pacific Northwest

The Columbia River Basin management system suffers from conflicts over water use and allocation, and vulnerability to climate variability that disrupt hydropower, fisheries, irrigation, water supply, and other vital activities. Climate forecasts have the potential to improve water resource management in this system supporting management decisions that decrease its vulnerability to droughts, floods, and other crises related to climate variability. This study shows that despite the potential utility, managers do not use climate forecasts except for background information. The barriers to managers' use of climate forecasts include low forecast skill, lack of interpretation and demonstrated applications, low geographic resolution, inadequate links to climate variability related impacts, and institutional aversion to incorporating new tools into decision making. To realize the potential of climate forecasts for water resources management, we recommend strategies that include technical improvements to the forecast products, and joint efforts between forecast producers and the management community to develop and demonstrate climate forecast applications through reciprocal and iterative education.     

Answering the Public Choice Challenge: A Neoprogressive Research Agenda

A neoprogressive research agenda is developed to challenge public choice theory's position as the new orthodoxy in both understanding and guiding policy choices about urban service delivery. Such a challenge requires more than accumulating negative empirical tests. Rather, we must accept the new burden of proof laid on proponents of progressive reform institutions by the theories of nonmarket failure and quasimarkets, ideas that undermined the intellectual pillars supporting progressive reform institutions and can only be challenged by new ideas. Public choice theory itself, broadly considered, is proposed as a valid source of such new ideas. Three research programs, in part already underway, are outlined as essential building blocks in the research agenda, focusing, respectively, on blunting the rough edges of the theory of nonmarket failure, coordinating the empirical critiques of quasimarkets in a new theory of quasimarket failure, and developing the new institutionalism so that it can provide the basis for comparing the production outcomes of alternative urban institutions.     

Family Characteristics and Adolescent Competence in India: Investigation of Youth in Southern Orissa

This study examines the relationship among a host of family characteristics and indicators of adolescent competence in a sample (N = 107) of 8th- and 9th-grade students in one school located in Berhampur city in Orissa state, India. Social competence (SC) and antisocial behavior (AB) were assessed by teachers, and adolescents evaluated various areas of their own competence on a perceived competence scale. Final examination grades also were obtained as a general measure of cognitive competence. The results indicated that families of more socially competent participants tended to be verbally and emotionally expressive; democratic with regard to discipline, input, and decision making; close but not enmeshed; higher in their level of parent–adolescent communication and family ideals; and lower in external locus of control. Consequently, families of more antisocial adolescents had more conflict and enmeshment and were more external-locus-of-control oriented and either permissive or authoritarian. Finally, several personal and family demographic traits were positively associated with SC and negatively associated with AB, including gender (girls higher in SC and lower in AB than boys), age and grade (older students and those in grade 9 more competent and less problematic), education level of mothers and fathers (positively related to SC and negatively to AB), and birth order (middle children in the family lower in self-perceptions of competence than oldest or youngest children). The findings have implications for parenting and family-life education efforts in India that could have a major impact on the development of adolescent competence.