The Yardstick of Manners

The interdependence of etiquette consumers and producers makes the contemporary etiquette guide a book of rules informed by realism rather than one etched from the behavior of the comfortable. While the acquisition of good manners facilitates comfort and mobility, the yardstick of behavior, like the measure of standard language, evolves with the times and thus is never a mere instrument of conformity.

‘Ground-Truthing’ Chinese Development Finance in Africa: Field Evidence from South Africa and Uganda

A new methodology, Tracking Underreported Financial Flows (TUFF), leverages open-source information on development finance by non-transparent, non-Western donors. If such open-source methods prove to be valid and reliable, they can enhance our understanding of the causes and consequences of development finance from non-transparent donors including, but not limited to, China. But open-source methods face charges of inaccuracy. In this study we create and field-test a replicable ‘ground-truthing’ methodology to verify, update, and improve open-source data with in-person interviews and site visits in Uganda and South Africa. Ground-truthing generally reveals close agreement between open-source data and answers to protocol questions from informants with official roles in the Chinese-funded projects. Our findings suggest that open-source data collection, while limited in knowable ways, can provide a stronger empirical foundation for research on development finance.     

An Assessment of Research on American Counties

In a 1992 issue of this journal, 12 scholars proposed an ambitious research agenda for the study of the American county. By all accounts, this agenda was both a catalyst and a guide for those interested in the nature, role, functions, operations, and practical relevance of county governments to either continue their research or to launch new studies in this underresearched area. The present article provides a detailed inventory of the research that has been conducted in the eight areas identified in the 1992 agenda. Specifically, which research questions have or have not been addressed satisfactorily? Such an exercise is a logical prerequisite for charting a path for future research on counties; it represents a synthesis of scholarly needs for theory building, hypothesis testing, and cumulative research and the dynamic and enduring knowledge‐base needs of county practitioners and elected officials.