Is the Rule of Law an Essentially Contested Concept (in Florida)?

Law and Philosophy -     

Administrative reform and the politics of management training in the People's Republic of China

Abstract: Since 1978 China has attempted to modernize its administration and to train and recruit younger and more professional managers, both in the state administration and in economic enterprises. Despite important efforts in this direction, this has created tensions in the traditional methods of recruitment and training of personnel by the Chinese Communist party. Traditional ideological training institutes, such as party schools have attempted to appropriate management training to preserve their prestige and primacy in recruitment despite their lack of adequately trained instructors. As a result, management education has been diluted by strong admixtures of ideology. As well as providing professional training, cadre training institutes become an important means to promote political favourites, whereas educated professionals may lack sufficient political influence to exercise their skills. The current crackdown in China represents one phase in a conflict over the objectives of political reform which has been going on for some years. Sommaire: Depuis 1978, la Chine tente de moderniser son administration, de recruter et de former des cadres plus jeunes, plus professionnels, B la fois pour I'administration de I'Etat et des entreprises. Des efforts considérables ont été déployés en ce sens, mais il en est résulté des tensions quant aux méthodes traditionnelles de recrutement et de formation du personnel par le Parti com-muniste chinois. Les instituts traditionnels de formation idéologique, comme les écoles du Parti, cherchent B s'approprier cette formation des cadres pour sauvegarder leur prestige et conserver leur rôle prépondérant en matière de recrutement, bien qu'ils ne disposent pas de suffisamment d'enseignants dûment formés. Résultat: de fortes composantes idéologiques viennent atténuer la force educative des programmes. Non contents d'assurer la formation professionnelle, les instruits d'éducation servent à placer les favoris politiques, alors que de leur côté, les gens instruits et dotés d'une formation professionnelle ne jouissent pas toujours de I'influence politique nécessaire pour exercer et tirer parti de leurs compétences. La répression qui sévit actuellement en Chine constitue I'une des étapes d'un conflit qui dure depuis plusieurs années à propos des objectifs de la réforme politique.     

Post-Industrial Changes in Policy Style

The article discusses central characteristics of the way in which western democracies formulate their public policy. This is done by presenting a preliminary typology of policy styles. An attempt is made to classify some European countries according to their dominant policy style as well as according to changes in this respect during the post-industrial period. Overcrowding and unconventional participation are identified as two important factors behind this development. The essay, which is mainly based on British and Swedish data, concludes with a discussion of the question of whether societies are able to exercise any choice in determining their policy style.     

Scaling‐up participation at USAID

Since the 1970s many non‐governmental development organisations have moved away from top‐down modes of operation toward participatory practices that hand over decision‐making power to the poor. The bilateral development agencies of the industrialised states have been slower to follow suit, but in the 1980s and 1990s a number of such agencies also initiated participatory‐oriented reforms. Development scholars have paid little attention to reforms of the larger organisations. In this article, we analyse the efforts of the United States Agency for International Development to embrace participation in the 1990s. Internal reformers managed to change some agency procedures but had only limited success in institutionalising participatory practices. Forces internal to the agency, including rigid rules and employee incentive structures, hampered reform efforts. Also, while some developments external to the agency facilitated participation, many others, including legislative interference and shifting national policy priorities, hindered change toward participation. The case reveals how complex webs of accountability relationships make participatory‐oriented transformation a cumbersome process in large development organisations. Change towards participation can succeed, but only if reformers acknowledge and consider existing institutional constraints. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Richard Weaver's Untraditional Case for Federalism

Although Richard M. Weaver's political writings do not offera systematic examination of federalism, they include a defenseof federalist arrangements. Because Weaver's federalism is centralto his conservatism, and because his argument for federalismdiffers from more common conservative defenses of federalismoffered in the twentieth century, his writings allow studentsof federalism to examine possible connections between federalismand conservative political thought.     

The Reasonable Woman Standard: A Meta-Analytic Review of Gender Differences in Perceptions of Sexual Harassment

Courts and legislatures have begun to develop the reasonable woman standard (RWS) as a criterion for deciding sexual harassment trials. This standard rests on assumptions of a wide divergence between the perceptions of men and women when viewing social-sexual behavior that may be considered harassing. Narrative reviews of the literature on such perceptions have suggested that these assumptions are only minimally supported. To test these assumptions quantitatively, a meta-analytic review was conducted that assessed the size, stability, and moderators of gender differences in perceptions of sexual harassment. The effect of the actor's status relative to the target also was evaluated meta-analytically, as one alternative to the importance of gender effects. Results supported the claims of narrative reviews for a relatively small gender effect, and draw attention to the status effect. In discussing legal implications of the present findings, earlier claims are echoed suggesting caution in establishing the reasonable woman standard, and one alternative to the RWS, the reasonable victim standard, is discussed.     

Measurement of Uncertainty for Aqueous Ethanol Wet‐Bath Simulator Solutions Used with Evidential Breath Testing Instruments

Aqueous ethanol wet‐bath simulator solutions are used to perform calibration adjustments, calibration checks, proficiency testing, and inspection of breath alcohol instruments. The Toxicology Bureau of the New Mexico Department of Health has conducted a study to estimate a measurement of uncertainty for the preparation and testing of these wet‐bath simulator solutions. The measurand is identified as the mass concentration of ethanol (g/100 mL) determined through dual capillary column headspace gas chromatography with flame ionization detector analysis. Three groups were used in the estimation of the aqueous ethanol wet‐bath simulator solutions uncertainty: GC calibration adjustment, GC analytical, and certified reference material. The standard uncertainties for these uncertainty sources were combined using the method of root‐sum‐squares to give u_c = 0.8598%. The combined standard uncertainty was expanded to U = 1.7% to reflect a confidence level of 95% using a coverage factor of 2. This estimation applies to all aqueous ethanol wet‐bath simulator solution concentrations produced by this laboratory.     

Explaining Crime Diversity with Google Street View

Journal of Quantitative Criminology - Crime diversity is a measure of the variety of criminal offenses in a local environment, similar to ecological diversity. While crime diversity distributions...     

Application of non-contact scanning to forensic podiatry: A feasibility study

Foot impression evidence recovered from crime scenes can be available in the form of barefoot prints, sock-clad footprints, or as impressions within footwear. In some cases, suspects leave their footwear at the scene of the crime, and the insoles from the footwear can be important in linking a person to the footwear. The application of 3D data-collecting technology is becoming more and more popular within forensic science and has been used to recover footwear impression evidence. The present study is a feasibility study to discover if 3D data capturing devices can be applied to insoles; to capture the footprint impression for measurement using the Gunn method (a method used in forensic podiatry casework). Three different methods of data capture were conducted; Adobe Photoshop, MeshLab, and calipers used directly on the insole. Paired t-tests and Intraclass Correlation Coefficient (ICC) were conducted for all three data capture methods. Seven measurements used in this study were significantly different across all three methods. ICC scores were moderate to excellent for the Photoshop method, poor to good for the 3D method, and moderate to excellent for the Direct method.