U.S. State Budget Directors: Characteristics, Experience, and Attitudes

Much literature exists on state government budgeting, but until now, none existed on state budget directors. This article reports on a survey of these individuals. Their ages, genders, race, education, and work experience are reported. Their work week is discussed in terms of number of hours worked and interactions with their staff, the governor, and the legislature. Attitudes about the job and about their personal lives as related to their jobs are discussed. Their plans for when they leave office are considered. The characteristics and attitudes of the directors are compared with data about their respective states in search of possible linkages.     

The EU’s Korea relationship: enlargement effects

As the EU was expanding in 2004, a phase of new development between the EU and North Korea could have been expected. However, it was argued that the EU’s position towards North Korea is likely to remain unchanged. Most of the existing studies ascribed the reactive attitude of the EU to the distinctiveness of the recent enlargement. The accession of a large number of new members, which are considered to have diverse foreign policy interests and perception, is likely to add up to the already overwhelming number of problems in the governance of the EU. Thus, the EU’s policy towards North Korea would rather concentrate on a soft security approach. However, this paper contends that the existing explanation is not exhaustive, but that the implications relating to the conception of smallness, which is relevant to most of the new member states, should be included in the parameters of analysis in order to generate a more comprehensive and balanced view where the future relationship between the EU and North Korea is concerned. The preliminary draft of this paper was presented at the International Conference of the Korean Society of Contemporary European Studies, November, 25, 2005, at Seoul, South Korea. I appreciate all the comments and helpful advice made at the presentation.

---

Artificial Intelligence,Forward‐Looking Governance and the Future of Security

Over the last years, AI applications have come to play a role in many security‐related fields. In this paper, we show that scholars who want to study AI’s link to power and security should widen their perspective to include conceptual approaches from science and technology studies (STS). This way, scholars can pay attention to critical dynamics, processes, practices, and non‐traditional actors in AI politics and governance. We introduce two STS‐inspired concepts – the micro‐politics of design and development and co‐production – and show how the study of AI and security could benefit from them. In the final section, we turn to the study of AI in the context of Switzerland to underscore what aspects the two previously introduced concepts help to highlight that remain invisible for traditional approaches.     

Democracy Beyond Secrecy: Assessing the Promises and Pitfalls of Collective Voting

This paper assesses collective voting as a specific mode of democratic decision‐making and compares it to secret voting. Under collective voting, voters gather in one place and decide by the show of hands. We theorise two potential advantages and two disadvantages of collective voting so defined. We then draw on original survey data from one of the largest polities practising collective voting, the citizen assembly of the Swiss canton of Glarus. We find that both the promises and pitfalls of non‐secret voting are exaggerated. Non‐secret voting’s suspected pitfalls – social pressure and abstention – do not generally materialise in our sample, although for women they do appear to be relevant to some extent. However, the promises of collective voting – enabling cue‐taking and discursive bridging and bonding – are equally realised to a limited extent only.     

The statistical variability of blood alcohol concentration measurements in drink–driving cases

Like many other places in the world, Hong Kong has drink–driving legislation which prohibits a driver from having in his blood alcohol exceeding a prescribed limit while in control of a motor vehicle. The accuracy of measuring this alcohol concentration is obviously of prime concern as an erroneous result can avert the administration of justice. The common practice is to deduct all errors from the measured value and compare the deducted value with the prescribed limit, so that the benefit of all errors of the measurement is given to the driver. It is therefore important for any laboratory responsible for measuring blood alcohol concentrations to identify and quantify all errors associated with the measurement. The present study examined 900 blood alcohol determinations carried out by the Hong Kong Government Laboratory (HKGL) on cases of suspected drink driving. The determinations were performed by 5 different analysts with two different sets of instruments during 1995–1997. Statistical analysis indicated that the instruments had no bearing on the random error or variability and that even though analyst was a significant factor on variability, the deviation from the mean so caused was only 0.3% and of no practical significance. When the systematic error introduced by the tolerance limits of the certified alcohol standards (purchased from the Laboratory of Government Chemists, UK) was taken into account, the total uncertainty (random plus systematic errors) of an alcohol determination at 99.5% confidence level was found to be 4%. It is recommended that laboratories engaged in blood alcohol determination should adopt similar statistical treatment of their analytical results to find out the error and to ensure that the results are independent of analyst and instrument used.     

A Community Divided: Defense Attorneys and the Ethics of Death Row Volunteering

When death row inmates elect to waive appeals and proceed directly to execution a series of problematic legal and ethical questions are raised. This article examines the ethics of volunteering from the perspective of death row inmates'defense attorneys. Studying attorneys is important for two reasons: since they are charged with protecting their clients'interests they must resolve the difficult question of whether death is ever in someone's best interest; and perhaps more important, most death row defense attorneys are themselves against the death penalty and must thus negotiate between their clients'desire for execution and their own personal value systems. Interviews were conducted with 20 attorneys who have participated in representing would-be volunteers. Qualitative analysis suggests that most are faced with profound ethical dilemmas, both professional and personal, when a client elects to waive appeals. This article explores how attorneys interpret, experience, and resolve those dilemmas.     

A CROSS‐CULTURAL EXAMINATION OF THE LINK BETWEEN CORPORAL PUNISHMENT AND ADOLESCENT ANTISOCIAL BEHAVIOR*

Several studies with older children have reported a positive relationship between parental use of corporal punishment and child conduct problems. This has lead some social scientists to conclude that physical discipline fosters antisocial behavior. In an attempt to avoid the methodological difficulties that have plagued past research on this issue, the present study used a proportional measure of corporal punishment, controlled for earlier behavior problems and other dimensions of parenting, and tested for interaction and curvilinear effects. The analyses were performed using a sample of Iowa families that displayed moderate use of corporal punishment and a Taiwanese sample that demonstrated more frequent and severe use of physical discipline, especially by fathers. For both samples, level of parental warmth/control (i.e., support, monitoring, and inductive reasoning) was the strongest predictor of adolescent conduct problems. There was little evidence of a relationship between corporal punishment and conduct problems for the Iowa sample. For the Taiwanese families, corporal punishment was unrelated to conduct problems when mothers were high on warmth/control, but positively associated with conduct problems when they were low on warmtwcontrol, An interaction between corporal punishment and warmth/Wcontro1 was found for Taiwanese fathers as well. For these fathers, there was also evidence of a curvilinear relationship, with the association between corporal punishment and conduct problems becoming much stronger at extreme levels of corporal punishment. Overall, the results are consistent with the hypothesis that it is when parents engage in severe forms of corporal punishment, or administer physical discipline in the absence of parental warmth and involvement, that children feel angry and unjustly treated, defy parental authority, and engage in antisocial behavior.     

Understanding the organizational learning culture—Innovative behavior relation in local government: The roles of knowledge sharing and job autonomy

Drawing from research on organizational learning culture, knowledge sharing (KS), and job characteristics theory, this study investigates the mediating role of KS in the link between organizational learning culture (OLC) and employee's innovative behavior (IB), as well as how this mediating effect might be moderated by job autonomy (JA). Data captured from 1420 public employees of 33 local governments in South Korea shows that OLC affects employees' IB, while the effect size is reduced when controlling for the role of KS. Further, JA moderates the positive relationship between KS and IB, such that the relationship becomes invigorated at higher levels of JA. The findings also reveal that the indirect effect of OLC on IB through KS is more pronounced at higher levels of JA, which offers evidence of moderated mediation. We discuss the significant implications of our findings for future research and practice.     

ACCès à information et reassignments personnel's: le précédent qéuébcois

Sommaire: En 1982, l'Assembly e nationals du Québec a jumele, sous me seule loi, l'acces a I information et la protection des reassignments personnel. Elle a mandate un organism nouveau, la Commission d'acces a I information (cai), pour assurer la surveillance de ce regime. Vingt ans plus tard, un premier bilan permit de saisir la faqon dont ce mandat a &b mis en muvre, tout en degageant les raisons et les circumstances de I'Clargissement des tlches assumées par la cai. Comme la plupart des assembltks legislatives du Canada ont imité le «modele» qubbkois dans ce domaine en crbant le poste de Information and Privacy Commissioners, les questions qui dkoulent de cet examen revCtent une portbe plus large. Ces questions portent notamment sur la co‐existence de plusieurs mandats et sur la responsibilities de cet organism a l'egard du sedeur privb en matiere de reassignments personnel. Elles visent aussi le sens du reattachment de cette Commission a l'Assemblee nation ale en tant que « chien de garde » de l'administration publique. Abstract: In 1982, the Quebec national assembly brought access to information and the protection of personal information together under one piece of legislation. It created then a new independent body, the “Commission d'acces a l'information (cai)” (information and privacy commission), to ensure the monitoring of this legislation. Twenty years later, a first assessment of the path taken by Quebec reveals how the cai has been fulfilling its mandate and identifies the reasons and circumstances for extending the scope of the cai's responsibilities. As most of the legislative assemblies in the rest of Canada have imitated the Quebec “model” by creating the position of information and privacy commissioner, the questions that arise from this examination have a broader scope. These questions bear mainly on the co‐existence of several mandates and on the commission's accountability to the private sector with regard to personal information. Moreover, they focus on the meaning of the relationship of this commission to the national assembly as the watchdog of the public administration.