Program design guidelines

Abstract. The article briefly examines organization and systems theory, Planning, Programming and Budgeting system, management and planning theory, Nadler's system design matrix and the scientific research design, and derives a ‘form’ or a format to describe and express human activities from a managerial point of view. This format is the Program Design Guidelines. A program is defined as a set of human activities and their requirements which can be described (for evaluation purposes) or formulated (for planning purposes) according to twelve aspects: title, introduction, needs/problems/concerns, objective, target population, operations, schedule, authority and responsibility, resources required, budget, evaluation and implications. A series of advantages could follow the wide use of such guidelines in government operations.     

Governance and Tools for the Post-Industrial Re-Conversion of the North-West European Mining Area： From a Contemporary Vulnerability to a Territorial Resilience

Many European countries （including Germany, Belgium, France, and England） were faced with industrial decline, creating a new issue in the territories： Brownfields sites inside or on the periphery of industrial cities. The post-industrial contemporary vulnerability involves prospective and strategic planning choices in terms of rehabilitation, requalification, or in terms of destruction of the existing heritage. The research targets North-West European mining area brownfields requalification via the paradigm of territorial resilience with a view to a socio-economic revitalisation. What can be the vectors of a sustainable territorial recovery and what are the resilience indicators of those traditional industrial regions of Europe？ By such research, the imperative commitment of political players and citizens to carry out a long-term proactive resilience of a space system to a major industrial heritage is demonstrated. Even if governance is not the only factor of territorial resilience, it remains a major sign in its vulnerable territories.     

Aśvaghoṣa and His Canonical Sources I: Preaching Selflessness to King Bimbisāra and the Magadhans (Buddhacarita 16.73–93)

A?vagho?a’s Buddhacarita contains two sharply argumented critiques of the non-Buddhists’ self: one against Arā?a Kālāma’s (proto-)Sā?khya version of the ātman in Canto 12, and one of a more general import in Canto 16. Close scrutiny of the latter?s narrative environment reveals A?vagho?a’s indebtedness, in both contents and wording, to either a Mahāsā?ghika(/Lokottaravādin) or—much more plausibly—a (Mūla)sarvāstivāda account of the events that saw the Buddha preach selflessness to King Bimbasāra and his Magadhan subjects. Besides hinting at this genetic relationship, the present essay aims at exhibiting the structure and contents of A?vagho?a’s arguments against the self, some of which can pride themselves of a long posterity in the controversy over the self.     

Going privately: partnership and outsourcing in UK public services

Public private partnerships provide an important illustration of the way the traditional role of government as employer and service provider is being transformed. While policy–makers argue that the growing role of the private sector is not driven by ideological thinking – that, in fact, both public and private sector organizations can benefit from working together in partnership relations – in practice it is the norms and rules of private sector management that underpin reforms. This paper assesses evidence from two detailed case studies of partnerships and demonstrates, first, that there is little evidence of mutual gains from partnership arrangements and, second, that because of an imbalance of power between public and private sector partners, any gains achieved are not distributed equitably. These results suggest that current reforms need to be refocused around building on the distinctive qualities of services provision in the public sector, rather than expanding the private sector world of markets and contracts.     

Der European Research Council als Ordnungsanspruch des europäischen Projekts im akademischen Feld

The European Union wants the “European Research Area” to become a process with its own competitive dynamics between national academic traditions and the global hegemony of US research. At first glance, such a Europeanization of Higher Education is vertically posited by the EU Research Framework Programmes. In addition and beyond that, the European Research Council (ERC) establishes a genuinely European academic logic fueled by strategies aimed at scientific autonomy. It does so by creating competition in accordance with meritocratic rules of academic legitimacy. As a result, both governance-oriented and critical idealist elites actively relate to the ERC as a European institution and bestow it with the ability of consecrating academic excellence. As a consequence, they contribute to the discursive construction of a European order characterized by a symbolic and material integration of elites, the opening up of national fields and the primacy of economic competition.     

Russia,Europe and the Ontological Security Dilemma: Narrating the Emerging Eurasian Space

Abstract

The aim of this essay is twofold. First, it seeks to examine how Russia and the European Union understand the emerging Eurasian space. We will do this by looking at how the two narrate the space, the use of power and each other. Second, we want to argue that the narratives at the heart of the conceptual and normative maps that guide their actions and behaviour create an essentially ontological security dilemma; that is, behaviour aimed primarily at enhancing confidence in the identity and continuity of a political community threatens the ontological security of other actors.