FEDERAL POLICY IN LOCAL CONTEXT: The Influence of Local State-Societal Relations on Endangered Species Act Implementation

Current debates regarding the degree to which centralization or decentralization of environmental bureaucracies promotes more effective management of natural resources suggest the need for employing new methodologies to empirical analysis, in a variety of political and ecological settings. In this paper, recent state synergy scholarship is adopted to an analysis of the impact of state‐societal relations on the implementation of the U.S. Endangered Species Act in the coastal redwoods region of California. This study suggests that certain state‐societal relations at the peripheries of bureaucratic state systems pose potential sources of both state autonomy and capacity. Effective utilization of such sources may be hampered, however, by policy actions that reflect national‐level political pressure, leading to management decisions that are not necessarily designed to improve either the ecological or social welfare of the region. In conclusion, the author argues that decentralization may be beneficial to bureaucratic effectiveness, however such efforts will be contingent on the ability of states to develop dense connecting networks with social actors that can contribute to policy goals.     

Limits to a cyber-threat

This paper reveals the limits to representing cyberspace as a threat. In contrast to more conventional threats, the suggestion is that the not-immediately-apparent consequences of a cyber-attack make it largely reliant on official practices of representation. Exploring the implications of this reliance, the paper outlines how attributing meaning and culpability – always contested practices – are amplified in the potential absence of a readily apparent attack. Given these limits, does the cyber-threat then require a different lexicon of danger to both educate and engender a sense of caution? Examining the discursive construction of the cyber-threat, the paper demonstrates how this threat draws upon an established economy of danger – likening it to warfare and terrorism – but also suggests a limit to these representations. Specifically, by engaging post-structuralist literature the paper illustrates that these limits are best understood through an appreciation of the performative and the constitutive ‘lack’ in signification. It thus concludes that the value of the cyber-threat is not determined by transparently representing a cyber-attack. Rather, it is drawn from processes of hyper-securitization and through the establishment of institutions like the NATO Center of Excellence in Cooperative Cyber Defense that retroactively bring into existence the very object it purports to defend against.     

Youth Worker Professional Development Participation,Preferences, and Agency Support

Using a Web-based survey, this study examined youth workers' professional development participation, preferences, and levels of agency support and the relationships between these variables and youth worker characteristics. Results revealed a positive relationship between participation in professional development opportunities and youth workers' self-reported job competency but also indicated low levels of agency support for participation in continuing education. Though perceptions of critical training topics varied among program staff from different geographic areas, most youth workers reported similar training experiences and interests regardless of their individual characteristics. Collaborative approaches to training and professional development may result in increased exposure to a broad range of professional development opportunities and significantly enhance the quality of youth programming.     

Tolerance of the Intolerant?

In the first part of the essay, the author analyzes the difference and the relation between two different ideas of toleration, the passive and the active meaning. While the former is related to opportunistic and prudential purposes, the second is grounded in an ethical framework and presupposes the individual's freedom of conscience. This second meaning appears to be very important in a multicultural society: On its basis it is possible to develop toleration both as a plurality of contexts of choice and as a priority rule between conscience and culture in Rawlsian terms. In the second part, starting from the case of O. Preminger Institut v. Austria , the author examines the relation between this idea of toleration and freedom of speech.