Interstate Variation in the Allocation of State Aid To Local Schools

Do state governments attempt to reduce the disparities amonglocal school districts with well targeted aid programs? Thisarticle examines this question with a study of virtually theentire universe of U.S. independent school districts and ofthe distribution of state aid in forty-four states in 1982.In a pooled analysis of states and in separate state analyses,state aid is found to be powerfully linked to enrollment. Despitethe general pattern of enrollment-based aid programs, thirteenstates are shown to be targeting a modest amount of state aidto school districts with greater needs, such as lower per capitaincome or lower district revenues and greater school debt perpupil.     

Gender differences in perceptions for women's participation in unwanted sexual intercourse

This article examines the reasons that women and men give in explaining why women willingly agree to sexual intimacy when they would rather not be intimate at that time. Data collected from a sample of students on a southern campus included a set of scales which measured the beliefs about why women consent to unwanted sexual intercourse held by men and women. The findings indicated that most sexual intercourse was consensual and mutually desired. Perceived reasons for consent to unwanted sex by women varied for men and women, as did the ranking of relative importance of the reasons. Some support was found for the contention that compliance might be a function of gender socialization.     

Baker & McKenzie's regular article tracking developments in EU law relating to IP, IT and telecommunications

This is the latest edition of Baker & McKenzie's column on developments in EU law relating to IP, IT and telecommunications. This article summarises recent developments that are considered important for practitioners, students and academics in a wide range of information technology, E-commerce, telecommunications and intellectual property areas. It cannot be exhaustive but intends to address the important points. This is a hard copy reference guide, but links to outside web sites are included where possible. No responsibility is assumed for the accuracy of information contained in these links.     

From retrenchment to performance: civil service reform in Africa

Whether or not an unfettered market is the best solution to Africa's problems, the public service is both the subject and the object of reform. It is an arena of policy change and adjustment in economic management, as well as the locus of struggle over principles and patterns of administrative practice. Below we take empirical stock of the patterns and progress made in public service reform in Africa, a process characterized by cost containment and retrenchment. Then we examine what is entailed in a qualitatively different public service that well serves a liberal economy, concluding with observations on whether and how that might happen in Africa.     

Dilemmas and Disappointments: Progressive Politics 1896–2016

Attempts at a Labour–Liberal Democrat Progressive Alliance came to nothing prior to the 1997 general election. The original idea of progressivism, first mooted in Britain in 1896, was an American one. Suggestions for a progressive alliance in the UK came from Lloyd George in 1914, and then again in 1931, each time with little effect. Nothing emerged after 1945 until the Lib–Lab pact negotiated by Callaghan and Steel in 1977, which led to electoral misfortune for both and the rise and fall of the SDP. In 2010 a coalition between the Lib Dems (under Clegg) and the Conservatives was always much the more likely option. Most Labour people no longer saw the Lib Dems as a party of the left. The Coalition Agreement in 2010 showed the idea of an alliance to be a centrist, elitist one with little grass‐roots support. Such an alliance would flourish through abstract pressure groups rather than popular democracy, especially with a Labour party led by Corbyn. In the US and the UK, progressivism went badly wrong in its politics: Theodore Roosevelt's New Nationalist campaign of 1912 divided American reformers fatally, as did Lloyd George's postwar Coalition in Britain after 1918. Now, even after Brexit, a progressive alliance seems further away than ever. The story of the ‘Progressive Dilemma’ remains one of unrealistic projects, invariably disappointed.     

Does supported employment work?

Providing employment‐related services, including supported employment through job coaches, has been a priority in federal policy since the enactment of the Developmental Disabilities Assistance and Bill of Rights Act in 1984. We take advantage of a unique panel data set of all clients served by the South Carolina Department of Disabilities and Special Needs between 1999 and 2005 to investigate whether job coaching leads to stable employment in community settings. The data contain information on individual characteristics, such as IQ and the presence of emotional and behavioral problems, that are likely to affect both employment propensity and likelihood of receiving job coaching. Our results show that unobserved individual characteristics and endogeneity strongly bias naive estimates of the effects of job coaching. However, even after correcting for these biases, an economically and statistically significant treatment effect remains. © 2010 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

Humanitarian symbolic exchange: extending Responsibility to Protect through individual and local engagement

Moral common sense frames the relationship between privileged and at-risk populations underpinning contemporary Responsibility to Protect (R2P) discourse. This article develops an alternative by considering the relationship between archetypes of would-be rescuers and victims through Jean Baudrillard’s theorisation of symbolic exchange. Baudrillardian analysis connects personal morality and affective intersubjective symbolic exchange with the politics of international order. This leads, first, to an argument that current foundations for advocating R2P risk participating in a problematic moral economy of symbolic exchange between would-be rescuers and victims. Nonetheless, and secondly, the article deploys symbolic exchange to develop suggestions for partially re-figuring R2P’s humanitarian impulse by engaging ‘locally’ – both through one’s self (in the ethical relation suggested by Emmanuel Levinas) and with diverse forms of political order (following Jacques Rancière’s conception of politics). Doing so supports moves to engage a wide array of individual actors in a more interactive and less hierarchical form of R2P, to drive deeper consideration of local complexities of R2P through engagement with diverse local forms of political order, and to develop a more inclusive understanding of ‘humanity’ in order to bolster R2P’s normative foundations.