Regulating Autonomy: An Assessment of Policy Language for Highly Automated Vehicles

Self‐driving cars (also known as driverless cars, autonomous vehicles, and highly automated vehicles [HAVs]) will change the regulatory, political, and ethical frameworks surrounding motor vehicles. At the highest levels of automation, HAVs are operated by independent machine agents, making decisions without the direct intervention of humans. The current transportation system assumes human intervention though, including legal and moral responsibilities of human operators. Has the development of these artificial intelligence (AI) and autonomous system (AS) technologies outpaced the ethical and political conversations? This paper examines discussions of HAVs, driver responsibility, and technology failure to highlight the differences between how the policy‐making institutions in the United States (Congress and the Public Administration) and technology and transportation experts are or are not speaking about responsibility in the context of autonomous systems technologies. We report findings from a big data analysis of corpus‐level documents to find that enthusiasm for HAVs has outpaced other discussions of the technology.     

Stakeholder model for community economic development in alleviating poverty in municipalities in South Africa

Governments globally have several responsibilities to its citizen, and one of these responsibilities is the improvement in the living standard and to stimulate social well‐being and sustainability in communities. A meta‐review of over a 100 article was conducted of both the qualitative and quantitative method related to the antecedents to business models, community economic development, and poverty alleviation. The basis for the paper is the proposition of the stakeholder model for implementing Community Economic Development in municipalities for alleviating poverty in South Africa.     

Conceptualizing community economic development strategic framework for poverty alleviation: The case of Raymond Mhlaba Local Municipality

Economic regeneration is a segment of neighbourhood renewal that boosts community economics and sustains certain principles of sustainable urbanization. The community economic development framework for poverty reduction, the implementation loop for stakeholder collaboration, and the Neo‐Marxist community economic development strategy for local economic freedom are imperative for sustaining and renewing the idealism of shared prosperity, which is the basis of collectivism and community economic development in relation to community development. Because, where there is poor economic vivacity; it is difficult, if not impossible for such community to galvanize towards the realisation of the sustainable development agenda, is tied to economic vivacity of an area. It is on this ground that this paper develops a neighbourhood regeneration model or the community economic development strategic framework for poverty alleviation for the Raymond Mhlaba Local Municipality. Data were sorted from Statistics South Africa, ScienceDirect, EBSCOHost, Proquest, and Scopus among others, and the data were cushioned with substantial qualitative analysis. Triangulation, content, and theme analysis were used to analysis the data and propose the models for the paper. It must be noted that an understanding and appreciation of this paper is dependent on the understanding of the earlier papers advanced in this series. Finding demonstrates the suitability and the need for models in empowering those at the rural areas in South Africa.     

Venezuela,April 2002: Coup or Popular Rebellion? The Myth of a United Venezuela

This article assesses the merits of opposing National Assembly reports into the coup against President Chávez of Venezuela in April 2002. Looking at the historical context and the content of the reports, it argues that the two opposing accounts reflect a class division that has always existed in Venezuela but has been officially denied. It concludes that a possible exit from the stalemate could be that the opposition accept the reality of this class division and therefore the Chávez government as a legitimate representative of the popular classes. This, however, is unlikely in the present circumstances.     

The paradoxes of ‘rational’ death

He has written widely on issues of moral theory, medical ethics, and moral theology. He is author of Medical Ethicsand co-editor of Set No Limits.He is currently completing a book titled The Distant Edge of Lifewhich examines Roman Catholic teaching on rational suicide.     

Public Service Motivation Concepts and Theory: A Critique

With its growth in popularity, public service motivation (PSM) research has been subjected to increasing critical scrutiny, but with more focus on measurement and models than on concepts. The authors examine PSM against standard criteria for judging the strength of concepts (e.g., resonance, parsimony, differentiation, and depth). After providing a critique of PSM concepts, they conclude with suggestions for research programs that could improve the explanatory power of PSM theory.     

Intergenerational offending in Liverpool and the north-west of England, 1850–1914

Using contemporary sources from the north-west of England in the Victorian period, the authors examine the putative connections made by contemporaries which linked together ‘bad’ parenting and the transmission of criminal traits. Poor parenting practices were a prevalent explanation for juvenile (leading onto sustained) delinquency, especially in the mid to late nineteenth century. Popular narratives by Charles Dickens and media opinion-formers were very influential in depicting neglectful mothers who did not socialise their children into law-abiding, useful members of society, and criminal fathers who inducted their children into their own criminal affairs and organisations. This article examines the reality of intergenerational offending (using prison- and court-generated data) to show that there is very little convincing research that proves direct intergenerational transmission of offending practices (i.e. parent-to-child-offending transmission). The authors then examine other possible routes of intergenerational offending using case studies and archival research, and the article concludes that environmental/socio-economic conditions and wider familial/neighbourhood relationships were, in fact, the main trigger for onset of offending, and the maintenance of criminal careers, rather than direct familial transmission. The article is therefore an important marker in understanding the processes which inhibit/generate criminality in a significant number of juvenile offenders in this period.     

India’s Growth Slowdown: End of an Era?

This article examines the sources of rapid economic growth in India in the 2000s and explanations for the growth slowdown in more recent years. We use the Indian national accounts and the National Sample Survey (NSS) to perform a growth accounting analysis. We disaggregate the total economy into agriculture, industry and services and separately identify the contributions of labor, capital and improvements in productivity. Services account for the largest share of the acceleration in 2000-10. Industry, on the other hand, is the sector most reflective of the recent slowdown. The high growth of the 2000s can be traced to strong capital accumulation, improvements in labor skills and large productivity gains. A slowing in the pace of economic reform and a general deterioration in fiscal and monetary policies appear to be the major factors responsible for the slower pace of growth since 2010.