(Mis)Measuring Value Change: A Brief Postscript

One aspect of the multifaceted controversy on value change in advanced industrial societies concerns the measurement of values. Analyses of 1976–86 Euro-Barometer data have indicated that responses to the four-item materialist-postmaterialist values index are very sensitive to current economic conditions, especially inflation and unemployment rates and, hence, much of the recorded increase in postmaterialism in eight Western European countries since the mid-1970s is artifactual. Although it has been claimed these findings disappear if more recent data are considered, time series analyses reveal that responses to the values measure are strongly affected by prevailing economic conditions throughout the entire 1976–92 period. These aggregate-level findings are buttressed by individual-level analyses of 1989 Euro-Barometer data.     

The ‘White Working class’ in South Africa

In general, the analysis of classes in the literature on South Africa beginsfrom the political and ideological levels and not from the concept of the mode of production. The effect of this is to obscure the nature of the class structure and changes in it and leads to a neglect of shifts in class alliances in the class struggle. In this paper, concepts of the ‘white working class’ commonly found in the literature are critically analysed and an alternative conceptualization which begins from the mode of production is outlined. The paper ends with a brief analysis of changes in the relationship between the white working class and the state.     

Targeting at the Margin: the ‘Glass of Milk’ Subsidy Programme in Peru

This article evaluates the Vaso de Leche (VL) feeding programme in Peru in order to illustrate an evaluation methodology based on targeting criteria for a decentralised transfer programme. We find that the degree of overall targeting of poor individuals attributable to the central government's choice of districts is greater than that attributable to choice of participants within districts made by the municipalities and the mothers' committees. However, when we use a version of a targeting efficiency measure first introduced by Galasso and Ravallion [2003] which we modify to be defined on the values of allocations, the opposite is the case. The community-based decision makers appear to be targeting the poor in terms of the values of the transfers.     

Dimock's philosophy of administration

Marshall E. Dimock was a self-confessed non-conformist who valued individualism and individual self-development above all other values. For him a philosophy of administration is more than a science or art and “must deal with institutional goals and objectives, with social values and individual growth, as well as with the paraphernalia of organizing and running things, which are only “incidental.^”(1) He warned that “over specialization of the individual makes him dull and lacking capacities for administrative growth^”(2)and decried the parochialism of behaviorists, logical positivists and other methodologists. At the core of his thinking about problems of administration, management and organization was what he regarded as the fundamental importance of “moral philosophy” although he recognized that “the political economist who epitomizes moral philosophy is regarded as a regrettably nonconformist and excessively individualistic relic of a past age.^”(3)