Civic Engagement in the Twenty-First Century: Toward a Scholarly and Practical Agenda

We understand civic engagement to mean people participating together for deliberation and collective action within an array of interests, institutions and networks, developing civic identity, and involving people in governance processes.     

Democratizing the Administrative State: Connecting Neighborhood Councils and City Agencies

Citizen participation in government decision making, especially at the local level, has received heightened attention with regard to its promise for improved governance. The overarching administrative ethos of the administrative state creates barriers to citizen participation in governance. Developing and nurturing citizen participation in the presence of the administrative state is a significant challenge. Drawing on the literary tradition of public engagement and learning, this article models a developmental strategy of participation that offers one avenue for achieving meaningful partnerships between city agencies and neighborhood councils in a metropolitan environment. We present a model of citizen participation that brings neighborhood councils and city agencies together in a collaborative partnership. This model is based on the literature on citizen participation, which focuses on the significance of interactive processes in building trust among participants and creating mutual understanding and agreement.     

Pigouvian policies in closed behavioral systems

This essay-analyzes the Pigouvian tax-subsidy policy, reviews the traditional justification and several practical and theoretical criticisms of it, and offers three arguments about the Pigouvian policy and the implied structure of effluent charges (as well as subsidies). First, many proponents of a Pigouvian policy misinterpret its purpose. The tax is not designed to reduce pollution to an ‘acceptable’ level, but to maximize joint production value. Second, Pigouvian effluent charges may violate some constructions of the equal protection clause. Third, these charges may violate, also, some constructions of the due process clause, as well as the ethical criteria that the right of due process implies.     

Quantitative analysis of glasses used within Australia

An initial 134 glasses have been collected from eleven classifications of glass used within Australia. These include both local and imported glasses. Quantitative elemental analyses of the glasses have been determined using a scanning electron microscope equipped with an energy dispersive X-ray spectrometer. The current program provides for an elemental analysis for Na, Mg, Al, Si, P, S or Pb, Cl, K, Ca, Ba or Ti, V, Cr, Fe, Mn and Zn expressed as oxides, and has a sensitivity down to approximately 0.1%. The data for the six most commonly occurring elements, namely, Na, Mg, Al, Si, K and Ca, together with the refractive index are presented for each class of glass in terms of their mean value and standard deviation from the mean, and also in histogram form.